but just as I was standing there, just feeling like, oh yeah, deep bow, deep bow. And in fact, the theme of this whole, what we call a practice period that just started not so long ago, the theme is Suzuki Roshi's teachings. And sometimes it's good to keep going back to what's familiar or keep telling stories and retelling stories because this reminds us what the practice is, what the lineage is, how we're situated in something much bigger than our own particular ideas and stories. And I was appreciating what I've heard of Suzuki Roshi's path of, as quite a young man, young monk, already having the idea of coming to America to share the Dharma from Japan.

[01:38]

And his, I believe he proposed this to his teacher who said, no way. But he went to some trouble to learn English, and he continued practicing in Japan in large temples and his home temple. And then in 1959, the opportunity came to come and be a priest to lead the church. Soto Zen Temple in Japantown in San Francisco, for Koji. And he still had this deep wish to come to America. There's a photograph of him that I revisit

[02:46]

often in my mind, which is of him dressed in full Japanese traveling monk, regalia, at the Tokyo airport in 1959. But he is there with his family, his wife, Oksan, his children, different ages of growing up, their roses. to send him off. And I know in this age of concern around cultural appropriation, what are we doing, this Japanese thing, this isn't Japan. But I keep coming back to this was a gift. This was a real gift.

[03:47]

The wish to, the willingness to leave homeland and family to come share something, to feel like there's something here that's been developed over millennia, passed through many countries and cultures, and I believe it would be of benefit. I believe it's of such benefit that I've devoted my entire life to cultivating and caring for this. And I will leave my personal life to share it. I was reading on the website... I don't know if you know it. There was a biography of Suzuki Roshi by David Chadwick called Crooked Cucumber, which I highly recommend. And that was a name given to him by his teacher because he felt like he was not really an upright monk or he was having a hard time.

[04:59]

He said, oh, you're just a crooked cucumber. So that's where that came from. But in that, I read that when he arrived at Sakoji in San Francisco, 1959, quite an interesting place, San Francisco in 1959. It was not a wealthy temple, and he basically had a suitcase, and he was shown where he was going to live, which is basically a single windowless room. But he came. And the temple there was serving the Japanese community in many ways, but there was not so much zazen going on, not so much seated meditation. And he was really interested in zazen, really interested in this core practice we call zazen, just sitting, seeing into our true nature.

[06:03]

And so at some point, he put out a notice on the streets, I think, that said something like, you know, sitting, I think, 5 a.m. every day, people are welcome to come, basically. And people started coming. There's this time of the beats and the hippies and people coming. And at some point, the Japanese congregation was not so happy about this, kind of sharing their priest's And they said, are you really going to go with all these sort of ragtag hippie people, not us? And he said, I want to go with the people who want to sit zaza. And eventually out of that, San Francisco Zen Center was born. Thinking more about appreciating how we get here.

[07:27]

So many causes and conditions. You may think, oh, I just woke up this morning and I decided to come. But what had to happen? Of course, we can never fully grasp it, but it's worth sometimes looking at least a few threads. What had to happen for us to be here today? You know, in war, war is so difficult and destructive, and yet looking back at World War II, it's interesting to see the cultural exchanges that happened there as well. Like Robert Aitken, who went on to found the Diamond Sangha in Hawaii. He had been living in Guam and was a civilian prisoner of war in Japan. And while he was there, someone gave him a book by R.H.

[08:29]

Blythe called Zen and English Literature. And he started reading it. And then later he was interned in the same camp as R.H. Blythe. And so out of that, when he came back to the United States and ended up in Hawaii, he started a Zen school, temple. And my own personal history is intertwined with Japan in an unusual way. Some of you have heard the story, but before I was born, my mother, she had worked as a speech therapist. And she worked in the public schools in the United States and wanted to teach in Europe. And when she applied for that, they said, it's hard to get a place in Europe. Have you thought about Asia? No, she had not thought about Asia. They said, well, try Japan. She knew nothing about Japan.

[09:30]

But she went to teach in 1958 to teach the children of army families stationed in Japan. and stayed for two years and traveled all through Asia with a friend. But nobody was really doing that. So I think, you know, here's my mother heading to Japan. She actually sailed out of Fort Mason on an army boat. So whenever I'm there and I look, there she goes, under the Golden Gate Bridge, into this huge unknown, right? So she went in 1958. Suzuki Roshi, they overlapped for a year. And then Suzuki Roshi comes here. This is just my own personal history. And then while she's over here, she's very curious, knows nothing about Japan. She says there aren't even guidebooks to Japan, just encyclopedia entries. Totally blown away by this incredible culture. And she starts studying Zen a little bit.

[10:35]

She actually takes a course. in Zen Buddhism taught by Jesuit priests at Sophia University. She starts reading about all kinds of world religions and goes to India and goes to Thailand, and all of this happens. And then after a couple of years, she comes back through Los Angeles and then eventually lands back in the town she grew up in, which is a small town in southeast Texas. And there is a small, somewhat chance that there's someone on Zoom listening to this now from Sillsby, Texas right now. So, hi. You know what I'm talking about. And she redoes, when she eventually gets married, my father who grew up there too, I'm a fifth-generation Texan, by the way, that she redoes the whole house in a Japanese style.

[11:39]

So unusually, I grew up in a small, very conservative town in Southeast Texas, Bible Belt, with books all about Japanese and world religion and Buddhas and bodhisattvas and soji screens and everything else, eating fried rice. And she goes to all the local schools and shares her sly shows about Asia. This is a formative experience for her and for my sister and me growing up. And after she died, I also found this big record, LP, and there was Alan Watts with a bell just like the bell over there, wearing a juban, this white thing I'm wearing here, and hakama, which is like a Japanese martial art thing. And he's right by the bell, and it's him offering meditations and teachings. And I thought, I was probably listening to that when I was two. You know, she was playing that.

[12:43]

So none of that really matured. She came back to the Methodist church, and I grew up in the Methodist church, but all of this was there. Didn't really mature until after college that I had more of an interest and actually went to Japan and things. took their course. People ask, well, what kind? I'm interested in Buddhism, but I don't know what kind is best for me. And partially, honestly, I think it's aesthetics. That was the aesthetic that really resonated with me. So when I first landed at the Berkeley Zen Center in 1991, that's what felt right. And I think, too, about lineage. You know, we talk a lot about lineage in Zen, passing down the teaching.

[13:55]

They say warm hand to warm hand and carrying on the lineage. But there are different kinds of lineages. So I very much feel myself as my mother's daughter. This is my inheritance from her. part of my lineage. I also have a 24-year-old daughter who actually grew up here, but said, you know, I grew up at a Zen center, but I've never really done a long retreat. And so she just did an outdoor camping retreat for young people in Vermont sponsored by the Berry Center, which I think really deeply impacted her. And when she came out, she said... I can feel how much I am your daughter. And we also come from a long line of female Methodist Sunday school teachers.

[14:58]

My grandmother had a whole classroom in our church named after her. And I remember sometimes spending the night over there and picking in early morning Sundays where she was in the kitchen practicing. And that goes back. So what are our different lineages that we carry? And how do we care for them? Perhaps part of the way we care for them... is creating a space, a practice field like this. Of course, practice is everywhere. You don't have to come specially on Sunday to Green Gulch. That's good news.

[16:01]

But somehow it can be a little bit easier to into a space that's dedicated, that has the architecture and the soundscape and the words and the bowing and every little thing is going, wake up, wake up, wake up. Do you feel it when you come in this room? And this has been cultivated over decades. And this was a barn originally. And now how many thousands and thousands of hours of sitting here, of caring for the space, caring for the land? The other day we had our...

[17:10]

Opening ceremony for the practice period. And there are about 25 people or so who are here really devoting themselves, not leaving the valley, for nine whole weeks to be cared for by this practice field. It's kind of amazing to take that much time and really devote oneself. But the practice period has a beginning and an ending. Zen is good at this. Beginnings and endings. And by marking them, by marking a beginning and an ending, you create something. You create a structure, a field, a practice space, physically, psychologically. And the ceremony for opening the practice period is one of my favorite ceremonies. And it seemed to be particularly beautiful this time. And we do many, many ceremonies here. in this room, as you might imagine.

[18:12]

But in this particular ceremony to open the practice period, everybody starts here, and then we go out. And this is early in the morning. It was kind of damp, although beautiful starry sky, very dark still, if you can imagine here. And somehow when the air is a bit damper, you can even hear the ocean more. And so we started here and then formally exited and went out and bowed to the kaisando, what I was just talking about, Suzuki Roshi. And then everybody, you know, dozens of people, all processing out going to the kitchen where the tenzo, the head of the kitchen, was waiting and offered incense to the abbot Juryu who's leading the practice period. We all bow in the kitchen. And then we go out different places, going to the office, the welcome center, the head of the welcome center offering.

[19:21]

We go to the maintenance shop right over here. We go out all the way down to the farm, all the way down to the farm, walking in the dark, offering incense at the farm altar. There's an altar at the farm. Coming back to the garden. the garden altar, and then to the beautiful new memorial area. It's behind that side of the garden, if you haven't seen it. It's really coming together, and the Suzuki Roshi of Ashes site is there and offering there and coming back here. So with our bodies, we're marking out, establishing, not just practice here, sitting, but practice in this whole life.

[20:15]

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