Good morning. Good morning. here for the first time today. Would you raise your hand if you're here for the first time? Thank you. You're welcome. And please raise your hand if you think of yourself as a beginner in Zen practice. Whatever definition you yourself might have for that. I think of myself as a beginner too, especially with giving Dharma talks. I think this is my third Saturday morning Buddha Hall Dharma talk.

[01:05]

So we can all be beginners together. And when I asked you if you felt like beginners, that was a trick question. Because being a beginner is really in vogue here. This is Beginner's Mind Temple. We're here for you. And this temple was named for a quote, a very famous quote by our founder, Shinryu Suzuki Roshi, who said, in the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind, there are few. And he spent much of his life in America with us, trying to teach us about beginner's mind. And the reason I bring this up is that this weekend we're celebrating the 50th anniversary of Shinryo Suzuki's arrival in America.

[02:05]

He actually arrived on May 23rd, 1959. And on May 23rd of this year we had a celebration. to honor that occasion. But today we're having and yesterday we're having a different kind of celebration. So we've been having a symposium of scholars and senior teachers who make presentations and then their panel discussions about various topics of Suzuki Roshi's life in Japan, his life in America. And then the one that's going on right now that seems very interesting to me, this is in Berkeley, we're co-sponsoring this with the University of California, is ZUN will be evaluated as an American religion, movement, or quaint curiosity.

[03:10]

So I feel very humbled by these presentations. I'm not a historian, and I, in fact, didn't know Suzuki Woshi. I came to Zen Center about 10 years, 11 years after he died. So everything that I know about him is from stories I've heard on occasions like these, and from this wonderful brick, which I recommend you read, called Cricket Cucumber by David Chadwick, the life and teaching of Shunyu Suzuki. And this coming, Cricket Cucumber, by the way, in Japan, Cricket Cucumbers are thrown away because they're useless. So that was his teacher's nickname for him. He called him Cricket Cucumber. Out in the hall, there's a display of a lot of pages of bricks.

[04:15]

And those pages come from the bricks in My Beginner's Mind, which is a collection of Suzuki Roshi's talks. And what we did was collect people's copies where they had written notes in their books. We were interested in the notes they had made to themselves. So those are posted on the wall, and you can look at that display. So this weekend was a celebration and an expression of our gratitude for the life of Shomaru Suzuki Roshi and I will join in that expression by talking about him today. So I'll start with a little history of his life in Japan and maybe give some inkling of why he came to America. He was born to a small, poor temple. His parents were poor.

[05:17]

And he himself was small for his age. He actually was a tiny person. As an adult, he was about 4'11". So he was small even for a Japanese person. But he was very strong and energetic and very intelligent and independent. And he almost was eager to do everything before his parents felt like he was old enough to do those things. And an example of that was that he chose a teacher to ordain with and was ordained at the age of 11. The Japanese had a different way of counting birth years, but according to American way of counting, he was 11 years old when he was ordained. And his teacher was a strict teacher. And Shereen knew that. The teacher was a disciple of his father. And so he had gotten acquainted with him and deliberately put himself into this situation.

[06:24]

And at the time he first began practicing, there were a bunch of other brothers that practiced too. His teacher, Solon, had a number of students. But Solon was such a difficult teacher that as time went by, one by one, all the other boys dropped out. And pretty soon, Shunuru was left alone with his teacher. And he practiced with him until Solon died. He had some other teachers, too. But he practiced faithfully with his teacher, helped him a great deal with his responsibilities. obeyed his wishes, took his teaching to heart, and studied very hard. When he was, when he turned 22 in 1926, all of these things happened to him in one year.

[07:25]

He was head monk or Shusara with Salon as his teacher. He entered Komazawa University as a freshman, he received dharma transmission, and he came down with tuberculosis. So that was a big year in his life. Usually, being head student or shiseo and receiving dharma transmission are rites of passage for a priest that happen five or so years apart. So for him to do all this in one year was a lot. And that's my impression of him in reading about his life, was that he actually did a lot. He actually was a person who had a lot going on in his life and a lot of responsibility. So his tuberculosis was mouth-threatening, and he had to stop and recover, which he did.

[08:29]

And he was still in school, and I want to tell a little story from this Creek of Cucumber book about one of his experiences with his English teacher. He was very interested in studying English, and he was Miss Ransom's best student, her best English student. And she was a tall English woman who was very opinionated. And she was over six feet tall. And one day, Shunwu was out walking around and decided to pay her a visit. So he went to her house, and she invited him in for tea. And they had a very lively, interesting discussion. She liked to talk and talk, especially about herself. And he was quite happy to listen. So they had a good exchange and became friends.

[09:33]

And she invited him to move into her house and be her translator, which seemed like a wonderful opportunity for him. And he did that. Once he moved in, he found out that she was quite a difficult person. that he was used to difficult people from his experience with his teacher. So they got around very well. Ms. Morrison didn't think much of Buddhism. She thought it was idolatry. And one time a friend of hers gave her a very beautiful Buddhist stature. And as a piece of art, Perhaps she put it in her tokenama. Her apartment had a tokenama, which is a little alcove that you find in a tea room where you put a beautiful vase of flowers and a square or a beautiful statue or a beautiful rat, something that is significant to you that expresses your aesthetic.

[10:43]

So it's an important part of the Japanese house. So she put her beautiful Buddha statue in the Tokanamo, but she also kept her shoes there. And so her shoes were sitting by the Buddha. And Shuriyeo was really bothered by this. It really offended him to have those shoes sitting by the Buddha statue. But he knew she was not a Buddhist and didn't say anything. But it bothered him as time went on. And Linda, when he was visiting, he had a cup of green tea in his hand. And he approached the Buddha statue and bowed and put down the cup of tea in front of the Buddha and bowed and stepped away. And Miss Ransom, of course, noticed this. And she really kept doing that day after day.

[11:46]

And she would tease him about worshipping that Buddha. What was he doing worshipping that piece of clay? So he just waited. He knew that she was curious and interested and that he would have his time. And further the time came, she asked him about Buddhism and why was he bowing? Why did he do this? And he talked to her about why we bow to Buddha and how we express our Buddha nature. And told her a lot of things about Buddhism. And she was very moved. And she had always respected Chinyu. And she was very moved by the things he had to say. actually became a Buddhist. So, of course, Henry was very happy about this. And this was sort of a milestone in his life, I believe, because he realized that he could be effective in bringing Buddhist practice to Westerners.

[12:58]

And he felt very confident after that incident. And I think it had some bearing on his decision to come to America eventually. So while Shunio was still at the university, his teacher Solomon was invited to be the abbot of Wunso-in, which was a larger and more prestigious temple in Japan than where he had been teaching before. And he was invited partly because he was known to be someone who could organize things well. And the temple had really fallen into disrepair and neglect. And he was being invited to restore the temple and bring it back to its former life. So his teacher became the abbot at Winsorun and then stabbed Shunuru as the abbot of Zoro.

[14:03]

that's C-O-U-N-dash-I-N, which had been his own temple before. So Maharishi was in college and he was the abbot of the temple and so his father took care of the temple while he was still in school and his parents lived there and his family lived there. So following Shumuru finished school, he was not late in the sense that it took him a long time to get through school, but he had started late because he spent so much of his life looking after his teacher. So he was 25 when he graduated from the university with a degree in Buddhism and Zen philosophy. And he was second in his class in the university. So he was always a very good student. And he met with his teacher and told him that he would like to go to America.

[15:09]

And his teacher became quite angry and said, no, he should not go to America now. He should go to practice at Eheji. So Eheji, some of you know, is the main training temple in Japan for this particular school of Buddhism. It's a monastery and it's not an easy place for most people to be. Usually the people that go there are 18 or 19 years old and they're sitting out of zazen in a cross-legged posture. They're not supposed to move. It's very strict. The forms are stripped. There are a lot of rules about how you should relate to seniors and your elders. It was cold and remote in the wintertime, and you would be barefoot on the floors doing your work. You don't get much sleep. You don't get much to eat.

[16:09]

So it's not an easy life. But there's a lot of Zazan, and Shumuru loved the Zazan. So he stood for two practice periods and then told his teacher that he would like to stay longer. And his teacher said, no, I don't want you to stay longer. I want you to go to Sojiji. So Sojiji is a sister temple of Ehuji. Very similar situation. There are two main training temples in Japan for this school. And there are sister temples. So then Suzuki Shimura went to live at Sojuji and he stayed there for a year and a half. After that, he talked to his teacher again and told him that he was really liking being at Sojuji and liking

[17:14]

and he would like to serve for a number of years more. So hearing that, his teacher of Zion said, now it's time for you to go back to your temple and be the head priest of Zion. So that's what Shamu did. He left his term at that point and became the actual abbot of Zion. He didn't like the activities that he was doing very much. It was Japanese Zen, doing a lot of memorial services and taking care of the needs of the community. So it wasn't very stimulating for him, but that's what he did, and he did his best. And he also announced at that time that he was going to be married. So he married a woman named Shurei.

[18:18]

And maybe a decade later, the war broke out in the world. And life really changed in Japan. It was a very militaristic and nationalistic time. And Shumurei was not in support of the war. He wanted Japan to stay out of the war. He wanted peace. And he was ordered by the government to let soldiers and Korean workers stay at Rinsowin. And so they were close and crude and not like his own students. And it was a very unhappy situation for him. So at that time we started a group for young men, young 18 and 19 year olds who were not yet old enough for the draft to meet and talk about the political climate in Japan and pacifism and different responses to the war situation and to be a support for those people.

[19:36]

But it was, he was kind of able to do this as a priest. He probably couldn't have done that without being arrested if he had not been a priest, but he was able to do it and he kept a low profile. But he met very interesting people during that time. A lot of talented, intelligent young people came and he had deep lines with them during that time. So follow the word after America and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan was, a lot of the people were very nationalist, wanted to continue the word to the death. And he really advocated surrender. And enough people were interested in surrender, but that's what happened. So he helped Japan a lot during the recovery years.

[20:42]

Helped during the occupation, which was not so bad. Helped Japan get back on its feet. And he also restarted a kindergarten in Yazu, the town that... Wait a minute, I skipped something. I don't think I told you about Salon's sudden breath. I'm sorry. Salon's teacher Salon suddenly died. Since no one was expecting it, he had not left any instructions about who would succeed him as the abbot of Rensalren. And after a little bit of a power struggle, Shumuru became the abbot of Rensalren.

[21:51]

It was a better merger, more prestigious temple, and he wanted to be the abbot of Rensalren. So... It was at that point that he married Chihui, so they could take care of the temple together. And so after the work, so he moved to the werewolves in Winsorun. And after the work, he started this kindergarten in Raizu, which is the town where Winsorun was located. And there's a little story about choosing the principle for that school. There was a woman he had his eye on that he thought would be a very capable principal. And he met and asked her. And she refused him. But he asked her a number of times. He was really quite convinced that she was the person who should be the principal of the school. And eventually she gave in and said that she would do it.

[22:55]

And her name was Mitsu. and she will come into the story again a little later. So I have only ever heard anybody knowing three faults that Suzuki Roshi had. Most people were so fond and loving of Suzuki Roshi that I've only heard three faults, which is pretty good for a human being. He was very forgetful, and he had a quick temper, and his family said that he was a bad husband and father. And this last thought caused grievous harm to his family in Japan before he came to America. One of his teachers, the Heiji,

[23:57]

had sent a student who had nowhere else to go to Suzuki Roshi to teach at Winsorin, asked him to take him in and help him. And he did. And the student couldn't do anything right. He couldn't do any of the forms. He seemed to willfully make as many mistakes as possible. And the family was an afraid of him. He seemed a little crazy or they wondered if he was shy-shocked or something. They felt really uncomfortable having him around. And his wife asked him if he would please send him away. But Shimura said, Mary, we need to help him. Please help take care of him. So one day, Shimura was in town and the Braves lived were out playing and there was some grandmotherly type person that was at home with Chui.

[25:05]

Maybe it was her mother, I'm not sure. But everyone was away and Chui heard the dog crying out and she knew that the student held off and tormented the dog. So she ran to see what was happening. And the student carried Chewie and the dog with a hatchet and hit her over and over again with his hatchet. And a friend who was coming to Winsorin to visit met the student coming down the road, all covered with red. and with the hatchet in his hand. And so people knew about it. The village began to know about it and the family came home. And so the children came home into this horrific scene.

[26:09]

So, literally that evening, Chiwe died. And Shumuru was extremely humbled by this, the runt. felt great remorse, blamed himself, felt that it had been his fault, that he had been warned by his family, that he had been stubborn and refused to bend and acknowledge the situation. And he was closer with his children after that and really tried to support them. And I think they forgave him, but that didn't bring back their mother, who they greatly missed. And in fact, his youngest daughter, Ami, began to show signs of not being mentally quite right and was institutionalized eventually and eventually killed herself. So all of this suffering, I think, was certainly the greatest suffering of Shamu's life.

[27:20]

So I don't know how much later it was, maybe a decade, that the invitation came to Shinryu to go to America. And he had always wanted to go to America. The invitation wasn't particularly serious. No one thought he would actually do it. He was being invited to go to serve in San Francisco, a Japanese everyday community, to do sort of the same things he didn't like to do at Sermon, and do memorial service after memorial service, do the Sermon every week. But he wanted to go to America, and he accepted the invitation. They were expecting a married priest. So he set about to get married and asked people who he should marry, and everyone said Mitsu.

[28:31]

And they had had a really good relationship every year. She was, you know, she was smart, but she was tough, and she could stand up to him. There were equals, and there were not many people who could be equal to Suzuki Roshi. So they were a good match, a good pair. And when he asked her to marry him, this time she did not refuse several times. She immediately accepted. She said, it's not a matter of liking or disliking. If you ask me, I will come. And then he immediately left his wife and family and went to Japan with the intention of staying for three years. So his intention, of course, was at some point to have Mitsu come to live in America with him. So how are we doing? Yikes.

[29:38]

So I'll talk a little bit about America. Suzuki Roshi came to. There have been interest in Buddhism in America since the 1880s. And San Francisco in 1959 was still in the Beat era. The Beat era was fading into the hippie culture that would happen in the mid-60s. And Alan Matz And D.T. Suzuki had published books about Zen that were very interesting to the people in this culture. And D.T. Suzuki was especially interested in Satori, Enlightenment Experience, and he wrote a lot about it. And at the same time, with that was going on, people were taking LSD and having experiences of their own, which made them receptive to that.

[30:45]

that idea of Western religion, something that might give them that kind of experience that they could hold on to. So the time was right, in a way, for Suzuki Roshi to arrive. The culture was one of anti-consumerism, spirituality, pacifism, communal life, sexuality. ecology, natural and sustainable food. All of that fit well with Asian religion and a simple Zen life. And also Suzuki seemed to be the right person. He was firm and upright and had authority, but he was also kind and warm and accepting. And he was also new and exotic and interesting. So people would show up on his doorstep or call him on the phone to ask about Zen.

[31:56]

They had read about Zen and they were interested in knowing about it. And he would always say, I sit Zen at 5.30 a.m. every morning. Please join me. and some of them would come. And gradually, a group of sort of land-tired people formed around him, and formed around the practice of zazon. These were the people who would show up every day and sit zazon with him. At the same time, of course, he was serving the needs of the ordinary Japanese-American community in the same temple, and the two communities weren't exactly on the same page. They didn't really integrate, and there was more and more tension between them. And at a certain point, the elderly Japanese people at Tsukoji said, you're going to have to choose.

[33:02]

It's them or us. So reluctantly, he chose the Ren hippies because he knew there would be a Zazen every day, and there wasn't any Zazen going on in the Japanese-American community. And as many Ren people showed up, some of them were extraordinary, gifted, talented people in one way or another. Notably, Richard Baker came during that time, and he had many skills of organization and leadership, many connections with the word. And about that time, Suzuki Roshi was feeling like the community had matured to a point that it would be good to have a monastery, a place for residential practice. And Richard Baker found Tassahaya.

[34:03]

And he took Suzuki Tazahaya, it was our monastery in Carmel Valley. And he took Suzuki Roshi to visit. And Suzuki Roshi fell in love with the place. It was just perfect. It had extremes. It was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Sometimes on a summer day, it would be 45 degrees in the morning and 100 in the afternoon. It was rugged and remote and natural and it had a hotel kitchen and a lodge and a big dining room already built and cabins for guests. So it was just perfect and Richard Baker knew that he had to make it happen and he did. He used all of his connections and fundraising and organizational skills and Zen Center was able to buy Tassajara.

[35:05]

One of the big things about life at Tassajara that was interesting was that men and women would practice together. There was some discussion about that and apparently Richard Baker said we won't be able to fundraise it if there can't be women. No women, no Tassajara. So shortly after that, oh, actually, the Sakoji split happened a little after that. And when Richard Baker found this building, when the group wanted to move out of Sakoji to move it to the Japanese community, Richard Baker found this building. a memorable building that was designed by Drew and Morgan, that also had a full hotel kitchen, a big dining room, a bar room downstairs that's now the Zendo, and this room was a big visiting living room.

[36:12]

There was a fireplace right here. There are pictures of it that we've had. So more than raising, more organizing, and Zen Center purchased this building. So there are now two residential practice places, and that made a big difference in how Americans could practice. Residential practice meant sara, and it meant more forms, and integrating the Japanese forms from a monastic situation like a heiji osuji into our American life. So in order to do that, Suzuki invited teachers that he knew from Japan. He invited Tatsugami Roshi, who had been the ino at Ahiji for 13 years. And Tatsugami Roshi went to Tassahaya and taught the students the various forms that we practice today.

[37:15]

And he also invited Katagiri Roshi, who eventually was an abbot here, and Cabancino, who had a temple down the peninsula. And Suzuki Roshi always was a full participant in the community. If there was a hike or a picnic, gourmand, he would be there. And he loved to work, and he particularly loved to build stone walls. He loved to move rocks. So small as he was, he was strong, and he could lift rocks, and he also understood the various ways of, like, engineering feats to move rocks, and he worked with students to build rock bags, and that was a way that they had intimacy in their life at Tassahara. So people really loved... Suzuki Roshi.

[38:18]

And after about 11 years of his being in America, it became clear that he was very ill. And he eventually was diagnosed with cancer. He didn't tell the students right away. About a year before he died, gave denim a transmission to Richard Baker, his chief disciple. And two weeks before he died, he made him abbot of Zen Center in a mountain seat ceremony. So this is a big, elaborate ceremony. Many of you have probably attended a mountain seat ceremony here where we install an abbot. And he was deathly ill. He could barely do the ceremony. So it was very moving for everyone. And he died too soon. He did manage to secure the succession to Annette's Sabbath, but he did not have time to transmit his other disciples.

[39:31]

So after he died, Richard Baker was the abbot, and he continued to do many wonderful things for his own center. He started businesses. He started Green's Restaurant and a grocery store and a bakery and a bookstore. And he also arranged for us to buy Green Gulch Farm. So now we have these three spectacular properties. We certainly owe a lot to Richard Baker for that. And three separate different opportunities in America to practice. An organic farm and garden, an urban temple, which is an entry point for many people, and a monastery deep in the wilderness. So now I want to talk a little bit about Buddhism in America since Suzuki Roshi's death.

[40:38]

So this wonderful book, Zunman Beginner's Mind, was published in 1970. It was a collection of his talks. And many people all over the world read this book in different languages and came to Zen Center as a result to practice. And over the years, many Dharma centers have begun, both related to this temple and not, but related to the Suzuki Roshi lineage and completely other different lineages and traditions. So the bureau is full of Buddhism, and it's also spread to other parts of the country. Many teachers at Zen Center have received Dharma transmission now, and we also have a new form of something similar to Dharma transmission that has happened for lay practitioners. It's called lay entrustment. So some of the very similar lay practitioners

[41:45]

people have been given this transmission and permission to teach. We are able to have foreign students come here to practice. That's getting harder with Homeland Security, but we're still managing to do it, and it just happens that right with the moment the entire city center staff is made up of foreign students. There are now several books you read that you couldn't possibly read them. That was not true when Suzuki, where she came to America. Then there were just a handful of books. And then there's, of course, the internet sharing of the dharma. Our dharma talks are all available for download online and several of the talks of other centers. So there's a great deal of dharma-available literary online. There are a lot of magazines, Shambhala San, Buddha Dharma, Tricycle, and they're inquiring mind and turning real.

[42:54]

So every month we all have an opportunity to hear the words or read the words of people and traditions other than our own. It's really quite full. And there are professional organizations, so does Zen Buddhist Association, American Zen Teachers Association, Branching Streams, which is an organization for teachers of Zen centers affiliated with the center. And then I think it's, that's even, what's also interesting is how Buddhism without the name is entering our culture. And the pioneer in this was Jon Kabat-Zinn, who taught mindfulness-based stress reduction in hospitals. And actually meditation entered mainstream medicine through Jon Kabat-Zinn.

[43:57]

I don't know how many of you saw the research Mara Sun that had an article about Google. And Google has a new program that's similar to the programs of Jon Kabat-Zinn. It's called Search Inside Yourself. And teachers come to lead meditation and teach about meditation to Googlers. And Norman Fisher, one of our former abbots, is involved in that. Mark Wesser, one of our teachers. And I guess Colin Norman, the abbot of Google. And also within the last decade, there's been a lot of stuff about neuroplasticity, fact that we're discovering through science that we can change the physiology of the brain through our behaviors, through our thoughts, through the way we treat others and the way others treat you, that everything that happens in our lives and our experiences actually

[45:22]

has an effect on the physicality of our brains. And that's a very encouraging thing if you're a meditator. It means that if you do these good things, it will help, I think. That's the message I take from it. And the Dalai Rana has been very encouraging of this kind of research. So a member of Tibetan monks and other monks who have had 10,000 to 50,000 hours of meditation have had themselves hooked up to functional MRI machines and had their brainwaves studied as they did different kinds of meditation. And it was discovered that the different styles of meditation each had its own signature, each created different... patterns in the brain. And that compassion, that meditation and compassion in particular created extreme states of well-being for really advanced meditators.

[46:31]

So I think that's encouraging. And I also think that peace and happiness and well-being is not just a pleasure trip anymore. With our global globalization, our tiny planet, the fact that we can blow it up easily at any time, I think that this is a necessity and a social responsibility. Suzuki Roshi's way of peace Most to practice meditation and to practice beginner's mind. The beginner's mind is the mind of meditation. It's an open, attentive, webbing mind.

[47:35]

A curious, alert, interested mind. It's not knowing who you are or how things are or what's going to happen next. and it's always studying what's readiness. I want to tell you a little story about forms and practice of beginner's mind that happened to Suzuki Roshi when he was studying at a Heiji in Japan. He was assigned to take care of one of the senior teachers to be his assistant. And then he was serving tea to the teacher and his guests. And he knew that the correct frame was to approach and open the shoju screen from the right. So he did that. And his teacher's face came from inside and said, don't open that sign.

[48:39]

So he... closed the right side and opened the left side and came in and served two. So he was not sure what to make of that because he knew that you should open the right side. So the next time he went to serve two, he opened the left side. And the teacher's verse came from inside and said, don't open that side. So he opened the right side. And this went on for some time. And one day, Suzuki Roshi came with Oshunyu, came with his tray of tea, and heard their conversation and was pretty sure that the guest was on the left. And he looked down at the shoes, and it revealed that the guest would have been on the left. And he listened a little longer, opened the right side, nothing from the teacher. So he went in and made the tea. So that's the mind that I think Suzuki Roshi tried to teach people.

[49:47]

He didn't tell them what to do. He showed them what to do. And beginner's mind is not about learning something by rote and being comfortable that you know. It's about being awake in every situation. So when we go into the kitchen and chop vegetables, every vegetable is different. And so we relate to it differently. If we try to treat an orange like a potato, we're going to get very strange food. And if we do that with vegetables, can we do that with people? Every person is different. And we have to relate to every person and every situation and every vegetable differently. It's fresh every moment. Durbin said that, Durbin is one of our favorite authors here, said that to study the way is to study the self. Where the self is new every moment.

[50:49]

So we need beginner's mind to practice just studying with the self. It's always new. We do this... With our old Roki bells, you know, we have a ceremony for eating our murals in the Zendel, and we handle our bells carefully. We lift up our old Roki bell with two hands. We make it not just a bell, but Buddha's bell. So we make something that's mundane into something that's sacred. We do that with the things of our lives, with our utensils and our Oriloki bowls. All the things of our lives, all the beings we relate to, and we make our own life sacred. We elevate our own life. So, Suzuki Roshi came to America as a beginner. He was a very well-trained priest, but he came as a beginner.

[51:51]

He had to use a new language and be in a new culture, a new kind of practice with men and women together, not lay, not priest, very different from anything he had known in Japan. And he explored and played and studied, and he was very, very serious and not too serious at the same time. He had an authority, but he also had no mood or desire. to control anyone. He often said that the way to control a cow is to give it a big pasture. So Suzuki Roshi liked to say that the most important thing is, and every time we'd say that it would be something different, But I think the most important thing was the warmth and connection that we have with people. And that's what he was so good at. That's what he brought alive in America.

[52:53]

And I want to end with a quote from this book. Some of his fondest memories of Japan were of the group of young men that he had. started during the High Grass Mountain group. And he maintained contact with some of them even after he came to America. So, Shigeru Kozuki, head of the premium section of the Ministry of Finance, published an article in 1974 in Japan's principal financial newspaper, the Nukeri. The article was named It read in part, there was a man who went to San Francisco to open the minds of young Americans to create a home for their hearts.

[54:01]

In America, he sat in silence. and acted in a natural way that imparted the importance of every day life. Our Harjo-san was this person. Rootsamaran at High Grass Mountain, with its lovely canoes, was the home of our hearts. There we used to do Zazan with him, and hear the enchanting sound of young Harjo-san's voice reciting the sutras. He did not preach or tell us what to do, for he was a person of action and living. At the time of great confusion during the war, a civil light from Hojisan caught the hearts of the young. He couldn't be satisfied just taking care of the Danka of his temple, and so he went to America. And I would like to express my gratitude for the fact that we came to America.

[55:10]

Thank you.

[55:12]

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