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. Here's a story. We are sitting here on the verge of the 50th anniversary of of the San Francisco Zen Center. Tomorrow is the date that the Articles of Incorporation were signed 50 years ago. A teacher named Yunnan which means cloud gate living in China more than a thousand years ago was talking to the assembly and he said what is the teaching of the entire lifetime what is the teaching of an entire lifetime and he answered the question by saying

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response. In contemplating the talk today, I thought, what would be an appropriate response to this occasion? And what I thought was, perhaps, some stories. Tell some stories. So, I offer you some stories. I already have given you some stories. May I offer another? A while ago, I was in New York City, the part called Brooklyn. And the thought arose in my mind, the naked city. Years ago, there was a television program in the United States.

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And it was called The Naked City. I watched that show when I was a boy. I think at the beginning of the show, by the way, The Naked City is, I think, referring to New York City. At the beginning of the show, I think it said, there are eight... million stories in the Naked City. You are about to hear one of them. And I think at the end of the show, they would say, there are eight million stories in the Naked City. You have just heard one of them. And on this occasion, 50 or 60 years after I watched the show, When that thought came to my mind, I thought, oh, New York City is actually a naked city.

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What's it naked of? It's naked of all the stories about it. Every moment, there's 8 million people there who have a story of New York, of the naked, unadorned New York. Living beings have trouble dealing with naked cities, so they make up stories about them. And so the show celebrated people's stories about this naked city. But that was the first time I sort of had that understanding of the show was really kind of a Dharma message that New York City is actually the actual experience life experience of New York City is naked of the 8 million stories that are constantly generated about it. So I'm thinking now there's a naked Zen center.

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And I don't know if there's 8 million stories of Zen center right now, but there's hundreds of thousands of stories of Zen center, of a naked Zen center. This is not to demean the stories which are the appearances of Zen Center. Actually, I propose that if we take care of these stories, if we're compassionate with our stories of Zen Center, and we calmly contemplate our stories of Zen Center, This could be a path to realizing the naked Zen center. The Zen center of reality. We have a story that, as I heard Abbas Eijin Roshi say, on the afternoon of October 22nd, 1959, Shunryu Suzuki, Suzuki Shunryu Roshi, landed at the San Francisco airport.

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He came to San Francisco to be the priest in a temple called Sokoji, Soko is short for San Francisco, and G means temple. And little by little, non-Japanese Americans found out about Suzuki Roshi and started to practice with him. And then, after less than two years, the San Francisco Zen Center was founded and lived together with Suzuki. the Japanese-American Sogoji Temple, they lived together and practiced together until 1969. That's a story about Zen Center.

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And as Bhikarashi said yesterday, Suzuki Rashi expressed a wish to have a place where he could practice together with his students more intimately, where he could show the body of the practice in daily life to the students he was living with. And so it's wonderful. resort was found in the mountains of the Los Padres National Forest in Monterey County, California. And that place, which is called Tatsahara Hot Springs, became Zen Mind Temple. And a monastery was started there. And I believe the monastery had its opening ceremony about 45 years ago this summer. It's the first practice period of that monastery at Tassajara was 45 years ago this summer.

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I don't know how it happened. There's stories. I could tell stories how it happened. But anyway, Reb Anderson went to San Francisco in the summer of 1967. That was. The summer that Tassajara started, but it's also sometimes called the Summer of Love, was it? There was a lot of things going on in San Francisco. He went to San Francisco for some reason and ran into the Summer of Love, which he was amazed by. He really was amazed. It was amazing. And then for some reason or another, he went to Tassajara. in a Volkswagen Bug, over that mountain road. And when he got there, he found an old high school friend. And he met Richard Baker, who had just finished the practice period where he was, at the beginning of which he was ordained as a priest.

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And I think you were also the head student, the head monk that time. So he just finished that practice period of being head monk. And that practice period was over so guests could come in. I came in and I met him. And he was very friendly and asked me where I was from. I said Minnesota. And he said, oh yeah. There's a really great department store there named Dayton's. He was very impressed by Dayton's department store. Dayton's also then started this thing called Target. He could see the vision of the Dayton company. And then, is Peter Snyder here? Anyway, Peter Snyder came up and talked to me. Peter was the director of Tassahar. He was also very friendly. He interrogated me about my motivation for coming.

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And then I was sitting there on this path to Tassajara, which is sometimes called Tassajara Avenue. I was sitting there meeting the various monks at the monastery, and in front of me there was a foundation, a stone foundation for a building which would become the stone kitchen of Tassajara. And the carpenters were walking around there, and one of the carpenters was Paul Disco. And... And I was ordained with Paul. I met him, and I met many other monks in that monastery, and I really enjoyed them. But I really didn't like Tassajara. It was too many flies for me, and it smelled bad. So I really was happy to get out of there and never really wanted to go back. even though the monks were very good people.

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After I left, I had second thoughts. Maybe I would like to go back, actually, and practice there. Here's a story. Suzuki Roshi wanted to give something really good to America. And the thing he had that he thought would really be good was the practice of the Buddha way. He thought giving Zazen, giving Zen meditation to the people of America would be a really nice gift. And he wanted to come and give that gift. And he came and gave that gift. And when I went to Sazahara, I didn't like the smell. But I somehow wanted to come back and receive that gift, that practice. And so I came back to San Francisco in December of 1967.

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But I went to San Francisco, not Tassajara. And I went to the Zen Center because I wanted to talk to people there about how I could start practicing at the Zen Center. in the address of the Zen Center. At that time, the Zen Center and the Japanese congregation were still in the same place, and the address was 1881 Bush Street. So I went to 1881 Bush Street, and I knocked on the door. Boom, boom, boom, boom. I recently found out that that is called the fate motive of the Fifth Symphony. Fate knocking at the door. That's an apocryphal story, but it's a good one, isn't it?

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That's Beethoven's The Knock of Destiny. The knock of fate. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And the door opened. And there was an elderly Japanese man. But he didn't look like a monk. He had just normal civilian clothes on. And normal length, visible hair. And he said, he's opened the door and stepped back and gestured that I could come in. So I went in. When I got in there, the room was pretty much filled with other rather elderly Japanese men. And they were smoking cigarettes. And

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I didn't know too much, but it looked like they were playing the game of Go. So, I knew a little bit about Zen. So I sat and watched them play Go and smoke cigarettes. I didn't sit there too long. Probably not even a half an hour. And the thought occurred to me. even though this is 1881 Bush, maybe it's not the Zen Center. I'm very glad to see you guys are laughing. So I said to these guys, I said to one of these gentlemen, is this the Zen Center? And he said, no. No. The Zen Center is next door. This is 1881 B. Zen Center is 1881 A. So I left the go club and walked about 100 feet and...

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I was coming to join the San Francisco Zen Center, and I wanted to learn about Zazen, and I was coming to practice with the community, and I was also coming to practice with this teacher, Suzuki Roshi. When I was at Tazahara, Suzuki Roshi was not there. I didn't get to meet him when I visited Tazahara after the end of the first practice period. I went to San Francisco to meet him and ask him if I could practice there with him and his students. So the door opened and there was a Zen monk, obviously. And shaved head and robes. And the person looked like he was about 35 to 38. And I heard Suzuki Roshi was about 60. And I thought, wow, he really looks good for six years.

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I mean, really young and vibrant. And then I said, I've come because I would like to join the Zen Center community. I'd like to become a member of Zen Center and practice here. And he said, come in. So he... So I stepped inside and he showed me into his office and he said, please sit here. I'll call the president of Zen Center and they can come and talk to you about it. So he called the president and the president said, well, I'll be over in a little while. And then he sat down and worked at his desk. And I watched him work at his desk. And he was very diligent. But he was very sleepy. So while he was writing, he kept falling asleep while he was writing. But then when he woke up, he would go back to work.

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He didn't hit his head on the table, but almost. But he just kept working. I was very diligent. I was impressed. Really. And I still am. And then the president came to the door. His name was Silas Hoatley. Knocked on the door, came in and said, okay. Please come over to my place. And then I went over with him and I said, was that Satsuki Roshi? And he said, no. That was Katagiri Sensei. Who's about 35? Very handsome. What I might call now, young man. At that time I was just a little kid. He looked like an old man. So I went over and talked to Silas about being a member. He was very cordial to me, explained to me how to do it, and offered me some tea, made me some tea, and I went into his kitchen and I sat down in one of his chairs and went right through the chair to the ground.

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And he said, you must be rather dense. I'm so happy to see these young men able to follow my abstruse discourse. So I signed the documents of membership. Not at that moment. I came back the next day, I think, and went to the office. And I think Yvonne Rand was the secretary. And I became a member of the Zen Center at that time. But also, another thing happened is I found out when Zazen was. I was going to stay in Zen Center for a little while, a few days, over a weekend actually. I came from Minnesota by air in December to San Francisco for a weekend of Zazen.

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And so the next morning I went to Zazen in the Zendo at 1881 A Bush Street. And I sat there. I was sitting on the ground, and at the beginning of the period, a person who I assume was the Zibdiversi walked around the students. And all I saw, because I was looking down the ground, was his feet. And when the feet went by, I thought, those feet can teach me Zen. And then we set some periods of zazia. And afterwards, all of the practitioners exited. But we exited. There was two doors. There were actually more than doors. Four doors in the zendo. One door, which we usually entered. And then there was another door into Suzuki Rush's office.

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And we filed out through his office. And he stood at the door and bowed to each one of us. And when I bowed to him, following the people in front of me. I did the same thing they did. I bowed, and when I bowed to him, I looked in his face, and he looked at me, and then he looked away. And I thought, was I not supposed to be looking at him? Was that impolite? Did I do the right thing? Was that good that I looked at him? Is he afraid of me? You know, what? I didn't know. I really didn't know, and I passed by, and I thought, I really didn't know what happened. I was strongly struck by that, and I thought, that seems like a good start.

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So I left San Francisco and I tried to get my life together to let it fall apart so I could give it up and leave Minnesota and leave my graduate school and come to Zen Center to practice Zen. And I started to try to come back in April of the following year tried to ride a motorcycle to San Francisco. But the motorcycle was not suitable, was not appropriate for the trip. It couldn't do it. It was too weak. It was a dirt bike. A scrambler. So it just couldn't. It kept breaking down on the freeway. In the spring winds blowing from west to east, it just couldn't do it. However, when I turned around and went with the wind, it did quite well.

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And I flew back to Minneapolis. After only about 500 miles, I gave up and went back to Minneapolis. But I didn't give up trying to go to Zen Center to practice. So next, I thought, I'll get a Volkswagen bus. So I got a Volkswagen bus, and I tried again. It was a 1958 Volkswagen bus, and it also was too weak to go west into the spring winds of the prairies, and it kept breaking down. However, that also, when I turned it around, it went really well with the wind at the back, and I zipped back to Minneapolis in this Volkswagen bus. And then a friend of mine had another idea. He said, why don't you buy a Cadillac hearse?

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He says, you can get these old hearses, which have really low mileage for practically nothing. And they have lots of horsepower. So I bought a Cadillac hearse. And I put my motorcycle in the back. And also, going this way, I could bring my dog, too. So I took my motorcycle and my dog into the car, and I headed again to San Francisco. And to make a long story short, I arrived at 1881 Bush Street with that hearse and my dog. And I pulled up and parked And I walked into a flat where Zen students were living across the street from the temple. And my high school friend was living there, and I moved in.

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And that's it. Then I could practice with the wonderful Zen Center Sangha and Suzuki Roshi right across the street. And then in 1989, the Japanese congregation said, Zen Center, we love you. You're wonderful people, but would you please move out? There's more of you here than us now. We think you need your own space. So we found this wonderful practice place. 1881 Bush is on Bush and Laguna. And so Silas Holy and... And Ananda Dahlenberg found this wonderful building down Laguna, about 10, 15 blocks, which was a residence club for Jewish girls. And we got that place, so then we all, many of us, moved over and moved to that building.

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And we lived with Suzuki Roshi and each other. And we're still doing that, in a sense. And then, as you know, only about two years after moving into the wonderful temple on Laguna and Page, Suzuki Rishi, actually he got cancer and didn't tell us. He had cancer, bald bladder, malignant gallbladder removed. He didn't tell us that it was malignant. But then about eight months later, he had to tell us that he had to be known that he had liver cancer.

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So he died that fall. But before he died, his successor, Richard Baker, came back from Japan and was installed as Abbott. And then Sukarishi died. And then, I don't remember exactly when, but Sukarishi died on December 4th, 1971. And then the new abbot felt that Zen Center needed three practice places. He felt that... Tassajara and the city center wouldn't quite work for the community. He told me recently that it felt like it was necessary to not know where your toothbrush was. If you had two places, you would know where your toothbrush was, but if you had three, you'd be totally confused.

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So somehow, causes and conditions, I don't know how it happened, there's stories about how this happened. But the stories are not how it happened. But I'll tell you a story. But that's not really... That's just a story. There's a naked story. There's a naked situation of how Green Gulch happened. I don't know what that is. But a story of it is that somehow Baker Oshie found out about the possibility of this Green Gulch ranch being available. And... He thought that that would really be good because it's a country place, but as you know, it's quite close to San Francisco. It's a country place. It's not exactly a remote monastery, but it would maybe really fill out the form of Zen Center. But not so far away, so maybe a good idea. And so he presented this idea to the board of directors.

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And my experience, this is my story, right? Or a story. One story is there was considerable resistance to the idea of getting another practice place. One story is Zen Center was kind of doing okay financially. We had this new building in Tatsaharbu. We were kind of coping with having taken care of these two fairly new places. The payments were not so much and so on. Some people didn't want to take on another big responsibility. But the new Abbots sort of thought, well, it would be nice for us to have another big project to draw us together. Is that kind of right? Yeah. I mean, is that kind of the story? So there was a meeting with the board and lots of resistance was expressed. But one story is that Baker Roshi insisted, and some people anyway said, with resistance in their heart, okay.

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That's one story. Another story is, which I credit to Mel Weitzman, is that Baker Roshi, I don't think he made the strawberry shortcake. Somebody made strawberry shortcake and it was served to the board members. And Mel said it was the best strawberry shortcake. And he said after that, there was no way to say no. So that's, you know, one story is he insisted. And that's why we went along with the other one is strawberry shortcake. I don't know. But anyway. we have this practice place where we can be together and tell stories. What time is it? 2.11.

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Here's another story. Some people say a man is made out of mud. Poor man's made out of muscle and blood. Muscle and blood and skin and bones. A mind that's weak and a back that's strong. You load 16 tons. And what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Say, Peter, don't you call me because I can't go. I owe my soul to the company's tolls. Boom, boom, [...] boom. I woke up this morning, it was drizzling rain. I picked up my shovel and I went to the mine. I loaded 16 tons, a number nine coal, and the straw boy said, well, bless my soul.

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You load 16 tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Say, Peter, don't you call me because I can't go. I owe my soul to the company's door. If you see me coming, better step aside. A lot of men didn't, a lot of men died. One piece of iron, the other of steel. If the right one don't get you there. That one, you load 16 tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Say, Peter, don't you call me, because I can't go. I owe my soul to the company's toll. Boop, boop, [...] boop.

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time is it now? I heard that Zen Center has three bodies. One body is sometimes called the true body of Zen Center. The Dharma body. That body is completely free of all of our stories. That's the naked body of Zen Center. The naked body, the true body. Based on this true body, which is free of stories, there's another body of Zen Center. It's called... transformation body of Zen Center.

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The phantom, the imaginary, the story body of Zen Center. The story of body of Zen Center is somewhat restricted and challenged by the stories. But by working carefully with these stories of Zen Center, with this phantom body of Zen Center, by being compassionate with the stories that we have about our practice together, by being compassionate towards this story, imaginary body of Zen Center, really being calm and concentrated with all the different aspects of the story, really caring for our stories, we realize the third body of Zen Center, which is called the bliss body, or the reward body.

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The reward for practicing compassionately and understanding that the story body is not the reality body. It's the bliss and the happiness of seeing how the unadorned Zen center dances freely with the adorned Zen center. The Zen center beyond our stories is dancing with the Zen center of our stories, of our happy stories and our unhappy stories. We have these stories. This is one body at Zen center. Some people who live at Zen Center say, there's too much work to do here. We're so tired from working, we can barely meditate. We should have more meditation and less work. And some other people say, we should work more so that more people can come here and enjoy the place. Stories like that at Zen Center.

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Other stories are, it's so wonderful, those people who work so hard and they're so joyful and they never complain. They're all so welcome and generous. And then there's stories like the people at Zen Center are not generous and they're cold and they're not welcoming. There are stories like that. People at Zen Center are so skillful, they listen to you. Like I went to a copy place in Mill Valley to pick up some stuff a while ago for the office. I said, I'm here to pick up this order. And they brought it to me and they said, I don't know what you people are doing there, but keep it up. I go to some other place, you know, and they say, you know, when you people come in to pick up your orders, there's something funny about you.

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You feel like, you like listen to us. Those are stories, those are part of the stories of Zen Center. And there's others. Many, many stories. That's one body of Zen Center. The other body of Zen Center is free of all stories. Those two bodies are always dancing freely together. And when we understand that dance, that's the bliss body. That's us practicing together. Accepting our stories and understanding that they're just stories. It's like, you know, the ancestor Dogen saying, when the truth doesn't fill your body and mind, you think you understand it well enough. But when it fills your body and mind, you realize there's something beyond what you know.

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It's like going out into the ocean, away from the shore where there's no islands and the ocean looks like a circle of water but the ocean is not a circle of water but that's the way it looks but this is not a put down to the circle of water it's just saying remember that you're looking at a circle of the water in the ocean whatever we look at we see a circle of water and it's not the ocean of what we're looking at But if we care for the circle of water with our practices and our practices, which we also are oceans and we have circles of water of them, we do our practice with the circle of water. We will be free of the misunderstanding that the circle of water is the ocean. And we will enjoy both the circle of water and the ocean again dancing together. So let's take care of the stories of Zen Center day by day and realize the story body of Zen Center and realize the true body of Zen Center and realize the bliss body of Zen Center.

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Some of us who are here in the early days won't be around much longer. So I hope you guys take care of Zen Center when we're gone. Do you want to? Consider it? It would be great if you guys took care of Zen Center for us. It's here for you, you know, to take care of if you want it. What time is it now? 11.03. I was hoping for 11.11, but I give up. May we take care of this great gift Hatsuzuki Roshi brought us so that the future generations can enjoy this practice. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

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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. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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