This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here this morning. As many of you know, probably most of you, there is a practice period, a period of more intensive practice going on here at City Center. And the title of the practice period, the theme of the practice period is

[01:10]

Everyday Enlightenment, Shunryu Suzuki's expression of Zen practice. I remembered it. Shunryu Suzuki's expression of Zen practice, and the practice period is being led by City Center's abbot, Ed Sattison, and he invited me to come and talk about Suzuki Roshi, some recollections that I might have and do, and also a sense of his teaching from the perspective of... someone who was here when he was still alive.

[02:12]

When I've thought about recollections, when I've recollected My first thoughts are about his last moments. So today is November 22nd. And in just under two weeks, it will be December 4th. So this is December 4th, this will be December 4th, 2014. On December 4th, 2014, that will be exactly 43 years from the time of Suzuki Roshi's death.

[03:35]

December 4th, 1971 was the first day of a seven-day sishin, Rohatsu sishin, just like there'll be Rohatsu here next week. Is it next week? Next week. And Suzuki Roshi was not in the zendo on that morning. He had been sick for quite a while. Months, maybe a year, maybe two years. Had been getting sicker. I don't remember how long. And for a long time, we didn't know what it was, what the illness was.

[04:46]

He was very jaundiced. So people thought that it was hepatitis for a while. Then a few months before his death, of course we didn't know it was a few months before his death at the time, in October, I looked it up in David Chadwick's book, October 10th, He gathered his close disciples to him. He lived in the apartment that Blanche lives in now. And one of those rooms was his bedroom. And he gathered his disciples together who were mostly ordained people. Not everyone, but mostly most of the ordained, the people who he had ordained and the one person he had given Dharma transmission to, namely Richard Baker, who had come back recently.

[06:03]

We used to call him Baker Roshi, who had come back recently from Japan because Suzuki Roshi was sick. And Baker Roshi was slated to be the next abbot. And he told people at that time that he had cancer. I wasn't in that group. The last group of people that Suzuki Roshi ordained were Lou Richmond and Angie Runyon and David Chadwick and Ed Brown. That was his last ordination group. Some of those people, I think, have come and spoken here like I'm doing. I think I would have been in the next ordination group.

[07:06]

Someone told me, maybe it was Yvonne Rand. Yvonne Rand, though she wasn't ordained, she was very close to Suzuki Roshi. very intimate relationship with him. So it may have been Ivan who told me, he's got his eye on your ponytail. At that time, I had a little bit more hair than I do now. And it was a different color. He's got his eye on your ponytail. But that didn't happen. So once that group was told, like nowadays, as soon as there's some news, within approximately 30 seconds, everybody in Zen Center knows it.

[08:12]

So the word spread quickly, and it was Yvonne. who told me, somewhere here, maybe upstairs, said, Suzuki Roshi has cancer. And... burst out crying. Which is very unusual for me to do such a thing. burst out crying that is you know I didn't think about it at all so and I was surprised that I reacted so strongly strongly

[09:51]

because I had appreciated Suzuki Roshi's way, but didn't know, didn't realize how connected I felt to him. So on December 4th, 1971, I went to the Zendo downstairs for the first period of Zazen in the seven-day Sashin. And I was in a new seat.

[10:56]

I had been the work leader here in the building. At that time, we called it the building. We didn't call it city center because there was no city center. It was just Tassajara and the building. None of the other properties. There used to be, where Samovar now is, there used to be a grocery store that Zen Center owned for about 10 or 15 years. That hadn't happened yet. I lived... Linda, my wife, and I lived above the grocery store for years over there. But anyway, no city center, no Green Gulch, just Tassajara and the building. So I had been work leader in the building for the previous year, maybe a little bit more than a year, and now I was going to be the director

[11:59]

So that was my first day as director here. The person who had been the director, Reb Anderson, was leaving that position to be the full-time jisha, the full-time attendant for Baker Roshi, the new abbot, soon-to-be new abbot. And interestingly, what I recall about that morning, so we were sitting there, and then the door, what's now called the Doshi door, not the door that most people go in, the door that just a few people by the library, that door, that door opened. And then there was like this whoosh, which was somebody in robes. I think it may have been Peter Schneider.

[13:03]

And at that time, there were very, very few people who had robes, sitting robes. People at Tassajara would have sitting robes, but nobody in the city had a sitting robe. You just had regular clothes, or you were ordained. But there were very few of those people, just two or three people usually. So it was a very distinctive sound that he came in. And... And then he and Baker Roshi left. And then shortly after that, after a little while, so we just sat there knowing that something was up. And then Baker Roshi came back and said that Suzuki Roshi was dead, had died. The room that's now the Kaisando, the Founders Hall, his body was laid out there.

[14:23]

And people came to offer incense. I remember there was a long line down the stairs and down the hallway and out the door. for the next few days. So although I wasn't, I didn't think of myself, maybe that's the way to say it, I didn't think of myself as being close to Suzuki Roshi. Nevertheless, his person, his being, his teaching, his way, was the generator of my practice kind of like the big bang being with him was the big bang and then like the big bang you know millions of years later things are still happening from the big bang you know I am sweating profusely here excuse me so like that um

[15:42]

I feel like the generative energy of my practice all these years and still now actually goes back to him. And more than even zazen itself. Zazen, which is our fundamental practice, our fundamental way. And as with a number of people here over the decades, you know, I've spent hundreds, thousands, a couple of thousands of hours sitting sasen, But Zazen has always been very difficult for me.

[16:44]

Less so in the last 10 years or so. Difficult physically. Mentally difficult. But physically very difficult. So it took me five years to just be able to sit. I didn't have a stool at that time. To just be able to sit on a cushion with my knees down. You know. without being in excessive pain and discomfort to be able to sit for 40 minutes. So I could say I'm deeply indebted to Zazen practice, which would be kind of a silly trivialization of how I actually feel. It's more like it... runs in my blood, something. But nevertheless, it was Suzuki Roshi, more than Zazen practice, that was important for me, especially when I was new.

[18:01]

And we say, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are the three treasures, three focal points for our practice, three supports, three encouragements for our practice. But the feeling of Sangha then was... everyone was really focused on Suzuki Roshi. It was kind of a gathering of eccentric people. There were a lot of eccentric people who showed up because Zen was kind of a... Even now, it's kind of an unusual business, but...

[19:13]

Then especially, it was like, wow, far out, man, you know, that kind of thing. So often, pretty eccentric people would show up. Suzuki Roshi seemed to be fine with that, though. And at that time, oh, so like when I became director, I had been practicing, I came in the fall of 1968, this was... December 1971. So I had been practicing Zen for three years. I was an older student. So I got to be director of the building. Whereas nowadays, people are sometimes around for five or ten years and it's sort of like, well, they're no longer completely new. But they wouldn't usually be thought of as an older student. So... So something that's here now at City Center and at Zen Center in general is lots of deep practice.

[20:17]

There are many people who have been practitioners for years and years and years. And that adds a quality of Sangha that I don't think we had at that time. Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And some people started studying Dharma seriously right away. You know, reading the Abhidharma Kosha in very bad English translation from the French, from the Sanskrit, you know. But the Dharma for me, the Dharma as teaching for me, really opened up over many, many years and decades. So again, that was not central, fundamental for me.

[21:24]

It was really the person of Suzuki Roshi. the very specific, particular person who he was. So we, you know, one of the teachings in the Zen tradition is Sandokai. Sandokai is, the translation of Sandokai is the merging of difference and unity, how difference and unity come up together, how the absolute and the relative merge, simultaneously arise, which can sound pretty esoteric, but it means that the Dharma, the absolute, the undifferentiated, the undivided,

[22:30]

always and only arises in karmic consciousness. It arises only and always in our everyday life. That's why nonsense said, When Joshua asked Nansen, what is the way? Nansen said, everyday mind is the way. Because that's where the way comes up. That's where the way manifests. In the very particular exact thing that we are now. This is now. The very particular exact thing of my life and your life. So that's what nonsense said.

[23:38]

Everyday mind is the way and that's why Norman Fisher named his Zen Sangha Everyday Zen Foundation. And that's the everyday that's in the title of this practice period. Everyday Enlightenment. That's the only place that enlightenment happens. There ain't no other place. The only place realization can occur is in our everyday life. In the midst of our karmic life. It means not going somewhere else. Not going to some beautiful land of enlightenment. Enlightenment is here. As much enlightenment as we're going to get, this is it. Suzuki Roshi was very keen on this point, very big on this point. So connected to that, a correlate of that kind of, is the notion of skill and means.

[24:45]

Skill and means refers to how the teaching, how the absolute, how the undivided, whatever we want to call it, how that gets communicated in a way that's accessible. in this everyday life of ours. Not esoteric, not far away, but how it gets communicated here to a given particular person. So this is leading up to a story that I have, which some of you know actually, so if you've heard it, My apologies. It has to do with my parents meeting Suzuki Hiroshi, which was very much an East meets West kind of a moment. So my parents, who are no longer alive, wonderful people, they were Eastern European Jewish origins.

[26:00]

My mother from Warsaw, my mother was born in Warsaw, and my father was born in western Russia, in some tiny town that we were never able to figure it out where he came from. They both came over to the United States with their families when they were six years old in 1921. and lived on the Lower East Side, and then in Brooklyn, and then we moved to the suburbs of Queens. Queens at that time was considered sort of very far away from the center of town. That's where I grew up. So then, when I was a young person, 21, I started, I came to California, long, Story, I won't tell you about that. But anyway, I came to California and started practicing Zen. And they did not know what... They didn't have any idea what I was doing.

[27:16]

It was very... Zen, you know. It was really... It was really beyond the pale. What was clear was that I was not going to be a doctor. My son, the doctor? No. It was very clear that I was not making good money. That was very clear. After a while... They would have thought that I was in a cult, but cults hadn't happened yet. Cults happened later. In the 70s and 80s, there were cults. So there wasn't any language for being in a cult. They knew that it had something to do with religion, which now maybe we'd say spiritual practice, but again, the vocabulary wasn't there.

[28:23]

So it was a kind of religious thing, you know. They'd talk to me and say, you know. They'd say, oh, yeah. So you're interested in religion. So why don't you become a rabbi? Something the matter with being a rabbi? Rabbi's good. Be a rabbi if you're interested. Kind of like that. And I, you know, I was not much help. I couldn't explain what I was doing. Meditating, you know, looking at a wall. It just totally didn't compute. And I couldn't explain it. And then in addition to not being able to explain it, also it was very important. It was very important that I did this thing that I couldn't explain, that I couldn't make money out of, that was some strange thing that they had never heard of.

[29:31]

This was the most important thing in my life, I told them. Actually, they were rather open-minded and didn't, you know... do some drastic thing that they could have done. So after a while, they came to visit. And I was thinking, I guess they didn't come to visit because when I first came to Zen Center, Zen Center was up on Laguna Street at Sokoji Temple. And then we moved to this building in 1969. So it must have been... after that, because my picture is, I remember standing right there where the umbrellas are and looking that way, and there's my mom and dad and Suzuki Roshi talking to each other, right in front of the glass doors going out to the courtyard.

[30:45]

Years later, my mother said to me, after we met Suzuki Roshi, after we met Suzuki Roshi, we didn't worry about you anymore. And my dad, my dad had, my dad had been in business. You know, they were both working class people. And my dad had been in business back in New York in what was called and maybe still is called the luncheonette business. Luncheonette is, they don't have them out on the West Coast. Does anyone know if they still have luncheonettes back in New York? Any New Yorkers here? They do. So luncheonette is like a soda fountain where you get an egg cream or a soda and a sandwich, roast beef sandwich for lunch.

[31:56]

and booths. And then in the front, my mom used to work in the front. She was at the cash register, and I would help her sometimes. It was where the cigarettes were, a wall of cigarettes, different brands, you know. And candy, comic books, magazines, newspapers. That was the luncheonette. So my dad had been... had owned various luncheonettes. He was a short order cook for the lunches. So then after that conversation, my dad said to me, yeah, you know, we were talking about the luncheonette business. And it was like, he was in the luncheonette business. That was that. So that way of communicating, that way of being with people, that accessibility was very characteristic of his way.

[33:12]

Very open and trustworthy. So skill and means, skillful means. skillfully able to communicate. They didn't talk about Zen. They didn't talk about what their son was doing or why he was doing it. None of that was necessary. He was able to communicate something that was unassailable. Unassailable. In the last... For the last while, maybe the last five years, especially ten years, I've noticed that the various teachers in the Suzuki Roshi lineage have different emphasis.

[34:28]

Each one has their own emphasis. It's like... You know, you have, in the Christian tradition, people refer to the Bible. But this person says, oh, the Bible says this. And that person says, oh, no, the Bible says this. And that person says, oh, the Bible says that. Each person can draw from this text many, many different things, depending on the point they're trying to make or what they're doing. And similarly, kind of in a parallel way, the different... Teachers emphasize different aspects of Suzuki Roshi's teaching, and it's all there, just like it's all there in the Bible, kind of a similar kind of thing. So my emphasis, when I think of, well, what is Suzuki Roshi's teaching? and this is not at all, this is just my version, and not the entirety of it, but just two of the main points, two of the main qualities of his teaching were encouragement and humility.

[35:52]

And by encouragement, I mean, I think, many of us felt that he was encouraging me in my life rather than, oh, Zen is this thing over here and you've got to do this and figure it out or get enlightened. It's not something out there that you're supposed to do. But the encouragement was actually about what my life was. Again, mostly unspoken. This was not verbalized. And because of that encouragement, that's why it was so generative for me. I was going to say earlier, if I may,

[36:58]

Ed and I have known each other for a long time. And I think that's something that Ed and I share is that sense of Suzuki Roshi's teaching as being the generative force. Suzuki Roshi's presence as being the generative force of our practice. That's why it's very fitting that the first practice period that Ed leads as abbot focuses on Shinryu Suzuki's expression of Zen practice. So this encouragement came in many ways. There was a fellow practitioner at the time, a man named Craig, that Blanche knows from those days.

[38:02]

And he and I were friends, and we were both really gung-ho practitioners. We were really doing it. Later, after a while, he left and joined Mayer Baba, Have you ever heard of Mayor Baba? That was a spiritual group at the time. That's the name of a person, Mayor Baba. They may still be around, the Babaists. But at that time, we were both practitioners here and really intense. And we shared, Craig and I shared, in addition to both being very gung-ho, we also shared... a very, very harsh, self-critical faculty, self-judgmental faculty about how stupid we were, how terrible I am, how I can't do the right thing, I keep doing the wrong thing.

[39:17]

Just very, very powerful. This is what Freud would call a strong superego. and what Jung would call an archetypal negative parent. So we had that very, very strongly. So Craig went to talk to Suzuki Rishi one time in Doka-san, and he told me about it later. This is one of the few things I recollect, really, clearly. He told me about it later after he spoke to Suzuki Roshi. And he said, Suzuki Roshi told me, because of the problems you have, because you are so troubled and have so many problems, you'll really be able to help people. This was really powerful.

[40:25]

It sounds very simple, but just very, very powerful. What you thought, he didn't say these words, but basically he was saying to Craig and to me indirectly, what you think is an obstacle, what you think is getting in the way, that's a vehicle. That's how you move forward. You move forward by what you think is stopping you. not by getting rid of the thing that's stopping you, or getting around it, leaping over it, getting enlightened, not any of those things, but actually by the obstacle, that's how you move forward. That's how you progress. That's what happens. So as many of you know, I'm a student also of Western psychology, and this is what Jung, Carl Gustav Jung, C.G.

[41:35]

Jung, he would call that transformative alchemy. The alchemists in the Middle Ages tried to turn, wanted to turn, their purpose, their object was to turn lead, which is of very little value and is this not so good stuff, into gold. How do you turn lead into gold? And Jung, I think quite wonderfully, understood this, not literally, but psychologically. How do we turn our psychological lead into gold, into psychological gold? And that's what Suzuki Roshi was doing right there. It was very, very helpful. It didn't eradicate that inner critic.

[42:38]

No. That didn't happen. But there was a transformation in it, of it, through it, by his words. I've been working on that one for a while. And it's true. What he said was true. So part of that encouragement was, you're okay. You're good. You are good. You. And that was made the more powerful because he was the Zen master.

[43:41]

He was the teacher. For the teacher to say, well, he must know something. He knows something that I don't know. For the teacher to say you're good is very, very encouraging. It counters that self-criticism. provides an alternative narrative to the harmful, destructive one. So he faithfully carried that role as Zen master. And part of that faithful carrying of the role was this humility. He said one time, every time I do one or two things right, I do four or five wrong.

[44:50]

Then after a while I said, no, that's not accurate. Every time I do one or two things right, I do 13 or 14 things wrong. And in the talk, in Not Always So, where he talks about jumping off the 100-foot pole. It's a well-known koan about what one understanding of the story has to do with spiritual arrogance. The story is that the student says, when I climb to the top and I'm at the top of a 100-foot pole, what should I do? And the teacher says, jump off. Step off. The illustration that Suzuki Roshi gave to that story was how he is sitting in the morning, studying, reading, something like that, and his wife calls him to breakfast.

[45:55]

Suzuki Roshi Okasan calls him to breakfast. Come to breakfast. And he says to himself, I'm an important... This is according to him. He says to himself, I'm an important Zen master and I'm studying Zen. Why is she bothering me with breakfast? He was making fun of himself like the person climbing up the top of the 100-foot pole. He says, we should jump off the top of the pole, go to breakfast. In that case, jumping off meant go to breakfast. So this sense of skillful skillful communication conveyed without words and encouragement and humility. Those are some of the things that I think of.

[47:05]

One last thing I'll talk about, again, kind of a physical recollection, which was the mountain seat ceremony for Baker Roshi. So toward the end of November, you know, it was clear, toward the end of November 1971, it was clear that Suzuki Hiroshi didn't have much longer to live and he wanted to, what's the word? Thank you. Install Beikiroshi as abbot to take his place. And that happened in this room. This room, when we first moved here in 1969, this building, many of you know, was a residence for young Jewish women built by one of the main synagogues here.

[48:24]

The architect was Julia Morgan and it was funded by one of the synagogues here. And it was for young women in, I think, the 40s and 50s, and maybe before that, whenever it was built, so that if somebody came to San Francisco as a single person, they could be here in a well-chaperoned environment and safe. That's what the building was. That's why there are, in the grill work... Like in the courtyard, you can see a Star of David in the grill work. And this was the parlor. There's a grand piano over there and big rug, couches, where people could entertain visitors. When we came, we took everything out, put tatami in.

[49:32]

So the ceremony was here, and... You know, there was a ceremony recently installing Ed as the abbot here and Fu as the abbess, Fu Schrader as the abbess at Green Gulch. And that was the mountain. The ceremony is called Ascending the Mountain. The mountain was over here that they ascended. But for Baker Roshi's ceremony, the mountain was over there in front of those two doors. And we were all... packed in here, facing that way. And traditionally, the new abbot has a long staff, usually about seven feet tall. You know, they walk with that staff, which means they're coming from a long way off to be abbot or abbess. And also in this ceremony, also Suzuki Roshi had his own staff.

[50:35]

but it wasn't a rough-hewn branch. His staff was milled, turned, so it was a straight staff, and at the top were iron rings. Do we have any statues that have iron rings? No, I guess not. But... Jizo often walks with a staff that has iron rings at the top. So when you walk with that staff, every time you touch the ground, the iron rings jangle. So we were all here, completely silent. And I think Baker Oshie had come in already. And then Suzuki Roshi, we could hear him coming. You know, we could hear that staff hitting the ground and each time the rings would jangle.

[51:48]

It's a very distinctive sound. And it was a very, very powerful moment. And then he came in and he was... He was walking down the middle. And he stopped. And he took his staff and he went like this. You know, moving it. So, like that. I think he was too ill to speak. So what did it mean? What did that mean? There was a lot conveyed in that, in the rings.

[53:04]

I'm still listening. Hearing that. jangle. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving. by offering your financial support.

[54:06]

For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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