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 evening. Is there anyone? Whoa. Is there anyone here for the first time tonight? Welcome, welcome all. My name is Ed Satizan, and when I asked Rosalie what I should talk about tonight, she said, Ed, since this is your first talk, since you've been asked to be the city center habit, maybe you should do a Way Seeking Mind talk. And since I've found it's usually good to follow Rosalie's advice, that's what I'm going to do.

[01:04]

And I would suggest for all of you who are in the practice period that you similarly follow Rosalie's advice. It'll serve you well. And by the way, congratulations to you, those who have enough time away from your busy life to actually do a practice period here. It's a wonderful thing to do, and it will definitely... help you with your practice. Way-seeking mind talk. Way-seeking mind. Isn't that a great sentence, way-seeking mind? Isn't that a wonderful thing? Aren't we happy to have a way-seeking mind, don't you think? Better than a monkey mind, right? I mean, most of us have monkey minds, but in addition, it turns out we have a way-seeking mind. So what is that way-seeking mind? How many of you, by the way, have given a way-seeking mind talk?

[02:06]

Well, you guys then are experts at way-seeking mind. Take that all back. Anyway, I thought I would bring a couple of quotes from Suzuki Hiroshi about way-seeking minds. He said, actually, the way-seeking mind is the conviction to fly as a bird that flies in the air, to enjoy our being in this vast world of freedom. Isn't that great? The conviction to fly as a bird in the air, to enjoy our being in this vast world of freedom. What could be better than enjoying our being in a vast world of freedom? Excellent. thing to do that. So that's the aspirational side of a way-seeking mind. The way-seeking mind is looking towards our finding that beautiful liberation and freedom that is available to us.

[03:14]

So the other side of a way-seeking mind, as Suzuki Roshi said, is when we feel the effinescence of life, or when we have problems for ourselves, we And of course, his language was always a little bit, you know. And the direct feeling of the problems, of the fact that you have to face the problems, is how you arise the way-seeking mind. Does that make sense? When you're up to your eyeballs in problems, you'd like to find a way out, right? When you're up to your eyeballs in suffering, That's when your way-seeking mind says there's got to be a solution to this, right? So the way-seeking mind plays like two roles in our life. And the one is very aspirational and says there's a liberation, a great freedom and joy in your life. And the other side that says, I'm in all this suffering and pain, I better get to practicing.

[04:18]

So anyway. There's also a middle way that Suzuki Roshi goes and says, no matter, even if you're really doing well in your life, you know, you're very successful, your career is going well, eventually, however, you will feel some contradiction in your everyday life and some uneasiness, feeling you have nothing to rely on. It is this feeling which gives rise to the way-seeking mind. Does that make sense too? Just a little bit of uneasiness, nothing to rely on. What are we relying on in our life for our direction? And our way-seeking mind says, well, maybe you should look to practice. Somehow I sat about six inches too far back on this thing, so I'm leaning forward to see my notes. So anyway, let's begin the way-seeking mind with the first way-seeking that occurred to me. I was raised in Los Alamos, New Mexico. I don't know if any of you are familiar.

[05:21]

Los Alamos is about 30 miles from Santa Fe. That's where the atomic bomb was built during World War II, and my father was head of the nuclear chemistry group there. And it is set in the most astoundingly beautiful location on a 7,000-foot mesa that comes out of the 10,000-foot-high Jemez Mountains, beautiful aspen groves. fields of meadows and since it was just a little small town as a child I ran in the woods and spent my whole life basically raised there running in the mountains and hiking and I found that my first real experience of the vastness and magnitude of life was in the woods in nature and that has turned out to be a reassuring and a lifelong love of mine. However, just to make sure you don't think I was just living in a bucolic land of flowers and aspen groves, I unfortunately had the typical high school childhood.

[06:27]

I had dyslexia, which wasn't diagnosed until I was in third grade, so I couldn't read for the first three years. And then, of course, I was... The smallest kid in my class, I was five feet two inches tall and 98 pounds with buck teeth and braces. So on that curve that they have in high school from the quarterback in the football team to the very other tail, I was on the other tail end of the curve. So fortunately, I got out of high school alive and went to college and grew magnificently eight inches in the first year I was in college. and discovered while I was sitting in study hall one day in my freshman year that I could do mathematics, and that I was extremely good at mathematics. And I rode that horse for the next six years. I graduated a double major in math and physics, straight A's. I had a master's degree in math when I was 23 years old, and I was working on my Ph.D.,

[07:33]

And I remember quite clearly that summer when I was 23, I was working for the Los Alamos labs on a nuclear rocket engine program. They had developed a nuclear rocket engine that was going to go to Mars. It was going to take human beings to Mars. And I was working on the stress fracture, the stress... corner of one of the rods for the summer and I was doing the computer programming for that and we went out to the Nevada test site and there it was gleaming out in the middle of this dried desert and you go up to it and you have to have security passes to get in and it was an engine that was about 10 feet high and they had it inverted on a solid stand so they could test it and shoot the flames up in the air. And the next day it was tested, and there was this plane that went up 2,000 feet in the air, and it put out the power of Hoover Dam continuously for an hour.

[08:42]

It was like James Bond, you know, like I was in an actual James Bond movie, you know, with these suits on with Geiger counters, and I mean, it was just too cool. I had arrived, I had made it. I had gotten through high school and I was there. I was gonna get my PhD, be a professor of mathematics, do a little bit of nuclear rocket engine building on the side. Things were, I can't tell you how good things were looking for me right then. That was 1967. And so, and actually many of my friends are actually professors and doing exactly that, but for me, That was the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, all of that. We called it the counterculture back then. I think some of you are probably old enough to know what the counterculture is. Anyway, for me, it completely turned my life upside down.

[09:43]

All that I thought made sense, the science, everything was just in great question. Are we going to blow the whole world up during my lifetime? Are we going to destroy the environment so that nobody can live? And so this whole world and idea I had was gone. Throw in a few psychedelic drugs on 24-grouper counters, communes up in Taos, and you can begin to see that my world was getting pretty topsy-turvy. Fortunately, I had a friend that had heard about this thing called Zen. and had actually sat some zazen with somebody up in Seattle. And he gave me the book Three Pillars of Zen and says, you should, and there's this actual real Zen master named Shinra Suzuki who's got a monastery somewhere in the Big Sur Mountains. So amazingly enough, I bought a BW van and set out that summer to California.

[10:49]

I called it In Search of the Truth. In Search of the Truth. And I was camping along the Big Sur Mountains, and I thought, well, at least I'll drive in there. And I'd heard that they had hot springs. I could take a bath. Check it out, you know, from the bath. So I drove in, walked to the front desk. By the way, it's a long drive the first time you drive in there. You wonder whether you're really getting there, huh? There was this old hippie. He wasn't a hippie. He was a beatnik called Stan White. I walked up to him, but I didn't say... I'd like to take a bath. For some reason I said, I'm interested in Zen, and I've read a book on it. And Stan White said, well, we have this program. If you want to stay here for a while, in a week you could follow our schedule and you'd learn more about Zen in one week than if you read all the books on Zen that are written in English. I said, well, that's pretty cool. So two hours later, Reb Anderson, who some of you know, he's the Dharma teacher at Green Gulch, senior Dharma teacher there, was giving me zazen instruction.

[11:59]

He was on the Doan Ryo. And that evening I was sitting zazen with Suzuki Roshi. And... It turned out I liked Zazan. Zazan was kind of like mathematics. In mathematics, you have to follow very concentrated, a long string of thinking for a while and be able to concentrate. And this was kind of like that, except for you didn't have to think. You just had to be concentrated. So it turned out I liked it. Anyway, the next night, Suzuki Rishi gave a lecture, and I thought I would share some of that with you. So this was a lecture he was giving on the echoes. You know what an echo is? You know, in the morning service, we chant the Heart Sutra, then afterwards we say, we dedicate the merit to, and then here we now chant like all of the ancestors. But back then, the echo would, of course it was done in Japanese, would chant something in Japanese and then say we're dedicating the merit to Buddha, Bodhidharma, Dogen, and Manjushri.

[13:07]

So Sukiroshi was... explaining the Japanese to us, which was totally esoteric to me. And then he was going on about this guy, Dogen, who had gone on some boat trip to China, doing something, and I thought... Goodness gracious, I mean, I'm studying Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and this guy's telling me Sunday school stories about some guy, Dogen, going to China. I mean, it just wasn't computing to me. I mean, I had come to find somebody really wise, you know. But there was something about him, you know. Mostly he was laughing a lot, and he was just sitting up there smiling, telling this story. And then anyway, and they got the end of the long lecture, and then he said, are there any questions? And I grabbed this from the... We have archives of all the lectures he gave, even the ones that aren't in, not always so in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

[14:12]

I like to read through the question and answers because it's wonderful. So anyway, since he'd been talking about, you know, we dedicate the merit to Dogen and Bodhidharma, David Chadwick, a famous person in our history, said... well, Suzuki Roshi, what are we going to name you after you die when we do the echo? Is it going to be Zenshin Suzuki? Because Eihei was named after his temple and Zenshin is the name of Tassara. Suzuki Roshi goes, no, my name's Shunru, not Zenshin. Anyway, they had this big long dialogue back and forth about what his name is. And Suzuki Roshi is having none of it. He's just hardly cooperating at all, but they're into it. And they want to know what's the meaning of his name, Shunra, and all this. And finally, Suzuki Roshi says, one of them says, Roshi, will you tell me? And he says, you, you must be a great teacher, you know, not me. You must use your name. I'm okay. I'm here anyway, drinking a lot of water. Laugh, laugh. They always have laughs every time he's laughing.

[15:15]

And he said, my teacher died when I was 32 years old. So I was not so lucky, you know, in this point. So I want to live as much as I can. Laugh some more. I was very weak. I didn't think I would live more than to 50 or 60, but I'm 66 already. Now I become greedy. laughs, laughs more. Because of you, 10 years more. Give me 10 years, all right. I'm asking Buddha, you know, give me 10 years more. Then you will be 40 or 50. You will be a good teacher if you try hard. So wonderful, you know, really, that a teacher. Suzuki Roshi really had only one interest, which was making us good Zen students. And he did say at the end of that that we would make it.

[16:16]

He says, and we're not doing anything here. It's like nothing happening at Tassar. All day, day after day, we are carrying stones and building cabins and scrubbing the floors, eating some food. You know, it looks like nothing happening here. Laughs, laughs. But something great is happening here. I am quite sure about that. Then you will know what is transmission. What is Bodhidharma or Dogen or Buddha? You yourself are Buddha. So that caught my attention. And so for the next few days, I was watching him like a hawk, just checking him out, trying to figure out what made this guy so good. And I think it's always appropriate at a time like this, Away Seeking Mind Talk, that you bring up the story of how you first met the Zen teacher. That's traditional in Zen, you know, usually. And the student makes some brilliant remark and the Zen teacher accepts them as a student, right? Some of you know this story, but most of you don't.

[17:18]

So it was about the fourth day there, and I hadn't got a bath the previous day, and I was on an unusual schedule because I was a dishwasher. So I was really looking forward to the baths, and I got there early. And somehow, you know, there's so many forms in Zen, you can't keep track of them all. And apparently there was this form going on there that the habit, the Zen master, bathes before the students privately. So I go zipping into the baths. And this is at Tashara when the baths were on the other side of the stream there. And they had little rooms and you had little bathtubs that you would bathe in before you went into the big plunge. And I come whipping around. There's Suzuki Roshi. completely nude, sitting on a little wood bench with a pail in front of him, and he was washing himself off and drawing the bathtub full so he could get in it and take a bath before going to the plunge. And back in those days when the monks would bathe together, they'd all jump, two or three of them would jump into that plunge together because you had to bathe off real quickly to get to the plunge.

[18:22]

But I was kind of stunned. I didn't know what to do. And he looked up at me and he said, do you want to take a bath? I said, yes. And then I thought, well, maybe I shouldn't barge in on him like this. Maybe I should go over to the plunge. So I said, well, maybe I should just go over to the big plunge. And he said, normally we wash off here in the small bathtub before going into the plunge. Excellent. This is my chance to sit and bathe with the teacher, get to know him. So I go in. take off all my clothes. Meanwhile, he's washing himself. The plunge is now completely full. I got all my clothes off, but I'm still a little tentative, and I'm not sure, and he motions me to get into the bathtub there. So I'm climbing into the bathtub, and as I'm sinking into the bathtub, I notice that Suzuki Roshi is already dressed and is walking out of the room.

[19:32]

I mean, can you imagine my horror? I mean, I realize now that I've driven him from his bath. He's leaving. You know, I was an Eagle Scout. My mother didn't raise me to drive Zen masters from their bath. I mean, you know, this is not how it's supposed to go the first time you meet your Zen teacher. And all of a sudden he pauses at the doorway, kind of... And he turns around and he looks at me and he says, don't worry. And he laughed. Don't worry. And I eventually, you know, I got bathed, I went to the steam room area, I went to the stream, and I was lying on the stream looking up at the sky through the trees, and I thought to myself, and all of a sudden I felt completely calm.

[20:35]

I felt fantastic. I felt great. And I think later on, when I thought about it, it's because I knew I had met my teacher. I knew that Suzuki Roshi was going to be my teacher. And so it's turned out, for 40 years he's been my teacher, even though he died, unfortunately, 18 months later. I had to go back to work on my PhD because all the momentum in my life was that I should finish my PhD, and also that was the way I was avoiding being drafted. Back then, one of the major strategies, if you were a young man, was how to not go to Vietnam and get killed, and I got a deferment because I was in graduate school. But I wasn't worried about that because I knew that Suzuki Roshi, because he had just promised me was going to live 10 more years, and I would finish my PhD, and I would come back and study with him.

[21:39]

So I would go back and forth. During winter break, I came here and had some interactions with him in this lovely building, and the next summer I went back to Tassara and practiced with him, having no idea that he was ill, because it didn't become entirely clear that Suzy Gershi was dying of cancer until September of that year, while I was back in graduate school. and then he died. And when I heard about that, I was devastated. How was I going to figure out what I was going to do in my life? I had so clearly seen that this was the path, this was the way, and he had something that I wanted to figure out what it was. I wanted to figure out what Suzuki Roshi had, and I wanted to know whether I could get it, and how to do it.

[22:48]

And he was gone. It was a dark period of my life. Anyway, I kicked around, I wandered up to Colorado and hung out with Trungpa's group for a while, tried a few various other schemes, and then I realized that, you know, I really liked that Zen stuff, and I would come back here to Zen Center and figure out what was going on. And I came back, and Richard Baker was here, and there were a whole group of people that had studied with Suzuki Hiroshi, and I, of course, I was highly motivated, so I went immediately to Tassar, and I lived at Tassar for four years, eventually became the director down there. And then I moved up to the city and we were building lots of businesses. So I got to be vice president of all the businesses and then became president of Zen Center and I lived here for nine years. Richard Baker and I had a great relationship.

[23:52]

I liked doing things and he liked having somebody that could do things well. So I convinced myself that I was a layperson, that really my way was to be a layperson. So I left Zen Center and I went out into the world, left being a resident here in Zen Center and went out and became a microcomputer software person. And I had a wonderful 18-year career building microcomputer software companies, which was exciting and exciting. and challenging and basically quite wonderful. And at the end, I was with the learning company, was doing educational software for kids, which was, you know, a wholesome thing to be doing. And then, out of the blue, I was done with that.

[25:00]

And... What I had noticed during this whole period of time that I was off being a layman was that Suzuki Roshi kept telling me about this freedom that I could have in my mind. It's a funny thing when a teacher of yours dies, you think that it's over with them. And especially for me, I had this big question that he hadn't answered. about the meaning of my life and how I was going to live my life. And since I couldn't get it answered from him, it was just this big question in my mind. Just hung out there. What is this Zen? What is awakening? What is enlightenment? What's the way to live a life that's meaningful and real? And that's one side. And the other side is you met somebody who was, for the first time, somebody that saw you. that could see who you were, that loved you, that took care of you, and inspired you in a way that you hadn't met anybody before.

[26:16]

So this person was living in me. And after I had done my computer business for 18 years, he said, it's time to go back to practice again full time. So I retired, was 55, And I started practicing first with Norman. Then my good friend, Linda, asked me to be Shuso at Green Gulch. And then another good friend, Lou Richman, asked me to start a group in Mill Valley. So I started a group in Mill Valley. And one thing led to another. And I joined the board of Zen Center and was chairman for seven years and worked very closely with Steve. And then somebody asked me to be an abbot. So that's how these things go. once you get started. I want to conclude with one sort of quick comment. There's a wonderful story from the Blue Cliff Records about a student who basically has a strong desire to get an answer from his teacher and his teacher doesn't give him the answer.

[27:25]

and he ends up having to leave, and for many years he wanders around trying to figure out the answer to this question of the meaning of life and death. His teacher dies, and he goes back to the temple where the successor of the teacher is there, and they have an interaction which is very similar to the first interaction, and he gets some insight into this question about the meaning of life and death for 20 years that he's been thinking about. So he feels like he has to say something about his teacher, so he goes into the hall and he's carrying a hoe into the teaching hall, and he crosses back and forth from east to west and west to east. And the abbot there says to him, what are you doing? And Yuan said, I'm looking for the relics of our late master. You know, the relics, usually if you cremate a teacher, the relics in Western society are bones. But when I was wandering around in China, Sometimes if they're a great Zen teacher, there's some magical, like jewel-like thing that happens and they have them in special places that you can look at.

[28:28]

So relics are very, you know, big deal thing. But Schwang said, vast waves spread far and wide. Foaming billows flood the skies. What relics of our late master are you looking for? Isn't that beautiful? Vast waves spread far and wide. Foaming billows flood the skies. What relics of our late master are you looking for? Our late master, Shunra Suzuki, is filling this entire hall. He's not only filling this entire hall, he's filling vast billows to the entire sky, all over Tassahara, are Suzuki Roshi's relics. In fact, I was in a bar one time talking to a guy who had written a book about... Who's that famous coach of the Bulls who then went to Los Angeles?

[29:33]

What was his name? Phil Jackson. Apparently Phil Jackson, the one book Phil Jackson carried with him all the time, was Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. So Ziggy Roshi is helping the basketball players too. Our teachers stay with us and they stay with us in very interesting ways. They don't just stay with us in our mind, talking to us, but they stay with us filling the halls. They stay with us like vast waves spreading far and wide, foaming billows flooding the sky. I want to say in conclusion one thing about another wonderful teacher and abbot of ours that is now gone. I first met Steve Stuckey 39 years ago when I was head of the shop at Tassara and he was on the construction crew.

[30:41]

We've been friends and Dharma brothers all that time. We worked particularly closely together for the last seven years when I was on the board and chairman of the board, and he was the central abbot. And he asked me if I would be the city center abiding abbot, and I had very much looked forward to working with him in that role. And because I was fortunate to have a lot of interaction with Steve the last three months of his life, and maybe some of you didn't have so much, I thought I would share a couple of things. about the Sunday after he announced his terminal illness. I was sitting with him, and we had a long talk about all the things he wanted to accomplish. And one of the things he said was, you know, Ed, I want to die at 340 Page Street with all of my students around me. I said, that would be wonderful, Steve.

[31:44]

And... So in many successive meetings after that, he would bring that up. He said, you know, I really do want to go and die with my students, because that's what he wanted to do, was he wanted to be with you to the very end. And it was very moving to me when finally, a few weeks before he died, he said, you know, Ed, I guess I have to realize I'm not going to get to go to Page Street. and be with my students. And so thankfully David Zimmerman, at one point in time after one of the grieving meetings, asked me if Steve could do a Skype Jindo. And I remember when I called up Steve and I said, Steve, we have this idea of doing a Skype Jindo. And he was not well that morning. Immediately his spirits picked up. And he said, yes, I want to do that. I want to have that chance to meet with the students. one more time.

[32:47]

So Steve gave everything he could to you till the end, and he is filling this hall, and he will be with you for the rest of your life. And each one of you, those of you who are students of his and care for him, will find your own way of letting him be your teacher. As is a girl, she's been my teacher for all these many years. So we have just a few minutes for questions, if anybody has anything. Ah, yes. I am married to a marvelous woman who is a constant inspiration to me. She took up acting three years ago. and is marvelously good at it. She just was Queen Eleanor in Lion of Winter.

[33:53]

If any of you know that marvelous movie where Catherine Hepburn played Queen Eleanor, a big part, up at the Nevada Theater Company. So she is going to be taking acting classes down here at ACT, and she will be coming up and staying with me some evenings when I'm living upstairs on the third floor. But it means that I will be going back on weekends to my home in Mill Valley. Because one of the things I'm going to do while I'm being City Center Avid is continue my wonderful marriage. In addition to taking care of my group that's in Mill Valley. So those are my two commitments other than to all of you. What my practice looked like while I was working was... 100,000 miles a year on United. That's when you get the gold card that says that you really are insane.

[34:54]

And you get all the free clubs. And that was until we finally got well enough that we could fly private jets. I was in high tech. I was working 70 hours a week. I had only one practice, which was work. Now, within work, I was known as the Zen master of direct marketing. So people were aware of my... You guys are going to be studying the paramitas, and I think it's a wonderful practice, the paramitas, and I do feel that I took my version of what it meant to live with integrity, honesty, and generosity in the midst of an incredibly competitive, greedy world. And I'd be happy at some point to talk with anybody... about what that's like, because I happen to know an enormous amount about that. Any other questions? Yes.

[36:00]

You know, when I was chairman of the board, I had all kinds of ideas about city center. But now that I'm the central abbot, I find myself completely lacking any idea. My intention is to come here and just spend time with you and get to know you and get to know what your practice is, get to know what my practice is here. And I think eventually I'll have some feeling about it from the program side. And I also would like to... I think that Obviously, the loss of Steve and Christina, who is greatly cared for and loved, leaves a hole here that I will try to have to take care of in the best manner I can. So I think I'm just going to focus on trying to be a good friend.

[37:06]

If you have any particular ideas, I'm happy to field them. Is that enough? One minute left. Yes? Do you have any animals in your life? I'm an animal-free person. My wife is allergic to animals, so... Do we have any animals in the building? Huh? Not that you're willing to disclose at this moment. There are always animals at Tassar and at Green Gulch, that was for sure. Well, I do have animals all around me. I live in Mill Valley, so I have a lot of deer that eat at my garden.

[38:08]

That's how I feed them. And raccoons that like to attack my garbage cans. And the neighbor's dog that likes to bark at the deer. And my neighbor's cats. And I'm friendly with all of them and interact with them. So in that sense, I have many animals in my life. Plus all the birds, fantastic. I have a hawk that lives in the tree behind my house, constantly entertaining me by outmaneuvering the crows. Well, overwhelmed in some sense. This is an enormous responsibility. and not anything I ever necessarily thought I would do. I was always on the administrative side. You notice president, director, chairman of the board. But someone asked me, and usually if they ask you to do something, I've done it, especially around Zen Center.

[39:20]

So the other side of me is I'm very excited to practice with all of you. I think it's... Gosh, what could be more wonderful than to be able to practice in this way with so many of you? So there's that side, too. And I only hope that I live up to the enormous responsibilities involved with this job, and I hope everybody will please help me as much as you can. Maybe that's good enough. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:22]

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