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 everybody. Nick, Nick, has been practicing at the drug center for 35 years, a little more, and he received late interest in a gentleman in 2005. He currently lives at Greenville with his wife, Suki, where he's the red baker, which is one of his passions, and another one of his passions, I believe, is techno-german. So I'm looking forward to hearing more for a bit.

[01:03]

Oh, you've covered about the first page of my talk here. I'd like to thank Rosalie for inviting me here, as well as the abiding abbess, Christina, and Marsha Angus. for inviting me to speak at this practice period, which is involved with lay practice. Looking around the room, I see lots of other friends, Steve Stuckey and Valerie and Blanche somewhere. Oh, okay. And many other people, some of whom I don't know, but the people I mentioned at least, all of these people have had or still have lots of lay experience in their life.

[02:05]

I'm a lay person, and who all is a lay person here? Okay, it would have been all right if everyone raised their hands, too. That was a little bit of a trick question. Given the context that we're in, they're... The lay and non-lay are pretty clear, but in the big world, we're all lay people in one way or another. What lay means is, among other things, somebody who's not an expert, who may be an amateur, a non-professional, or maybe even, using Suzuki Roshi's language, a beginner. So in one way or another, we're all in the same boat. My wife, Suki, and I have been living at Green Gulch. How did you know all this information about me in such detail? We've been living at Green Gulch for the last 20 years.

[03:07]

Suki's a layperson, too. And her main job at Green Gulch is the land steward. But she also takes care of many other things, such as tour groups and docent training, outreach. and communications with the state and federal government regarding different kinds of land restoration. I'm currently the bread baker and have been that cumulatively for over 10 years at Green Gulch. I've also held administrative positions of treasurer, head of the meditation hall, and with Emila Heller, co-director of Green Gulch. Emila also is a layperson who's been at the Zen Center for how long has she been there? She's been there quite a while. I've also done lots of behind-the-scenes work at Green Gulsh as graphics guy and IT guy.

[04:11]

I was given lay dharma entrustment by Norman Fisher in 2005, correct, along with my dharma sisters, Martha De Barros, And Sue Moon, Martha, you might have been here when she, among other lay teachers, had a panel discussion. I heard that myself on the web. And I was hesitant to join Norman's lay entrustment project because I felt unsuited, kind of uninterested, but basically unqualified for it. But I'm glad I participated and I'm grateful to Norman and my sisters for the mysterious relationship we established. My life changed at that point. Not that anything outside in particular was so different, but inside some old things began to fall apart and some new things began to come forward.

[05:17]

I don't know how or or why it happened. Norman said that what he wanted to do was to pass on to entrust his dharma understanding to us in a formal way. In our discussions over a year, Martha, Sue, and I talked about the reasons we didn't want to be priest-ordained, and among the various reasons that came up, the one I remember most was the notion that we simply didn't feel a calling to do so. A number of years ago during a public Shosan ceremony I asked Norman this formal question. The world is vast and wide. Why do you put on your robes at the sound of the bell? And Norman replied, because I want to. One of the last things

[06:22]

the Buddha supposedly said to his disciples as they were expressing their sadness about his passing, was, be a lamp unto yourselves. And we've heard that among the Bantu people of southern Africa, there's a practice of parents sneaking into their children's rooms at night while they're sleeping and whispering into their ears, become who you are. And Maladoma Some says that among his people, the Dagara of Burkina Faso, a pregnant woman may be hypnotized and her fetus asked by the elders why it's coming into this world. Sometimes it'll answer with the mother's voice. If it's not possible, to do this practice, they can just watch the child after it's born, watch it carefully, moving around to see what it is that it likes, what attracts it, what it finds interesting.

[07:32]

That's a way for the village to try to provide what the child needs to help it realize its purpose. My own strong interest during recent years has been in finding and getting familiar with the language that inspires me. and the language that can say or embody actually what I really feel and using that language to communicate with others. My long time in this practice and community life has given me the conviction that this is the most important thing for me. It's also given me some tools that can help it happen. Mostly what I'll talk about tonight is some of the biographical map that brought me here tonight. and something about what I do and how that may relate to practice or my own particular kind of lay practice. I grew up in New York in a working class, lower middle class family.

[08:40]

My dad was a furrier. He sewed together mink and ermine pelts into shawls, stoles and coats. It was a busy industry after World War II. My mother's father owned the first salon. My dad not only went to work in the city every day, he also brought homework at night to complete on his own sewing machine in our basement. He was a taciturn guy who didn't express himself verbally very much. He often seemed to me to be brooding and vaguely unhappy about something. My mom had more obvious energy. She was open-hearted about many things, but was also kind of edgy and unpredictable in her expressiveness. Our family named Sopko in Slovak means volcano. My parents were Roman Catholic and I was raised that way too. I loved, just thinking about it over these past few weeks, I realized I really loved the little chapel that I attended as a child.

[09:47]

was intimate and that was while the liturgy was being done in Latin still the services were filled with incense smoke mysterious language with a lilting rhythm and good acoustics I actually studied to be altar boy but soon after when I was being instructed in the catechism my feeling developed that the main thing they were saying was that everything I was really interested in doing sensual things, anything that basically felt good was basically wrong. There seemed to be a problem with even being born. You were born in original sin and had to get that taken care of right away with the baptism. The individual clergy, in my congregation anyway, didn't seem particularly happy with or even engaged by the material they were preaching. It and they seemed to me all pious and uptight. The only interesting fellow seemed to be the pastor, Father Stuart.

[10:49]

And that might have been because he seemed to be DUI a good deal of the time. I started working at nine years old with a paper route and haven't basically stopped since, except for the four or five years in Zen monasteries. Mostly manual labor, caddy on the golf course, laborer with a plastering company, carpenter's apprentice. I worked at the post office in Wichita, Kansas, and did door-to-door magazine sales in Boulder. My favorite job was as a foot messenger in Manhattan for a couple of years. After I was married and lived upstate, I drove my own truck making deliveries in the tri-state area. for another messenger service. Perhaps you've noticed the big drum in the room here. I've been playing music most of my life, experiencing its language, nonverbal, nonlinear, trying to find my own voice somewhere in there.

[12:03]

Drumming seems to have reached me in a special way. I've been studying and practicing African-style hand drumming and percussion with my teacher Sandoor Diabonkwesi for the last 15 years or so. When he was younger, he was the director of the Congolese National Ballet. For the last 25 years, he's been teaching in the Bay Area traditional Congolese drumming, singing, and dancing. I've been going up to Bolinas most Thursday nights to drum for his dance class. at the community center there. He also teaches in San Francisco on Saturday afternoons. You can speak to me later about that if you want. But tonight in the Zen hall, I thought it might be interesting for us to experience the ceremonial taiko drum a little bit up close. Norman gave me the Buddhist name taiko joshin, which means big drum, quiet heart.

[13:07]

Or he said it could also be big heart quiet drum. I'm actually not a student of taiko by any means, but over the years I found myself playing the temple drum for different ceremonial purposes at Zen Center and have observed and learned a few things, some of which I can mention to you. Taiko means big drum. Taiko also has come to mean a style of performance drumming developed in Japan over the last 50 years, which has spread throughout the world. In the US, for example, the San Francisco Taiko Dojo has become a world-renowned and influential drumming group. But strictly speaking, the word itself refers just to the drum. There are many shapes and sizes of taiko. There are small ones and large ones, and very large ones. called old daiko, or big fat drum.

[14:13]

These can be six feet or more in diameter and weigh several tons. They're usually not going anywhere once they're established at a place. In Japan, drums like this have been used for probably thousands of years. One of the first uses was likely on the battlefield to direct maneuvers and to terrorize the enemies. The rumbling power of the drum can be easily associated with the gods. In villages, the drums were used to announce important events like hunters going out or returning or like the approach of a storm. So these signals were very important in the life of a village. The people were thankful for the drum and began to believe that it was inhabited by a god. As the religions of Japan developed, Only the holy men were allowed to play the drums. And after a while, taiko were the only instruments found in Shinto and Buddhist shrines and temples.

[15:17]

The association with religion eventually meant that the drums were played only on ceremonial occasions and by those granted special permission. According to myth, creation myth, Taika was started by Ame no Uzume, a shaman-like female deity. One day, fed up with her cruel younger brother, the sun goddess, Amaterasu, hid herself in a cave. The world became pitch dark, and the other deities tried to appease Amaterasu so that the world would be bright again. They held a big party in front of the cave, and Ame no Uzume danced, an erotic dance, stamping her feet on a wooden tub. The gods laughed and sheared loudly, and the noise provoked Amaterasu to come out of her cave, and thus the world saw light again. This taiko drum that we have is kind of amazing, I think.

[16:44]

There are larger ones, much larger ones, and some of the larger ones are, you can't make them with a tree that's less than one or 200 years old. And after the tree is cut, it has to dry for another 25 or 50 years before it can actually be worked on to make a drum out of it. I don't know much about the provenance of this one, but I think it's the biggest one Zen Center has. The one at Green Gulch is a little smaller. The one at Tassajara, I believe, is a little smaller. The qualities that people look for in a good drum or the wood itself, the like the hardness of it and the beauty of the grain. If they're taken care of well, they can last hundreds of years. The skin is usually cowhide.

[17:47]

Not American cowhide, though, which is inferior, they say. It's been made of other things, such as the hide of elephant. snake and whale. They're not as good as this, though, the cowhide. As you can see, it's not tunable. The skins are attached just by tacks. At Tassajara, as I remember, that's a problem because the drum is outside and the weather changes quite dramatically from freezing to 115 degrees. So all these... basically living or almost living materials change a lot with that temperature change. At Green Gulch it's a little better, but I think here at City Center it's the best because it's all a nice little warm temperature controlled place, everything taken care of and like that.

[18:53]

So this is an unusual and beautiful drum. We don't have any more sticks, do we? Okay. At Sam Sander, we play the drum on a daily basis. I believe it's done here in the city, in the early morning, as the time drum indicate the time. We play it during retreats at mealtime. And there are various other ceremonial times when we do different things. I might say we don't play it very much. In the old days, I think we played it a little bit more. At South Sahara, I think it's used to signal the work meeting. There was a time when... Someplace?

[19:55]

I said here also. Oh, the work meeting too? Okay. I remember in the old days when the abogated a talk, there was a special kind of pattern that was... In considering what I just set it up, the history of the drum and people's general feeling about what's going on with the drum. Oh, one thing I forgot to say. I don't know about this one, but often the interior of the drum is lined with gold leaf. I don't know why. That certainly makes me a little important. I found myself that considering all these things, Before I play the drum, I'd like to address it silently in two ways. First, to apologize for disturbing it before I admit it. And secondly, to ask the spirit of the drum to help me bring out its true voice.

[21:03]

So there are different sounds that can come out of it. The main one, they're actually two different sides and they probably have a different sound. Do you hear a difference? More than a thumb, I think. Formally, performance taiko style, and probably, depending at the temple or whatever that person happens to be at, there may be very, you know, dramatic ways to strike. I, myself, don't know about that, so I don't do that. But it looks like fun. Alternate hands off.

[22:13]

That's a pattern that is often used. Something like that is often used when a meal server during a treat is making a symbolic offering food to the altar. This drone had companies that little journey that they made. And I'm wondering if you guys would like to try to play the drone. I checked with the practice committee and said, is he okay? And if you'd like to come on up to the other side, and you don't have to do anything fancy, just crack it a few times and see how it feels. I would urge you to consider doing this, because we have nothing of an opportunity. I've always wanted to get this to rush.

[24:00]

This is my dad. What I'm going to do is kind of have a little time here, so you can try to keep time with this. Don't worry if you don't. That's what I'll do next person here for me. Sometimes the drum is used to accompany chanting.

[28:46]

or questions about the job of the government? Yes. I wonder about the purpose of that. I mean, did you say anything about life in Africa? It's a form of social life. What is it for? Well, some of the stories that Sunder tells us about his life experience and his environment, his village, his culture, and probably this many countries in Africa, of course. And each one has, each country has their own drum, depending on the terrain. And part of that is because the drums are used or were used for communication across the particular terrain. So one. he'd be like, no, no, that's not, that's almost it, but it's not it.

[31:21]

You've got to get it right. And he would say, if you were the drummer of the village and you heard word via drum that the king was coming with a rent of 14 people, you would have to convey that information to your family. You wouldn't want to say 13 people. You would have to get it right He said, OK, what happens if you mess up? And he was like, you would be punished. So what would they do? They would bury you. And he said, no, no, no, only up to you. So it was serious in that regard. In another regard, it's the way he talks about it, drumming, dancing, singing, it's just part of every many events of the day. during the Civil War in the Congo. He said, in the town, Brazzaville, there would be on every block what you would think of as a party, but what they were really doing is a memorial service for someone on that block who had died.

[32:31]

So yeah, it's pervasive and used for many. It's not just the drumming in a way, except for messaging. Whenever there's drumming, there's singing and there's dancing. It's all together. I don't know. I think my guess would be that, my guess was that they were bronze, but I don't know. You mentioned earlier about giving voice to the ground or letting the ground's voice come out, and I noticed that there are different areas to hit those different sounds. Can you talk a little bit about how to Well, technically, if you see a title performance, recently I went online and I was looking for videos of maybe people in the tent playing this kind of drum.

[33:37]

I found a couple of extraordinary videos, and the least part of what they were doing was hitting the center. They were hitting the side of the drum, they were using the rivets, shh, shh, shh, all kinds of patterns and whatnot. So there's the technique, that part, the technique of whatever it is, and you figure out how to do that. But in some way what I was, what I'm feeling, and it's kind of a general thing, I don't know, what it would mean, except that when, you know, as a drummer, if you hear it, then it sounds right. I suppose what I'm doing, if I think of it that way, is trying to make myself open to give it with a minimum of things in a way.

[34:44]

Well, this may be abstract, but where does the rhythm come from? I mean, I noticed that when everybody came up to it, it kind of played up in another area. Sometimes I was listening to the time, sometimes I was listening to what somebody else was doing. Where does that come from? What does that motivation to find the rhythm as a musician come from? I noticed you were absolutely fine. I got you. Well, there are, there's a repertoire of rhythms, for example, folk rhythms. There are these tempo rhythms. I mean, there are certain patterns that have been passed on from one issue or another as to why they came to be that way, I would not have to say, except they, did you understand? Five minutes? I think it's left in the top.

[35:50]

Go ahead. Go ahead. people make up rhythms, contemporary rhythms. The motivation behind it, I don't even have to ask the person who makes it up. Probably a lot of rhythm, whether it's in this Japanese or Taiko tradition or in African tradition or in American jazz tradition, it's built upon a lot of tradition, a lot of stuff that's happened before. Basically, what sounds good and what's the purpose of the rhythm? I mean, with the Afro-Cuban and African rhythms, a lot of the purpose is to help us dance or kind of tell a story of the rest of the music that's going on, whether the song or the instrumentation.

[37:06]

Does that address your question? Big mind? I think everything comes from big mind. Right? As opposed to adding some attachment to the material. I mean, it's more of an innate sense than it is attached to anything. Any particular? Yeah. Well, I think you can't go wrong. By saying what you said, I mean, I agree with you. However, depending on the context, you'd want to be true to the context that you were in if you were playing rhythm for a funeral as opposed to a rhythm for a wedding. There might be different rhythms. But, you know, if our attitude would be respectful of whoever we are and trying to feel whoever we are

[38:16]

I think that will carry over into the detail that would be playing. You know, like Sandra will say to us, you know, play Zebola. So we're not going to play the cure. We've got to play Zebola. That make sense? Have you ever seen the cowhide damage from Plankstum Art? Not on the gun like this. Replace it. Replace it, yeah. The one that talks about this, they want to replace it. Then you just take out the... We didn't get to talk about the bread, It's okay, in a way, because I brought some here.

[39:19]

Feel free to. When you leave, please help yourself. Marsha, I think. Get a whole bunch of roles to pick some up. For those of you who are going on, the families are larger. There's some things that happen to us in the roads there, too. So help yourself, too. I should have to do my closing. Say it again. Say it again. Yes. This is what I thought was interesting about this. One of the reasons I find satisfaction in baking bread, especially, is because it's a living process.

[40:30]

It's a living thing. In a way, the drum, you could say, is a living thing, too. It was made from things that were alive. So the bread itself is actually When you bring all of the ingredients together, flour, water, salts, and leavening, I'm sure. When they're together, that collection of things becomes alive. It's breathing. It's absorbing your drinks. It's giving off gas, and so forth. And incidentally, producing flavor. So as bakers, we become managers of tangy, light, events that are taking place in Britain. So all of that makes, to me, makes Britain making interesting. It's unbelievable. It's both forgiving and unforgiving.

[41:32]

It's like when we're using our sourdough starters beat. You buy a yeast in the store, come back to the chains, get one or two events. It's a lot. But when working natural, like we do mostly, you take flour and whatever, put it together, you just leave the container open and then all by itself, yeast, bacteria, what kind of microorganisms, find their way into that mix and develop the colony. And then you've got to take care of the colony. People who are serious homemakers, if they go traveling, they either take it with them, which is probably a check. Or they get a friend to take care of it for them. So all that material for me makes it an interesting experience to work with.

[42:36]

And also in the context of Zen Center, I feel, in the context of just, you know, people have been making bread for a long time. They figure like 6,000 years. So that's a long tradition of people who are doing activity very much like I'm doing. That connects me in a way to world history, you know, it makes me feel like that. And also in Zen Center's history, we have, above our altar in the bakery, we have a selection from Suzuki Roshi. in his section in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, repetition. Our spiritual way is not so idealistic. In some sense, we should be idealistic. At least we should be interested in making bread which tastes and looks good. So that's our motto in the bakery. Actual practice is repeating over and over again until you find out how to become bread. There's no secret in our way.

[43:38]

Just to practice Zazen and put ourselves into the oven is our way. So I've always found that not only inspiring, but kind of remarkable that this Japanese man who, I mean, I can't imagine that bread played a big part in his life or diet. I don't know where he got that, but I mean, that's real. That's accurate. That sounds accurate to me. So in Zen Center's history, right from there, through Tassajara Bread Book by Ed Brown in 1970 or so, he published that. It's still being printed. Tassajara Bakery, where I worked for many years as one of the businesses of Zen Center in the early days. And Tassajara itself, there's always some bread maker. Here, there's a bread maker, right? For at least one day a week. Saturday. So bread making is part of the community.

[44:39]

So when I'm making bread at Gringosch I feel like I'm doing something that's always been part of the history of Zenzer and I feel connected in that way too. And so yeah that's part of what's going through my mind when I'm when I'm working in the bakery. And nowadays we're We're doing well. Our production has doubled since we started five years ago, and the revenue has also doubled to Zen Center. We've started kind of a prototype apprenticeship program mostly with in-house people for a six-month apprenticeship program. And we have volunteers coming from outside helping out also. We do five bread workshops a year. You sign up. Yeah, so I feel it's finding its place in the community, and I feel pretty good about it.

[45:43]

So the last thing I want to... The one thing I want to close with, you'll see why. This is a selection from... very long acceptance speech for the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Poets are not little gods. No, they're not little gods. They're not picked out by a mystical destiny in preference to those who follow other crafts and professions. have often maintained that the best poets are those who prepare our daily bread. The nearest bakers who don't imagine themselves to be gods, they do their majestic and unpretentious work of kneading the dough, consigning it to the oven, baking it in golden colors, and handing us our daily bread as a duty of fellowship.

[46:51]

And if poets succeed in achieving this simple consciousness, this too, will be transformed into an element in an immense activity which constitutes the building of a community, the changing of the conditions which surround humankind, the handing over of humankind's products, bread, truth, wine, dreams. Thank you very much. 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.

[47:38]

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