The Empty Trappings of Transmission

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Lying in bed last night before I went to sleep, I suddenly thought ‘I didn’t really explain what a temple gate was at all’. Somebody wanted to know what a temple gate was like and lying there I thought everybody probably thinks a temple gate is a gate. But a temple gate is a big structure, a ‘gate house’ we would call it, made of wood and in the temple wall with two big sides and a great big overhanging roof. In the middle is the door to enter in and leave the temple and often in the two side pillars which are hollow they have statues of Buddhist deities, sometimes two very fierce guardians of Buddhism with great evil faces and their tongues sticking out. If you look at that funny little pictures of the monk I gave you yesterday you can see the ceiling of the temple gate – and it is big – so on the ceiling where you can’t reach is a big hook where you hang the lamp. – I should have explained all of this yesterday and lying in bed I thought ‘Ah, I see’ – and the monk would go with the lamp at the end of a stick because he can’t reach. He goes like that and hooks the lamp onto the hook in the temple gate. Thus, as Yunmen is walking across the crunchy gravel, the lamp is going up and down on the pole and in the circle of the illuminating lamp the gate comes towards him; then he lifts his stick and the lamp like that (gestures) so the gate appears to come onto the lamp – that’s what I should have said yesterday. Have you got it?

Participant: Yes, no longer confused.

Mike: I didn’t have a title for my talk until I walked into the room just now and Barbara gave me a nice title. What did you say?

Participant: ‘To go on your spiritual path with your luggage’.

Mike: I am going to explain how I have been on my spiritual path with my luggage. People often think that Buddhism is a spiritual path and in fact if you read some of the description in the Pali sutras, it would seem that it is a spiritual path. However, you can also find in the Pali scriptures statements by the Buddha that what he is teaching is not either spiritual or material but a doctrine of the middle. So the question is, what’s the path that you follow that’s in the middle?

Well, in my case, as many of you know, I went to Japan after many years as a fanatic climber and mountaineer. In my climbing I had found a refuge from my busy mind; because if you do climbing or mountaineering or some other kind of intense physical activity which doesn’t have to be an outdoor pursuit but something that you concentrate on, you can find a nice balance, a physical/mental balance. You can make yourself feel whole and not so worried – because I was a very worried young man. I went to Japan without any knowledge of Buddhism and met this funny little Japanese monk called Nishijima and the practice of Zazen. I found that if I practised Zazen, I had the same nice state, sometimes, that I got during mountaineering.

So my entry into Buddhism was not anything to do with the spiritual. I don’t remember having read any Buddhist books – I had read a few books about TM and Indian teachers and so on. So I listened to the old – he wasn’t very old, actually, he was younger than I am now – Nishijima talking about Buddhism on and on and on and on for twelve years, practising Zazen with him every day and listening to his talking – sometimes he talked very insistently and loudly and almost quite aggressively but I just kept on listening and then after twelve years, Yoko and I decided to return to England.

Before we went to England, I went to his office and said to him: ‘Can I have the shiho?’ – Do you know what the shiho is? The shiho is what people call ‘dharma transmission’. Actually if you read the Shobogenzo, there is a chapter called ‘Shisho’ in Book 1 and it sounds fantastic. There is this special transmission outside the scriptures that you can get from a Buddhist master and then you become a Zen master.

Dogen writes: ‘Buddhas without exception receive the dharma from Buddhas; Buddha to Buddha and patriarchs (‘Patriarchs’ is a bit sexist, but you can read ‘ancestors’ for ‘patriarchs’), patriarchs without exception receive the dharma from patriarchs, patriarch to patriarch. This is experience of the Buddha’s state. This is the one to one transmission and for this reason it is the supreme state of Bodhi. It is impossible to certify a Buddha without being a Buddha. And no one becomes a Buddha without the certification of a Buddha, but who but a Buddha can esteem this state as the most honoured and approve it as the supreme. When we receive the certification of a Buddha, we realise the state independently without a master and we realise the state independently without ourselves.’

It sounded good and that is one of the chapters I helped to rewrite. So I had this idea that there is some kind of certification that I could become a Buddha. I didn’t really know what it meant but as I was going back to England, I asked Nishijima and he said: ‘Oh yes, I was going to ask you.’ So we agreed that he would give me the ‘dharma transmission’.

Those of you who listened to Brad talk know how he talks about it. Although I don’t talk about it like that, my feeling is the same. I went through a ceremony which was nice, which I did and went through with to the end, but it didn’t seem to do anything really. But I got some things to take on my travels. (Starts unpacking a suitcase with Soto-Zen paraphernalia.) I got a stick; you often see people like Daido Loori with these sticks. It’s called a kotsu and you hold it like this if you are a Buddhist master or sometimes you can lean on it like that and it has a very spiritual quality, in fact it has a life of its own. (Throws it on the carpet in front of him.) Stand up! (Laughter.) Oh, I thought it did… Actually, it is a piece of wood and although some Buddhist teachers use a piece of wood as a symbol of their authority, it is important to realise that it is only a piece of wood with some tassels on the end. You could make yourself one. The reason it’s in that shape is, I think, because, certainly in Tibet, in old times they used a human femur and the top of a femur is shaped like a curled scroll. So this is a kind of stylised version of a human femur. Why should a Buddhist teacher have a human femur? Well, I suppose, it is something very bare; it’s a bone bare of all the flesh and all the life. It’s something very basic and bare and quite severe. That’s what this is a symbol of.

And then I got something even better. Does anybody know what this is called? It’s a hossu. The great Buddhist master has the hossu and it’s a kind of symbol of what? Some people make it a kind of symbol of a special authority. But again, it is only a piece of wood. You can buy them in Japan through catalogues because Japanese monks like to have them for their chanting ceremonies. If you have a very nice, silky robe and one of these, you know, ordinary people can’t help but think that you’re great, really. And yet, I think, it’s real horse hair probably and it’s quite nicely made and woven but – John has got one too…

Participant: Not as nice as that one…

Mike: Haven’t you? I thought yours was nicer than that one.

Participant: No, yours is nicer.

Question: Could I borrow it for the flies?

Mike: Yes, you may because on its own it’s only a piece of wood and some horse hair; it has no life of its own; there is no spirit in it.

I think it’s important to emphasise that these trappings which people associated, for instance, with Buddhist masters, everything from this down to those things there (pointing at various other paraphernalia in the suitcase he has brought with him) are nothing other than symbols and we invest those symbols with some kind of meaning. If a man or a woman puts on a nice robe and holds those symbols and those symbols are familiar to us, we feel some kind of reverence. In the same way that, for instance, if you are a very keen footballer and somebody gave you a pair of football boots that were worn by Maradona you would somehow feel, you know, ‘These are Maradona’s boots’. Is that a good example? And you would invest them with something and actually they are only boots. All the trappings of what they call the Zen masters are the same.

I got these and I also got what is called a certificate and because I have given the same shiho ceremony to John and John, they also have a certificate like this. But mine is made of silk. It’s made of silk because Nishijima’s was made of silk. And his was made of silk because his teacher’s was made of silk and it’s wrapped up in this special white washi, Japanese handmade paper, so depending how you unwrap it you can make it more or less sacred. (Shakes it out of its wrapping.)

This says ‘Authentic transmission of Buddhist Patriarch Certificate transmitted to Patriarch Eido’ – so I’m a patriarch (my Buddhist name is Eido).

Question: In English?

Mike: Yes, in English.

Question: Is that valid?

Mike: That’s the big question really…And it has got a huge stamp with lots of wavy lines on it. So it’s beautiful, isn’t it? And on the back it says ‘Master of Dogen Sangha, Old Priest Gudo’ (Gudo is Nishijima’s Buddhist name). But that is only the outside; that’s the cover for the cover. And inside the real cover is the certificate itself and I’d like to show it to you because it’s exactly the same as Dogen’s certificate which is preserved in Eihei-ji Temple.

Inside is this piece of material like a table cloth really. It unfolds lengthwise and it unfolds this way and it has a kind of diagram on it. Can you see? I copied Nishijima’s which was just the same as this and the two Johns’ certificates are the same as this one; but we used different material, didn’t we, because writing on silk is very difficult. This ring here is all the names of my ancestors going right back to Shakyamuni Buddha. In the middle along that line it says ‘Shakyamuni Buddha Bodhi’ and then there is a red line that runs down here that says ‘Mahakashyapa Buddha Bodhi’ and then the line goes round ‘Ananda Buddha Bodhi’, ‘Sanavasin Buddha Bodhi’, ‘Upagupta Buddha Bodhi’, ‘Ditika Buddha Bodhi’, ‘Mishaka Buddha Bodhi’, ‘Vasumitra Buddha Bodhi’… so these are all the people in the line and it goes on and on. It gets round here to some familiar names like ‘Bodhidharma’ and then the Chinese masters which are written in the Chinese not in Japanese pronunciation. Then there is Dogen somewhere around here: ‘Dogen Buddha Bodhi’ and his successor was ‘Ejo Buddha Bodhi’ and then it goes right round here where it gets to ‘Rampo Niva’. He was my teacher’s teacher and became head of the Soto sect; he died about fifteen years ago. And then there is me and then the line goes back up through there and kind of links everybody up.

That is what people call the ‘transmission’. And down there it says: ‘In the Buddhist patriarchs’ life and blood and vessels realisation of the state has been transmitted here and now. Eido (that’s me) has received the transmission here and now. Japan 1990, Dogen Sangha, Gudo. Lots of people make this into something very special almost secret and they look to see whether somebody ‘has received the transmission of the dharma’ and things like that. For instance, in the organisation called the ‘International Zen Association’ their teacher Deshimaru died without making certificates for his disciples - which created a lot of problems because they didn’t feel they were authentic. But what does ‘authentic’ mean? Well, it is a list and you add your name to the bottom and you pass it on to the next person and they write their name on the bottom and they pass it on to the next person. So who do you pass it on to? You pass it on to somebody who you teach Zazen to or who you realise, practises Zazen as part of their life. That’s what it is all about.

At the bottom it says: ‘…has realised the state.’ Lots of people think that there is a special state to realise. There is a special state to realise and we talked about it yesterday. It’s a state where we prefer a realistic way of looking at things rather than a spiritual way of looking at things or an overly materialistic way of looking at things. So, when you meet somebody who says ‘Ah, he is just hanging up the lantern’, you can say ‘That bloke has got the state. Let him add his name to the bottom of the list’. And you make your list and pass it on. That’s all it is.

I didn’t feel particularly special, rather I felt a bit puzzled after the ceremony. I thought ‘Mmmh, ok. Well, that’s done then.’ All these objects plus black, shiny robes with little robes inside and lots of ceremony which lots of people give great value to are really empty trappings. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have them but it’s very important to realise what they really are. Once we realise what they are, ‘Oh, I see, it’s only a beautiful certificate’, it’s very nice and sometimes enjoyable to put the red stamps on. But it’s only an empty trapping. Yet sometimes empty trappings are important in themselves. I don’t mean that none of these things should be used and we should throw them all away but it’s very important to realise what they are from a realistic point of view not from a spiritual point of view. Unless we can erase the spiritual aspects of Buddhism, I am going to retire next year and practise the accordion which is much more realistic.

Participant: It seems to be the same with language and Rory’s joke about: ‘Oh, is it authentic?’ People might think that was a serious point. I haven’t spent twenty odd years in Japan and am in there reading, singing this thing, I haven’t a clue – you see what I mean? I realise, you just do it, you just sing it but part of me thinks: ‘I don’t understand’.

Mike: You chanting the Hannya Shingyo?

Participant: Yes, chanting things in another language.

Mike: Well, chanting is singing and producing a voice has an effect on us, hasn’t it? I think choirs are becoming really popular everywhere; there was a programme on the telly last week called ‘How a choir works’ with this very charismatic young choir master who is going to the different places and getting people to sing. It’s unifying and it’s joyful; singing or chanting changes your state by you doing it with lots of people. But there is nothing intrinsic in chanting, for instance, the Hannya Shingyo that gives you something spiritual that you don’t get somewhere else by singing something different. Singing is singing. But there are certain traditions and it’s nice to practise those traditions because traditions give us some kind of feeling of security sometimes. It’s nice to follow the same routine when we come and practise Zazen, like bowing when we enter the dojo, walking round the back of the table, I mean, walking round the back of the table with the Buddha instead of the front of the table (!), and all that and of course. We do it because it is kind of quite nice, isn’t it? But in itself, it doesn’t have any value.

Actually to me, it doesn’t matter what the chants mean. Paul asked me what the mealtime chants mean: we can translate them and they say things like ‘Thank you very much for your efforts in preparing the food’ and so on but actually it doesn’t matter. When we chant we are not kind of projecting our spiritual thanks somewhere to some farmers. I mean, can you think where you would have to project them to, down through the distribution chains; Kellogs are manufactured in Ireland, all our spiritual thoughts are wafting around so widely that probably when they get there, there won’t be very much for anybody. So it’s not that; it’s the actual activity that we are actually doing here and now and that’s what it is: the state here and now because that’s all that Buddhism is about. It’s realising that there is nothing behind where we are, there is nothing above where we are, there is nothing to attain in that sense but we need to come down to earth and coming down to earth is to hang a lantern on the gate not ‘to knock our wedges and pull out nails and collapse the whole structure’. But just do our normal things and the reason Buddhism reveres doing normal things is because that’s all there is because the future hasn’t come. All we can actually do is to get on with the next thing. Though perhaps we can’t stop worrying about tomorrow – worrying about tomorrow now doesn’t make any difference to tomorrow. But what we do in the next second does make a difference to tomorrow. Buddhism is about keeping remembering that and all the teachers who are on that list kept remembering that and the way they kept remembering that was by speaking it loudly to other people. If you tell things loudly to other people, in the end you hear it yourself. That’s all there is. The rest of it is trappings and the trappings themselves have value in human society but we shouldn’t be afraid to not do them sometimes or change them sometimes or whatever. If we don’t realise what the centre of Buddhism is but get caught in the trappings, then it is better to play the accordion… We could have an accordion band.

Participant: It’s actually quite a difficult instrument, the accordion. I tried it many years ago. Yes, you need good coordination because you have all the buttons on which you play the melody but then you have to pull this part …

Mike: Also there are Health and Safety considerations if there are children around because you could catch their fingers in the bellows.

So this is the Buddhism I learnt and you can see it in Brad’s rather irreverent attitude too whose talks some of you have heard. He is trying to do in a different way what I am trying to do too, which is to say ‘Don’t worry about all the trappings, you won’t get demoted, or you won’t get negative merit if you don’t bow before the Buddha statue or even if you say ‘fuck’ in front of the Buddha statue. The Buddha doesn’t mind because he is dead and that in there (pointing to the Zazen Room where there is a Buddha statue on a little altar) is just a piece of wood. But when the symbols and human beings meet, then something takes place.

So the chant doesn’t have any meaning really, even if a Japanese person chants those mealtime chants, he doesn’t understand what they mean because they are written in medieval Chinese. The chant on its own is worthless, but when the person chants, in those two meeting there is something real and that something real has value. But the value it has is in what is happening now not some kind of spiritual projection or moving up the scale towards enlightenment or anything like that.

That’s what’s on this certificate. So if you want one of these get that state and then write your name on the application form please and you can have it.

Question: How many copies of the application form?

Mike: Two hundred and fifty, oh no, ninety-one, one for each of those people.

Participant: But life has a complete mystery at its core. So the idea of reverence and awe by standing up there at night and just looking at the stars as we did last night and see two shooting stars I feel reverence, I feel awe and I feel that life is a complete mystery.

Mike: But that reverence and awe and mystery is there for everybody. Little children feel it often. We don’t need Buddhism to tells us that life has reverence and awe. We just need to slow down and stop getting trapped in the structures we build up. But yes, it’s true; everybody experiences that at one time or another.

Question: We don’t need to make any more of it than that though, do we?

Mike: No.

Participant: But what we often do is to say ‘Ah yes, that means something else which we haven’t got’ and then we have this big thing about not having it rather than just go ‘Hm, there … [inaudible].

Mike: ‘Doesn’t the moon look fantastic out there?’

Participant: Just let that be.

Mike: That’s right.

Question: But Nishijima also learnt from Kodo Sawaki and yet his name isn’t there. So that kind of represents something, doesn’t it? It doesn’t tell the whole story, does it?

Mike: Well, yes, it’s true. In the late eighteen sixties there was a kind of cultural revolution because Japan opened up after three hundred years of being a closed country and all these foreign ideas came in and the Japanese thought that Buddhism was quite a crude farmers’ religion, you know, practising facing a wall and so on and no such sophisticated spiritual philosophies like they saw in the western great churches. They had little wooden temples; they thought ‘We better get rid of this lot and get some of the western stuff’. So they tried to destroy Buddhism and they pushed the monks out of the temples, burnt a lot of the temples and tried to destroy the rather simple original Buddhism that had been in Japan for hundreds of years. In the process, people who were teaching it, stopped teaching it and stopped teaching people how to teach it. So they had the temples and the ceremonies but nobody knew what it was all about. Because of that they started concentrating on how you hold the stick of incense and what colour robe you wore because that was all they knew. But there were one or two people, including Kodo Sawaki, who saw through the form and taught what it was really about. My teacher studied with him when he was young; so that is where it all started for him.

Question: But this thing, doesn’t it give you the authority to teach?

Mike: It doesn’t give me anything other than that piece of silk; I project the authority that I think that gives me.

Participant: I was just wondering about how you feel about people teaching who haven’t had this transmission.

Mike: It doesn’t worry me at all. Is what they say that is important to me or actually what they do. You don’t have to have a certificate that says ‘I realised reality is what is in front of me’. Millions of people in the world have realised what is in front of them and you can find them everywhere, in the arts, in music, in science, in sport, in everyday life, in business. They have realised what reality is; they are balanced people but they don’t teach those facts clearly in the way Buddhism does.

Participant: I was just wondering about the value of this thing in terms of the teaching lineage. Do you have any ideas about that, that teaching is a tradition? – I suppose, in a way anyone can call himself a Buddhist teacher.

Mike: Yes, they can. But the proof of the pudding is in what the person is like. So even if you get one of these (pointing to the certificate of transmission), it doesn’t mean that you are going to convince people or teach people something valuable. I don’t know.

Question: There is no real quality control, is there?

Question: Well why do you assume that everybody who gets transmission has to be a nice guy?

Participant: No, but if the teacher is a man or a woman who can see the truth then they should really be able to see through another [inaudible] if you get my meaning.

Mike: Beautifully put; only, do you think that somebody, for instance me, who has got his name on the list, should be able to see through people? Do you think that I can see through people?

Participant: Well, I think …

Mike: Can you see through people?

Participant: I would hope I’d be able to…

Mike: Are there times when you can’t?

Participant: Oh, I’m sure there are.

Mike: Me too.

Question: In the end, you could size the people up, couldn’t you?

Mike: In the end, yes.

Question: But can you strike somebody from the list?

Mike: Evidently not in the Japanese tradition. Officially, you can’t, no.

Participant: Somebody said about ‘quality control’ and if you look at normal academic life, we have it. But it’s no guarantee either because we also let arseholes through if I can borrow this expression. No system is perfect [inaudible]. But when somebody has made great mistakes, we can strike him from the register. There was recently such a case, when a guy forged all the [inaudible], practically everything was forgery. In the end why would you want ‘quality control’; in the end Nishijima is also a man not superhuman.

Mike: Yes, he can make mistakes.

Participant: Has Nishijima ever commented on that? Because there are teachers to whom he has given the shiho where he perhaps feels now that it was a mistake.

Mike: Nishijima has commented on one teacher, yes, because he said to me last time I saw him two years ago that this teacher will never be his successor. I have no idea what he meant by that, but it was an expression of disapproval. But who is to say my name shouldn’t be on the list. Just I am doing what I can and whether you all stay or leave is a kind of proof. There are not many of us and I have been doing my thing for ten years; so I’m not so successful. I am wondering what is going to happen in a few years.

Question: ‘Not successful’ did you say?

Mike: Not successful, no. I should have hundreds of people and a big…

Question: This is not about numbers, is it?

Mike: Right. Well, I’m glad you said that, Rory.

Participant: You had me worried there for a moment.

Mike: But can you see all the traps. Can you see all the Buddhism that is around with all these different groups, all doing different things and in the middle of all that the threads of, if you like, the essence of Buddhism here and there through all the different forms and that’s what’s important, the essence of it.

Participant: But this is why you haven’t got hundreds of fellows there because people …[inaudible].

Mike: People like it all.

Participant: Oh, yeah, I mean it’s extremely popular. If you look at the people that [inaudible] the religions and branches of even Zen that have that [inaudible] and it’s all the ones that have got all of the extra bits and ‘this is important because I am special and this is a piece of paper of special significance’ and all that. People buy that big time. And that’s why a teacher in America can charge fifty-thousand dollars for enlightenment in one afternoon. People buy into that.

Mike: So, I am successful in not having…?

Participant: Yes.

Mike: Good.

John’s more successful than me.

Participant: I have heard a monk say that he took the monkshood because he liked dressing up.

Mike: Yes, there are all these things; and we are human beings. There aren’t any super humans.

Question: But did he say what happened afterwards? Whether he kept it up because he still liked dressing up?

Participant: I’ll ask him next time I see him.

Question: I am quite serious because it might be the initial stage but what does he do and think now?

Participant: I think he was part joking.

Mike: Right. So anyway I just want to make a clear point which you can see that at least in the teachings of what people call Zen which have these koan stories and stories of ancient masters and conversation between teachers and students. If you look and you get through the medieval language and metaphor you can see that what they are talking about is something very simple, that is: reality is just here, now, not somewhere else, not something that you get through to and haven’t got through to yet, but just what’s in front of us. And the reason why that is so valuable in modern society, is because society is very virtual now. We live in the world of thinking a lot. Our economic structures, our business structures, everything is now becoming more and more virtual. So it’s easy to mistake that virtual world for the world of tying our shoelaces and cleaning our teeth. But if we do that, we will miss something which is more than important, it is vital. Without concentrating on the ceremony of washing our face and cleaning our teeth and eating and keeping ourselves healthy, we can’t live properly and that is all that Buddhism is teaching.

Participant: There is a kind of tacit agreement between the teacher and the student. They kind of reciprocally (lift) each other up. If I am giving you a bigger plinth, what you have to say is more significant and because I am receiving it, I am more significant.

Mike: Yes, there is. And in Zen, that also originated in Japan. Because in Japan traditionally, they have this system which is vertically structured so the teacher is up here and you are down there and that is spread right through from all the schools to the universities, researchers… You know, in Japan scientific researchers can’t publish a paper in their own name until they’re about seventy. They have to put their teacher’s name on the paper: Twenty years research and you write your teacher’s name, your sensei’s name on there. How terrible is that?

Participant: There are rankings like that for potters, as well.

Mike: Rankings for potters?

Participant: If you buy a pot, you get their sort of lineage and their ranking and whether they are a ‘national treasure’.

Mike: To say ‘Right, my teacher’s teacher was head of the Soto sect reflects on me.’ That kind of hierarchy, I feel, is quite counterproductive to understanding what Buddhism had got to offer really.

Participant: When I went for the first time to Japan to work in Kyoto there was a group around the professor and they came in a very specific order, the oldest, the one who had been with him first would sit next to him and the one who came last would sit next to the door. Now they are breaking out of it – which is not simple because nowadays they also have less money so people don’t have jobs for life and that creates a lot of difficulties obviously…

Mike: Yes, Japanese society is changing slowly.

Participant: Yes, it is changing but clearly, it is like this example, you pull out all the nails and bindings and suddenly everything collapses. It’s too much ingrained in their thinking. I had a discussion with a colleague and I said to her ‘I will talk to the professor’ and she said ‘yes, he will listen because you are older than he is’ although he is hierarchically higher than me and I just laughed. But that’s how they think.

Mike: Yes, and that kind of thinking has come over, especially with Zen; I don’t know what it’s like in for instance Tibetan groups. I think they have a completely different approach but certainly in Zen groups that are around there is this hierarchy that has come over from Japan. Even, for instance, the biggest Zen group in Europe is the AZI, the International Zen Association and they’re really glued up with hierarchy and they don’t know how to get out of it, really.

Participant: I went to a Tibetan group a long time ago once and in that group at least had a hierarchy with some dead people as well. There was a teacher who was in some heavenly sphere and he had been reincarnated this many times. I asked the teacher that was there ‘how many times has your teacher been reincarnated, Rinpoche Such and Such?’ ‘Oh, thirteen times, excellent, very good.’ I couldn’t really understand what they were doing…

Mike: But if the centre of your thinking and feeling is spiritual, then it all makes sense and is very attractive. So it comes down, and this afternoon I will talk a bit more, it comes down to why are we sometimes spiritual. Some people are very materialistic and some people are very spiritualistic, what is that all about? We can talk about that more next time. But I’ll stop now.

This afternoon, in the free time, at half past two we are going to have a precept ceremony for Hal in here. It will last about forty-five minutes and if you want to come, you are welcome, but it is only a precept ceremony. You can come and join in which is just to sit and listen, actually. This room is probably the best because it is quite light.

Thank you.