Zen Center, City Center Online Zendo. Tonight's speaker is the central abbot, Ed Sadizan. So we'll begin the evening with the opening verse, which you can find in the chat. And unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma. is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kalpas having it to see and listen to to remember and accept i vow to taste the truth of the tatagata's words uh good evening everyone welcome to our Zoom evening together, nice to see you wherever you are. I hope you are well.

[10:08]

Those of us in the San Francisco Bay area are enjoying some more welcome rain. I want to thank Matt for hosting this Zoom experience. I suspected as is the case that this would be a small intimate group tonight. Thank you for forgoing your holiday activities to be here. I know this is a busy time of the year. Without you, there would be no talk. I'm just gonna take a quick look at the gallery and see my friends. For those of you who are new to Zen Center, I gonna apologize a little bit about this lecture since I suspected this would be mostly Zen Center folks, which is what it is on Wednesday night. And it would be a small group. I thought I would talk a little bit about Suzuki Roshi, who is the founder of Zen Center. And this is partly prompted by the fact that I've been recently reading through a group of talks that were recovered and restored that had been lost for over 50 years.

[11:19]

And it's wonderful to listen to Suzuki Roshi's voice. And some of these talks are absolutely wonderful. And in January, David Shundohei and I will be holding a four week class on four of these talks. So I've been listening to them and reminiscing about Suzuki Roshi. And, you know, he was my original teacher. And so he really shaped my practice. And also it turned out that December 4th of this month, this month was the 50th anniversary of Suzuki Roshi's death. So I think tonight I'll celebrate his life and teaching by talking a little bit about one of these four newly discovered talks. Actually, when I sat down to write this talk, I thought, well, I'll take the jewel from all four of them. But after a while, I realized that would be too much for you and way too much for me. So I'll save the four talks for the classes that Chindo and I will leave in January and just talk a little bit about one of them, one of his famous talks called Beginner's Mind.

[12:22]

And I'll share a sense of, hopefully through this process, a little of his style and approach to Zen. And I express my appreciation for him. So Suzuki Rush arrived in San Francisco in 1959, but it wasn't until 1965 that any of his talks began being recorded. In 65, Suzuki Roshi was traveling to Marion Derby's home in Los Altos to sit with a group of students. She began recording his talks, and these recordings became the content for Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. These four talks that I mentioned that were recently recovered were from her home in 1965. I'll just list the four talks. One is called Beginner's Mind, which was done on November 11, 1965, which became the prologue. for Zen Mind Beginner's Mind and had been lost for 50 years.

[13:24]

Wisdom Seeks for Wisdom was recorded on July 22, 1965, and is the earliest recorded talk we have of him lecturing. And Calmness, which was in August of 65, which is a chapter in the section Right Understanding of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, also recorded there. And Study Yourself, which is another chapter of Right. Attitude in Zen Beginner's Mind was in 1965. And I was listening to these talks and I realized how much Dogen is in them. For those of you who don't know, Dogen is the 13th century founder of Soto Zen in Japan and is sort of the head person in our lineage. And I remembered that his first translation of Dogen into English was done in 1965 by Kaz Tanahashi and Robert Aiken in Hawaii. And it was a translation of the Genjo Koan, a foundation essay of Dogen's, which was circulating around Zen Center, I think in 66 and 67.

[14:27]

And I kind of wondered if there was some connection between Kaz's translation of Dogen and Dogen showing up in Suzuki's lectures. I hope some of you know Kaz, he's been associated with Zen Center since 1960. He's been working with Zen Center on translating Dogen's Treasury, The True Dharma Eye, his most influential work. And it was published in 2010. You'll have seen his answers around Zen Center. Anyway, I came across an interview that David Chadwick had with Kaz about when he first came to Zen Center in 1964 and met Suzuki Roshi. And quoting from Kaz about Suzuki said, one time I said, what do you teach? What kind of text? And Suzuki Roshi said, the Blue Cliff Record. I said, why not Dogen? He said, Dogen is too difficult for American students. So I said, if you are teaching foreign students, you should present your best.

[15:33]

And Dogen is the best. It doesn't matter if your students don't understand. That was Kaz's comment. I look back at the earliest transcribed lectures we have as a Suzuki Roshi, and we have them from 1961 through 1965. They weren't recorded. They were just transcribed by people listening to them. And they were all presentations of koans from the Blue Cliff record. I'm not quite sure why Suzuki Roshi thought these were not difficult. I've been studying koans for years. decades, and I still find them challenging. But anyway, for Suzuki Kershi, he thought Dogen was much more challenging than the koan. So that's what he had been presenting for, you know, three or four years. That was back when we didn't have all these wonderful translations of the Blue Cliff Record with all the commentaries on them. Anyway, you'll be happy to know that Zen Center is editing all of these lectures of the Blue Cliff Record

[16:38]

lectures he gave, and in addition to some other lectures on precepts, is going to come out with a new book. I don't know when it's actually coming out, but I've been looking at drafts of it. I think you'll all enjoy getting to see that. But anyway, maybe as a part of Kaz's suggestions, Suzuki Roshi started lecturing on Dogen in 1965, and these four lectures represent that. And also in 1966, he did a whole series of lectures on the Genzo Koan. And I've always sort of loved this comment from Kaz saying, when I read Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, I could see it's Shobo Genzo in very plain, simple language based on a solid understanding. Richard Baker told me later that Kishizawa decided to train Suzuki at the last part of his life.

[17:38]

And Kishizawa was the foremost scholar of Shogo Genso of his time. So I think it's really wonderful that this, and we, most of us all have studied a lot of Dogen by now because we've had these wonderful translations of the Shogo Genso. But Suzuki Roshi was able to really pass on the depth and insight of Dogen in his 17-minute lectures to a group of absolute beginners, lay people at Marion Derby's home in Los Altos in 1965. And we have captured them in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, a true treasure. And I was talking about this with my... my teacher, Lou Richmond, and good Dharma friend about the fact that Suzuki Roshi was willing to really put forward this real deep teachings, even though we wouldn't get it, but he believed that we would catch it eventually.

[18:46]

And to use a baseball metaphor, Suzuki Roshi would throw us a long ball with the confidence that maybe... five years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years later, we would get it. I was talking with a student this morning who is like me, read Zen Beginner's Mind for 40 years. And he said he opened the book up and read a particular section. And finally, he really understood what Suzuki Hiroshi was talking about in that particular essay. And I find that often the case when I read these. So I'm going to, you know, take a few excerpts from this one lecture called Beginner's Mind, which was the prologue for our book Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. But I'm going to be reading from the transcript of the actual talk he gave. So it's not going to flow like the edited version that you see in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind.

[19:46]

We'll study maybe the difference between those two when we go through it in January. So here's the first quote. In the beginner's mind, we have many possibilities, but in expert mind, there is not so much possibility. So in our practice, it is important to resume our original mind, our inmost mind, which we ourselves, even we ourselves do not know what it is. So I love that paragraph. In the edited version, the prologue, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, that first sentence go, in the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind, there are few. And that has become basically probably one of the most well-known slogans in Zen. It's practically synonymous with Zen. What's Zen? A Zen mind is a beginner's mind. It's easy to remember. to the extent that we know what a beginner's mind is, but still much easier than something very not understandable.

[20:54]

I'm going to go to the next sentence, you know, later, but I also really loved it. Like he said, we ourselves, even we ourselves do not know what it is. So in our practice, it is important to resume our original mind and or our innermost mind, which we ourselves, even we ourselves do not know what it is. So beautiful. We're talking about a mind, a quality of mind, a mind that we have, but we don't know what it is. We can't grasp it. We can't know it. And yet it is expression. He's talking about expressing something here. When Suzuki Roshi goes on, he says, Beginner's mind, it means our experience should always be refreshed and renewed. It means always having the joy of discovering something, the same joy as children discovering something new. Well, that sounds that makes sense to us.

[21:59]

When we think of a beginner's mind, we think of a mind that is refreshed and renewed. But I like that where he says, always have the joy of discovering something. You know, it's a mind of curiosity. Like a child discovering something. If we can remember back when we were very young and the world was a great curiosity to us. So when we are curious and open, we can connect to whatever is happening in ourselves. And in other people. But actually, we're not so curious about parts of ourselves. Oh, I don't really like that too much. I think I'll ignore that. And we're not so curious about other people. I don't think I like that so much. I don't think I'm going to pay. But Suzuki Roshi had this tremendous curiosity about life. And he says, and that brought great joy of discovering something.

[22:59]

It's an inquiring mind, a ready mind. But in addition, he says it's an inmost mind. an original mind. As if this beginner's mind is something we already have, something already in us. It's like our natural state is this beginner's mind. I mean, in other and many other lectures, he uses the term big mind instead of small mind, you know, our small mind where we all of a sudden are captured in our thoughts and the whole world narrows around us. This is a a bigger mind in which the whole world is boundless. Siguroshi was, you know, a living example of that mind. To be with him was to feel his immediacy. You know, as I was saying, since I was thinking about this being his 50th anniversary of his memorial, I looked up.

[24:06]

what Trungpa had said in his memorial, because I always liked a couple of statements he meant. He said, Roshi's style shines through as part of the living lineage of Dogen Zenji. It is the direct experience of living Zen. When I first met Suzuki, I thought, wow, this is Zen. His life is what Zen is. I want that. I want to learn what that's about. And Trungpa went on and said, all his gestures, And communications were naked and to the point as though you were dealing with the burning tip of an incense stick. Isn't that great? As if you were dealing with a burning tip of an insect stick. I remember the first time I was sitting in the Zendo at Tassara and, you know, I just arrived there that day and gotten Zazen instruction. And I was sitting in the Zendo and Tsukiroshi got up.

[25:08]

I didn't know what he was doing. So I'd been instructed if somebody comes by to hit you, put your hands in certain place and he came by and he hit everybody with the stick. And it was like so crisp, so connected to you, sort of just so woke you up. Anyway, Trungpa goes on. At the same time, this was by no means irritating. for whatever happened around the situation was quite accommodating. So even though he had this sort of, one would call it intensity, it was very comfortable because he was so appropriate to the situation. So in touch with, somehow so in tune with what was happening around the situation. Trump, I use a situation, but when you're with him, if you were able or fortunate enough to be with him alone, he was so in touch with you, you felt, oh, this person is touching me, connecting to me like no one ever else has.

[26:19]

I'm sort of carrying on a little bit just as a way of memorializing him. And another way to talk about Suzuki Roshi, which is You know, basically shows Trudy Dixon's tremendous love for him and her introduction to Zen mind, beginner's mind. She put it this way. His whole being testifies to what it means to live in the reality of the moment. So being testifies to what it means to live in the reality of the moment. The result of this in terms of the quality of his life are extraordinary. Buoyancy, vigor, straightforwardness, simplicity, humility, serenity. joyousness, uncanny perspicacity, and unfathomable compassion. I always liked that part, uncanny perspicacity. He kind of got it. Turnpah sort of finished with two comments about.

[27:28]

Suzuki was my accidental father, presented a surprise from America, the land of confusion. It was amazing that such a compassionate person existed in the midst of so much aggression and passion. It was a crazy time in America in the 1960s and early 70s. He goes on, his positive vision of American Buddhism is one of the most powerful and creative messages that the American spiritual scene has heard. So a little sort of about Suzuki Roshi on his 50th anniversary. So to return to the more practical, how do we manifest this beginner's mind? It's through Zazen, the gift that Suzuki Roshi brought us and taught us. He created Tassara and City Center as a place to practice Zazen.

[28:32]

The reason he created Tassara was so we could hold 90 day practice periods, a chance to intensify our practice and find our beginner's mind. And anyone who is fortunate enough to arrange their life to live there for a practice period, I would recommend doing it. It's difficult to do, but I would recommend doing it. And for those who have, And certainly appreciate the fact that Susie Cursey founded really the first practice place outside of Asia that could carry on a 90 day practice period. On the other hand, for most of us living busy lives, how do we build practice into it? And I have my kind of daily formula for recommendation. Practice daily Zazen. Because we are locating ourselves on the fact of being alive when we're sitting, which is so much more important than the other things that are going on.

[29:39]

You step out of the person that you are into life flow. When we sit Zazen, we're able to experience just being. Even though the very many different roles we play run through our heads, we don't grab onto them or believe them. We can. As Dogen would say, drop body and mind. Just sitting some every day locates us in the most important aspect of ourselves. That we exist versus the different ways in which we exist. So to resume our boundless original mind, that's the understanding of Zazen. Not to meditate or understand something, but to resume the boundless original mind. Just to sit and give ourselves to our practice is to resume our boundless original mind. So that's step one. Even if you're living a busy daily life, if you can sit just a little bit every day and get in touch with that.

[30:48]

My other recommendation is that you meet weekly with a sangha for some encouragement. Find some place where you can share your practice with a sangha so that it's easy to forget your practice and having a sangha that you can relate to maybe once a week can encourage that. And recommend the other thing that you can bring, you should bring if you can practice into your daily life. And that's through a practice of we say practice of Zazen during the day. But mindfulness is the term people are using now. And there's a simple acronym to remember what that is, which is RAIN, R-A-I-N. R for recognize your state of mind. Name it. Know it. Know this is anger. Don't be embarrassed. Allow it to be there. Don't push it away or deny it. OK, I'm angry. So that's recognizing it.

[31:51]

And the next thing is that you accept it or allow it. Let it be there. Let it let it be part of who you are. And the eye of rain is investigate. What does anger look like? What are your what are the feelings associated with it? What does it feel like in the body? And then the last part is not to identify. It doesn't define me. It's important, but it's not all of me. So bringing mindfulness into our everyday life, instead of fighting our state of mind or moping about it, we can get interested in it. We become curious about it. Life is short. We should be present with whatever is happening, even if it isn't anything we planned on. So getting back to this essay on beginner's mind, there's a place where he says the beginner's mind is the mind of compassion.

[32:58]

When your mind is compassionate, it is boundless. Isn't that wonderful? He's sort of saying this beginner's mind, if we can figure out what it is, if we can get in touch with this innermost original mind, it is the mind of compassion. It's the mind that is actually connected with everything. It's the mind that brings information. compassion into your life. You know, Trudy had mentioned how moved she was by Suzuki Roshi's compassionate way. And certainly I was and everybody mostly that I knew at Tassara was. It was amazing that Suzuki Roshi could care for that many people. It's hard enough, I think, for any of us to care that deeply for one person. I think I'll, I was going to tell a story.

[34:08]

I've told it before, but I probably will tell it again, just because it was so memorable to me. And obviously some of you people haven't heard this story. So I was at Tassar and this was early on when I was just a guest student there. And apparently Zuckersh had been very strict with the staff and a staff meeting he'd had with them. And so at the lecture that evening, he said, I'm just going to get, he just gave a short lecture and said, I'm going to open it up to you because I think some of you probably have some questions. Because apparently he had been kind of angry with them or strict with them, maybe would be the better way to put it. And I think it was the director put up his hand and said, Suzuki Roshi, I just, you know, find it so difficult, you know. Apparently what had happened is the staff was, you know, complaining about this, probably complaining about the guest students, complaining about the guests, complaining about, you know, all kinds of things.

[35:12]

And the students said, I just, you know, I've been practicing for five years and I just find it hard for me to be, you know, kind with people. And Sigurushi sort of, I think almost in a very strong way said, Five years is nothing. You don't know how hard it is to love some people. And the way it came across in that room that night when I was sitting there and realizing that, you know, he loved me. As far as I knew, he had somehow managed to reach out and love everyone else in that room. And yeah, you don't know how hard it is to do that. Five years of Zen practice is nothing if that's what you want to do, if you want to actually try to be compassionate and love everyone you meet. So a little story about the beginner's mind is the mind of compassion.

[36:16]

So moving on to another part of this lecture, he goes on to say, This is the most important thing for us. Founder of our school emphasized this point. We must remain always with beginner's mind. This is the secret of Zen and the secret of various practices. The practice of flower arrangement, the practice of Japanese singing and various arts. If we keep our beginner's mind, we keep our precepts. What? All of a sudden we went from a beginner's mind, the mind of compassion to keeping our precepts. That's an interesting twist or kind of transition in this lecture. And he goes on, when your mind becomes demanding, when you long for something, you will end up violating your own precepts, not to kill, not to tell lies, not to steal, not to be immoral and so forth. So if you keep your original mind, the precepts themselves will, the precepts will keep themselves.

[37:19]

You know, it's kind of, counterintuitive, normally we think of precepts as, you know, these 10 prohibitions, you know, we've got to keep track of ourselves to make sure we don't do this or we don't do that and don't, you know, hurt people or lie or steal. Or if we look at it on the other side, we should, there, the precepts are, the opposite side is acts of, you know, being, instead of lying, you tell the truth. And instead of killing, you make life You promote life, you know, but even the compassion side sort of sounds like some kind of effort and work. And but what he's saying is if you can get in touch with your beginner's mind, if you can become. Find that as part of your daily moment by moment living, then the precepts will you'll automatically live an ethical life. Which I think is, you know, kind of. makes life simple let's all just have beginner's mind be compassionate and live an ethical life so i wanted i want to end this uh lecture a little early so we get a chance to have a little bit of conversation so i the last paragraph of this transcription was um super she said

[38:47]

I was very impressed by your practice this morning, although your posture was not perfect. But the feeling you have here is wonderful. There is no comparison to it. At the same time, we should make our effort to keep this feeling forever in our practice. I just thought this is so wonderfully encouraging. He's so impressed by your practice. He's a bunch of crazy Americans. Although your posture was not perfect. I mean, he knew what perfect posture was. He was trained at a Heiji, a training temple established by Dogen in the 13th century. I've been there. Their posture is good. When they do service, you've seen service being done. I mean, but for Suzuki Roshi, he... He could feel our effort and the feeling of our we believe Zazen would work, would help us.

[39:50]

And that feeling, he said, was wonderful. It's so such a wonderful comment for him to me to make. And, you know, just to transition back again to my thinking about his memorial, I read the transcript of the last meeting Suzuki had with his disciples on October 9th, 1971, and they recorded it. It's actually very short, but this paragraph I pulled out. He said, I have been doing what I wanted to do. So you shouldn't feel to do, you know, exactly what I did, you know. You shouldn't try to do, you know, exactly what I did, you know. So you may be free to do, to develop your own way, you know, exactly what people want you to do.

[40:51]

That is bodhisattva idea. If they want you to be a beggar, you should beg. He laughs. That is the spirit, I mean. I want you to, that is the main point. If you do not lose that point, the bodhisattva idea, feeling all the bodhisattvas will be with you. So I kind of think the lure of Zen Center has always been that Suzuki Roshi carried attention within him. He was faithful to the Soto tradition. He wore his robes. He transmitted the rituals very carefully. He was conservative in that sense. But at the same time, he wanted Zen Center to be independent of Japanese Soto establishment. He wanted Zen Center to find its own way. And he was attentive to our needs and to the spirit of the Western students. And so this tension between the traditional and the modern, the East and the West has been there from the beginning of Zen Center.

[41:58]

It's very conservative and yet open and not conservative at the same time. This feeling is still with Zen Center, and I feel it is our challenge, and I feel Suzuki Roshi freed us to work with that tension between holding this marvelous tradition that he brought to us beautifully and his capacity to be open and adjusted. You know, oh, men and women want to practice together in a training monastery? Let's do it. You know, that kind of willingness to experiment and respond to the requests. of the students he had. And I think that same request is kind of coming anew to us now in America. And I look forward to practicing with all of you and finding our particular solution to holding the beautiful tradition that we've inherited and adapting it to the times as they are now. So that gives us a little bit of time to have a conversation.

[43:04]

And I open the floor to you. Matt, how do we do this? Do we chant and then have questions or do you go directly to questions? Right. Let's chant and then questions. Okay. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless, I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it. If you'd like to ask a question or make a comment, you can raise your electronic hand and we will ask you to unmute.

[44:17]

Barbara. Thank you so much, Abedad, for a wonderful talk. I love hearing about Suzuki Roshi and his teachings. You brought up your recommendations of five things to do in our daily lives. And I think you got to three of them. And I was wondering if you could do the fourth and the fifth. You got to daily Zazen, meeting weekly with the Sangha for encouragement, and mindfulness in our daily life with RAIN as an acronym to help us. And I was wondering what the other two were. I could actually make it 10. I think studying some is good. And if one wanted to incorporate some practices we have like bowing, that would be good. And I think if you can have a teacher, that's pretty helpful.

[45:29]

So I would put study four and having a teacher five. But I put the first three is the most important. because Zazen, carrying Zazen into your daily life through mindfulness and having a Sangha, which can maybe act as your teacher that encourages you to keep with it are the three most crucial. Thank you very much. Maybe we should, I could write a little book, the seven methods of bringing Zazen practice into your daily life as a busy lay person, you know, the 10 crucial steps, then we could have something marketable. I see Joe. Hi, Joe. Welcome. Thank you for your talk.

[46:31]

I wanted to get back to what you were saying earlier about Dogen, because I've always been much more puzzled while reading Dogen than by studying the koans, like you, I guess, because the koans, you know, I can come up with an answer to some of them, even just immediately, intuitively. And there's others, you know, that 40 years, I've been studying for 40 years, and now it's like, oh, I think I get this one. But I think part of what makes Dogen so special and similar to Suzuki Roshi, is that they allow each one of us to have our own thoughts, our own responses. Do you think that is true? Because, you know, I remember hearing one Dogen scholar says, oh, everything in Dogen fits together. It all makes sense. And I thought it doesn't make sense to me. And then I heard another Dogen scholar says that Dogen deliberately tries to confuse us.

[47:33]

So each of us has to have our own thoughts. way of thinking and then i remembered that suzuki roshi does the same thing in beginner's mind he says on one page don't worry about enlightenment you know don't even think about enlightenment don't think of it as a goal and then later in the same election he says there's no zen without enlightenment and so i was wondering what your response is to this you know this idea that i have of You know, there's no one right answer for anything. Well, not always. So I love that. No right answer for everything makes a lot of sense. You know, Dogen is such a huge subject for us in our school, for those who follow this. And, you know, if Shohako Okamura comes back again and does a Genzo A, I don't know if you've done one of those, Joe, with Shohako Okamura, that it's like a seven-day sashim, only... You have a two-hour lecture in the morning and a two-hour lecture by Shoah Okamura every day for the seven days.

[48:39]

And you study one four-page fascicle of Dogen, character by character. And going through something like that with Shoah Okamura, who's such a wonderful human being and Zen teacher and such a great translator of Dogen, makes you really appreciate the depth and complexity of Dogen's writing. And so part of what I love about Suzuki Roshi is he somehow takes the essence of the feeling of Dogen and the sense of, you know, practice realization and brings it into our, you know, everyday American language through these talks he gave that, that, that, that really, really makes it much more understandable for me, even though, you know, and partly I think I can read Zen mind, beginner's mind easier because I met Suzuki Roshi. So I kind of get it, but, But I, you know, and there's a fair amount of complexity there. This idea, which is such a kind of brilliant idea that these koans always sort of like press you to maybe find some experience somewhere else.

[49:48]

And once you have this big experience, then you're going to be enlightened and then your life is going to be great. And Dogen's practice realization is each moment. is the realization of your practice and your practice in each moment is the realization of your enlightenment and how you do that. And, and the fact that, that Suzuki Roshi captured it by with this word, beginner's mind, a mind that's curious and open and ready that, that the point is not how you're going to live your life after practicing Zen for 10 years. The question is how you're going to live your life right now in this moment. And, uh, And I think Dogen was brilliant in bringing, of course, he has, you know, like what, a thousand pages to try to explicate that more clearly, but was brilliant in bringing that style of practice to us. Is that helpful, Joe? Oh, yes. Thank you. Keep studying Suzuki Roshi and keep studying Dogen.

[50:48]

No end to it. Good evening. Good to see you. Good evening. Thank you, Ed. I've heard this story from you many times about Suzuki Roshi and the director or whoever it was talking about I've been practicing for five years. And Suzuki Roshi saying five years is nothing. That's always encouraging to me. But it seems when I heard it this time, What I got from it was the instruction that Zen training is really, in some ways, the training to love people. And I've never really thought of it that way.

[51:53]

What do you think about that? Is that a goofy thing? I mean, he's talking about how hard it is to love people. Some people, it's really hard sometimes. Well, I think, Tim, you've got the takeaway I was going for. I mean, when I first was studying Zen, I was fascinated by ideas of enlightenment. And when I first saw Suzuki Roshi, I thought he was so present in the moment, so with it, so... And but of course, when I started hanging around him, I realized he was he had this his his immediacy was what allowed him to connect with you and care for you. And so and when he somehow when he gave that lecture, I finally got it. You know, our practices is to help us love people. That's the whole point. Everything else is basically who cares, you know?

[52:59]

I mean, who cares how well you can put your robes on? Who cares how well you can follow the forms? Who cares if you can't actually be kind with people? And, you know, I mean, he was raising the bar quite a bit because, you know, you know, you can be kind with this person, that person, but the variety of people that Suzuki Roshi was able to connect with and who basically felt he was the A person who would love them more than anybody else in their life. You know, that's something. So that is the point as far as I'm concerned of practice. To put it bluntly. Of course, Tim, to figure out you have to have wisdom to know how to love somebody. That's the other half. That's why we say Buddhism is a practice of compassion and wisdom. You know. I see, and how do you pronounce, Miho Kim?

[54:02]

Is that how you pronounce your first name? Yeah, Miho. Can you hear me? I can. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Thank you so much for all the talks, and I enjoy these opportunities to connect immensely. I have a question about the reference you made to the beginnings of beginner's mind um being that of uh the of compassion um meaning beginner's mind is the mind of compassion and uh you know you reveled for a moment about how the it's the mind that brings compassion into your life like i kind of pictured it being like a conduit you know to to access compassion and And it really took me by surprise because I'm one of those lazy, not lazy, busy lay people that has really developed a curiosity about this practice over time.

[55:04]

But one thing I've observed in that journey is from an early time on, like how the mind is something that is there and that kind of distracts you and you're meditating. So, you know, you're focused on your breath, for example. And then, you know, before you know it, your mind is like everywhere. And then you realize that your mind is everywhere and then you go back to the breath, right? So that's like the beginner's training and stuff. And so I think that... several other kind of ways in which we sort of talk about the mind and how we try to you know not identify with the mind kind of maybe inadvertently painted like a sort of negative picture of the mind and that's what I discovered about my own reaction when he said that but I'm also curious like so is it the mind that's the conduit to compassion or like how does the heart fall in

[56:13]

that whole scheme of things. Like, can you just talk more about that? I think that's very good. And it's easy to get. So I'm glad you're giving me a chance to clarify this. Suzuka Rishi talks about big mind and small mind. Small mind is this busy thinking mind. And big mind, actually, the Japanese word is shin, which actually means mind heart. It's... It's your mind and your heart. And that's why there's such an emphasis in Zazen. Zazen is not an intellectual practice. It's a body practice. It's a yogic body practice because it's bringing us into our body and our heart. And the mind that he's talking about when he's talking about a beginner's mind, and I use the example of the curiosity mind, it's really the mind that is everything, your whole being. Your body, your heart, your whole being is that mind. And that mind actually is not different from other people's mind and body, because you're really when you're at that level, you're really connected with everybody.

[57:21]

And that's where compassion flows from. You recognize you're deep. I mean, we have these mirror neurons that are talking to other bodies all the time. There's all kinds of neurology in this, but that is the truth of it. We are intimately connected. to the world and to other people. And out of that connection, when we can be in that big a connection to ourselves is where compassion flows. That's really clear. Thank you so much. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for your excellent question. Clarifying this. I'm thinking, Matt, I'm not sure. Are we, how are we doing here? We're a little bit over. I think it's time to. Time to. Well, thank you very much for showing up on a night, which I'm sure is a very busy night for most people. And I wish you all well for what may be a, let's hopeful, a joyous and complex holiday season, because it always seems to be both those things.

[58:25]

So best wishes to all of you and stay well. Thank you very much. Thank you, Abbott, Ed. Thank you, Eli. Thank you for checking out, even though you're on vacation, wherever you are. Thank you from Bangkok. Thank you. Thanks, Ed. Thank you, Shosan Victoria. Good night. Thank you for showing me that beautiful flower. Good night.

[59:08]

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