This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Well, I'm Mary Moseen. I know some of you. I started in... 88 at Green Gulch and Berklee Zen Center and my teacher became was basically Sojin Mel Weitzman Roshi and in 89 I did a summer practice period at Green Gulch and in 90 I went off to Tassajara and I lived there for basically four years and I was day off baker. I'm telling you my kitchen my kitchen lineage, Day Off Baker, then I was kitchen crew, then I was a cook for the guests, a guest cook, and then I was something else, and then eventually I was Tenzo there, and then when I left there, I moved to Green Gulch, and I was not Tenzo there, and then I got drafted to come here, and so in

[01:26]

95, I guess, 95, 96, I was Tenzo here. And that's my kitchen practice. I mean, I've been sort of in and out with the Tassajara kitchen to help out. I used to substitute for guest cooks who went on vacation sometimes in the, I guess it would have been the early 2000s. I was shouseau there in 98 with Norman Fisher and I received Dharma transmission from Sojin there at Tassajara in 2005. And I was installed as, I founded the Vallejo Zen Center in formally in January of 2000, and I was installed as Abbott in 2008. And I stepped back as Abbott in 23.

[02:31]

And I'm now sort of doing some stuff, but I'm no longer in charge. And I don't have to think about any reminders or administrative things. And it's just wonderful. and also I know that today is International Women's Day and I thought I would at least mention my women kitchen mentors they start with my mother who was a very good cook and quite what do I want to say I don't know if quite adventurous is quite the word, but maybe. At least she was interested in a lot of things, and we didn't just eat standard stuff.

[03:36]

Some of it was not so wonderful. She was Swedish, so she would serve rutabaga occasionally, and my father and my sister and I did not like it. I like it now, by the way, but... Not then. But anyway, she taught me how to cook, not just to follow recipes, but to cook. I'm the kind of cook. I read this somewhere, and I think this is supposed to be a good thing. I wasn't entirely sure. I'm the kind of cook that cuts against my thumb, like if I'm cutting up onions to put in to fry up for spaghetti sauce or something, if I'm not making mass quantities. I learned the hard way that you cannot cut enough... green beans for the guests at Tassajara and just cut against your thumb. It's not a good idea. But I do, I cut against my thumb. And I think I learned that from her, and I learned how to cook. And Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, because in those books she teaches you to cook.

[04:49]

demystifies things. I was talking to Kathy on the way over here about how she'll teach you how to make mayonnaise and both classically by hand but also in a blender. But she'll teach you how to make mayonnaise and then she'll teach you how to make the fancy sounding thing sauce remoulade. Well, what sauce remoulade is mayonnaise with some pickles in it. You know, she doesn't use those kinds of words, but she teaches you that, so it's not so mysterious. So I feel like I learned a lot about cooking from her. And Marcella Hazan, who teaches many cookbooks about Italian cooking, and she was from the Venice area. And... Diana Kennedy, sometimes known as the Doyenne of Mexican cooking. And Madur Joffrey, who has a wonderful cookbook that we used at Tassajara, also it's called, what is it called?

[05:59]

I don't know, East Asian Cooking or something, but it's all vegetarian recipes. Is that the right name for that book? Yeah. Anyhow, Kathy and I were in the kitchen together at Tassajara. At any rate, she, I think, it feels like a mentor to me. And Deborah Madison, she was the first chef at Greens. And she's especially the savory way. And vegetarian cooking for everyone that she did is a similar thing to Julia Chazin's sense that she teaches you about it. And so does The Joy of Cooking, by the way, which is also a basic cookbook for me. They teach you about it so that it's not so mysterious. So Deborah Madison has a recipe for custard. Vanilla, blah, blah, blah. But just to the left, there's a little tiny insert in red type that says custard is basically one cup of milk and one egg and one da, da, da, da.

[07:06]

So that you understand... kind of what custard is. And so these women have been mentors for me. And my first kitchen teacher, Zendo manager, was Tia Strozer, who I think lectured here on Wednesday night. And I decided not to listen to it because I thought, uh-oh, it'll drive me nuts and then I'll start thinking to myself, oh, I better not talk about that because, you know, so I just thought, Just give your talk. And she was very rigorous. I didn't want to say strict. She was kind of strict, but she was rigorous about kitchen practice, and I'm very grateful to her for that. She wouldn't let us, she made us You know, we're cooking. When you're cooking for the guests, you're cooking often for 100 people, right?

[08:09]

She made us beat egg whites and whipped cream by hand. And you can tell her that I'm still pissed off. I'll tell her. I don't know if I've told her that lately. And I learned a lot from her, a lot about being quiet in the kitchen and about paying attention. So now I'm going to... Yikes. It's almost 10.30. I'm thrilled to have a clock here, by the way. There are many places. I lecture a number of places, and they don't have clocks. And how are you supposed to know when you have to start to wind it up? So... I want to talk kind of from Dogen's instructions to the Tenzo.

[09:11]

I changed in the Tantos office and I saw something. It was probably the, where did he go? There you were. The translations that you're using is not this one. It's a little different. Oh, okay. Well, the one that I saw on your desk. At any rate, this one, this is a Bible to me, refining your life. It's Uchiyama Roshi's. In translation, he translated Dogen into modern Japanese and then wrote commentaries. But I guess Dogen's writing was somewhat, I don't know if this is true, something like Beowulf would be to us or something like that. So it's useful if it's translated into modern Japanese and then he would write commentaries. And I've had this book since probably... I don't know. It was given to me by another mentor, a woman named Maylee Scott.

[10:13]

It wasn't about cooking so much. She was my practice leader, basically, at the Berkeley Zen Center. And Maylee gave me this. something by Trunpa, which I don't remember which one it was. Anyway, but she gave me this and told me that this book had been really important to her. The title in this edition is Refining Your Life from the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment. And then the later edition is reversed, and it's called From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment. And then below that, the subtitle is Refining Your Life. So I Googled it, though. I think you can find it either way. And I'm sure it's in the library. Anyway, this is marvelous. I'm familiar with Kazza's translation also, which is also fine. And it is helpful, I know, to have different translations. But I read this.

[11:16]

There are a lot of... Forgive me. I used to, when I was starting out, I wrote notes and questions and ink in the margins. Not a good idea if ever you're going to look at the book again. It's very distracting. So, oh well. And as I imagine you know, it's, and from the title I guess you can tell, you know, it is based on the work of Atenzo. of the head of a kitchen, but it's also about how to live your life. And he's talking about it, about being a Tenzo, but his analyses and advice are about life and practice. And I find myself near tears.

[12:19]

I mean, this is like a Bible to me, this book. And things come up from it in my mind, you know, as I'm talking to somebody or something. It just pops up. Those of you who've been around and chanting it for a while, for me, like the Genjo Koan, you know, phrases from the Genjo Koan come up and seemingly out of nowhere. for this also comes up that way. So the Tenzo Kyokun, the instructions to the Tenzo, has advice about what he calls like three kinds of mind, you could say. Joyful mind and parental or kind or I forget what the phrase I saw in Tanto's office. parental mind and magnanimous mind.

[13:22]

And joyful is not the kind of joy, it's not sex and chocolate so much, but it's something, those are pretty good, but it's something deeper than that. It's deeper than that. And what he He talks about, when he's talking about joyful mind, Dogen says, my sincerest desire is that you exhaust all the strength and effort of all your lives, past, present, and future. and every moment of every day into your practice through the work of the Tenzo so that you form a strong connection with the Buddha Dharma. To view all things with this attitude is called joyful mind.

[14:22]

So it's the joy of completely committing to something, to each thing in front of you and each thing that you do. Maybe you could say it's the joy of letting go or maybe better the joy of jumping in. The joy of not holding back, the joy of not being entangled with all of your ideas and your ancient tangled family karma and anything else. Parental mind or kind mind is It's the mind of caring for all beings as if they were your children. The mind of a parent that protects their child from rain and from sun and makes sure they have food and so on, even if they have to go hungry.

[15:34]

That dedication. And I say, he doesn't say, but I will say, don't be forget to include yourself. You're one of us. We so often say, okay, I'm going to be kind and parental to all you people. And I forget that, oh, I'm one too. So don't forget. Don't forget. I hasten to add that because I think it's very easy to forget it. And magnanimous mind says it's like a mountain like the ocean, unperturbed. So for me, that's aspirational. And I'm going to tell you a bunch of stories, and I can see from some of them that there are fruits of practice in my responses to some of the various challenges that I've faced as a Tenzo or adventurous.

[16:41]

So that's nice, but it's difficult sometimes. So I want to tell you some stories, and I broke them down, and so these first ones had to do with this notion of joyful mind, of complete, complete joy. dedication, complete commitment to cutting the carrots, or stirring the stew, or the first instance of cooking the budina azteca, which is a classic Mexican recipe, I learned. And I learned it from a man named Joaquin who was at Tassajara, my second practice period, When Kathy and I were in the kitchen, Kathy was a mentor, too.

[17:45]

She was my Fukuchen, and she was the boss of the cooks. We were staff. We did a lot of prepping. Anyway, Joaquin was in the practice period, and he really wanted to make something, Mexican food, for a day-off dinner for the people in the practice period. He asked me about it, and I asked Atenzo, who was Daigan Luik at the time, and Daigan said, okay, if you help him. And I said, fine. So we made it, and it turns out what it is, budin can mean like pudding or something. In this instance, it was a casserole, and it's sort of like a casserole of enchiladas, which is a great thing, because you don't have to roll them. You just layer them like lasagna, sort of. So... He and I made it. We figured out what we would put in it as filling and what kind of sauce and how much we'd have to make.

[18:49]

I think that was not a huge practice period, but there were maybe 40 people or something like that. And so we figured it all out and ordered stuff and ordered a lot of corn tortillas. And we had a great time. The tortillas are supposed to be somewhat stale. So we, the Tassajara kitchen is pretty big, right? We just had tortillas spread out over every surface possible so they could sit there and dry out a little bit. And he taught me how to make sauce with tomatillos, green tomatoes and so on. And it turned out great and it was delicious. And then he left. at the end of that practice period and came back up here, I think, or he may have returned to Mexico City, I can't remember. And what I do know is that he died not long after. And that was sad news. And did you know him at all?

[19:51]

And I asked Richard Urban, I realize if that were on tape, but what are you talking about? Anyway, So I was a guest cook that summer, and I thought, well, I'll make the budin azteca. And I did, and I figured it out. And I started cooking that day, and I just felt so heavy. Like I was just walking through molasses or something. Everything was slow and hard. And I was thinking about him, and it was rough. It was really, really hard. I've heard Ed mention this. I mean, don't let anybody tell you that you can always taste in the food whether the person making it was happy or not or loving or not or angry or not. I've cooked in all those modes and I don't know that you could tell the difference. At any rate, it was very, very hard.

[20:51]

And afterwards, afterwards, I realized, oh, I was just, I was thinking about him. He was so much with me and that sadness in my body. And I learned a better response later sort of by accident. I mean, in fact, what I, I wasn't fully present. I wasn't being joyful mind in the way that Dobbin is talking about it. You see, I was, I was carrying something, and I wasn't allowing myself to know it, and I wasn't allowing myself to physically experience it. And I'm jumping the gunman away, but what I understand now is if I had gone into the student eating area and just sat down and cried for a few minutes, it would have been a completely different experience. I would have been sad, but it wouldn't have been that heavy, hard experience.

[21:56]

I was in denial, and I wasn't fully present. So sometime a little later in that summer, I guess, I was doing dinner, and I went in a kitchen in the morning to check to make sure stuff was ready or something. I don't know what. And I got into some tiny disagreement with Tia. I don't even remember what it was. And the rest of the morning, I was upset, and I kept... sort of chuckling to myself and saying, wow, that's way out of proportion to what happened. You're carrying around some old stuff. And she, because of circumstances that are not relevant and no longer operate, she was in my family. And I mean, I had that kind of a transference, not that she was, anyway, she was just triggered something in me. And it wasn't her fault and it had very little to do with her.

[22:59]

And I knew that and so I thought that was sort of cute. And I was still irritated. And so then I went, then I started cooking dinner and it came time to take a break. And I took a break and I went up the stairs by the Zendo heading towards the gate to sit down and take my break. And I tripped on those stairs and I fell down. And I hurt myself a little, not much. And I just burst out sobbing and sobbing and kind of laughing at the same time because I knew damn well it wasn't about my knee. You know, that I was just finally letting go of this ancient tangled trigger. And that's what I think. I think that with that, I really learned something about being present. with what was actually going on. If my body needed to grieve, then I needed to grieve, or whatever it was that I needed to physically feel it, experience it, if it was knocking on my psychic door.

[24:11]

And that may be when I realized the same thing about the Boudin and Joaquin. And a wonderful experience of being present and a wonderful teaching was from making bread. My first practice period, there were 28 people in that practice period. And our tangari, we were like 13 or something. We were almost half the practice period. Anyway, I was the day-off bread baker, and Maya Wender taught me how to make bread. And she taught me the Tassajara way, where you make what's called a sponge, a sort of a slurry of flour and a lot of water and the yeast. And you let that sit for an hour or so. And then you add the salt and more flour. And then once it's not liquid anymore, you dump it out. And then you can start kneading it and adding flour.

[25:17]

And what she taught me was when you think it's getting ready to stop kneading and stop adding flour, you wash your hand, you cut it in half, and you stick your hand, the palm of your hand, against the cut side and hold it there for a moment. And then you pull it back. And it should have some dough sticking to it. But it should come away. It shouldn't be like big strands of the dough following your hand, just a little bit. And if there's none, your dough is probably too wet, but you can live with that. But what I took from that is that bread is a relationship. And when I made bread from then on, I had to be completely present with it. And it was a great... teaching of joyful mind. It was a joyful thing to make bread. And it's alive, you know, and it was a relationship.

[26:20]

And it seems to me it was very useful and it was a great teaching of being completely present. You have to be present when you're cutting carrots, too. Because they're hard, so if you make a mistake, you might be in trouble. So I want to go on to parental mind, loving mind. When I first became Tenzo, I was thinking about it. How do I want to be Tenzo, aside from allowing people to use the Hobart to whip the cream? She's going to hear about this, isn't she? What? What did you say? Yeah, well, you're one of, there's at least 10 people in this room that I know. Anyway, I thought about, you know, who am I?

[27:21]

What do I want? How do I want to be? And I realized, you know, I'm a one, a perfectionist in the Enneagram system. And my tendency is to sort of to judge and to say no. and to be critical, and that I didn't want to be that way. And so one decision I made was that I was just going to say yes, unless I had an actual reason to say no, that I was not going to follow my sort of instinct to say no. And it was just wonderful, and it was so liberating. And that kitchen, I think, ran... Well, at least it was okay. Leslie told me people like to work for me, so I thought that was nice to hear. And occasionally I'd say no, but when I did say no, I was clear about it. It wasn't this sort of reflexive no. And that was, it was, what do I have to say, like a wonderful feedback for me personally.

[28:32]

Oh, this works. Oh, I could be, I could be, I don't know, generous. And the kitchen still runs. That was a wonderful thing. And another thing that I decided was related was that if somebody was late, rather than saying, how come you're late? Or you're late, you know, to say, was there some problem? Are you okay? What did something happen that you're late today? You know, to ask people, ask people rather than starting with the blame and starting with, you know, the hidden assumption when you start, you're immediately blaming people is that they screwed up. And, you know, it might be that they fell on the steps to send over. Who knows? You don't know what happened. And that worked perfectly. really well. And it worked not just, I mean, I'm sure it was, I mean, the crew didn't know that I had that intention.

[29:37]

But it worked well because I did have the intention. It made it easier for them. But it also made it much easier for me because I wasn't in opposition to them so much. It was a tremendous lesson. And then It was a challenge to me, to my equanimity and my parental sweetness. We were making lemon bars. And the recipe... that I'm familiar with, I'm thinking the timing of this doesn't exactly look good. The recipe that I love, I found here in the Tenzo files, handwritten and titled, Deborah Madison's Mother's Lemon Bars. I don't know if it's still there or if those files still exist, but that's a great recipe for lemon bars.

[30:41]

And she just says, make the tart dough the usual way, something like that. But I think, anyway, what we did and what works is just to mix the flour and the butter together and then add a little bit of liquid, I guess, and sugar and stuff. And this person was making the tart dough, and I know who it was, but I won't say it. Anyway, and they called me over, and with this pained look on her face, it was a woman, and she showed me the dough. She had followed the recipe, she thought, and it was just like all butter. It was like melting. And then we looked back and we realized... You know, like instead of putting in one stick of butter or four sticks of butter, I think, so that's a pound of butter.

[31:42]

No, that's two pounds. No, it's a pound. It's a pound. Okay. So she had put in, instead of putting in four sticks, she put in four pounds. That's a lot. And I just, what I remember is she was at the end of the counter. by that kitchen, the sink that you use to wash vegetables and stuff at that end. And I sort of came around a corner and saw it, and my heart stopped. And I didn't, I didn't yell at her. I may have started laughing. But not, you know, there's laughing that's at somebody and laughing that's, it was laughing with her to tell her that it really, it just meant that we were going to make a lot. She just needed to add flour and sugar and so on and mix it together. And I don't know what we did with it.

[32:44]

I'm sure we did not throw it away. But I wasn't thinking about it. I was totally there for that. But in hindsight, it's a fruit of practice, it seems to me, that I did not yell at her. And I did not, I don't know, overreact. You can make somebody miserable and you don't have to yell at them if you start saying, oh no, what am I, oh no, now what are we going to, oh my Lord. Then you don't have to yell at them. They'll feel bad all by themselves. So it just, you know, looking back, it seems that that was, A fruit of practice. I wasn't thinking about it at the time. I was just taking care of the tart dough so we could get dessert made or cookies. I don't know. I don't remember what it was about. And magnanimous mind, this rock-like... Rock is a bad...

[33:56]

He does use the word, but I think it's not a wonderful word or a mountain. Because it seems to me that equanimity has to include flexibility. And he says, magnanimous mind is like a mountain, stable and impartial, exemplifying the ocean. It is tolerant. and views everything from the broadest perspective. Well, that's better. I like that image better. He's talking about maintaining equanimity and not getting carried away. In the text, he talks about taking care of the vegetables and making a great soup from common vegetables and common materials and not rejoicing when you get great ingredients and not sneering at them when you get ordinary ones or even maybe slightly wilted ones.

[35:16]

And that equanimity, that maintaining one's balance when things are out of balance, that's very useful in your life. It's extremely useful in your relations with other people. And I think that that's a lot of what we practice with. When you're sitting zazen and you get on some train, especially a difficult thought train. Can you let it go? And that's our practice, isn't it? Letting it go and letting it go and letting it go. Sometimes it feels like the whole period of zazen is just about getting on the train, getting off, getting on the train, getting off. But that is learning discipline. That is... Here's the judging mind. I'm rejecting words like real zazen, good zazen.

[36:22]

Forget I thought those things. That is zazen. It's all zazen, of course. Including those times when it's free-flowing and obsession-free. So magnanimous mind, I think, does... It comes with practice, and it's not perfect. I don't know anybody who doesn't get irritated, including the various Zen masters that I know. I don't know any who are always perfect. I can't resist telling you an anecdote, even though it's almost 11. I say that. That's one of my lines, is that I know a lot of Zen masters, and none of them is perfect.

[37:23]

to encourage us all, because none of us is perfect, right? I was at Berkeley Zen Center. When you give the talk, you're seated here. The altar is to your right. And then Sojin Roshi's seat was on the other side, right? And he was there when I was giving this talk. And I sort of glibly said this, you know, I know a bunch of Zen masters and not one of them is completely perfect. And he leaned forward and he looked at me and he said, except me. And the whole place broke up and, of course, that was the joke for the rest of my lecture and after. So, except for Mel. And those of you who know him know that there were occasions when he would not be perfect. But still, it is that kind of magnanimity, that kind of patience, that kind of flexibility is a fruit of practice, does grow with practice, can anyway, I guess.

[38:30]

I'll hedge my bet a little bit, but I do think so. It certainly is my experience. And patience is, I call it the dreaded patience practice. So that gives you some, if you don't already know me, that gives you some idea. And I had some, I'm going to tell you some I was substituting for a guest cook, and I would give the Tenzo my menu because it's just a lot easier to cook something, you know, how it's supposed to taste and how it works. So I was going to make a sort of a crustless quiche that the basic flavoring was blue cheese. Anyway, I gave him my... and I gave him the sheet that you fill out, or I don't know now, for the ingredients to order. And then he was on vacation, and I came, I appeared down there, and turned out he hadn't ordered the cheese, which was like the base, it was like, you know, a lot of cheese and a little bit of egg and not much else.

[39:41]

And I just... I was taken aback, but I just thought, well, and I went and then walk in, the refrigerator that you walk in, and I just took all the cheese that wasn't already, what do you call it, saved for something, and I got out. Hobart is a professional mixer. You might have seen them in a bread place or something. Anyway, there's one. Is there one here? Yeah. Anyway, it's got a bowl like this. It's metal, you know, and it's about like that. And I think it's five gallons. Yes. I don't know. I don't know who the Tenzo is. I don't know. Anyway, I just kept throwing stuff in there. That's all. And... And I guess it was not that hard to maintain my equanimity because there was enough.

[40:44]

And there was, at least, the main cheese was blue cheese, and there was blue cheese, so it had the right flavoring. And I just kept putting in cheese and eggs. And I guess I put in some milk, I don't remember, until the Hobart was full. And I could have... thrown a fit about it, but I didn't. And then there was the gravy that was here. And one thing that I have to remember when I'm in charge of a kitchen, especially someplace like here, when there often are a lot of people in the kitchen and people relatively new, it's their house job once a week to help out or something. They may not be cooks. They may not automatically know the following. So I was making gravy for dinner and there wasn't enough.

[41:48]

And so I turned to somebody, one of the crew, and I said, uh-oh, there's not enough volume. Go get some dried mushrooms and simmer them for 10 or 15 minutes. So she did. And then she came back to me and she said... Okay, I drained them. Those of you who are cooks know. It never occurred to me that I needed to say, I want the liquid in order to increase the volume. It just didn't occur to me. But she wasn't a cook. And so I guess she assumed, you know, you simmer fancy mushrooms. You want the mushrooms, don't you? No. I mean, sure, dump in the mushrooms too. But anyway, I think I showed, but I did not much. And I don't remember. I don't remember. I was telling this to Kathy on the way over here.

[42:49]

I don't remember what we did. We did something. Dinner appeared. But that was a challenge to my And I had, I don't think, I don't know if she, I know inside I responded because dinner was due in about 15 minutes and I guess you could water the gravy or something. Anyway, you know, it was a punch in the gut. But it wasn't on purpose and she didn't know and I hadn't told her that I wanted the liquid. But those kinds of, I think that kind of thing, that's Sittenzo's practice. And it's our practice in life. In any kind of relationship where you're working with somebody or friends or whatever, when somebody does something not on purpose, but that because of whatever circumstances is a challenge for you, how do you respond?

[44:00]

How do we respond? Do we remember it's not on purpose? Do we remember, this is a whole other lecture, but these are hard times and people are set against each other. We are set against one another. And can we remember that people that have a different perspective on politics of the time, that most of them are not doing it on purpose to get you. And most of them are as afraid of you as you are of them. When we can remember that, that's magnanimous mind. And my last story I'll tell you is at Clearwater, at Vallejo Zen Center. Somebody was in charge of lunch and was supposed to cook rice in a rice cooker and make salad and heat up soup and so on.

[45:09]

And we came up, or I came up just before. No, it was time to eat lunch, and we all came upstairs. And it turned out he forgot to turn the rice cooker on. That's a good, at least a half hour, more like 45 minutes, even for white rice. So, you know, one thing about kitchen practice that you want to do is always have boiling water ready. Always have boiling water ready. Even if you have a big samovar available, you always have boiling water ready. Is that right? So, he did. There was boiling water, so we had, I don't know, we had couscous or something instead of rice. Worked out, okay. He was amazed that I hadn't been screaming at him. I do. I feel like it's a fruit of practice, that that's part of the job. It's a job of the Tenzo, and it's a job of all of us, each of us, when we're relating to other people, especially if you're in any kind of position of authority in relation to them.

[46:16]

And dealing with these challenges, I think, has deepened my patient's practice. And I want to say one more thing about, maybe most of you know this, this is our shared history. You know, I was director here. I lived here for four or five years. Anyway, that, the floors, I don't know if you know who Eson Dorsey was. You ever read Street Zen? He was Abbott at Harvest Street, but he lived here. And I'm told... And if this is wrong, don't tell me, okay? The story is that when Isan was work leader, he was just obsessive about keeping these floors, his red floors, nice and shiny and clean.

[47:25]

And Suzuki Roshi loved him for that. And at one time, he was polishing the floors, and Suzuki Roshi came running up behind him and jumped on his back and kissed him. hugged him and thanked him for taking such great care of these floors. And when I was director, I told that story to the work leader then, whose name was Butch Ballyut, who maybe a few of you knew. And so Butch was equally, well, he was inspired by that, and he was equally fanatic about keeping these floors. And I was thrilled when I saw there was a video on Facebook or something and the floor looked the same. I think Ren Bunch, somebody mentioned something. Oh, I see the floors are still the same. That's great. And I say, thank you. Thank you.

[48:29]

I hope that you will read this I like this because I love Uchiyama Roshi and his commentaries always helpful. And there's a movie, which I don't know if you guys are familiar with, a movie called Zen. And it's a lot based on the Tenzo Kyokun, not all of it, but a lot of it. They got the old Tenzo from the ship and the other one with the mushrooms and Tetsugikai being hard-nosed to a kitchen guy. So let us bear in mind these minds, joyful mind, deeply, deeply letting go mind, deeply present, totally present.

[49:32]

When you are, you don't even know that you are, and then later you can notice, oh, I was completely absorbed in cutting those carrots or writing that talk. And parental mind, extending that kind of love and care to everybody, including yourself and including the vegetables. You know, he also says, Take care of these things as if they were your own eyes. And magnanimous mind, that great fruit of practice, as much as we can occupy that territory, let us do that. And let us not beat ourselves up. don't manage to do it, because that's not useful.

[50:41]

So let us enjoy Women's Day and Women's History Month, I think it is, and get to know your women mentors. I assume you have quite a few. I hope you do. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[51:25]

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