So we'll have one more speaker this afternoon, and things never happen according to plan, and tomorrow we'll have more chance to interact. All of you could ask questions or make comments, and hopefully tomorrow will be more participatory than it has been. You've been very patient just sitting here, listening, most of you. Now I'd like to invite Yvonne Rand to come and speak. One of the things that struck me in reading the manuscript of David's biography and reading other things, Miriam Derby's recollections of the start of the sitting group here in Los Altos in Palo Alto, one of the things that struck me is how often it was Suzuki Roshi's wish and desire and impulse to start different things in America. First he seemed to have a tremendous desire to come abroad and teach Zen, and he kept

[01:02]

that intention, that desire was there all the time in his adult life it seems like until he came. And then he came and within a year or two, a couple of years of being here in America, it was his idea to start Zen Center, to get incorporated and start a Zen Center. And it was his idea in 1964 that someone start a sitting group down in Palo Alto that he would come down and teach for. And it was his idea to get a country monastery like Tassajara. And it was his idea to get a, he wanted to have a seminary, kind of like a Buddhist college or university developed here in America. That didn't quite happen in the kind of grand way he wanted maybe. And it was his idea to have a farm where, you know, like Green Gulch. And he had a lot of ideas and he took a lot of initiative. And that really surprised me a lot, reading this, because I had this idea which I wrote about a little bit in the windmill of, I don't know exactly where I got it, maybe it was

[02:04]

misunderstanding of the currents floating around Zen Center, that Suzuki Roshi was kind of like Mr. Natural. And he didn't, you know, he was just at Zazen and people just sat with him and this stuff kind of grew around him, but he was just sitting there and whatever was fine. And maybe whatever was fine was fine, but it surprised me how much initiative he seemed to have taken. And not only initiative, but tremendous dedication to what he was motivated to do. I was very moved to read the Merriam-Derby's account of Los Altos Sitting Group and how for many years Suzuki Roshi drove down here once or twice a week with great dedication just to talk to a small handful of people and sit with them in the morning and the evening. And the idea that he would come in his busy life to come down here and come down here and come down here and support the local sitting group, to me was quite moving. So, I say all this partly because I've heard people say that the great institutionalizer

[03:07]

at Zen Center was Richard Baker. And I think he had a very important role at Zen Center in making things happen. But I was very struck that Suzuki Roshi took a tremendous amount of initiative on his own and then people followed suit. And what we have today kind of follows his initiative. So, I've invited Yvonne Ran to talk a little bit as she sees fit about the history of Suzuki Roshi in America and what he did here and his impact here. It's a great pleasure to introduce Yvonne Ran to you. I think most of you know her. She was very close to Suzuki Roshi for many years. She was his secretary. And she's been a friend to many, many of us, many people at Zen Center and very supportive over the years. She was particularly supportive of me for doing this conference. She was someone who gave me lots of encouragement along the way. I needed a lot of encouragement to do something like this. And she was one of the people who gave me a lot of encouragement.

[04:08]

And together with Lou Richmond, who should be here this weekend, but it was impossible to be here because of business commitment. And both Yvonne and Lou were kind of supporting me behind the scenes so I can pull this off. So, with great pleasure, I introduce Yvonne. Applause The clock really is prominently displayed here on the podium. Before I begin with my remarks, I brought something which I don't own, but which I've been safekeeping. I think everybody knows the calligraphy, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, that's on the cover of Suzuki Roshi's book.

[05:09]

And I think that... For me, the Sumi brush that he made for doing that calligraphy is such a perfect example of his teaching. He did the calligraphy by using a yucca leaf, which he ground the end of, and then he dipped it in his Sumi ink. So I brought the yucca leaf brush that he used for doing the calligraphy, and I'll leave it up here for you to look at. It's so simple, and so beautiful, and so direct, what was right under his nose. There are a couple of things I'd like to say about Suzuki Roshi

[06:13]

in terms of his place in the history of Buddhism in the United States. One feature that I think is really crucial, and I remember over the years Richard Baker commenting on this a number of times, that there were two important Buddhist teachers who came here in the 50s. One was a Mongolian lama in the Tibetan tradition, whose name is Geshe Wangyal, who started a center a couple of years before Suzuki Roshi came to the United States. In New Jersey, and which has been the place where he taught and spawned really many of the great Buddhist scholars in the Tibetan tradition in the United States. And he didn't go anywhere, he didn't travel around, he stayed in one place, and students slowly gathered around him while he knitted and crocheted. And Suzuki Roshi also basically stayed in one place,

[07:19]

he didn't travel around except, if you could call, traveling between the city center and Tassajara traveling, but he was really located, and all of us had to come to him. And I think there's something very important about that, both in the model that he presented, but also in the fact that he was able to coalesce and use this tremendous energy that he had for teaching, and for bringing his cultivation and wisdom forth in a way that affected so many people. So there's been much noticing of the fact that when he came here, he came very quickly into the world of hippies and psychedelics and all of that, and I don't think I need to elaborate on that too much because we were all here for all of that. Psychedelics, the Vietnam War, and the growing protests against the war,

[08:19]

and American women practicing, those are all important elements in terms of the challenges for him as a teacher. As many of you who have been part of the Zen Center for a long time know, in the early days of his teaching in San Francisco, a number of poets and painters went to practice with him, and through his influence on those people, his teaching spread. But there's another area of influence that I want to make sure we have in mind as we consider him historically. And that has to do with his effect on what I sometimes think of as the northeast power elite, the wasps of America. Probably in 1966, two women came to meet Suzuki Roshi,

[09:21]

one of them a writer, a woman named Nancy Wilson Ross, and the other a dear friend of hers whose name is Margot Wilkie. So this was about 32 years ago, and Margot must have been 52. I recently had quite a long conversation with Margot, and she said that it was really because of her experience in meeting Suzuki Roshi that she understood that there was such a thing as a spiritual practice, a spiritual path in Buddhism and in Zen in particular. And through the inspiration that she felt from meeting Suzuki Roshi and being with him during her visit to San Francisco, she began practicing. She's now at age 84, continuing to practice. She has devoted her life since then quite wholeheartedly to Dharma practice.

[10:22]

She has had a meditation group that has met most of these years in her living room. She's now into her third generation with that sitting group, and Suzuki Roshi would occasionally go to New York to give a teaching and to practice with that group of women. That group of women included the wives of men who were making all kinds of decisions that affect our time and our culture. The three people who were really the mainstays of the group were Nancy Wilson Ross and Margot and Anne Morrill Lindbergh. But there were people like the wife of the head of the Trilateral Commission. There were members of the various families of great vast wealth having established philanthropic work in the United States. It was through that connection that Lawrence Rockefeller came to know Suzuki Roshi's book,

[11:27]

which he has kept by his bedside ever since then. So there's this very interesting kind of filtering into this world of what, from the realm of the hippie, psychedelic, war-protesting poets and painters in California, might be thought of as the American establishment. And though we don't have an aristocracy, something like that. Suzuki Roshi had quite a profound influence on a number of those people in very quiet ways. That led in time to the support of Tassajara, for example, through the great generosity of Chester Carlson, and eventually the great generosity of George Wheelwright in the establishing of Green Gulch. People who were the developers of Xerox and Polaroid processes.

[12:28]

People who were creative and inventive and felt some spark of creativity that had to do with the realm of the spirit, which they understood from meeting with Suzuki Roshi. George Wheelwright, of course, never met Suzuki Roshi, but he certainly met Suzuki Roshi through all of us. Suzuki Roshi had a very strong effect on an American doctor whom we knew as Mickey Stunkard, Dr. Albert Stunkard, who was a professor at the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who over the years, whenever he would come out here for professional reasons, would always come to sit with Suzuki Roshi and to meet with him and take teachings from him. Many people from many different circumstances who had the experience of their lives changing course

[13:30]

as a result of some experience with Suzuki Roshi. Sometimes experience that lasted only from one meeting, sometimes over repeated meetings. In thinking about Suzuki Roshi over the last year, as Gil has been planning the conference and we've been talking together, more and more what I have been able to be more clear about is how much Suzuki Roshi's effect on all of these people who didn't necessarily practice with him formally in the Zen meditation hall, but who encountered him as a presence, is that it was just that that was so great about him, that he had great capacity for presence. Those of you who have seen the movie Kundan perhaps know that the word in Tibetan means presence. And it's not just the Dalai Lama who has presence, it is our beloved and revered teacher, Suzuki Roshi.

[14:32]

I was lucky to be a kind of fly on the wall with Suzuki Roshi during the years in the establishment of Tassajara and the development of the Zen Center. I was present when Chogyam Trungpa came to visit him. And I still remember quite vividly the kind of quality in the room when the two of them met. They did talk some, but they didn't talk a lot. But what was expressed between them was a recognition that they both understood the great loneliness in being a teacher. And that there was a kind of father and son quality in the way they were together. And it was clear that afterwards Suzuki Roshi had had quite some effect on Trungpa Rinpoche,

[15:35]

but that also for Suzuki Roshi what he expressed was his great gladness at having that brief encounter with another person who understood the loneliness of sitting in the teaching seat. Suzuki Roshi's openness to all kinds of people I think was characterized by his remarkable capacity not only for presence, but for meeting each person with great respect and without bias. And I think all of us who met him briefly or for long periods of time had that experience of being seen, of being with someone who was really with us without any agenda. The summer that Suzuki Roshi was in Tassajara in 1971 when he was already beginning to be quite sick, I went down to Tassajara to drive Suzuki Roshi and Suzuki Okusan back to San Francisco.

[16:39]

And on the way back Suzuki Roshi said that Soen Nakagawa Roshi was doing a Sashin in San Juan Batista and he wanted to stop and say hello. It was the last day of the Sashin. He was already quite jaundiced and quite weak, but we stopped by and sat the last day of the Sashin. We had tea. The two Zen masters visited with each other. We wandered around and looked at the roses in the mission garden. We had nowhere to go except right there. Today is today. Suzuki Roshi had this incredible openness to go and see Soen Roshi. It had nothing to do with his being from another school. They were friends. They were practitioners. He had that quality about meeting new people all the time and it didn't matter what circumstance.

[17:49]

It didn't even matter if you had a dress made out of fishnet. I think it's extremely important for those of us who knew Suzuki Roshi in the context of a practice environment which he formed and had a vision for, but which he invited us to help him create. I think it's extremely important for us to keep in mind that he also has had an extraordinary effect on people scattered literally all over the world. Now, of course, through people's experience with reading Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, but also that there are people in many different situations all over the United States who met him once or twice, heard him give a talk, came by the Zen Center and were surprised to find out that they could sit down and have a cup of tea with him. That was, of course, in the days when Zen Center was smaller,

[18:50]

but even to the end of his life, he always had that kind of openness. One of the New York women who used to come to visit was a woman named Mary Strudwick. Mary was very tall and quite thin and she always wore enormous glasses. And Suzuki Roshi, I suppose in the true character of his forgetfulness, could never seem to remember her name, but he would always say, is she coming to see us soon? And if Mary was coming to see us, I would say, is going to see you at nine. Mary had been a designer, particularly in the clothing business. She designed fabrics. She was the first person to design denim in colors and stripes, etc.

[19:54]

She was quite elegant. I remember having a very interesting conversation with her one time about her interest in painting the walls of her New York apartment the color of a brown paper bag. Anyway, Mary would come to Zen Center. She would come for lectures. She would always want to have tea with Suzuki Roshi, which he was very glad to do. He gave her some guidance about her own meditation practice and, of course, saw her whenever he went to New York for the women's meditation group. And Mary was the first person who started talking to him about the idea of having a stitchery. Some of you may remember Elias Stitchery. Well, Mary, with her love of cloth, thought that our Zen outfits were very stylish and fashionable

[20:55]

and comfortable and modest, and we would make a fortune if we sold them, if we made them and sold them. And so she had this idea of doing this small business that was a way of sharing the artifacts, if you will, of our lives. She also was very keen on the idea of our doing what eventually became Tassara Bakery. The notion that we could do some businesses that might support the center, but that would be expressions of the way we were living and the way we were doing things. And I remember being quite surprised at how enthusiastic Suzuki Roshi was about her ideas. He was much more enthusiastic than the rest of us. So it was Suzuki Roshi and Mary who would be pushing this idea,

[21:56]

not in a way that was challenging, but more inviting. Here is a way to do something that would be inviting to the community around us. I mentioned these several people, in particular Mary and Margo Wilkie and Nancy Wilson Ross and Mickey Stunkard, who each of them in the work that they did in the world took their experience with Suzuki Roshi and let it inform their work so that he was expressing himself through them. And I think it's important for us to remember that in addition to those of us who practice Zazen and who are devoted to a more formal practice, there are also a number of people who began to change the way they understood how to live in the world out of their exposure to Suzuki Roshi and to the experience of being with somebody who could be so radically present.

[23:01]

I don't know if I'll have a chance to tell you this story later, so I'm going to tell it to you now. I think in the video that we're going to see tonight, there's a photograph of Suzuki Roshi holding some glasses up to his eyes. The glasses belonged to my great-grandmother. The kind of glasses that would have a hinge on the nose piece and in the middle of the ear pieces so the whole business would collapse to the size of one lens. And then you could push a button and the glasses would spring out. After the Zen Center moved to the Page Street building where the Center is located now, the usual practice was that we would all have tea together, the staff and Zen Center officers would have tea with Suzuki Roshi in the morning before the day would begin.

[24:04]

So one morning at tea, I produced these glasses and gave them to Suzuki Roshi. And he took them and pushed the button and they popped open. And the photograph is just at that moment where he's got the glasses right in front of him. And he looks like a little kid with this wonderful new toy. He spent the rest of the tea closing them and popping them open with this kind of, oh, so characteristic of his playfulness and ability to be completely, totally present with what was happening in the moment. Something that came up from comments earlier in the day reminded me of a conversation that several of us had when Suzuki Roshi walked into the old living room in the Page Street building, what is now and has been for a very long time the Buddha Hall.

[25:09]

And he kept trying to work out how we were going to enter into the room. By this time we'd covered the floor with tatami mats and there was a certain complexity in the traffic flow. And finally he said, I'm imagining this room in the way that I imagine the Buddha Hall at Rinzowen with these four big pillars. You may remember this. These four big pillars and the way we move, the way we enter the room and leave is because of the placement of those pillars. Now, we're talking about a room which has no pillars in it. These are imaginary pillars. But the way the room was laid out was so much in Suzuki Roshi's body that that was the way he could reconfigure the traffic pattern for coming and going, for bowing and chanting. And I remember being struck by his saying, I can only teach you what I know the way I know it.

[26:15]

And I want to teach you what I know and the way I know it as thoroughly as I can. And then after you know what I can teach you thoroughly, then it will be up to you to change it. And of course he was talking about what he knew, in this case about entering and leaving the room, that was in his body, that was underneath language. And I'm really struck by that wonderful invitation that he gave us to let him teach us what he knew, but without any restriction, without any holds barred, without any limitation as to the horizon. A kind of invitation that if we would practice with him in the way that he could practice with us for as long as that was possible, then we could fly. Then we would be able to figure out how to come into the room

[27:17]

and leave the room without the pillars. I didn't really understand what he was talking about until I went to Rinzo-en and I walked into the room and I thought, oh, this is completely familiar. I know how to walk in here and sit down. So I like to think of Suzuki Roshi as kundan, as presence. And to... to cherish the way in which he touched my heart so that I can practice with more fullness now

[28:25]

than I could when he was still with us. And to know that my friend, who is 84, who lives in New York, in a very fancy apartment on the Upper East Side, feels exactly the same way. Some years ago, Marco's son, who was in his mid-forties, very fit, was out jogging and he dropped dead of a heart attack. And I remember Marco saying afterwards, I could never endure the grief of my son dying before me if it were not for the Buddha Dharma. Suzuki Roshi started her spiritual life by his kindness, by his capacity for being completely present,

[29:31]

and his example of a fully passionate spiritual life. We were very lucky, those of us who practiced with him, because we got to taste his passion, the way he loved stone, the way he loved zazen, and the way he loved us. One time when I was driving Suzuki Roshi and Okasan back from Tassajara, we stopped in the Pacific Grove to have lunch. And I was at the time a single mother, a single working mother. And I don't remember exactly how we got into this conversation about how to practice in such circumstances, but Okasan said, Suzuki Roshi is a terrible husband.

[30:36]

And he's not a very good father. But he's a great teacher. And he very smilingly said, she's right. He was so a hundred percent. I want to thank you, Gil, for doing this conference, and I hope it will be the start of something. I really was struck, particularly this morning, listening to Carl and Richard, by how wonderful it is for us to begin to get together more of a sense about Suzuki Roshi's life before he came here, and understand more about his context

[31:39]

as a way of understanding more deeply his teachings. One of the last things he said to me the last time I saw him before he died was his apology to me for not ordaining me. He said, you know, I just didn't know how to train women. I didn't have any idea about how to train women. We used to have fights, actually, about how he was going to train his ordained women, and one day, when he was planning to send one of his ordained women students to Japan to a nunnery, I said, I'm going to lie down on the floor and scream and yell and cry, because he'd already done that, and it hadn't worked out very well. And I pleaded with him to let this student stay here

[32:42]

and practice with him, even if he didn't feel like he could train her. Only recently, when I've thought about this statement that he made, that he didn't know how to train his women students, I realized that, at least for me, part of what I didn't know was how to teach him what it was I needed to know. And my not being able to do that, but coming to understand later what my opportunity was as a student meant that when I did later meet a teacher who was ready to teach me, it was because I could show myself in certain ways that at the time Suzuki Roshi lived, I didn't yet know how to present myself. But his not knowing how to teach those of us who were his women students was part of the process of his being with us

[33:44]

during a time of extraordinary change that included our lives as women wholeheartedly and fully in the Dharma. And I actually think he was wrong. I think he did know how to teach us in a way that was beyond gender. And it's just taking us a while to find the different ways of expressing that. This core of New York women that he inspired have had such ripples out into the wider culture. Beyond his lifetime. That didn't have anything to do with his knowing how to teach any of us by virtue of our gender. It had to do with his ability to be so present without any bias and respectful of what each of us could bring forth.

[34:46]

Thank you. Thank you.

[34:49]

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