I'm delighted to be here. It's so rare and special a chance for me and maybe for you also. My agenda for the talk this evening I thought I'd introduce myself a little bit, because some of you don't know me at all, or just a little bit, and introduce myself a bit in terms of Tassahara, as we are here at Tassahara. And then I want to move on to some teaching that has really moved me recently. And I did think of a humorous event that I'll relate to you.

[01:15]

That has to do with, I was thinking about, well, what is it about Tassajara that is so wonderful and so important? and has been important in my life. One of the most important things in my life has been the time that I've spent at Tassajara. I came to San Francisco Zen Center in the fall of 1968. A while ago, at that time, Suzuki Roshi was still alive. As you know, he didn't die until December of 1971.

[02:24]

So I got to spend... some time with him during the last years of his life. I was not close with him. Actually, he spent a fair amount of time down here. And I didn't get here until 1973. I didn't come to live at Tassajara until a few years after his death. But nevertheless, even though... Oh, can you hear me okay? I'm good? Okay, great. And you folks over there? Okay. Nevertheless, even though I didn't know him closely, his teaching, his way, who he was, how he was, is far and away, how shall I say, the wellspring, the main wellspring.

[03:28]

of my own practice and understanding. Sojun, Mel Weitzman, was also a very important person for me. But the original, original energy, as it were, that I'm still, I hope, living out, came from Suzuki Roshi. But what it was, and you can put words to it, but like Tassahara, you could say, it's remote and full of sincere people. And someone mentioned at dinner, silent. My son, who I joke around with quite a bit, I was suggesting to him years ago when he was a teenager that we promote a new word like cool, like, what do people say?

[04:47]

It's sick. Man, it's really sick. Some people say that, right? So I suggested to him, why don't we start to spread silence? Wow, that was really silent. Didn't go anywhere. That flop. Maybe it'll happen. No, we'll see. That was silent. Anyway, maybe it's the silence. Because it is silent in a way here that is rare. But I think it's also... something ineffable, something that is hard or can't really be described in words. Suzuki Roshi once said that when he returned to a Heiji, which he didn't do very much, but I guess on some return trip, that was his home temple, that was where he trained as a young man.

[05:54]

He said that tears rolling down my eyes. And the tears, I haven't been crying here at Tassajara, but it's some feeling like that. The humorous story which I enjoy telling has to do with my aunt, Fran. Her name was And she, along with my parents, were Eastern European Jewish immigrants who came to the United States in 1921 when they were little kids. And they were New Yorkers. They were New Yorkers. And they taught, they thought, and they talked like New Yorkers. And my aunt called me, I don't know, sometime...

[06:55]

after I'd been at Zen Center for a little while. And she said, you know, so how you doing? How you doing out there? You making good money? And at the time I was earning approximately $25 a month on stipend at Zen Center. I said, no, I'm not making good money. Oh, okay. Well, you happy? Are you happy? I said, no, no. I'm not happy. I'm not happy either. She couldn't figure out what I was doing here. No money, no happy. What else? What else could you possibly be interested in? I had a hard time telling her. And it's hard to say. what about practicing a tasahara is important, so important.

[08:02]

That it's important, I'm pretty clear about that. But why or how or explaining it is difficult to do. Just brief autobiographical notes. So I hitchhiked from New York City to San Francisco in the fall of 1968 when I was 21 years old. And shortly after that, part of my intention in coming to California was to find out about this place called San Francisco Zen Center. So shortly after that, I became involved. And at that time, everybody around me wanted to go to Tassajara. It was required that you practice in the city, what we now call city center, for six months before you go to Tassajara.

[09:07]

So everybody just tried to get their six months in so they could go to Tassajara. And why? Because it was really far out. It was really far out at Tassajara. I don't think it's far out anymore. I was thinking maybe it's far in. Hopefully it's far in. But people had ideas, including myself, which I'll tell you about in a moment, about what practice was about, what Zen practice was about, what the point was, what we were doing. despite Tassahara life and despite what Suzuki Hiroshi told us. So I practiced here for a number of years in the 70s and then ending in 1976.

[10:12]

And then I went to the city and was treasurer of Zen Center and then president of Zen Center for seven or eight years. And during that time, my level of enthusiasm and my confidence just descended over the period that I was in the city, over that six or seven years. In 1983, there was a big crisis, some of you know, a big crisis at Zen Center, a leadership crisis, and a kind of identity crisis. So just like my aunt, what are you doing out there? Many people at Zen Center thought, what are we doing?

[11:16]

What is this thing? It seemed inauthentic. perhaps. And I was in the middle of it as the lead administrator in the situation, as president. I was in the middle of it. And it was extremely unpleasant and very difficult. At that time, two people, Reb Anderson, whom many of you know, and another person, Lou Richmond, who I think some of you don't know, they were the leaders of Zen Center. And they suggested that I go back to Tassajara. So I came back in the fall of 1983, myself, the woman I am married to, Linda Ruth Cutts, and our baby,

[12:24]

two and a half years old Sarah and I have a very very clear memory and that's unusual for me I have a poor memory in general but this is a clear memory if you've been here in the fall you know leaves leaves and leaves and leaves and I think it was a Maybe it was a three and eight day and we were raking the leaves. Making a small dent in the vastness of leaves. And I was walking through the leaves. You know how they make a lot of noise. And... I felt... How would you describe it? I felt...

[13:24]

renewed I felt reinvigorated I felt oh oh this is what Suzuki Roshi was talking about I don't even know what the this was but it spoke to me this is what practice is So it was something about the alchemy of the moment and the alchemy of Tassajara that was, it helped, it helped me. So it's continued to be in my heart, in my mind.

[14:52]

Oh, Tassahara. Even though I don't come here very much. Even though I haven't come very much. Especially in recent years with COVID and everything. Okay. Well, I want to move on. as I said. There's a Zen group in San Francisco that I participate in called Presidio Hill Zen Group. Just 10 or 15 sincere people who appreciate meeting on Thursday evenings and we sit Sazen together and then there's a Dharma talk and Dharma discussion and we've been slowly making our way through not always so for those of you who are not familiar with that that's the compilation of talks by Suzuki Roshi

[16:18]

I think mostly by Ed Brown and Mel and Soji. Not always so. That was one of Suzuki Roshi's expressions. So I think we've been working on it for... 2014. Oh, since 2014. And what is it now? Oh my gosh! I was going to say four years, and I thought that was a long time. We've been working on it for seven years, and we're about, oh, I'd say two-thirds of the way through. The book is not a very large book, if you know it. But there's a great deal in it, and there's a great deal that Suzuki Roshi said where you can just take a short bit, and it's like, oh, well, that's the entirety of Buddhist practice right there. So I'm going to give you one of those bits right now. Here it is.

[17:20]

In a talk of his called, he didn't name the talks, but it was later named by Ed and Mel, Wherever You Are, Enlightenment Is There. And in that talk, he says, Things that exist are imperfect. That is actually how everything exists in this world. But in the imperfection is, excuse me, but right there in the imperfection is perfect reality. Then he goes on. Oh, uh, Then he goes on in various ways. It is true intellectually and in the realm of our practice.

[18:27]

It is true on paper and with our body. Then there's a shift. And he says, you think, speaking to us, speaking to you, You think you can only establish true practice after you attain enlightenment, but it is not so. True practice is established in delusion, in frustration. when you make, if you make some error, that is where you establish your practice. There is no other place for you to establish your practice. So he begins, this little, this is just four or five sentences, he begins,

[19:43]

you might say ontologically, with Vyut, Drishti, the first of the eight steps of the path, the eightfold noble path, the fourth of the four noble truths. He begins with, how do you see things? How do you see the world? Everything that exists is imperfect. Oh, It may not be so clear what he means. Imperfect. So I thought I could give you some synonyms to help clarify. What he means is something like everything that exists is limited. We're limited beings. We're limited by our skin and our eyesight is limited and our brain functions are limited. They're very large, but they're limited.

[20:44]

As we know, you know, like with eyesight or ears, I mean hearing, there's lots on both sides of the spectrum that we don't know anything about. So we're limited beings and we're partial. We only see part of things. We don't see the whole thing. We're not omniscient, omnipotent, om-whatever. We just see part of things. Like right now, I can only see a little bit through the doors a little ways. I can't see on the dark side of the moon. And even if I send a satellite up there and see on the dark side of the moon, there's other stuff that I won't be able to see. So we're limited beings, but right in the limitation is unlimited being.

[21:54]

That's the turning, that's the turning piece right there. then he goes on to say how true it is it's true on paper it's true in reality it's true here it's true there it's true all over the place so limited is one synonym another synonym is partial and the third one that I thought of was specific everything in this world is specific it's not Everything. It's specifically what it is. There's a specific mat there. It's not anywhere else. And nothing else is there where the mat is, other than the mat.

[22:58]

Right in the midst, right And right there in small mind is big mind. And it's nowhere else. So then he takes that understanding of the world and as always in teaching he turns it into what is our practice? It's an understanding in the service of our practice. What he has to say about practice, I find extremely encouraging and heartening. And completely the opposite of what I thought it was, what I thought practice was. What I thought it was, for about 30 or 40 years, slowly I've kind of moved over to his camp.

[24:07]

He says, you think, it's very true. Maybe it was even more true then. You think that you can only establish true practice after you attain enlightenment. Yeah, that's right. That's what I thought. But it isn't so. We establish true practice in frustration. Frustration? Frustration is an obstacle, isn't it? It's supposed to be an obstacle to true practice. Frustration, or what was the other word that he used? Indelusion. That's where we establish true practice. So surprising.

[25:10]

I thought, for many, many, many, many, many years, and who knows, maybe some of you think this too, that the idea was that you do this thing called hard practice, which usually involves a significant amount of pain and some sweat in the summer and freezing in the winter. You do this thing called hard practice. Then you attain enlightenment. That's the point. Then you get enlightened. And then once you're enlightened, you don't feel frustration. You don't feel delusion. You don't make mistakes. Because you're enlightened. Many, many years ago, my sister came to visit me with a friend of hers, her boyfriend at the time. And we were going to go out to the restaurant, to some restaurant. And he thought, we'll get a parking place close to the restaurant.

[26:17]

Because, well, you're a Zen person, you know. You're vibing with the universe, you know. Things will work out well, you know. I was very far away from the restaurant. But that's the way I thought about it. That's the way we often think about it. Katagiri Rashi called it, Katagiri Rashi, who was a teacher here at Zen Center, called it vending machine zen. You put the dollar in and you get the Coca-Cola at the bottom. You put the effort in and then you get enlightenment and then you don't have problems. So Suzuki Roshi is saying more or less the exact opposite of that. He's saying problems are not problems. Problems are not obstacles. Problems are where you establish your practice and you don't have any other place to do it.

[27:24]

So we have to, how do they say, get used to it? We better get used to the fact that this is where we can establish our practice in our difficulties. when we're frustrated, deluded, angry, jealous, stupefied, upset. So, as I say, it feels to me like this is very encouraging because I'm very familiar with angry, jealous, stupefied, upset. I'm familiar with that. Oh, that's a path. That's a way. That's not what's getting in the way. That is the way. Wow. That's surprising. I'm going to see how the time is here. Whoopsie. Okay. A couple more things I was going to say.

[28:26]

So we chant the four vows. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. So recently I've had a change of feeling about what that means, I vow to end them. You know, one of the things about Suzuki Roshi and one of the things about the four vows is we should listen to what is being said. They're not kidding around. Delusions are inexhaustible. They don't get exhausted. After the first 10 billion come, 10 billion more come. And then there's billions after that. They're inexhaustible. They don't end. They don't stop. They don't stop coming. So similar to my misunderstanding about practice, I thought end them meant that they would be ended.

[29:56]

It sounds that way. I vowed to end them. Then they'll be over. They'll be done. They'll be a thing of the past. No, I don't think that's what it means. It means, or I believe, it means we meet our delusions one at a time. And that is, as Suzuki Roshi was saying, that is where we establish our practice. That's where we practice. That's where we bring our practice. Period. Never mind what comes after that. Never mind the sales pitch that comes after that. Oh, then you will be very peaceful and things will be good. Maybe. Maybe so.

[30:57]

Maybe not. Not always so. So the emphasis in our practice is on the practice of Not on the result of the practice, sorry. As much as we'd like to, you know, imagine good results so that I can tell my aunt about what good results I'm having. It turns out that that's not the business we're in, the results business. which makes it, which makes our practice, which makes Suzuki Roshi's teaching, which makes Tassahara a very, very unusual place. Because usually that's all that we care about.

[32:01]

That's all that's promoted on the magazine covers and the self-help books. Our results. Do this, that, and the other. Get these results. You'll feel better. You'll be more at peace with yourself. You'll whatever, whatever, whatever. It seems like that's not the emphasis of our practice. The emphasis of our practice is make your best effort. That was another one of Suzuki Rishi's phrases that he enjoyed. Make your best effort. You know that phrase in 12-step, take care of your own side of the street.

[33:04]

Have you heard that? I need yeses or nos. I can't tell. No. Okay. So in 12-step, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous and various other anonymouses They have many, many slogans and phrases that are really brilliant, many of them. And one of them is, take care of your own side of the street. In other words, don't get involved in other business, other people's business or telling people what to do or anything. Just keep your side of the street nice and clean. Sweep your side of the street every day. That's what you can do. And that's the feeling, to me, That's one way to describe the feeling of the emphasis on practice, the emphasis on what I just said, which I'd forgotten exactly what I just said. But that emphasis on not results, but on making our best effort.

[34:05]

That's taking care of our side of the street. That's what we can do. Then we have to see then what comes, what comes, comes. And we can't necessarily guarantee that good things will come. In fact, pretty much we can guarantee that there'll be a mix of good and bad, like always. But what we can do is We can take care of this side of things that receives things. We want to be able to control what it is that comes, but we can't control it. That's a foolish idea. So in one of Dogen's works, he says, he quotes some old Buddha.

[35:16]

I don't know who it is, but he quotes some old Buddha who says, what do you do when 10,000 things come all at once? And the teacher responds, don't try to control them. And then later the teacher says, They're not things at all. They're Buddha Dharma. That's the feeling. That's the feeling of Suzuki Roshi saying we establish our practice in our delusion, in our frustration, in our upset and difficulty. It's not delusion, difficulty, upset. It's Buddha Dharma. The last thing I'll mention, which is an echo of this in different language and maybe somewhat more approachable.

[36:25]

A few months ago, probably just a month or so ago, I did a memorial service for an old friend who died of cancer. Prostate cancer? I think it might have been prostate cancer, but I'm not sure. In Minneapolis... And we had had a number of really good conversations in the months previous to his death. And he told me that he had, some years previous to the conversation, had spoken with a Zen teacher, someone, you know, a contemporary Zen teacher, and asked that person, how do I meet my death with grace and dignity? And the teacher, very much, I think, echoing Suzuki Roshi, and very much echoing this particular thing, this particular quotation from Suzuki Roshi, said, to meet...

[37:45]

death with grace and dignity meet this moment with grace and dignity. So again, the emphasis on what do we do now in the life that we actually have? Not some fancy life that we're going to have after we attain enlightenment. Or we could say make your best effort to meet the current circumstances with as much grace and dignity as you can. That's how to take care of your side of the street. That's how to do what can be done. This is true intellectually and it is true in the realm of our practice.

[39:00]

It's true in the Zendo and it's true in our daily life. And maybe what's special about Tassajara is that for some combination of reasons, the opportunity to focus on this is more prominent than it usually is. In the noise, literal and figurative noise. of our usual life. Okay. Thank you very much.

[39:52]

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