As I listened to him, you know, what I think happened was something like, I heard that in my head and said, oh, no. But then I heard it somewhere else and said, oh, yes. In any event, I kept coming back to hear more of what he had to say because, because I kept coming back. So, I mean, that's just, my body went there. It sounds like your body also went to Zazen. My body went to Zazen, not just daily, but morning and evening. My daughter said, boy, things sure changed around the house when you started to sit. She said this not, you know, not all together with pleasure. It was sort of like, as I say, it was like a drowning person with a life preserver.

[01:03]

It was not as if I had, you know, it didn't feel like I had an alternative, you know, it felt like I just, you know, had to do this. I don't feel that I took best care of my family as a mother, to tell you the truth, but it was also, it didn't feel as if I had so much of a choice, and I, you know, I could have some regrets about it, but I couldn't change it, so I had to live with it. The interesting thing was that my husband, as I said, our life was a turmoil, and one of the turmoils was that our marriage was shaky, and I was terrified about it. He had gone off to spend the summer taking care of his father, and somebody had given

[02:04]

him, Philip Keflow's Three Pillars of Zen. So when he came back from the East, he was sitting Zazen, and I was sitting Zazen. Completely independently. Completely independently, and I was sitting Zazen. But, he wouldn't go to the Berkeley Zendo with me, he said, that's your trip. I'm tired of having women run my life. And so he sat at home, and I went to the Berkeley Zendo, and then he came down one time when Suzuki Roshi was speaking, and he met Suzuki Roshi, and then he sort of, it was sort of irrelevant, his trip it was. He has always had more difficulty with the institution of zensai, because I'm a much more gregarious person than he is, he's much more, and this living in the midst of community

[03:05]

for 25 years has been a little hard on him. What do you think it was about Suzuki Roshi that you found so attractive? Well, it was his capacity to completely accept me just the way I was, and apparently, everybody, apparently, everybody was acceptable to him, just like this. I guess, it was like, I don't want to sanctify him or something, but in a way, I mean, that's sort of like unconditional love, you know, I'm not going to say you're perfect just the way you are, what we all want is unconditional love. I don't think he would have called it that. But, I mean, he himself was completely devoted to what he was doing, and he seemed to have

[04:08]

some confidence in, he seemed to have more confidence in me than I did. You know, I told you this story of my outrageous behavior, smoking while I was carrying an offering tray, and as I look back on it now, it is so appalling, why he didn't just throw me out of a place or something, all he did was waggle a finger at me. Sort of like an indulgent grandmother, you know. And, you know, that was certainly not the worst thing that ever happened to me out there, there was some pretty... People used to go off at the end of a one-day sitting, and they'd all go out to the park

[05:12]

and get stoned and stuff like that, you know, it was the 60s. Do you think he knew that they were doing it? Yeah, I mean, he just couldn't sort of shake his head. And still, you know, he saw a beginner's mind there, he saw people who were sincerely practicing the Buddha way, trying to understand their life, which was more appealing to him than people being sort of... going through all the motions of being a perfect monk in order to inherit their father's temple, and then not ever sitting in satsang again, because they finished their necessary... And also, you know, in spite of that outrageous and barbaric behavior in some of the monks,

[06:15]

it was... There was some kind of sexual carrying on that went on in those days, just the... When and where it was, was pretty appalling to me, you know, being a rather staid, middle-class, middle-aged, proper something-or-other. I found a lot of respect for Christianness a little bit in the wild, and I'm sure he did. Well, is there anything for me to do? Take a corner, help yourself, have a corner, and have some bread. Oh, you did that corner? Yeah. You know what might work well? You did this corner too. You've done all the corners except the one I'm working on. Maybe you could say, Blanche, Stuart, it's freezing out here.

[07:23]

It is getting a little bit chilly. I don't know what happened to the sunshine that we were appreciating when we first moved out here. It's behind a cloud. But I have some spinning wheels. Okay. Okay.

[08:39]

Okay. As we were walking here, I was thinking, you know, that, you know, in our discussion before when you were talking about your family history and your political activities, it sounds like you were very interested in the problem of suffering, that you were most particularly focused on other people's suffering, and that when you came to Zen, it was part of refocusing on your own circumstances. Well, I became quite aware of my own suffering, which until that time I think I probably hadn't paid any attention to. Probably had been in a state of great denial about it. Uh-huh. In any event, I just...

[09:56]

It seemed to be something I needed to do. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I don't know. I mean, I have a hard time talking about some of this stuff. Uh-huh.

[11:05]

Susan Kirishi was a really neat guy, and I just wanted to hang out around somebody neat like that. Uh-huh. Yeah. And then there were other neat people there. I don't know. Cutty Kirishi was a neat guy, too. Was he here when you... He was. When you came? Yeah. Yes. As a matter of fact, the first time I went to San Francisco Zen Center was on a Saturday morning, and he was giving his Hazen instructions. So he gave his Hazen instruction, and one of the things he said, I forget, he said, And there was something about that that I just loved. I didn't understand what it meant, but I liked it.

[12:06]

There's something you wanted to have happen. I really liked the feeling of that, and I... Boy, I probably could have done it a jillion times. That's it. To settle myself on the self and let the flower of my life just bloom. And... You know, the flower of the life force blooms. Yeah. It blooms here as me, and it blooms there as you, and, you know. All blossoms are different, but... You know, that fit very well with perfect just as you are. The rose blooming as a rose is perfect, and...

[13:09]

The violet blooming as a violet is perfect, and it's not the same as the rose. But still, it's perfect. The two of those go together very well for me. Well, it seems like they came into your life at about the same time. Yeah. Well, you know, Suzuki Roshi used to also say things like, that we have everything we need, where he was just walking down the hall with... You know, one time he just turned to me and said, just to be alive is enough. Those are all attitudes toward life that I appreciate a lot. That resonated with me. So, when you first started sitting, he was with Mel over in Berkeley. He was doing Zazen instruction and meeting the Sangha,

[14:13]

but he was maintaining very close contact. Well, he was then... He had been ordained literally two months before I started to sit there, so he was not yet teaching himself. When he first started to teach, he would take a section of Zen My Beginner's Month and read it out loud and we would discuss it. But Suzuki Roshi was lecturing once a week at the Berkeley Zen Do. And then, you know, Carlo and I would go over from the Berkeley Zen Do to San Francisco to sit on Saturday morning, the sort of half-day sitting, the same, you know, two periods of Zazen, service, or you'll eat breakfast, or period of Zazen lecture. Sounds familiar. Yes. Sort of a half-day sitting we did every week in San Francisco. So we would go there to that. And also on Wednesday nights,

[15:13]

he lectured in San Francisco over there. And then we'd go to one-day sittings in Sessions. So there was, you know, quite a lot of participation with Suzuki Roshi in San Francisco. Not everybody who sat at the Berkeley Zen Do, but many of us who sat at the Berkeley Zen Do. So then, how long was it before you moved over to... Well, you know, I had a house and four kids at home and a full-time job in Berkeley. I went down... When I first went to the Berkeley Zen Do, the only residential practice place was Tassajara, which had recently been... well, appointed. And everybody was talking about Tassajara,

[16:16]

and I said to them, I said, everybody talks about Tassajara, Tassajara. What's the big deal about Tassajara? And they said, well, Tassajara... You know, we all live together, and we sit together, and we eat together, and we work together. And he said, pretty soon everybody's going to see who you are. You might as well see it yourself. Yeah, but that sounded kind of mean. Anyhow, I came down here as a guest student, and it just seemed just wonderful. And I decided I wanted to come down here and do a practice period. And I applied, and I was accepted. But I talked about it at home, and they were kind of horrified. I'd be gone for three months, and in the first place, Lou had been blacklisted, and I was the only one with a job, and we had four kids. He was freelance writing, but that was not supporting the family, that was bullshit. So... He came down here,

[17:19]

and I kept telling him about this wonderful place. He came back after the practice period had already started, so he couldn't come down until the interim. So he came down here, December interim, when it was cold as hell. He had a terrible time down here, because it was really cold. Wait, did a practice period? No, he came down from mid-December to mid-January, the coldest time of the year. Right. And... But he said the cold was not just the weather, that he would stand in the middle of a plunge, you know, at 110 degrees, shivering. It was just the whole experience. I couldn't get him back down here for about three years. What is that fun in the place? Right. I kept coming down in the summertime. And I applied, and I was accepted, and then Lou got upset about me going away, and I thought it was his fault.

[18:20]

And then I applied, and I was accepted, and my boss got upset about me taking exams, and said it was his fault. Finally, at a certain point, I realized, you know, I must be ambivalent about this. I think maybe I'm not ready to go. I'm scared. And so I think I just better relax, and when I'm ready to go, I'll go. And that's sort of what happened. I mean, I kept thinking, I said, well, I can't quit my good job while Mitzi's still in school. I have to wait. But at a certain point, it was time to go, and then I just don't feel like a place. I came down here. Of course, you know, again, this is about this problem of this practice and being a good mother or not. My recollection is that Mitzi came to me and said, Jerry wants me to live with her out in Orinda. I said, oh, good. I can go to Tassajara next practice week. Her recollection is, when the other three kids left home,

[19:21]

oh, my God, mother's going to go to Tassajara. I'd better find out some place to go. Which recollection is accurate? I don't know, but I suspect hers is at least as accurate as mine. Hers is her life. Yeah. Many of them came down here when she was still... Someone came down here in 72, and she would have been 13 then. She stayed with them. And... She was staying with a friend? She stayed with friends out in Orinda, in the school up there. She was there for one semester,

[20:25]

and she did not like the change from Berkeley High School to whatever high school she was going to, and up there, and she wanted to find out. So, Lou went home and stayed with her. Oh, Lou came with you? Lou and I did. Lou had done a practice period with Kaigiri Roshi. Actually, he was here at the time Suzuki Roshi died. That was in... December of 71, so he did the fall practice period in 71 with Kaigiri Roshi. And then... Then we came down in fall of 72. At that point, I just, you know, I had arranged to take a leave of absence from my job, and then my boss said, Oh, gosh, you know, it doesn't seem like you want this leave of absence, because if I wanted to be gone for three months, I'd be in here every night and weekend, you know, getting this project finished. And I had been here a lot of the time,

[21:29]

trying to get the project finished, but what happened was I just said, You know, you're right, Dan, I don't want to leave of absence, because that means I have to come back in December. I don't know if I'm going to want to come back in December. What I want to do is quit. And my whole body just relaxed, and he looked dumbfounded, and I looked dumbfounded, because I still was the only one in the family working, and Mitsu was still in school, and I was driving home, and I thought, Well, what am I going to tell Lou? We haven't even talked about this. And I told him, and he said, Well, thank God. I wondered when you were going to do that. It was just kind of like as soon as I was really ready to come down here, sort of all of the apparent obstacles kind of melted away. And so he came down here, and it was terrifying, as I thought it would be. But also strangely satisfying.

[22:32]

I quite liked that first practice period. I'm sorry? I quite liked that first practice period. Did you? Yeah. I don't know why. And it's interesting. We sat all night during Rohatsu Sesshin on the night of the Seventh, you know, and because that's what everybody was doing, everybody could do it. I've tried to do that again here. Nobody can do it. Because it's, you know, when it was just what everybody was doing, we all did it, and it wasn't a problem. It's interesting. I mean, I couldn't do it by myself. I had a couple of people sit with me until about two, and then when they went to bed, I went to bed soon after. I couldn't do it by myself. And only two people out of the whole practice period

[23:34]

even wanted to try it when I tried to do it. But anyhow, we sat all night. It was a very powerful experience. And during that night, it was the first time in my whole life that I sat one forty-minute period without moving my leg. I had been sitting for three and a half years, and I had not managed to sit one period without changing my legs until that night. It was interesting. And generally speaking... I hated myself every time I moved. But I moved anyhow. And did that signal sort of a change in your practice? It was a big change in my practice. It was sort of like, it was kind of like a realization, oh, I see, my legs hurt, but I don't have to move. And it was... It was actually... It was more interesting than that. It was sort of like, I mean, really? I don't have to move? And it was sort of like,

[24:35]

yeah, didn't you see? You already did not moving. It was... It was very... I don't know how to describe it. It's kind of crazy to try to talk about it. But it was... And it sounds funny to talk about it as a big experience, but it was a big experience. Yeah. The not moving, it was something more than just not moving my legs. Just staying with what was. That was a major experience for me in the whole session. In fact, the next session, I kept waiting for some of it. Great experience of that session, of course. That was a big mistake. And at some point, I let the abbot know that I was expecting something.

[25:37]

And he said to me, go back to the zendo and don't expect anything. And I said, whoop, yes sir. That's a kind of interesting thing about Suzuki Roshi. I mean, he would say, you're perfect just as you are and thoroughly mean it and be completely convincing. And yet, he was able to talk roughly to his students. And I understand sometimes hit them and knock them around and be very rough and admonitory with them. Well, he was rough and admonitory with me on a couple of occasions. Sometimes he'd hit me and knock me around. But of course, then I wasn't, I don't know. I don't know if he actually physically knocked anybody around, except I know he did his son. That was some years earlier. His son said, he picked him up

[26:39]

and threw him in the pond one time. Oh, yeah. It went so in? Yeah. Must have had a lot of frogs, I'm happy. Did he say why? Oh, no. I don't know. Well, he just, we were all so, you know, we were talking about Suzuki Roshi like he was a saint and he said, he wasn't a saint. You know, he hadn't, listen, he wasn't, he had terrible temper. He threw me in the pond one time. Well, Rev has talked about him doing that. Well, there was one, one session that Lou was at. Lou and I had to take turns sitting session because we had the kids at home so we couldn't both sit the same session. So Lou was at a session with him when

[27:40]

Mel rang the wake up bell early and then he went around and said, oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I read the clock wrong back then. Well, Lou was awake and what the hell am I supposed to do out of this endo? I can't go back to sleep. And pretty soon Suzuki, you know, there was one other person in the room and pretty soon Suzuki Roshi came downstairs and came into this endo and sat and then, you know, later on, Mel rang the wake up bell again at the right time. Everybody came in and sat down and then Suzuki Roshi started talking to me. The one thing that Lou remembers him talking about was oh, he says, you're all a bunch of something, I don't know. When the bell rings, get up, go to the endo. He said, and then he said something what Lou remembers, tell me, who is priest

[28:41]

and who is layman or something like that. Anyhow, and he jumped down off the tom and he went around and he hit everybody in the endo. Whack, whack, whack. With the keisaku. With the keisaku, yeah, right. And, you know, the first people he hit, he hit pretty hard. By the time he got around to the, you know, got all the way around the endo, he was kind of tired and running out of steam and he didn't get hit so hard but the first people really got whacked. So Lou remembers that very well. It wasn't there and I know about it obviously. Do you remember that he was lecturing here once about when the bell rings, get up, go to the endo and he says,

[29:42]

just get up, go to the restroom, go to the endo, don't even think about it. He said, this morning, he says, yesterday, Alan-san, who was his anja, said to me, Roshi, your bed shouldn't be here, your bed should be here, your head should be to the east or something like that. So I said, alright, and so Alan-san moved my bed and this morning, the bell rang, I jumped up, go to the washroom and went right into the door. Into the wall. Your stitches are so close together. Just about like yours. There.

[30:48]

I don't even understand how those French people do it because you can't go down and back and get them that close together. They must go down from one side, pull it through. I don't know what you're referring to. Oh, if you look at Patricia's Okay, so you see how close together the stitches are. Maybe I'll ask her. So, I mean, if you just go down and back, your needle comes up a certain distance away from the last stitch. Right. No matter what you do. Right, so they must be just doing in and out in separate stitches. I guess, I don't know. Very tiny stitches. Oh, and here's Kathleen's stitches. Yes, Kathleen has those in very close together. Kathleen Williams. Where does she live? Page Street. So, is there any more of this? Well...

[31:57]

Is there anything you want to do while we take the quartering concept out? Yes, yes, we should consider that, and also we should consider the time. So it's almost three o'clock, and we have to stop. So, I'd like... Going now? Okay. So, last time we got together, which the date is on there, it seems like it was years ago, but actually before you left. Oh. For the Mounting Seat Ceremony, right? Yeah, we were sitting out there, and I was working on your Zagu at that time. So, anyway, I don't remember exactly where we left off in our conversation, but my sense of it was that you had spoken about your childhood, and some of your earlier experiences that maybe informed your coming to practice.

[33:01]

And I think where we left off was that you were starting to talk about your teachers, about meeting Mel and... Okay, let's see. Well, I think the first thing that happened, before I met a teacher, the most significant thing that happened was... I went to San Francisco State College at the time of the student strike, where my son was a student, and that thing is not moving, so I wonder if I can... This isn't moving? Oh, that's probably just because your voice is low. Maybe if we turn up the volume a little? So I went out to San Francisco State College because of the student strike,

[34:02]

and community leaders had asked members of the community to come and interpose themselves between police and students to prevent further violence. The first day of the strike had been pretty violent. The student picket lines had been attacked by the police tactical squad, and several hundred students had been arrested, including my son. So I went out there with the idea of interposing myself between police and students, and I was there sometime before the rally that had been scheduled at noon, and was kind of looking to see what was happening in the strike. What I noticed was both the strikers and the strike breakers were both being pretty aggressive, and I was standing there watching and sort of saying,

[35:03]

well, where's my side? Because by that time I was pretty much a pacifist. And it was hard to identify with either side. And then the rally was called out on the quadrangle, and it was sort of scheduled to be in defiance of the administration. And as soon as it began, there was an announcement on the loudspeaker that this is an illegal assembly, and around the corner came mass tactical squad policemen in their full riot gear. And the crowd started backing away from them, and I realized, oh, I'm here to interpose myself, and I ducked under the outstretched arms of some people in front of me to get between police and students without thinking. And by that time, it was a very heightened emotional situation,

[36:08]

and I was very present, but I was backing up, and I made eye contact with the riot squad policemen directly in front of me. And I had an experience of identity for which I was totally unprepared. It was very powerful, very real, and totally outside any conceptual framework that I understood. As far as my thinking up to that moment was concerned, the riot squad policemen were sort of the essence of not me. And this experience of identity was very, very...

[37:13]

I don't know how to say it. It was much more real than any ideas I'd ever had, any concepts I'd ever had, and I had no theoretical foundation for it. I'm not philosophical. I'd never read anything about anything like this, so it was not sort of in keeping with anything I knew about it, but I knew it was very real. In fact, that night, I went to a parents' meeting in support of the strike and was elected chairman of the parents' committee to support the strike, and the next day I had a press conference. But in fact, sort of my radical political career ended at that moment because the basis of it fell away. So when you say you had an experience of identity,

[38:13]

that's a kind of abstract, descriptive term. I'm wondering if you could say more about what happened. Now I can read about it in a Zen book, Self, Another, and Not Too, but I had no prior... I never read a book about Zen. There was no boundary. There was no separation. I don't know how to talk about it. Talking about it concretizes it in a way that... The experience was what the experience was, the sort of identity with not me.

[39:14]

And I tried to explain it to my friends by saying, well, I realized that he was doing the same thing I was doing. I was trying to protect all that I thought was right and good from those awful policemen who were going to destroy it, and he was trying to protect all that he thought was right and good from those awful, striking students that were going to destroy it or whatever, but that was just all trying to make some sense of it. So I started doing a lot of reading and looking around, trying to find out who knew about something like this. Somebody gave me a book about Zen, and I went down to the Berkeley Zen Do. It was a long time between somebody giving me a book about Zen and me finding out there was a Zen Do in Berkeley and actually going there. It was some months between the time that my friend Paul Disko

[40:22]

told me about the Berkeley Zen Do and actually going there, because Zen Buddhism, boy, that's weird. I said, you know, one of my friends made it, and all that stuff. But I finally went there for a Zazen instruction and really, really appreciated the Zen Do. I thought the service was strange, and so I would go sit Zazen and leave. And at Suzuki Roshi, we would go over from the Berkeley Zen Do to Sokoji Temple every Wednesday night for Suzuki Roshi's lecture and every Saturday morning for a half-day sitting, which is pretty much the same schedule we have at City Center now. Or at the Berkeley Zen Do, too. And when I met Suzuki Roshi, I had the feeling, oh, he understands that experience I had.

[41:24]

I can't say exactly why I had that feeling, except perhaps he looked at me like... I don't know. Like he saw me in the same way I saw the policeman. I don't know. But there was something about him that made me feel that he understood that experience. Did you ever discuss it with him? I don't think I discussed that with him. I discussed it with Baker Roshi later. I told him Baker Roshi's story later. As a matter of fact, he lectured on it. He brought it up in the lecture. He said he gave it the day before the ceremony, so he had remembered it all. I don't know. I don't think I ever talked to Suzuki Roshi. I never thought I needed to. I never talked about it much until...

[42:31]

I started talking about... like giving a way-seeking mind talk, and talking about why I came to practice. Anyhow, that was, I think, the most powerful influence for me to find out. I mean, it's... You know, you say things like, I knew I had to change my life. I knew that the world was not the way I had thought it had been. The world was different than I had thought it had been. And I didn't understand it, but I knew that it meant that I had to... the way I was doing things was not the way I wanted to continue doing things.

[43:33]

You know, it had partly to do with, even before that, the reason I say I was standing there wondering, where's my side? I had already begun to kind of question, you know, I've been fighting for peace for all these years, and there's something not quite right about that. You know, fighting for peace doesn't sound right. It doesn't feel right. So what is it that one needs to do to move toward peace? And so I think that had already prepared me for seeing things differently than I had seen things. That questioning that had already come up about, what does it mean? What is this fighting for peace? I mean, it clearly wasn't producing peace,

[44:35]

but... Well, where's the peace? I'm not peaceful. You know, up until that experience, I had seen the world in such terms of black and white. You know, there were the good guys and the bad guys, and the good guys were the people who agreed with me, and the bad guys were the people who disagreed with me. It was very simple. And then it wasn't so simple anymore. I mean, that's enough of that. But, you know, if I had to say, there's one moment at which practice became necessary for me, that would be it. And I was just extraordinarily fortunate in the time and the place of my life that there was a teacher like Suzuki Roshi and the zendo that Mel had established a few blocks from my house. It should have been, you know,

[45:43]

most anywhere else. I don't know if I would have wound up finding a teacher or finding a practice. It's just... You know what they say about the... The board was a knothole floating in the ocean. You know that story. The turtle. Yeah, the turtle finding... The blind turtle sticking their head through the hole. Something like that. So... Then for the next two years, my main relationship with the teacher was with Suzuki Roshi. I went to Tassar as a guest student. I was hiking there. Oh, was it? But one of the city blinks all the time, so I didn't think... I guess I'm just sitting here just having a dangerous position for that particular...

[46:45]

So, that was... That was your first dokusan, and that was pretty strong medicine. It was pretty intense. It was pretty intense. So... So I continued to sit daily at Berkeley and get more and more involved there, and come to the city for sessions and Suzuki Roshi's lectures and Katagiri Roshi's lectures, and then... I heard that a woman teacher was coming from Japan. Yoshida Roshi was coming, and she was going to be staying at the city center for a couple of weeks, so I took my vacation to be a guest student there while she was there. I was quite... struck by the fact that a woman Roshi was coming. I was a very intense feminist for most of my life.

[47:51]

Um... And she was teaching a case of sewing. I think it... And eventually, you know, one thing or another, I became identified as a sewing teacher because of my... great concern for hanging out with women teachers, and it's always been a lovely, ironic twist to me that out of my intense feminism, that a person like me, who had very carefully never done any traditional women's work all my life, I had taken manual training in high school instead of sewing, I had not learned to type so that I would not ever get stuck in a secretary's job, I had studied chemistry and physics and mathematics in college, I had been a mechanic during the Second World War, an aircraft mechanic. I was...

[48:56]

a machinist. I never did any traditional women's work, and I prided myself on it. I was not going to get stuck. In the first place, women's work gets paid out a lot less. Very practical. So that it's quite ironic to me that in the same training, instead of a direct karmic result of my feminist tendencies, I ended up being totally identified as a sewing teacher. It's quite amusing. And... a lovely twist of fate. But it began with wanting to be there, wanting to be with this woman while she was there, and she was a very... strict, authoritarian, aristocratic... teacher, if you will. If your stitches were not exactly one booty apart,

[50:03]

she would tell you to take them out and do it again. When I visited her some years later at her temple in Japan, all of the nuns were terrified of her. Wow. She would call somebody's name and they'd say, and they would come skidding across the floor in seiza on the tatami, you know, bowing as they slid across the floor. It was quite... She came twice, and I was at Sensei when she was there both times. Later... At the time I came to Zen Center, Richard Baker and his wife, Virginia, were in Kyoto, where he was studying. And Suzuki Roshi asked Virginia to study Rakusou no Kesa-san with Joshin Kasai, who was a disciple of Sawaki Koro Roshi

[51:06]

and well-known as a sewing teacher in Japan. So, Ginny Baker was working with Joshin-san, and... Then in 1972, when I was coming to Tassohara, Joshin-san came. Richard Baker invited her to come here and help us sew. So I came over and... And... No, she came, I guess, maybe... Earlier in 1972 she came here. She worked at the city center for some time. But she was coming down here, and... Ginny was going to be her assistant, and then Ginny had to... Ginny's mother got ill.

[52:07]

She died at that time. And anyhow, she had to go back to Minnesota, and... I went to help Joshin-san, because Ginny couldn't do it. So I began working with her, and... It was the second time she came. Anyhow, I sewed my Rakusou with her, and... When I finished, she said, Go get your Rakusou. All of this she said, I said. I mean, I talked English and she talked Japanese, and it was never any other way, but we communicated quite correctly, nonetheless. Go get your Rakusou, and then we went over to see Baker Roshi, and then there was this kind of string of Japanese conversation between her and Baker Roshi, and when we left the cabin, I was her assistant. And... And I continued in that role.

[53:10]

And... She was working very late at night, and I kept worrying about her, and... No, at night... Why was she working so late at night? We made a reflector for... We did it all by kerosene lamp, and we made a reflector, which you could see better, but she was working until 11 o'clock at night by kerosene lamp. And I kept trying to find out why, and finally she went to the suitcase where we kept some things, and she took out some incomplete Rakusou from Yoshida Roshi's visit, and in Japanese she was saying something which I took to be, that's why I don't go to bed, and that's why, and that's why, it's dumbing us, dumbing us, it's very bad, there should never be a half-finished Buddha's robe anywhere, you know, and so that's why I can't go to bed at night. So... I, you know, and she was trying to see that all of the cases that would have been,

[54:12]

and Zagos that had to be done for this rather large group of people who were there in coordination, maybe eight people, she was trying to get them all finished before she went back to Japan. So at that point, I promised her, I vowed that I would see that they got completed, that she did not have to stay up every night and sew, I would take the responsibility to see if they got completed, and at that point she started doing the things that she had been doing, like the corners. She had me, kid from Heaven 5, sewing corners all day long. She would put the needle in for the first stitch, and then she would hand it to me and show it to me, and then she would take it out and then she would hand it to me and ask me to do it, and I would put it in, and she would say, no, no, you should take it out and you should put it in, and we did that all day long, and for days, until I learned how to do corners,

[55:13]

and then we thought something else. And the day of that ordination, I sent her a telegram saying that it had happened. But nobody had done any zagus yet, so we went over what size to make the zagus for various sized people. It wasn't one size fits all. No, because we had, in that group, we had people all the way from, I remember Ginny saying to her, how big for the biggest person, like Jerome's size? How big for the smallest person, like, at that time, Ulysses Lowry, I think, was the smallest person. So, I mean, there was sort of a small, medium, and large. Pretty much now,

[56:19]

we make them all the same size, but at that time, it didn't seem like Jerome and Ulysses should be necessarily using the same size zagus. Anyhow. So, whenever, Jochenstein used to come here most winters because Untaiji had moved out onto a mountaintop and it was too cold for her. She couldn't stay there in the wintertime. But she often came here for the winter. Untaiji was her... It was her home monastery. Home monastery. They had moved the monastery. Uchiyama Roshi's. Uchiyama Roshi's monastery. And they had moved it. It had been sort of, it had been on the outskirts of Kyoto and then the city had grown up around it and had been kind of surrounded by city and they wanted to get out in the countryside again. So, they sold that city temple and with the money, they bought a whole mountaintop out into the Japan Sea.

[57:20]

It was very cold out there. She wrote me from there. She sent me some pictures of the new monastery they had built and a little house they had built for her. Sweet little house. And she said, they built me my own little house and they take very good care of me here. And I live now a life of gratitude and gratitude. And I was very... That was a very important life for me. It impressed me deeply because by that time, she was not in good health. She had had a heart attack. She had had a stroke. She had cataracts. And that she, first thing, she couldn't do what she loved which was to do this thing. And she could say in those circumstances, I live a life of gratitude and I show and impress new people. So...

[58:23]

Mel, I just took for granted in those early days, you know. I mean, he was just... He was a pretty... He had just been ordained in May of the year that I came in July. When I came to Tassajara for practice period in 1972, he was director here. And then after we were at Tassajara, while we were at Tassajara, they bought the house out of Jamesburg, or they rented the house out of Jamesburg and Higuroshi had thought his father might retire there. His father had just retired and he didn't want to go to Jamesburg. So Higuroshi thought it would be good for Zen Center to have a place out there because we used to stop at Bill and Amber's all the time on the way in and out, have a cup of coffee and park cars there and put chains on and that stuff. Bill was no longer living at the ranch house. He had met his son

[59:25]

and moved across the road. And so Higuroshi wanted somebody from Zen Center out there to have a kind of halfway place to stop. So he asked me if Lou and I would like to live there. He said, well, you know, the school bus comes from there. And so Mitzi did go to school there, you know, from there. Because Mitzi was still at home. The other kids had all left home but my youngest was still at home and we were going to go back to Berkeley and take care of her. So I called Lou and asked him if he'd like to live at Jamesburg. He said, well, he'd be all right. So we moved to Jamesburg and Mitzi rode the school bus 56 miles a day for a year and said she wanted to go back to Berkeley. Also she didn't like

[60:27]

the kind of upper middle class all-white high school after having been at the Berkeley school. She thought the Berkeley school was much more interesting. She wanted to go back. She wanted to go to Berkeley High where all of her siblings had gone. And so Higuroshi said, well, you shouldn't stay down here. Maybe you should go live with the Green Girls. She didn't want to live with the Green Girls. She wanted to have a room there and spend a week with the Green Girls. She didn't want to live with the Green Girls. And I said, well, I can understand. When I was your age, I didn't find my parents very interesting. She said, oh, I think you're very interesting, but if I have to choose between living with you and going to Berkeley High, I'd rather go to Berkeley High. So I didn't really want to move back into the house in Berkeley and go back to the health department or some other job. So I arranged for her to stay with her best friend. He was her good friend as well.

[61:30]

We lived a few blocks from Berkeley High and spent weekends with us. Well, she actually never did come to spend weekends with us because she was spending them with her peers who were much more interesting than we were. She barely had to be with us. So that was probably a mistake. So from the time I came to Tassajara, from the time Suzuki Roshi died, Vick Roshi was my principal teacher. I had had... Kari Giri Roshi had had a good effect on me for the while that I was going to Zen Center before Vick Roshi came back from Japan. Because he had this quality of... very intense presence.

[62:32]

Very... wholehearted. He used to say, throw yourself into the ocean of Buddha. And that was the way he threw himself into practice. An enthusiasm, energy, passion. But I didn't want to go to Minnesota. Lou almost went to Minnesota. He made a very good connection with Kari Giri Roshi. He did a practice... The practice period at the end of 1971, Lou was here at the time that Suzuki Roshi died. I was sitting in the session at the time that he died. And... Lou was down here during the practice period with Kari Giri Roshi. But during that practice period he made a very, very deep connection with Kari Giri Roshi. And...

[63:40]

many parents thought of going to Minnesota. And Kari Giri Roshi said, everybody wants to be my student, but nobody wants to come to Minnesota. I remember him saying that. He came back the first day he came back, he said, Bear is paradise! He took him out to dinner and he said, Oh, you don't know, Bear is paradise! I went to visit my student in Omaha. We went to antique store. And... We went to antique store. And... Kari Giri Roshi said to my student, Who's that? Who's that? And... he pulled his teacher and she whipped a cross around her neck and said, Get him out of here! Get him out of here! Get the heathen out of here! Bear is paradise! You don't know, Bear is paradise! I think

[64:44]

Midwest was very hard for him. I don't know if he stuck it out of the Midwest and all of the Midwest, not just Minneapolis, but Omaha, Iowa, the Midwest. He visited in town all over there. I didn't understand the first word though. Bay Area is paradise. Oh, Bay Area is paradise. Oh, yeah. Oh, right. Besides, you couldn't get the Japanese food in Omaha, could you? I'll bet. When he was dying, I went back there to read a session on Minneapolis when he was very ill and

[65:44]

Tomoe-san gave me a long list of Japanese vegetables and fruits and I went carrying most of my baggage was carrying fresh Japanese vegetables. To make him some food that he would find at the inn. What was your practice connection with him like? Well, as I say, I connected very much with the kind of... this whole-heartedness. I remember when I was first amputated, I'd come back and do a shop in Minneapolis when he was still well. And I said, well, you know, what would I teach back

[66:48]

there? I had two things to talk about. One is sewing Buddha's robe and Tomoe-san is you know, is Yoshida Roshi's disciple and teaches sewing Buddha's robe and the other is whole-heartedness and I learned that from Kadagiri Roshi. I mean, he's Mr. Whole-Hearted himself, so what would I talk about? Isn't already completely covered there. There's something about this kind of whole-hearted way in which he did everything, you know, from kasho to smiling that appealed to me very, very much. And I teach that sometimes because doing things with a whole heart is not for the sake of what you're doing, it's for the sake of the whole heart. It's its own reward.

[67:51]

Throw yourself completely into what you're doing. And he did that every move he made. It inspired me. But the first time I went to Sokoji Temple, he was doing satsang instruction during his first week when I started practicing and I remember he said in that satsang instruction you sit to settle the self on the self and let the flower of our life force bloom. And in that state of being, I said I love it. And I often, again, I often use that quotation in teaching. It's that feeling of, I actually say let the flower of the life force bloom, that feeling of letting the flower of the life force bloom there as you

[68:55]

and here as me and in each locus as each person manifesting life force in the particular each person manifesting the completeness of the life force in their particularity Talking in that way actually is kind of interesting that Joshin-san seems to clearly made a very strong connection and that she

[69:58]

taught you something some things that were very important but what you've described is the practical aspect of it, sewing Buddha's robe. Oh, no, what she taught me was, as I say, I live a life of gratitude and gassho and also the totality of the way she put herself into her practice same, you know, the same as and the same way I mean when I found out well, two things I heard Oksan talking to a Japanese group that came over to visit Kuetsui where she brought the abbots

[71:00]

of a number of the sub-temples of Rinzongin and their wives over for visit to see what Suzuki Roshi had done over here when he left Rinzongin and she was talking with them about Suzuki Roshi and she was saying that he used to stay up and work on his dermatox and work so hard and she said to him why do you work so hard on those dermatox I mean, nobody ever comes and he said it doesn't matter if it's one person or a thousand people still it's the Buddha Dharma and I must do my best I was very moved and impressed by that but then I found out that those lectures which comprised that number were given sometimes to three or four people

[72:01]

somebody from India those lectures have been the introduction to practice by thousands of people I think it's translated into virtually every language it's probably the most widely circulating book on Zen in the world I mean they were lectures but not to be as bad to be up to three or four people yeah, it is very moving very moving, it's like like one of those miraculous success stories or something it's completely

[73:02]

inspiring totally inspiring I never believed it could turn out that way so, with Joshin-san was that your feeling about her all along and it was that that was the that was sort of the heart of your relationship with her was that feeling that you had about her or was there, was that sort of the capper you know what I mean? well, you know, I never really realized what a profound effect she was having on me I might have noticed that for someone who never would avoid it so in all her life

[74:04]

and spend her time time sewing that something had happened you know but when you know, Lu said some years ago well, Blanche's real transmission came from Joshin-san but then of course I said the same thing and that was the same and Lu was sitting there I don't know why I don't know but I took her the first time she was going back to Japan and she was going from San Francisco to Los Angeles and then she was getting on a plane

[75:05]

that would go to Hawaii and to Japan and so I took her down to Los Angeles to get her on the plane that was going to Japan and we got down there and they didn't have her on the manifest or something and I was frightened and we were making all these phone calls and what was wrong with me and she couldn't understand what was going on it was all going into the mission and finally they got her on the plane and I was getting on with the carry-on baggage and there were a couple of young Japanese people and I was getting on the plane and she gave me this big hug which was very un-Japanese so we gave each other this big embrace and I said to these young Japanese and they were dumbfounded they were just looking at this elderly Japanese woman and this gaijin

[76:05]

who was working and I said could you please take care of her and help her take care of her baggage and stuff in Honolulu and oh yeah they really but I could see that they were just kind of astounded at the obvious affectionate connection between this old Japanese man and this gaijin woman I don't know you know Ann Overton had the same kind of affection for her and she said well if she'd been studying TV repair I would have studied TV repair if she'd been teaching TV repair I would have studied TV repair just anything to hang out with her she had this vitality and spirit enthusiasm that was so infectious

[77:06]

and wonderful and she was a little nuts you know oh well that's very fair that would have gotten my attention at least Takaroshi said she was a little nuts I don't know I mean she was just she was completely she was so devoted to her teaching I mean her practice of devotion was sort of total I don't know if you know she didn't have a little finger on her right hand she didn't have a little finger and I had heard that she had cut it off to show she was first a Yoshio Roshi student she had been an orphan as a teenager and she had gone to Yoshio and she said oh well there's lots to it

[78:09]

and then she met Sumaki Koto she really really wanted to be an example but changing teachers in Japan is a big deal and for someone she was a country person she had been a peasant she was a country person and still steeped in feudal tradition but to change teachers is a very very serious thing one in which you have the most sincere apology to the teacher and I didn't have I mean listening to her I saw moving Yakuza and that's about a Japanese Mafia and in it a person who had been a Yakuza subordinate to

[79:10]

like a Mafia Don is sort of changing his allegiance to help an American who had saved his life during the war in leaving his his leader he cut off his finger to show his sincere appreciation for him as his leader and he had to do this because he owed this man his life well you know he took a knife and went it was all wrapped clean clean I heard a lady from Okinawa that the Japanese didn't have the Japanese stayed up all night cutting off her finger to give to the Japanese and

[80:13]

and I tell you that every time I think about it she would not like to hear anything but she used to sit and read the books any spare time she had and she would show me this picture and you know that was isn't it adorable that was so strong as being but she was and she would tell me stories about she was the Tenzo at Aotagi for 10 years or more and that meant she was the only one in the kitchen she didn't have a kitchen crew she cooked for the sessions they had monthly sessions and she was the cook and she was telling me about how it was in the kitchen

[81:14]

these big pots and she would you know act it out these big pots and everything and the smoke coming out my eyes and she would just sort of do this whole mime of what it was like this little bitty woman she was not 5 feet tall she was about 4 foot 10 or something like that and it was just well I mean there she is in this picture you know she's just took a delight in everything we hiked together all of us including at the end of this practice period hiked up to the horse pasture for this birthday celebration I had all kinds of pictures of her hiking up to the horse pasture and I can't find them she went all the way up there

[82:15]

this was before her stroke and heart attack disease it was 1972 in this picture she looks so sweet and also incredibly open she looks like a swinging door just wide open you couldn't help but be in love with somebody like that it's just good fortune to get thrown into close contact with somebody like that well I have some feeling of you've been talking quite a while and this is quite a lot so maybe would this be a good place to stop if you could my concern with something took the form

[83:18]

of part of that was the influence of my father but also was because the only people who were doing anything active about civil rights in the south when I was growing up in the tremendous unfairness that I saw were communists and philanthropists people who were vilified as communists and philanthropists whatever the real politics may have been whatever the real politics may have been that goes all the way from the New Deal left as far as my in my mid-year as the New Deal was already public far left

[84:18]

and the family had to open but you know the New Deal platform was lifted essentially from the Communist Party platform of about 25 years of leader yeah to some degree in any event in any event that was the direction that I took to try to do something about suffering and I discovered it wasn't really anything effective as I mentioned fighting for peace was not establishing peace and although I still strongly support what I did

[85:20]

in civil rights I think that the dominant approach might be in the long run more successful than the revolutionary approach but it's hard to go from adversarial to adversarial relationship to harmonious relationship and even if you establish some legal equality the adversarial relationship continues I don't know, anyhow after 25 years of intensely involved

[86:20]

political activity trying to alleviate injustice and suffering in that way I came to the conclusion that it wasn't reasonably desirable and I really don't have much answer at this point what is the best approach but certainly I've never viewed my practice as apolitical it's just different it's not adversarial and I think the whole adversarial approach sets up dualism as the basis of understanding

[87:20]

and it's pretty hard to see where you see a demon so if you demonize people who disagree with you politically it's pretty hard to see and it's pretty hard for them to hear anything you have to say so maybe that's enough for that but I want I didn't want them to be part of a profile of me that ignored what basically was the first 25 years of my life or turn you back on those concerns because they were your concerns still so I don't know where we got as far as features of concern I think that we talked about Suzuki Roshi

[88:30]

and Joshin-san and a little bit about Mel, but principally about those two Well, Kageyori Roshi gave us some instruction the first day I went to Sokoji Temple and he said that we sit to settle on the self and let the flower of our life bloom and that had a very powerful effect and it still does I still use it every time I use that instruction maybe I say to let the flower of the life force instead of your life force because I think that the flower is born in the same life force in each of us in the particularity of each one of us and that seems to me

[89:37]

such a powerful way of saying it and from him I think I probably did mention from him I first got this sort of total high energy wholeheartedness that he exemplified throughout his life so clearly I think It's what? It's blinking over there It means that we're approaching the end of the tape deeply moved by the his willingness to go to Minnesota in the Midwest

[90:37]

I think I did talk about it the Bay Area's paradise and how difficult it was from him back there and he stuck it out and I think created a real song with a great enthusiasm for the Buddha Dharma and I have an enormous appreciation for him and also his willingness to help Zen Center through our difficulties in the 80s Kobin Shino was another teacher whom I didn't meet when I first came to Zen Center I had only heard about him because he'd been here and gone back to Japan but everybody

[91:38]

talked about what a wonderful influence he was here and I met him later when he came back and I found out that someone whom Suzuki Yoshi had sent to train at Eheji who didn't stay had spoken of Kobin Shino by name he was at that time I think in charge of training of monks in Minnesota or Eheji and when he was asked to take that job he says I'll do it if I can do it without the Kyosaku I could train them without the Kyosaku apparently at that time and maybe even still the Kyosaku is used rather militaristically compared to what Eheji and certainly they could actually have done that in his experience and he is quite famous among the monks as being both very contentionate and a very good teacher so I guess Suzuki Yoshi heard about him and his student and he requested him by name

[92:40]

when he asked Suzuki Yoshi to send someone to Kobin so he came over on a boat with a huge big bell and a huge mokugyo and a huge drum that Suzuki gave to Tatsuhara helping us establish the first monastery here so he brought them over on a boat they burned up in the fire the drum and the mokugyo the bell too melted melted down into a puddle well for me what was sad was the mokugyo which was just astonishing it was, I don't know huge, you had to stand up to it it might sound like a heartbeat the striker was three people tall I don't know

[93:41]

I guess it was at least two feet high off the ground and those are made out of one piece of wood so there are not so many trees like that anymore yes thousands of them anyhow he brought them over

[94:05]

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