At Tassajara, I had decided to take lay ordination, but I went to talk to Suzuki Roshi about some doubts I was having. I said, I'm not sure I want to be a Buddhist. I wasn't quite sure I agreed with everything necessarily that had ever been published under the name of Buddhism, and whether I could live up to it. And he said, well, do you want to take lay ordination? I said, yes. He said, okay, go ahead, and if you ever regret it, you can blame me. And I've never regretted it. I never regretted it.

[01:53]

I came to San Francisco to spend some time at the Zen Center, and I lived across the street from Sokoji. And as has been said earlier, there was a lot of very strange energy floating around in those days, and there was a lot of strange energy also in the place where I was staying across the street. In particular, there was one guy who was just really, we couldn't figure him out, and he was pretty disconcerting actually, and I was kind of rattled every time I was around this guy. And someone else living in the house said to me, do you think this guy is a little strange? And I said, yeah, I do think he's a little strange. And he said, well, I think he's a little strange too. And he told me that he had been to a lecture that Suzuki Roshi had given, in which Suzuki

[02:54]

Roshi demonstrated the walk of a bodhisattva and the walk of a devil. And so I'm going to demonstrate those two walks as they were demonstrated to me. This is the walk of a bodhisattva. And this is the walk of a devil. Sorry. And sure enough, this guy had exactly that walk. And it scared the hell out of me, and it scared the hell out of this other guy too. And he said, you know, maybe we should get out of here. You can get pretty cheap rooms at the YMCA in Chinatown. So that's what we did. We split. So. During the shuso ceremony, I think, I asked Suzuki Roshi, please ask me a question.

[04:16]

And he said, why are you so serious? On that same note, last night when we were talking about joyful mind, it seemed to me there were an awful lot of serious kinds of remarks. But what I was thinking of when we were talking about joyful mind was Ed and Meg's wedding at Tassajara. And Suzuki Roshi sitting there wearing Bill Lambert's big cowboy hat. And the Oak Sun making a playful slap at him and him fending it off with his chopsticks. And then later, there was this band. Lou Richmond was playing a keyboard, and David was playing the guitar and singing,

[05:18]

and Craig Boyan was playing the drums. And Suzuki Roshi was sitting on the corner of the platform playing a kazoo. And I thought that was just delightful. I'm here this weekend because I have felt a connection to this man for a long time now. I think I first encountered him in his book, Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, in 1972. And I spent a good part of the last 20-some years running away from practice, I would say. But I was attracted to it nonetheless, and I felt a very strong, deep connection to Japan. And in graduating from school nearby in 1973, I went to Japan and taught nursery school

[06:21]

in the fall of 73. And I was sitting in the ochien. I had a nursery school classroom that I lived in and stayed in. I was sitting there freezing near my kotatsu, reading Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. And I felt a very deep connection to Suzuki Roshi and the book. It was an opening. And one day, one afternoon in the fall of 1973, I decided, I'm going to go visit this man. I want to go to this place that was in the wind bell. I had a copy of a wind bell called Rinso-in. And I got on the densha, the surface train, and took a train to Yaizu. And I was nervous, but I felt connected. Nonetheless, I went up to a taxi cab. And the door was open, which indicated the taxi cab was available.

[07:23]

And I went to the driver and I said, do you know where this place is, Rinso-in? And this arm came out from the back seat of the taxi cab. It literally grabbed my right arm and pulled me into the back seat. And there was a bosan, a priest from Soji-ji, in the back seat who was on his way to visit you. He was on his way to visit you at Rinso-in that day. And he pulled me into the back seat and he said, I'm going there. And obviously you're supposed to be going there, too. And I was quite stunned. I was quite shocked. You were gone that evening, but I met, I think, your wife and a very new baby. Suzuki Shunryo. And he was maybe four weeks old. And I was just so happy to be there.

[08:27]

And I wandered around and looked at the Mekong, the tangerine orchard in the back, and wandered around the temple for a good couple of hours. But you didn't come, you didn't get back. And so I just took a cab and went back to the gensha and went back to Hamamatsu, where I was living. And there was this, from that point I met Inoue Tetsugenroshi and then went to practice very briefly at Antaiji, which is an alternate practice center in Kyoto. And I couldn't sit with a darn. I thought, I thought very strongly, I thought very harshly. I would try to, I would get up early and go and at one point at my first session I passed out and fell into the shoji, at which point I was very quickly escorted out of the zendo by two monks. And when I came to, they said, either sit or get out. And I've taken his latter recommendation seriously for a good long time.

[09:37]

And I wanted, I do sit on my own at home and sometimes go to public talks at Green Gulch. My deepest connection with Zen Center over the last 20 years has been to go to the Saturday morning talks, or was to go to the Saturday morning talks in San Francisco. And I wanted to give a deep gassho to Rev today for a statement from Suzuki Roshi he shared one day, which helped me sit a great deal, it's that simple. Please correct me if I get it wrong. Suzuki Roshi said, there is change and stillness but no movement. And that particular statement helped me to be more gentle with moving during zazen. Thank you for that. Thank you.

[10:55]

Well, I was very confident back there. This has to do, again, with my awkwardness and Rev Suzuki and the Sangha. So, he asked me to do the moku-gyo for the Hanahara Mita Sutra. And I could go bonk, bonk, bonk, but when it came to gong, this hand would gong also. So, I had a lot of strength but not much coordination. So he said, well, come up and practice in the evening

[11:58]

or the afternoon whenever you have a chance. So I would go up. At one time, he was fooling around in the zendo where the altar was. And I had practiced and practiced and practiced and finally he said, come and have some tea. And so what happened is my legs are not like Roshi Suzuki's. They accommodate my sitting in seiza in a different way. They go numb. They get no feeling at all. So he said, come and have some tea. So I started to lean a little bit on the moku-gyo. He said, don't touch the moku-gyo. So he said, I said, but I can't feel anything.

[13:00]

It's numb. He said, just imagine your legs. That tea cup looked very far away. He said, imagine. So I looked down. He said, don't look down. And so he had this opening, this door. I didn't see it as a door at that time but the communication was that I didn't feel fearful. At the same time, I was trepidatious. You know, like what is really going to happen? So I imagined these legs going down there. And so I stood up. I had these imaginary legs lift me up.

[14:01]

And it worked. So then I imagined them walking. And they walked. Then there was it was an altar with, I believe, a step-down. It's a goji step-down about this far. He said, don't look down! So I imagined it and it worked. And finally I got some tea. So I think we were allowed one story, so... Imagine. I wanted to play

[15:13]

a tape of Suzuki Roshi's which we don't have with us where he says that something like the the essence of Buddhism can be expressed in Japanese in two words and in English in three words and those in English, it's the words not always so. So lunch? Gil has asked me to wrap this up. I think it's been wrapped up and tied with a ribbon many times already. But I also

[16:15]

want to tell a couple of stories of things which affected me deeply in the short time two and a half years that I had to practice with Suzuki Roshi. I didn't go to see him in Dōsan for quite a while because I was quite in awe of him. The first time I ever heard him speak he said, you're perfect just as you are. And I thought, well he doesn't know me. But then he said all these other things that I mentioned earlier I began to get it that he meant everyone without exception. And so I... that was my koan, how can that be so? And I had come to practice, one of the reasons I didn't think that I he could include me was I'd come to practice after some

[17:19]

22 years of marriage and discovering in counselling that how selfish I had been in a certain way in this marriage and I was really overcome with recognizing my selfishness. And so I was trying very hard to be unselfish. In the course of it there was someone at Tassajara who said to me as I left at the end of guest season before practice period don't forget to send care packages. So I sent her you know this meant cookies because it was macrobotic and there was no sugar down there. So I baked cookies and sent them down every time I heard somebody was going to Tassajara and I sent other things that I thought she would like and then I realized I was waiting for a response, you know thanks, gee, you're great, something. And I was just overcome again with my goodness, none of this has been generous, it's been just

[18:22]

more of that selfishness that I seem to be totally involved in and so I finally in desperation went to see Suzuki Roshi in Dokusan and I told him my story and he said, it's all right for you to take care of her but first you have to take care of yourself. And he said with great intensity, do you understand? And I responded yes, but actually when I got out of there I thought, no what does he mean? First take care of yourself. That's selfish that's just what I was talking about. Zen is about no self. So that became my koan for a long time. He's a Zen master and he said that, so what does that mean? What self do you take care of if there's no self? How do you take care of it? Is this taking care of it? It continues to be my koan. All of the koans

[19:22]

he's given me I've never solved. They continue to be koans for me. but he made me feel in that Dokusan that it was all right to be who I was. He completely every time I saw him made me feel that it was all right to be just this one. When I was in his presence but I couldn't maintain that feeling outside of it, but in any event at the end of this Dokusan I was so grateful to him and I had never had Dokusan before so I'd had this brief description by the Jishu of the forms and I knew I was supposed to step back behind the Zabatan and my Zafu and bow but I had this, such a deep

[20:24]

gratitude I wanted to bow to him personally and directly with nothing in between us it didn't occur to me to step up on the Zabatan and bow I went around to the side and I bowed with my head to his knee without thinking, that's just what happened and he was sitting there but when I lifted my head he was head to head with me on the floor he had jumped up and bowed and returned that bow because he recognized I guess that it was that was maybe the most beginner's mind moment of my whole life I just did what occurred to me without any thought and he responded in that way and that was my experience of him he never allowed me to give him more respect than he gave me so he was very encouraging

[21:32]

to me when I was feeling inadequate and like a bad student but one day in a session I was feeling like hey I've got it I think I'm doing Zazen wow, so I want to tell him about it and he was very different that day, he said don't ever imagine that you can sit Zazen that's a big mistake Zazen sits Zazen so maybe that's enough of my stories now I'll get to my job of wrapping up and you know I wonder sometimes how I get to be so lucky to have had the opportunity to meet Zazen and Suzuki Roshi and my root teacher Sojin Weitzman

[22:33]

and all of the many teachers who have been teachers for me Reb, Lou Richmond, Yvonne Catherine, many, many teachers and I haven't come up with anything except just lucky I guess just aren't we lucky to have met this teaching and this person and all of these people and this whole family and so there is this enormous gratitude that wells up in me when I think of not just Suzuki Roshi but all of the people who preceded him and all of the people who succeeded him and who keep this practice going for whoever comes along who's lucky like us and just bumped into it and finds it, meets

[23:34]

where they are at this moment and there's a teacher you know this sort of standard dedication of merit that we do we translate it may our intention equally permeate every being in place there's a teacher in New York Nakashima Sensei who translates it beginning may this compassionate gift be extended to all beings and that's my deepest feeling and what I think is the legacy of Suzuki Roshi's teaching I think everyone in this room is involved in extending this compassionate gift to all beings and of course many many people who are not in this room just from this

[24:39]

lineage I tried to count up and I'm sure I left something out there are at least seventeen practice centers offering daily zazen practice and many more small groups of where there are weekly sittings available people sitting together growing out of this lineage with teachers coming from time to time to visit or maybe with teachers meeting with them every week there are at least eleven which offer sessions practice periods classes dharma talks and these are just the ones that sitting here trying to count up the ones I know

[25:40]

came to my mind there are at least eight which offer the possibility of residential practice some with one teacher and some with many teachers and I don't know actually how many students are involved in all of these practice places just at the three practice places of San Francisco Zen Center alone there are about 150 students in residence and many more who sit zazen some daily, some occasionally some two or three times a week some once a week and that's just the three that I know of I know also that Berkeley is outgrowing at Zendo and has a waiting list for sessions and I think this is happening in many places

[26:43]

as for the lineage there in in the first generation there is one teacher in this lineage in the west in the second generation there are at least seven that I can count up, most of them were student, you know, although their second generation they were long time students of Suzuki Roshi in the third generation I count at least 15 more and again many of those were long time students of Suzuki Roshi and now there are a couple in the fourth generation and there are at least to my knowledge 12 or more who are actively working toward completing their Dharma transmission so the lineage is increasing in order to help pass this compassionate gift to all beings

[27:47]

this is kind of the formal extension of this practice but for each one of us who carries this practice in our daily life into how we meet people in all of the ways in which we meet people this practice is extended to all beings I'd like to thank all of the many people who made this conference possible and all of the many people who are continuing to extend this compassionate gift to all beings I'd like to just make a additional dedication of merit which I would like

[29:00]

if we may to follow with the four bodhisattva vows and all being in the general echo of all buddhas ten directions three times with gratitude we offer the merit of our work at this conference and the effort of all who continue extending this compassionate gift to all beings may they have calm practice and live in peace and joyous harmony beings are numberless I vow to save them delusions are inexhaustible I vow to end them

[30:00]

dharma gates are boundless I vow to enter them buddhas way is unsurpassable I vow to become it all buddhas ten directions three times all beings bodhisattva mahasattvas wisdom beyond wisdom maha prajna aranita

[31:01]

bell after the ecstasy there's a laundry and it would be very helpful if we had about ten people who would stay behind and maybe meet with Richard back in that back corner to help move the chairs back and help with a little bit we have to do to clean up so thank you all for coming this weekend and may we all do it something like this again thank you applause [...]

[32:07]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ