It's my great pleasure and privilege to introduce our speaker tonight, Kaz Kanahashi. Many of you know Kaz, though you may not know it, as he's the translator of Munirududra, and has just completed, with a number of people, as he did Munirududra, another series of translations from Dogen Senji's work. He's been translating Dogen Senji's work, what time is it? Thirty years? Let's see, thirty-five years? Thirty-five years. And so we owe a great debt of gratitude to him for the possibility we have of studying Dogen Senji's work. He also is very active in plutonium-free future,

[01:07]

and I think that that's more of the subject that he's going to work on tonight. He's going to speak of a ten-millennium future. Thank you very much. Good evening. Thank you for coming. I always feel I'm coming back home to Zen Center. Since 1977, I worked for Zen Center as a scholar in residence for seven years. So, I was living in here and there and there, 350 different places,

[02:10]

but usually also boarding here, too, so coming here for breakfast and lunch and dinners and so forth. And usually coming for afternoons as opposed to mornings. And then working with Blanche and many people, especially in Dogen. And I guess, I didn't know, actually I had a very clear idea that I wanted to come to the United States to work for Zen Center because I had met Suzuki Yoshi before in 1964 and 1965, and then saw the practice of his community at Sokoji. And then I visited other places in the United States, Hawaii,

[03:15]

and Canada. And then I thought, well, this would be the best place for me to come and translate Dogen's words. So, anyway, I sort of managed to be invited, I think, here to work for Zen Center somehow. And then I didn't really know the basic, kind of hidden agenda about Zen Center, why they wanted me. So I found out that there were some studies about transmission of Dharma transmission, certifying advanced students as next-generation teachers. So we were sort of secretly doing that job.

[04:19]

Then I think I came back in 1979, and then I met a woman who became my wife, Linda. And we got married in 1980. But about that time, maybe before and after our marriage, I said, well, maybe this world may not last long because so many nuclear missiles were aiming at San Francisco and other cities. And then there was a kind of great fear of having some kind of accidental nuclear war happening. And then we may have to sort of wake up the next morning.

[05:25]

And I talked to people at Zen Center, and people agreed that we should really study about the nuclear weapons issues. And so we started, you know, we met here, and then one of the first things we did was that we had a meditation on UC Berkeley campus, which was, as you know, mainly responsible for, I mean, responsible as a main organization for development, research and development of nuclear weapons. And the branch was the Doshi, and we did this service on Hiroshima Day, I think, 1980. And then we were very active in having visual in downtown San Francisco, demonstrations and so forth.

[06:32]

But actually, I'm not going to really talk about the nuclear weapons issue so much. My sort of intention of talking about it is I really appreciate sort of my friendship with many people who have worked together trying to work for the survival of humanity. But also, it's sort of the nuclear weapons issue is a very extreme issue that the world can be wiped out just almost like momentarily. Within a few days, I guess, you know, the surface of the Earth could be just completely burned to nothing. And this is the first time in human history that humans really sort of saw the actual practical sort of end of the world, mass suicide.

[07:42]

And so in a way, this is a very unique time in our history. And then when I was talking to Norman this time, about a year ago, Norman Fisher, he said, well, you know, nuclear weapons are sort of, you know, nuclear wars may happen or may not happen. But this environmental destruction is going to happen, you know. So these environmental issues are really, really serious. And I think many of us here are aware of that. Well, I guess I'm supposed to talk about the practice, right? How our practice sort of works in our life.

[08:44]

And maybe part of my practice is to be with Dogen Zenji, 13th century, going back to 13th century, just being with him and his teaching somehow, and the sense of sort of not one, not two. And this is a wonderful experience going back to his 13th century world and trying to really understand what he was trying to say. But also I feel this kind of sense of oneness can be applied to sense of oneness to other people, other beings. Also to the future generations. Just somehow we feel not separate from our future generations.

[09:50]

I often talk to young people, like, you know, go to high school or some art project with high school students and ask them one question. Maybe I should ask you questions too. The question is, how many years do you want humanity to live? And some people say 100 years, 200 years, 50 years. Some people say forever. But it's very hard to find someone who would say 100 years. We want humanity to live 1,000 years or 2,000 years. It seems that our young people are really losing hope or have already lost hope.

[10:58]

They don't really want to talk about it. They don't want to give numbers. They usually give some bad reasons and say, you know, this is happening and so climate is changing, you know, we are losing rainforest and all these things. So they don't really want to be sort of unrealistic and say we want humanity to live for 1,000 years. And I think I find it very, very disturbing. I think from the beginning of the civilization when people started sort of counting big numbers like 1,000 or 10,000, there was always an assumption that in most cultures that we live for thousands of years, you know.

[12:08]

There are some stories, of course, you know, ideas about end of the world, you know, coming very soon and so forth in different cultures. That's true too. But I think in most cultures, especially in East Asian cultures, we sort of assume that we would live like 10,000 years. So like the word 10,000 is in Japanese Banzai, which means like long live the emperor. It's like 10,000 years. But not only emperors, but society or just our group, you know. This Banzai means 10,000 years. And a fountain pen is called Nannenshitsu. Nannenshitsu is another way to say 10,000. Banzai and Nannenshitsu actually. So a pen that can last for 10,000 years, that's a fountain pen in a way, you know.

[13:15]

So 10,000 is a very common way of saying just long time, I think. And I think, you know, we are sort of now going into a new millennium. Everyone is talking about the next 1,000 years, or at least the beginning of 1,000 years, next century. But I don't know how many people are really thinking about, you know, like 10,000 years, 10 millennia. So instead of asking this question, I stopped asking this question, how many years do you want humanity to live? And I found it very kind of depressing.

[14:17]

So I changed my question. My question is, do we want to live for 10,000 years as a society? So, I don't know, you know, people say. How do I know? Then some people may say, yes, okay. And then say, how? How do we do that? Oil, people say, is going to run out in 80 years. Maybe scientific research is sort of finding that maybe we can dig deeper holes, you know, and maybe could stretch it to 100 or maybe 150. But I think many people are thinking that climate change could come faster in 20 years.

[15:28]

So, how do we sort of survive? I mean, avoid all these catastrophes and live that long? I think this can be maybe one of the most important questions of our time. So, maybe expectation, let's say civilization started about 10,000 years ago, you know, when farming started about that time. And then sort of there is always an assumption, as far as I'm concerned, that we will live 10,000 more years.

[16:35]

And then all of a sudden in the mid-20th century, so that possibility for human survival for 10,000 years was kind of decreasing radically, you know. Primarily with the development of nuclear weapons, and then sort of catching up with environmental destruction. We still have both threats. Environment, of course, includes population explosion, and then high consumption. So, I think we are really, our society is rushing toward the unrecoverable zero point, you know, zero possibility to live for 10,000 years.

[17:43]

Very close to zero, I think. So, that's a very frightening fear. So, I'm an artist, so I do some lines, you know. And then sort of, I try to find a kind of optimistic picture, most optimistic picture. That would be going like this. We are going sort of toward the zero potential for that long human survival, and then something happens there. And then it gradually sort of, it turns its direction, and then goes up. Our sort of possibility for human survival for that ultra-long time will be sort of recovering, you know. So, that's the kind of picture I have. Of course, I don't know how to do it. And I like to ask these questions.

[18:46]

How should we do that? At the moment, what I'm trying to do is trying to ask questions, these questions in Europe and in other places. I just ask questions. Humbly ask questions. Another idea is probably, I wrote an article, and I'm trying to maybe convince some organizations, like maybe Peace Institute at the University of Hawaii. I have some connection. And some groups. Maybe that's it. To start a study group. Maybe a few people can just meet, you know, once or twice a year or something like that. In a kind of lazy way, we can start, you know. I mean, we'll be talking about 10,000 years, so maybe, you know, we don't have to bust.

[19:46]

So, I think having a study group is one way. At least people can start talking about it. I like to have, like, academic organizations to have study groups and proposing it to the Academy of Art and Science. So, that's where people, artists and scientists talk to each other. I think that's a good place for a study group, a small study group to start. Eventually, I'd like to have, I'd like to see the United Nations to establish a council for the 10 millennium future. So, their task will be just talking about the long-term future. That's all. But maybe I'll be asking them to involve people, not like specialists, you know, and leaders.

[20:57]

Because basically, specialists and leaders sort of have messed up the planet. So, we need sort of people, you know, people, young people, or, you know, different cultures, tribes. Those people to really express their concern and present their ideas. So, that's my sort of agenda so far. Well, if you have any suggestions or questions, please go ahead. Yes. I wanted to thank you so much for speaking about this. So much eloquence and passion and feeling.

[21:58]

Your thoughts and understandings are deeply my own. I think in the 20 years or so that I've studied this problem, what's ironic is that the board, the crisis board on the world map, population, water, I mean, in so many ways, it's blinking all over. And the ironic part is that there's so much of a force for collective either denial or see no evil, speak no evil. And the opportunities for human beings to come together with angst and compassion and just do this now, so rare. The irony of it is that we're talking in terms of two generations to some kind of a catastrophe that's, for most of us, unimaginable.

[23:03]

Those are basic scientific kinds of clear, rational, logical projections. And yet, we continue to continue on. And so the question that I find, the coin that I find that I try and pass to people is just one. What then does one do? And the other thing that seems to be, I've kind of been an educator for a long time, sort of thrown out of the schools out of necessity in some way. But it came to me a number of years ago that the most important thing that we could do to the young people is stand before them at the youngest possible age. What that age is, I don't know. And just say simply, look, kids, we have something awful to tell you. We've really screwed it up. And we've screwed it up so bad that we don't know how to get out from underneath it because we're the problem perpetuating the problem. But somehow we feel that within your genetic inherent makeup is necessarily so the solution to this.

[24:09]

And for the first time ever, Margaret Mead was the first person that I saw talk about this. But she was talking about this generation out of necessity becoming co-educators. And all future generations, too. Co-educators were the children because they had in their intuitive mind inherently the map to be able to get us home. Where we were the problem mind. They were the solution mind. So somehow if we could take that most absurd, radical conclusion into the schools, then the curriculum becomes simply how do we as co-educators get us all home. And that's been in my heart for a long time. And I just want to again thank you for this moment. Thank you, Stephen. I don't know if I can answer all your questions. I don't think so.

[25:10]

But first of all, how does one do this? I like to translate it into two sentences. One is how do I do this? What can I do? And then the other one is what can you do? I think that's the question. In a way, I'm a pessimist that maybe I see bad elements. But on the other hand, I'm an optimist because I see capacity of humans. And also I have some experience of kind of impossible things sort of happening, you know, became possible. The first impossible thing was when I was like 11 and 12, I see American bombers, you know, just coming and dropping bombs on our cities.

[26:25]

And just, you know, our cities were all burning. And then Soviet Union joined the allies. And then Japanese fighters, you know, zero fighters, were challenged that they couldn't really go up. So actually, you know, our sky was just all kind of under the control of the U.S. Air Force. And then the government was saying that we would never, you know, surrender. And then they sort of provocated kind of a beautiful phrase that means, you know, Ichioku yokusai, that means a hundred million people crushed like a jewel. It's a beautiful image, but the idea is that we all sort of fight and, you know, get killed and no one will surrender. So that's the idea.

[27:26]

So when I was a kid and then, you know, our education was such that we would never surrender. We would rather kill ourselves. So first of all, I didn't see any sign that we will win the war. I mean, any kid can figure it out. Okay, I would never sort of predict that we will surrender because, you know, it's our kind of commitment, you know, to ourselves, you know, all of us. And then what happened was recently I sort of found out that this Zen monk, Yamamoto Gentaro, he was very important. He had a very crucial element because he was kind of blind.

[28:26]

He was abbot of Ryutakuji, a small country temple, but he was very highly respected. And I think in spring of 1945, General Tojo's, you know, failure was so clear. He started the war and carried on the war. So General Suzuki was asked to be a prime minister. And then he was looking for an advisor and then talked to Genpuro Oshi and said, what shall we do? And then Genpuro Oshi said, yeah, just accept the offer, be a prime minister, surrender as soon as possible. And at that time, no one had this courage to say that, you know, civilian or military people, no one. This was just kind of, you know, just a presentation of the most cowardness, you know, just, I mean, you know, extreme lack of integrity and so forth, you know, disgraceful.

[29:37]

He was the one, you know, he could say that. And then Suzuki became prime minister. And then in August, he sent a message to Genpuro Oshi and said, we will make an unconditional surrender within a few days. So you'll see that. I'd like you to know that. So Genpuro Oshi wrote back and said, you know, your service is going to start actually now. And you just bear what is unbearable and sustain what is unsustainable, you know. And so he wrote this letter. And then actually this became the part of Genpuro's, you know, he appeared for the first time on radio and then ordered the entire nation to surrender.

[30:40]

But he did it in a very arrogant way. And then he used actually this Zen-like paradoxical phrase, which is still now most frequently quoted verse from his infamous historical announcement. Anyway, so something, you know, which appeared to be impossible can be, can happen. To us, you know, when we are doing this, you know, work against nuclear arms race, it was impossible. Everything we did, you know, nothing worked. The world got worse and worse. We got more and more thousands and thousands more nuclear weapons. And there was no sign that we could reverse it. When I heard someone saying, OK, we should reverse the arms race, it sounded so crazy and so fresh.

[31:48]

Because reversing arms race, we can at least freeze it. But how could we reverse it? But all of a sudden, as you can see, there was a breakthrough. Somehow now we don't sort of worry about the fear that we will never get up in the morning. The situation is not better, but still at least we don't have that sense of, you know, immediate danger at the moment. And I think, you know, that kind of breakthrough happened. It was, for us, it was completely impossible, unimaginable that the arms race would stop. But it did stop. And my sort of retrospective understanding is that breakthrough is anonymous.

[32:50]

Large breakthrough is anonymous. You know, no one person or group of people are really responsible. Everyone is responsible. Another thing is that, you know, everything everyone did actually counted. We went to San Francisco downtown and, you know, did physio. We did this service on the campus. I think, you know, people did some citizen diplomacy and all these things. Everything counted, I think. And I think so every step of failure and defeat was actually a step of victory, you know, a step of a breakthrough. So we can be sort of, in a way, we could have some kind of vision of turning around the kind of impossible situation.

[33:53]

Yes. Well, France was doing that, right? And the United States was doing some kind of testing, right? Not in the atmosphere, but also, more importantly, the United States is conducting research with a computer, right? So you don't have to have actual research. And also, maybe we fear that this Russian plutonium is sort of being sold to different nations. And so the situation is, in a way, when we had the superpower really developing these things, you know, it was just horrible.

[35:01]

And then the scale was just so frightening. But on the other hand, it was, I mean, these smaller people wouldn't do anything. In a way, this is a kind of worse situation because of the spread. Yes. How does the work that you did, or that you continue to do, the scholar work that you do, translating these texts of the 13th century, inform your more social activism? Well, I think, you know, I'm an artist too. And then, you know, if you're a writer or translator, you need readers. I mean, actually, when I was doing the work on the 228th Page Theater,

[36:06]

at that time, I had, at Zen Center, provided me IBM Selectic. You know, it's a nice computer. You can sort of erase at least one line. And then using pasting, you know, of Xeroxing and so forth, the newest technology. Yeah, it was great. But one day I thought, well, maybe this book will never have readers. I think artists need the audience, writers, and then need some people who love their work, but also who the artists can love. You know, we need love. And so it's all related, I think. In a way, it's so wonderful to be able to get away from this century, and then sort of get away from this work trying to change the government policy,

[37:10]

but go back to it gives some kind of a detachment, and then some energy, you know, when you come back to this work. Also, I feel comfortable, confident, because we were facing, this was 1991, my uni older, you know, who painted this, she called me up from the USA and said, because, you know, we have to stop Japanese plutonium. I mean, my goddess said, you know, I should work on that. Would you help me? So I said, yes, I will help you. We'll work together. And that was a time Japan was sort of developing a fantasy that plutonium is a kind of a material you burn, and then you get more plutonium.

[38:11]

So it's like a dream energy, you know? And then, so uranium will be gone soon, like, you know, within 100 years. That's still true. And then we need plutonium, you know, burning plutonium. So Japan could not really process, reprocess, you know, produce plutonium that time. Of course, you know, this France or U.S. or British people were sort of advanced because of nuclear weapon technology. So Japan was commissioning European countries, and then they were thinking of bringing like one or two ships of a lot of plutonium from Europe every year. So their kind of vision was that within 20 years, Japan will have more plutonium than the U.S. and former Soviet Union arsenal combined. It's just crazy, you know? I mean, then we could build, you know, I don't know, 100,000 nuclear weapons.

[39:17]

And then the idea is that this is just for civilian plutonium electric generation project. So we got really scared, and then, you know, some Japanese people got together and started a group called Plutonium Free Future. I went to Rio and then organized the international campaign. And then basically the world knew about this scary shipping, which is very dangerous, and also Japanese very arrogant government program. So there was a complete outrage of the international opinion. So the first ship went from France to Japan. But because of the international opposition was so strong, you know, I was working very hard in my garage office. Basically they changed their policy,

[40:20]

reduced the multi-billion dollar project, and, you know, canceled some of them, and reduced it, you know, in a dramatic way. Still, after, let's say, six or seven years, the second shipment, you know, is not done. So, you know, this was almost like a near impossible project because Japanese scientists were able to, seemed to be able to do breakthrough, technological breakthrough. There were no political parties, including communist parties, who were against this policy. And we fought, you know, not just several of us in the Bay Area, but also Greenpeace worked very hard, and then, you know, a lot of environmental organizations in the world worked together.

[41:24]

So even if, you know, something seems impossible, we could change. And that's my sort of confidence. What role do you think Buddhism has to play in this 10,000 years? I don't know. What role do you, are you going to have? I think the best chance for humanity for long-term survival is really the awakening and sustained effort of a spiritual community. I can see a lot of problems with the spiritual, religious communities, a lot of exploitations and, you know, denial and all these things. And if you see the past, there are a lot of problems.

[42:28]

Even we can see the religious, some certain religious groups really sort of denying and actually sort of worsened the population problem, they can see. So I'm not really talking in a kind of general way, but I think spirituality means to be really, to have deep understanding, and to have deep understanding of the others, including the future. And I think that's crucial. We can't really count on scientists, you can see, especially in this country, you know, who are funding scientists. So how can we, you know, there are a lot of good scientists, but also there are scientists who are sort of radically lacking integrity, I think.

[43:32]

So we can't really depend on scientific technology community. I think to have real, maybe, integrity, I think the spiritual practice can help. If it's sort of, if it's done with awareness, awareness and ethics and sense of responsibility and wisdom, I think. And also I think it's very important, in a way, you know, Zen people really sort of like to be kind of arrogant and say, OK, we don't, we are not looking for achievement, you know. This is non-achievement practice. But maybe non-achievement should be limited to just enlightenment. But I think, but also if you look at, you know, Zen students and former Zen students,

[44:39]

you know how they are good as scholars or business people and all these things. Somehow there is something about the practice, kind of maybe non-attachment practice, maybe compassionate wisdom practice, that can really make people be very effective. And I think sort of effectiveness is really important because we can, you know. I think, you know, I'm sort of writing a book, maybe two books on breakthrough. And I'm sort of enjoying saying that I'm stuck. I think, you know, I'm sort of writing a book, maybe two books on breakthrough.

[45:42]

And I'm enjoying being stuck. Because I think, you know, the idea is that to have breakthrough you have to be stuck. And also you have to enjoy it. You have to be healthy, in a way. Of course, you know, when you get sick you may have more chance for breakthrough because you have to do it. But I think the important thing is to be healthy. And then to be positive and to be inspired, I think. So I developed ten laws of breakthrough. And one of my favorite laws is breakthrough may or may not occur. Laughter If you can make it happen, it's not a breakthrough, you know.

[46:47]

Well, the first one is a definition, you know. Breakthrough makes what seems impossible, possible. The last one is detachment is a crucial element for breakthrough. One of the things, you know, so most of the things are kind of obvious things we already know about. One of the things that is not really obvious is that it came from my sort of practice of Aikido when I was young. When I was, right after the war, I was a student of Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido. So that time Japan was disarmed. All martial arts were illegal. So the master was, you know, living in the countryside and farming.

[47:57]

And I was lucky enough to be one of the five students which he trained every night. Underground Aikido class, which is probably the only Aikido class in the world. So I was always watching him. I'm still watching him doing this, you know. He died, of course, a long time ago, in 1960, probably 66 or 67. But I still ask him questions and then I watch him trying to figure out how he did all these things and what it meant. One of the things I noticed was that when we, all of us attack, five people attack him, it was easy, actually.

[48:57]

Because he just moved somewhere, you know, without us noticing. And then we fight each other, you know. And that was a time, very interesting. That was a time, you know, he had this understanding that the heart of martial art is love. And to protect others. So that was much before the Pearl Harbor. Sometime before that, maybe 10 years before that. But at that time, you know, he was always sort of trying to teach peaceful way and then people would come and say, you know, okay, we want to conquer China and we want to, you know, do this thing with the United States and so forth.

[49:59]

And then, so he had to teach sort of other conquests, you know. And then these are the more, kind of more powerful people, generals and, you know, ministers and they came and then his students. So he had to teach kind of, you know, fighting techniques, actually, and strategies. Only after our defeat, he was really concentrating on the peaceful use of martial art, you know, real expression of love. Which has spread, you know, you can see now millions of people in the world, you can see, study Aikido. And then they really learn how to work together, how to love each other. And I don't think so many people really use Aikido for fighting. Anyway, so one of the laws is that the larger the problem is, the easier to bring the force together, to work on that.

[51:06]

And it's a kind of obvious law. I'm not saying that the easier to solve the question. No. Of course, the larger the problem is, it's more difficult. But on the other hand, like, okay, we have some problems in Berkeley and maybe I have to organize some problems about maybe Berkeley Lab. I could get maybe about 100 people together, you know. But this Japan's plutonium issue was so huge that we sort of asked the world environmental organizations to take the issue as a top priority environmental issue. So we could get just so many organizations. We could launch the largest legal procedure against Japanese government, you know, from all over the world.

[52:07]

We could collect a lot of money, which we spent, you know, a lot. Anyway, so it's so obvious, you know, that the problem is larger when we have more, you know, force together. And then I sort of found out that in English, forcing is really a bad word, right? Force something. But actually, you know, like, forcing is almost against breakthrough in a way. But also force is a kind of a technical term, right? Dynamics is just some kind of working sort of movement or momentum, you know, to change something. In a scientific term, work. It's a work, you know. So it's like 10 people more force than 5 people, you know, and it's obvious, too.

[53:15]

Yes? What would you say is second to nuclear waste and nuclear weapons? Well, I'm not a specialist, but I think many people agree it's appropriation. Yeah. Running an oil and like coal, like China is really developing a lot of coal burning electric power plants, which is really a threat to the world for climate destabilization. You know, basically, climate change seems to be coming very quickly. But as you say, you know, water or food, you know, the spread of chemicals all over, I think, which is rather invisible.

[54:26]

But I think we are getting the effect, you know, almost without knowing all these chemicals, fertilizers and all these things. Yeah. It's no longer a hot topic. Well, Michael Phillips, you know, he wrote a book called Disarming America's Presidents. And he was saying something very interesting. I think, you know, environmental people, including scientists, I think we like sort of bad news.

[55:27]

And bad news is really, you know, I mean, he's not saying that, but that's my work. We like bad news. So we get alarmed. But also the industry people, they like sort of, they don't like bad news. They like good news, you know, so forth. So the denial kind of data. And then real scientific finding may be somewhere in between or maybe their side, you know, industrial side. They may have truth. And then people may be overreacting. You know, that's true, too. And also the kind of scientific understanding changes all the time, as you say. Or there is one problem, and then we thought, well, this is a little less problem now. And, you know, so that way, environmental people are not really convincing the public. You know, we can't really, because we are seen as one-sided, first of all.

[56:31]

And also we are seen as not maybe so scientific. So it's very important to really talk to scientists of all sides. You know, industry scientists, government scientists, neutral, you know, like university scientists. And then maybe environmental scientists. I think we should be really open to them. You know, instead of just blaming and say, you know, we aren't going to talk to you. We should talk to everyone. We should work together. Yeah. In the 60s and 70s, you kind of had, like, two strategies that groups of people had, counterculture. One was kind of to drop out. And, you know, society is corrupt. You know, we can't really deal with it. We are just going to drop out and reject it. And another group said, well, we need to change it. You know, so you had this. I think later we found out we are false dichotomy. You know, you couldn't kind of, you know, divide, split things up that way.

[57:36]

For example, when Dogen came back from Japan, my understanding is, from China, he wanted Japan to be run on Zen principles, whatever those are, I can imagine. But when he found that the rulers weren't serious about this, then they kind of retreated into the countryside, is my understanding. Thomas Cleary wrote that all of Dogen's writing is one giant koan on the politics of knowledge, which I think is a pretty interesting statement. So, I mean, Dogen didn't have to deal with plutonium. He didn't have to deal with the problems that we have to deal with. I mean, we have to solve these problems. But can we learn from Dogen methods, ways of approaching these kind of problems that we have? Yeah, I think so. I think he was, you know, there's one piece called

[58:46]

Identifying with Cause and Effect in the coming book. Basically he's saying that, you know, whatever small action we take, it will have an effect. Maybe, you know, we may see it or may not see it. And I think this principle is really, I mean, any one of us know about this, right? In the natural world, of course, it's true. And also maybe in the community, I guess, you know, if you do something mean to someone, it will come back to you in some way. So we learn the dynamics. But I think, you know, so that the confidence that any small action takes an effect

[59:47]

is a very powerful teaching. One time I interviewed Mrs. Suzuki, and she was saying that, you know, in Sokoji, Suzuki would study all week, and then there's a time for Wednesday talk. She would have just one person or two. So she said, you know, Hojo-san, I really wish, you know, you work so hard, I wish you had ten people. And then he said, you know, one person and one thousand people, that makes no difference. And I think there is a great wisdom and great encouragement, especially when we have a workshop and maybe only a few people show up, something like that. And, you know, that's... And he, you know, basically he was right.

[60:52]

He did well, right? I mean, he would go to this zendo in Mountain View, right? Let's say, in the garage in Los Altos. And they had 13 seats, no, 17 seats, so they call it haiku zendo. And that talk was transcribed and published as Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, which is probably the best-selling book in the world. So changing thousands of people's lives, he was right. One thousand and, you know, one person, no difference. You know, how you do it is more important in a way. I guess it's about time. Yeah, one of my two questions on that.

[61:56]

Mika, she's actually coming from... She's from Japan. She's a student in Japan. And she's helping us put on a free feature on some items. She's going to distribute an article I wrote, which was published in a magazine called The Waging Peace. Yeah. Nuclear Peace Foundation. So would you just give the whole stuff to this person so you could... Just one page. Questions? Any questions? Could I offer a short poem? Yeah. For, as you say, a future generation. From the earth the clay was gathered, and from the clay the bowl was formed. And to the bowl were added the tears of the children who watched, waited,

[62:59]

and wondered why it was as it was. Your question is... The bowl collected tears? The bowl collected tears. Yeah. He was just reciting his poem. Oh. Whose poem is that? Your poem? Yes. You know, it's a kind of implicit, that we sort of all knew that our utmost responsibility is to pass on to the next generation our world with certain clarity. You know, not just confusion and fear and uncertainty. I think it's... You know, we have to always remind ourselves

[64:02]

that's our responsibility. And it should be the greatest will of ours. You know, if we are to die soon, it should be our work. Well, maybe I shouldn't say our. It should be my work. And anyone who would like to take that on as your work, I think that will be... That will take an effect, too. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[64:42]