Oh, to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. And a special good morning to those who are here for the first time. It is impossible to tell you or explain why your mere presence here transforms this assembly, whether you have heard of Zen Center or Buddhism or not. Just by being here, you have altered our lives. And it may be, for some, just by being here today, a week, a year, ten years from now, your lives will be altered by just having been here. So it's within that spirit that I would like to talk today. But I have an extra, not extra, a deeper feeling of what I've just said, as it means

[01:03]

to me. You'll see there on the two cupboards, wonderful dogwood blossoms. They were brought here for a funeral service, which I participated in last night for one of our former students here at Page Street. And I thought that all I had to do was be Chidin, which is the name we have for the person who lights the lights and tends to the physical arrangements within the Buddha Hall for ceremonies. But when I called Abbot Sojourn Mel Weitzman a few hours in the morning before I began to go to work, he said he could not do the ceremony. And since all of our other priests are engaged away from the temple, I was left as the one to do the memorials, the funeral service.

[02:06]

And though I had been to them before, I had never participated as the doshi, as the priest. And whatever I had intended to say this morning about Zen and American Transcendentalism flew out the window at that time. I had been precipitated into a totally original situation, and since I was told that when we speak from the seat, what we speak about is what is right in front of us, I would like to explore with you this morning some of the significances of me being here like I was yesterday, only I'm not, and you being here like you were yesterday, only maybe you're not. You would think that someone who has practiced, attempted to practice Zazen for 27 years should not be thrown by something like this.

[03:09]

They should just take it the way we are instructed to take all varying aspects of our lives. But I have the feeling that I am confronted with a new life, that these 75 years that preceded the first awareness of having a life have somehow or other been blown away, like picked up by a cyclone and swept off somewhere, that I'm mulling around in the wreckage. This is Beginner's Mind Temple, and I have been interested in Beginner's Mind ever since I read a book. I was someone who lived with books ever since a child. They were an escape from my actual life. I could always disappear into some story, and I just don't mean children's stories. I don't know if I have a place in the Guinness Book of Records, but I don't think there's

[04:14]

another 12-year-old who had read Moby Dick from cover to cover by that age. Now, if there's anybody here that's done that, I'll be willing to step down, but that is my main claim to fame. So you can see, if at 12 years old I was addicted, good word, addicted to books, and at the same time felt the beginnings and stirrings of some of the things which are associated with this practice, that when I found a book that would tell me all about it, I was in hog heaven. And that book was by Suzuki, but not Suzuki Roshi, Shunryu Suzuki, but Daisetsu Suzuki, the famous man who perhaps more than anyone else introduced America to the understanding of things Japanese.

[05:15]

And I had read it so often it had come apart, and I had rebounded. And when I came to go to the Berkeley Zendo, where Mel Weitzman was just then the priest there, I can still see myself rushing up the steps of that old place on Dwight Way, rushing into the kitchen where Mel is having his late coffee and saying, I just have to talk to you about this book. And he says, I don't have to talk to you about that book. If you want to go upstairs to the Zendo and sit zazen, that's fine with me. And I realize now that there was another priest, one of his peers, one of his contemporaries, and had he been there, he and I would still be talking about that book. I would have found my soul mate, and we would have spent these last 26 years batting it back and forth, you know. So that was a wonderful thing that Mel did for me.

[06:19]

So when I finally came to know briefly and at a distance, unfortunately for me, Suzuki Roshi, when he used to come over to Berkeley to lecture, and we used to come over here for sashins, I finally saw in front of me the real thing. This was no mind. This was a man who was so totally open that he terrified me. I even drew a picture of it. All I could see was this left eye of his like a whirlpool. And it reminds me of the story of the man who loved dragons in ancient China. He painted dragons, he carved dragons, he made sculptures of dragons. He was totally consumed with, someday I will see a dragon. And the news finally got up to dragon heaven, and the dragon emperor called a meeting and

[07:26]

said, look, we really should do something for this man down there. He is so much our friend. I think I will go down and visit him. Now this is an old dragon with seaweed dripping off and one eye, you know. And his courtiers said, you have other things to do, but someone should go. And they decided on a young lady dragon in all her beauty. So she descended to the earth. She located the garden, and lo and behold, when she peered in at the window, there he was painting a dragon. And she realized that this was someone that they could trust, so she waited and she waited. And then she, and the artist turned from his easel and he saw this dragon. Now there are many stories, some say he dropped dead on the spot, others say that he ran screaming

[08:32]

out of the room, others say that he lost his mind. But what he had been dreaming of and yearning for and wanting in the depths of his being was right as close as this, and he couldn't handle it. And that was my experience with Suzuki Roshi. I was terrified of him, just like the man with the dragons. So I met again someone who had that quality, but didn't terrify me, and that was Katagiri Roshi. I'm going to pass around his picture while I'm speaking, so you can see a little bit of what it is. He was sensei here, he wasn't Roshi then. His language, Suzuki Roshi had studied English in Japan, but Katagiri sensei had great difficulty

[09:33]

in how he was able to lecture the way he did with that language restriction, I don't know. But the thing that bound us together was this. I was being trained at the end of the Second World War to learn how to land small freighters on the beaches of Japan when the invasion had been the battle plan. And at the same time, Katagiri Roshi had been brought into the kamikaze program, and we always thought when we sat in Dōkasan how it might have been had we met otherwise. But here we were like this. So there was a bond, even despite the language and the national differences and the age difference. But he was adamant in getting me out of the books.

[10:39]

He never wanted to hear my stories about my practice or myself or my worries or my troubles. He wanted me to show it to him. And right there, we're back in your college writing courses, show, don't tell. That's where you get good marks. You do it, you don't talk about it. So he asked me to show him my life, and I couldn't do it. Let me read just a bit from his book, Returning to Silence, which will give you the flavor of this demand, page 114. You know, these sticky things that you paste in books, they're wonderful. And you know that their mistake, did you ever hear the story about these things?

[11:40]

They were making a new and stronger adhesive, and something went wrong, and the whole project was about to be thrown out. And then they decided that there was use for failures, and so I'm encouraged to use sticky. This is in the chapter, To Live is Just to Live. Can we thoroughly learn the naked nature of being a human being? If we try to do it, we are always looking at ourselves in our own territory. It is sort of playing hide and seek, or putting new knowledge into a hole. We feel good, but on the other hand, we try to find another hole. We put that new knowledge into that hole, and then we look for another hole. Always we do this. We take out our old knowledge and put it into new knowledge constantly. This is human life, it's fun, but it makes us exhausted, and finally we cannot play hide

[12:47]

and seek with ourselves, and then we must throw ourselves into the universe. That's one of Katagiri Roshi's favorite expressions. Throw yourself into whatever you're doing. Okay. I have, as some of you who have borne with me through many lectures, described all the holes into which I have put my knowledge of life. I put it into the Christian hole first, which is about this big, then I put it into the humanist hole, which is about this big, then I put it into the Marxist hole, which is about this big, and then I put it into the Buddhist hole, which is about this big. But this is Katagiri Roshi's story. If you want to dig a well, you don't stop when you get down at 10 or 12 feet and start in another hole. Very simple. You keep going down in the same hole that you are, which is your life, your actual experience, not something in that hole or that hole.

[13:49]

So, I'm a figment of my own imagination. I'm a mental artifact. Those of you who read science fiction know what an android is. It is a creation, a man-made thing, which so closely resembles a human being that in the stories only the hero is able to understand, is that a human being or is that an artifact? Well, I have known and been told constantly, not just by Katagiri Roshi, that I was an artifact. I was making myself up all of the time, come on, Lou, come out from behind the words. And once in an exchange with a Shuso at the training period, I said, I am the words! God damn it. So I've been, you know, this has been on my case for a lifetime now. My grandmother, who was originally a peasant woman driving geese to the, the village geese

[14:57]

to the river Elba every morning, would complain, Ideen hat der Junge, ideas that boy had. And had she just changed it a little bit, Ideen ist der Junge, ideas the boy is, she would have saved me all of this difficulty. I would have been 75 years ahead of myself, right? So it was amazing to me to discover a quotation. The main point to remember, this is a famous writer of Buddhism talking, the main point to remember is that all Buddhist teachings are the outcome of a warm heart that cherishes all sentient beings and not of a cold intellect which tries to unravel the secrets of existence by logic. That is to say, what we name as Buddhism is personal experience and not impersonal philosophy.

[16:01]

Now who do you think said that? Daisetsu Suzuki. Now that's really the thing, because he's the man who has written so intellectually and so philosophically, and I discovered later that towards the end of his life he became more interested in Pure Land Buddhism than in Zen, Pure Land being more of a faith school than ours. But I thought that was neat, that if Daisetsu could say that, maybe there was some hope that I could catch on to what he's talking about. This naked nature, this is interesting. When we dream sometimes, we dream of being in a public place without any clothes on, it's a basic dream. To be naked in the presence of everything, not armed or armored. For instance, this robe is an armor for me, it makes me something different than you.

[17:05]

This robe is armor. We hide the distance, right? So, I'm going to go back into Katagiri Roshi's book and I'm going to read a poem, and I would like, if possible, for you to withhold your judgment and get as naked as you can and listen to this man's naked poem, which you won't think is naked at all, I'm sure. I'll tell you later the circumstances of this. The man's name is Senri Ueno. Thanks to lamenting over the pain in the world, I am able to become laughter when my life

[18:08]

is happy. Due to being struck and trampled upon and biting my lips to control my temper, I fully realize how precious it is to be born. Even if I am intentionally tired of an ugly world, look, what a blue sky. Even if one laughs scornfully at my penniless life, there is something much more beautiful, true and worthy than anyone knows. I don't care so much about anything else except love and sincerity, the sun and a little amount of rain from time to time. If I have a healthy body and a little piece of bread, I want to walk with a smile in great spirit. I will do my best to work without complaining about anything at all. I always consider things by putting myself into another's place without flinching, no matter how hard and heart-rending it is to live. If there is someone unfortunate, I will try to help him out with anything.

[19:12]

And if I can forget myself in order to help out, that would surely delight me. In the morning the sun rises, I greet it. I will do my best to live today. In the evening the sun sets, staring at the evening glow, I want to sit still. With a dream in my heart, I sleep quiet as a little bird. If I have my own time, I want to spend it reading an old collection of poems, meditating on them alone, quietly. Let's find happiness by ourselves. Within silver tears like pearls and laughter like the sun, let's keep walking ahead each day. Certainly, someday, as I look back over my past, I will quietly see my life and I will smile. If you knew nothing about the poet or the conditions under which that was written, you might say, as I did when I first read it, that is a hallmark greeting card.

[20:18]

That was written two weeks before he died. He looked back, as he says. Certainly, someday, as I look back over my past, I will quietly see my life and smile. This man was a Japanese corpsman in a hospital. It's the end of the Second World War, before the bomb, but when the intensity of American traditional bombing was ravaging Japan, where it was blazing from north to south, one of the American planes had been shot down. The pilot had survived wounded and was taken to the hospital in which this man was working under the supervision, I'm sure, of medical doctors, because Katagiri Roshi, who translated

[21:26]

the poem, did not call him doctor. He just said he was working in the hospital. He was ordered by his superior to kill the American pilot on the operating room, and he refused. Then another wave of bombers come over, alarm sound, they leave the hospital, they go into the bomb shelter. When they come out back to the hospital, the poet sees that someone has killed the man that he was working on. Now Katagiri Roshi doesn't go into details, but evidently, when the war crime trials were held, this poet, this man, was convicted of killing the American pilot and executed. Two weeks before he wrote that poem, To Look Back on My Life and Smile, that's pretty wonderful,

[22:37]

I think, and it's the spirit with which, that's in the first chapter of this book, the spirit with which Katagiri Roshi speaks of our lives in the light of that understanding of the Buddhism. Now wouldn't it be wonderful to strip ourselves naked of all of our fashionable intellectual clothing, stop buying those wonderful videos that are advertised about improving your life, and live it a little, directly as it is, in the face of, as we said in the ceremony last night, Brian, you have preceded us by a few years, a few months, perhaps only a few moments. That would be a wonderful thing. Then I think we would be throwing ourselves into our lives, throwing ourselves into the

[23:39]

universe, being able to meet Katagiri Roshi, Suzuki Roshi, face to face, and, even more wonderful than that, everybody, not just these special, wonderful people, but everybody. And yet we look at, through a mask, we defend ourselves. Now how do you do it? There's always, in Sapa Jack, you're laughing all the time, on that. How could you be the kind of person, not that you were told to be, not that you would even like to be, but the person that you are, how could you do it? And the answer, of course, is very simple. It's a five-letter word, Zazen, and Katagiri Roshi says so, in the next chapter.

[24:47]

So I will, I'll read you what I accidentally came upon last time I talked, and it brings me into this consideration this morning. When you really want to know who you are, or what the real significance of human life and human suffering is, you come back to silence. Even though you don't want to, you return to the area of no sound. It cannot be explained, but in time, in this silence, you can realize, if only dimly, what the real point is that you want to know. Whatever kind of question you ask, or whatever you think, finally you have to return to silence. This silence is vast, and you don't know what it is.

[25:47]

So we have all these admonitions, all these examples, all these stories. So perhaps using personal experience as a, [...] as a request from Kanagiri Roshi. Lemme tell you an incident that happened to me years before I ever heard of Zen, Zen Center, Suzuki Roshi. I like to be able to find these things in my past, because they are free of any Buddhist taint. They are experiences without a previous interpretation. Afterward, of course, then you can talk all you want about it. But these things happened before, I guess, when I was truly an innocent in such things as SOSF.

[26:51]

You may know that the Kaiser shipping company that built all the Liberty ships up there in Richmond had a health program for its workers that was really original. And after the war, Kaiser opened it to other people. And we were members of the Berkeley Co-op. And so we took our membership in the Kaiser health program. And I guess that must have been at least 1950. And one of the things that they featured was a very thorough annual physical checkup. And in those days, the techniques were much cruder than they are now. And you spent hours in that yearly experience. First, of course, you went undressed down to your shoes and socks.

[27:54]

And they put on these paper robes that don't tie, you know. And they gave you a clipboard and you fill out all your... They've got it on file, of course, but each year you have to go through it. So you review, when was I born? Did my mother die of this? What happened to my grandfather? You know, I had all of this. And then they start running you through the tests. And you have, in those days, IBM cards, punch cards. And every place that you went, you handed in a punch card. You would have your eyes examined, you give them a punch card. Have your ears examined, you give them a punch card. You have your urine taken, you give them a punch card. And as the day went on, the stack of punch cards decreased. And finally, the last one was handed out. And then they gave you a box of a hundred questions. And there was a yes side and a no side. And you read the question and you put the card in whichever of the two sides of the box you thought was the best.

[28:56]

Are you happy? Oh, God. But you had to do it, so you made some... That was your mental urine that you were getting rid of. And then you go back and you put on your clothes and you step out of the hospital. I noticed something as the years went on. I looked forward to this experience. When I saw on the calendar that it was coming up, I felt some change in my life. Some excitement, some anticipation. And then one year it was revealed to me. I stepped out, as I just said, and right across the street was a mortuary. I've been there all these years. It's not there now. It's a gas station, I think.

[29:57]

This time I went over to the mortuary and went into one of the parlors where someone was laid out and sat down. Then I started to walk home. And now I know it was Keenehan Speed. And then I noticed that little children came up and took my hand and walked along with me. And young women smiled and old people stepped back and let me go through. And one time I went into a little cul-de-sac by four or five houses in a circle. And I noticed a woman sewing at her sewing machine. And I saw two men loading a TV set into the car down there. And over there I saw a man painting his house. Then when I somehow or other looked back as I left the cul-de-sac, the woman had come out in the street holding her sewing.

[31:00]

The two men had put down the television set and the man with the paint roller was standing there letting it drip down his arm. So I continue home that way. It's about, I guess, maybe two and a half, three miles. In this state that had somehow or other been revealed to me. And I go up the steps of my house in that state. And then I hear one of the children say, Ma, he's back! And Blaine says, where have you been? We've been holding supper. And it's all over until next year. But what was the mystery of this? It should be pretty plain now. I was dropping body and mind. Doing exactly what it says in the book before reading the book. I got rid of this piece of my body and that piece of my body and that piece of my body. And then I got rid of my mind. And so for an hour, maybe,

[32:04]

I was there without any sweat. And it's interesting to realize that one of my older daughter came down to Tassajara to work one summer. She was not practicing. An older friend of hers was there and I guess they worked together on the cabin crew. And she wrote home a letter. It was a wonderful day at Tassajara yesterday and I was up before the wake-up bell. And as I passed Suzuki Roshi's cabin I saw him walking in his garden. And you know what he was doing? He was walking in his garden. Underlined exclamation point. So there is this man that I was terrified of because he was so open. A child was not threatened by that and saw the openness

[33:05]

and the only way it could be spoken of is he was doing what he was doing. And that basically is the Zen teaching. Do what you are doing in the instant totally. Now you would think that with all these wonderful advantages I would be able to go back and do that. Because immediately I think about it. And I'm right back on the wheel. But at least there's the encouragement of knowing that what Katagiri and the others are talking about is not something made up. It's something that actually exists open to everyone and for 2,500 years in scores of countries, millions of people have been doing just that and coming to the same place that Shakyamuni did. But you got to do it. Like the old spiritual says

[34:08]

you got to walk that lonesome valley you got to walk it by yourself. Nobody else will do it for you. But it's nice to talk about it and read about it. Write poems about it. Oh. Blade Runner. Anyone ever see Blade Runner? All right, Blade Runner, raise your hand. Not too many. Oh, wow. Well, great. One of the best movies ever made. For those of you who are unfortunate enough not to have seen it, it's a sci-fi picture about a not too distant future in which these androids that I've been talking about are actually in production. But there's a glitch in them. And they are also just as murderous as they are human. And they've been exiled to some other planet to work in the mines. And from time to time they escape and come back to our environment. And then the bounty hunters

[35:11]

have to come in and find out, one, who they are and exterminate them. Now, who was the hero of that? Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford. He is the Blade Runner. He's the one who's in charge. Well, there's a second generation come on where the difficulties have been evidently solved. And he falls in love with this, I don't know if she was an android or not. I never saw such a tall, beautiful woman in my life. She must have been over six feet. And the climax of it is is he going to turn her in or are they both going to become fugitives? And, of course, they ride off into the sunset together. Now, the way I bring this up now is this was a human being in all of the basic reactions

[36:13]

of loving and concern. But it was also a man-made thing. So I've circled back now to my original statement that I am a figment of my own imagination. That's why I responded to that picture so. I was really with them on that. But what kind of android are we going to make ourselves? That's where it comes down to buttons. And, of course, from a Buddhist position you become a Bodhisattva. And the Buddha himself says don't let it floor you. It's just a word. Bodhisattva is just a word. There's no such thing as a Bodhisattva. So maybe I can continue to have it both ways. I can continue to make myself up, but now I will have a new thing to make up. How do I get myself in this? I must have had an intimation of this

[37:16]

because I don't write anymore. I used to be a professional writer and I could write thousands of words a day on any subject that you assigned me. It was a snap. But every once in a while I did write haiku. Katagiri Roshi told me that I shouldn't write because it made my mind spin too fast. But a haiku, he said, lasts as long as a breath. And you don't link up haikus into haikus into haikus. There's haiku, new breath, new poem, new poem. That's why Basho, the famous haiku master in old Japan, said you should be able to write hundreds of haikus every day because there are hundreds of breaths and hundreds of things that happen to you every day. So maybe this is the one that I will have to pay more attention to. Awakened in a dream, I fall into my own arms.

[38:17]

What kept you so long? If we are to fall into our own arms, to be our own selves, why do we resist it? When you have the answer, you will come back. Tell me, please. May our intention... May our intention...

[38:44]

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