Are there any questions? So today is meant to be more devoted towards the teaching side of Suzuki Roshi's teachings and his practice, and it was a great challenge for me to figure out how to talk about or how to present this side of Suzuki Roshi, and I went around and had a lot of thoughts about it. And at first I thought that we should invite three, four people to kind of give a 45-minute talk about what the essential teaching of Suzuki Roshi was, and then I thought, well, and I also thought, well, someone can read all those erroneous transcriptions. There's many, many pages. How many pages, Bill? A thousand. But anyway, it's a thousand. It's like a stack of papers this big of transcriptions that exist, and you can, you know, it's possible

[01:06]

to read those. And then I thought, well, someone can read them and do a thematic study and see, you know, look at all those 738 occurrences of the word enlightenment to see how, you know, what Suzuki Roshi's teachings was about enlightenment. But I decided that that wasn't so interesting, particularly, and that we would just kind of get one person's take, in a sense, and it's also a more scholarly thing to be done, and maybe that can be done later. But what the opportunity exists is, while they're still alive, is that people who study Suzuki Roshi and heard his lectures can talk to us about a little bit the context in which we received those teachings. Because to just read the transcripts and read what he had to say kind of on paper, what we lose is we lose his laughter, we lose his pauses, we lose his quality of his being. And I think that, for many people, that's kind of what often inspired people the most.

[02:09]

Like Laura Kwong said yesterday, she didn't remember even what he said at the end of his lecture, but she knew it was very deep, and she felt it, you know, felt it, it really had a profound impact on her. And this profound impact that occurred kind of parallel to the actual meaning of his teachings, the words, I think that one of the few ways we can get back to that is actually have the people who studied with him try to somehow talk about that context, and that's actually more important to preserve right now than try to go through the transcripts and pull out his understanding of enlightenment from that. So, in that spirit then, I've invited a few of the people who are in the lineage, who received dharma transmission in the lineage of Suzuki Roshi, to speak a little bit around this topic. And the first two people, I invited three people, but Ananda Dallenberg hasn't come, so regret that he doesn't seem to be here.

[03:13]

If he does come later, maybe we'll include him then. But the first will be Les Kay and Catherine Thannis, and I've asked them to talk about the qualities of Suzuki Roshi that inspired them, what are some of those qualities, aside from the meanings of his words. And again, I think they'll just talk, they know how to talk, it's what they do as profession. But it's also, I think, a special honor and privilege for me to actually introduce them because this is a generation of ... I didn't know Suzuki Roshi, and this is a generation of people that I learned my Zen practice from, and so this is a very important generation for me personally. And when I get old, then we'll have conferences about them. What I haven't asked them to talk about, which I'm actually going to put them a little bit

[04:16]

on the spot, which apparently is one of Suzuki Roshi's ways we learned yesterday, is what I'd like to ask these two and then the next three, who will speak after them after the break, is if they could ... These are people who are in some ways been entrusted with Suzuki Roshi's lineage, his way, and they've also, in receiving Dharma Transmission, I feel also have devoted themselves, dedicated themselves to carrying that way forward. And I think it would be very nice if they could try to speak a little bit about ... It could be very simply about what is it about Suzuki Roshi's way that they want to convey now that they're teachers in this lineage. So the first one I'll ... I'm not going to introduce them especially, except to say that the first one I introduce is Les Kay. Thank you, Gil.

[05:19]

Is this sound level good? Good. Thank you. I was one of the very fortunate people to have studied and listened to Suzuki Roshi in the small center here in Los Altos. Very intimate. It's a very intimate setting, as was described earlier, a relatively small group of people sitting in a place called haiku zendo, haiku being the poem that has 17 syllables, and we had 17 cushions in this converted garage, and Suzuki Roshi said, haiku zendo. Of course, when people got wind that he was there speaking, there were a lot more than 17 that showed up, so the floor was covered with these extra zabatons that we would pull out. When you read Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, you're aware that Suzuki Roshi was a genius

[06:39]

at the use of metaphor, the use of metaphor to convey the teaching and to convey the practice, and there's some really memorable metaphors in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. The one about giving your cow and your sheep a very large meadow teaches us a new way of taking care of business. Instead of obsessively trying to control things, he was very gently showing us that there's another way to do it, and that metaphor was very touching. The metaphor about the parallel railroad tracks to convey the practice of the bodhisattva, parallel tracks that go on forever, don't even look at them, just go. The wonderful metaphor about the waterfall to teach us that life and death are both quite joyous, and occasionally when I have occasion to do memorial service for someone, I often

[07:42]

quote from that piece, the waterfall. He was a genius at metaphor, I think. That's one of the reasons it makes the book so special. So I thought today I could begin by offering you a metaphor, my impression of Suzuki Roshi in metaphor. To me, Suzuki Roshi was like a fisherman, but a very unusual, very unique kind of fisherman, a fisherman on a vast water. His fishing, his way of fishing was not a contest or a challenge to win, to achieve the goal of pulling in some fish. It was just his way of being in the world. He liked to go out there on the water, quietly, and joyfully watch the fish that swim around in the great water, and he had the great delight in doing that.

[08:43]

And he was never disturbed by the changing currents of the water, and he understood the changing currents very well, and he simply watched them. So he was a very unusual fisherman in that he didn't use bait, and he didn't use hooks. He didn't do anything special to attract us, to attract people. He just didn't do that, he just put himself on the water. No hooks, no bait, and he had no idea of catching people, just put himself on the water. Baits and hooks, that was just not his way of being in the world. Most of us are in the world with our baits and our hooks, right? And he showed us that, gee, you don't have to do that to be happy and successful and to have joy in your life. You don't have to do that, he showed us another way. So his way was just to be himself in the midst of all this water and all this life in the water. And his daily activity in the water had this wonderfully playful quality.

[09:45]

That's the kind of fisherman he was, he was just playing. And he was always mindful. But despite the fact that he had no bait, and he had no hooks, we, people, were attracted to him. He didn't hold any lures out there, you know, pretty bright lures to attract us. Despite no bait and no hooks, we were very eager to jump into his boat. We wanted to hang out with him in that boat. What's in that boat? He's enjoying that boat so much, what's going on? We got to get in there with him and see what he's doing. And so we jumped in the boat. And he didn't try to keep us in the boat. He said, you know, if you want to stay with it, fine. If you want to go back, fine. It's okay with me. That's the kind of fisherman he was. And his success at fishing was better than anybody that I've ever met who was a master fly fisherman. We were always welcome to jump in or jump out of his boat, and that was why we didn't jump out.

[10:48]

My own personal experience of being with him was very difficult at first. And some of this was spoken about yesterday. I couldn't understand him. Couldn't understand him. There was the terminology, first of all. And as Utsuzuki said yesterday, Dogen Zenji. What's a dogen? What's a zenji? And he would use terminology like that. And I was just not familiar with that kind of language, and so my wife and I struggled with that. And then there was his use of English and the pronunciation. And one example was, and my wife and I continually bring this up to our friends, Suzuki Roshi always talked about the pedrics. And for the longest time we would drive home after listening, What's a pedric? Years later we discovered, we realized he's talking about the patriarchs. So we had a lot of trouble understanding him.

[11:55]

And of course we had, when he would refer to something Dogen had written and talk about it, something out of the Shogogenzu, it was difficult for us. So for the longest time, I had a lot of trouble understanding him. At the end of a lecture, like Laura, at the end of a lecture, What did he say? What was that all about? But there was something in the practice, you know. I don't know what it was. So I hung in there, despite all the difficulties. I don't know, maybe Zazen was kicking in and changing my life in some way that I wasn't aware about, or just his presence was very inspiring. I don't know what it was, but I just wanted to hang in there with him and see, What's in this boat? What's going on here? So eventually I started to understand something. Something about his attraction for me. And from a very practical and very pragmatic standpoint, very everyday standpoint, it boils down to this. He expressed the finest qualities of a human being. Everything that I admired in people,

[12:58]

and all the qualities that I would hope to have for myself. And those included such things as poise. If you look at the photographs of Suzuki Roshi, he had poise. The way he carried himself, he had poise and he had confidence. And being around him, you were just encouraged by that poise. He was patient, he was a good listener, as we all know. He was very generous. Had a wonderful sense of humor. He was courteous. In a society that was becoming less and less courteous to itself, he was very courteous to everybody. He was very gentle, of course. And he had a humility. His way of fishing was to be humble. We here in the U.S., at least I never saw his strict side that was spoken about so much yesterday. We just didn't see his strict side. Earlier, before we sat down, we were talking about how in Japan

[14:03]

maybe he used a kyo-saku a great deal. He used his stick a lot in Japan. But in America, he used a feather. Maybe that's what we needed. Maybe that's what we still need. But that's what he did. He was very gentle with us and used a feather to get our attention rather than a stick. Most of all, for me, his manner demonstrated integrity. Integrity. He brought integrity. This practice is integrity. That's what he seemed to be saying with his whole being. And that's the thing that really impacted me strongly. This man has integrity. He had a clear sense of what he was doing, of his values, and what he stood for and what he was trying to do. He never wavered. And you knew what he stood for when you were around him and you spoke to him and you listened to him. You knew what he stood for. There was no question about it. And at the same time, he never insisted or demanded that you stand for the same thing that he did. He never insisted.

[15:03]

Maybe in Japan he did. Maybe that's why he was angry in Japan. That was alluded to yesterday. He got angry when people veered away from the things that he felt were important or the things that should be expressed in practice. But he never seemed to demand that we believe and act the same way he did. He didn't seem to want or need anything for himself. And he had a wonderful sense of humor around people who didn't get it or were slow in getting it or something like that. Let me tell you a little story, a personal story. My mother, who passed away in the early 80s, she lived in San Francisco, and she and Suzuki Roshi met at the time that I had ordination in 1971. They met briefly.

[16:05]

And they had an occasion to meet a couple of times that year, very briefly, because he passed away at the end of that year. But I used to visit her in San Francisco, and they had a couple of occasions to meet. And she didn't understand him, but she liked him. One day I was visiting with him in the city center, probably around mid-year, mid-'71, and we're talking, and then it becomes about noontime, and a big bell rings. Oh, let me tell you about my mother. This is the whole point. She also had a pretty strong sense of herself. She knew what she believed, and that's the way it was. And it was pretty hard to move her off of whatever she believed in. She was quite a strong personality in that way, very strong. So one day I was with Suzuki Roshi, and the big bell rings, and he says, Oh, that's the lunch bell. Can you stay for lunch here in the city center?

[17:08]

Can you stay for lunch? And I said, Oh, no, I can't, thank you very much, but my mother lives in San Francisco, and I promised to have lunch with her today. And he jumped up from his cushion and he said, Your mother, I surrender. I surrender. So, uh... It helped me do the same. Because up until that time, I didn't really understand what it meant to treat your cow or your sheep at the largest meadow. But he jumped and he said, I surrender. I don't insist on anything. And in fact, he was saying, You do the same. And I learned just from that one moment. It was a wonderful moment. And then there was another moment for me where I began to really understand him, I thought. There was some meeting in San Francisco Zen Center.

[18:09]

I don't remember what it was. And we all went to dinner afterwards, and we were all sitting at some long tables. And it just so happens that I was sitting opposite Suzuki Roshi. And the meal was a very simple meal. And, uh... I noticed him eating his soup. And it struck me how mindful... how mindful he was in each moment. There was complete awareness in everything he was doing, with the spoon or the chopsticks or the vegetables or the soup. Everything seemed to be done so naturally and so mindfully, and I was very struck by it. And I thought, well, he probably even breathes that way, you know, with full attention on every little detail. Never careless. He was never careless in any activity. And that moment always has stayed with me. He was never careless in any activity. And I thought, well, what's the secret? How do you do that?

[19:10]

And I realized that his practice was continuous. That's when I learned that practice is continuous. There's no breaks in practice, and it's not segmented. Here's my cushion, here's my practice, and then I go do something else, and so the practice is still back there. I realized that practice is continuous. You don't break it off. When you stand up from your cushion, every activity is practice. Eating your soup is practice. Every activity is spiritual activity. I began to understand that watching him eat soup at San Francisco Zen Center. So in that way, I realized that his practice was continuous and his practice was, his whole life was timeless. His whole, because it was continuous, it was timeless. Time did not differentiate practice from something else. So I was profoundly touched by this,

[20:15]

by my awareness of how he lived and how his life, his activity, was actually spiritual practice. And I realized that this practice is really a great thing, not only for individuals, but for whole societies, for whole communities. And it seemed to me that the practice that he was expressing with his ordinariness really also emphasized the best in the American tradition, the best that America had to offer, freedom and equality, determination, self-discovery, generosity, recognizing that this country hasn't always lived up to those standards and those ideals. Nevertheless, the foundation is there. Developed a couple hundred years ago, the foundation is there. And he was expressing it. Here's this man who had come from another culture

[21:18]

and another country, halfway around the world, and he was expressing what I felt were the important values for this culture. He was expressing them. And I thought, wow, we can put these together, if we could put these together. So I decided I wanted to help in some way to marry the practice and American tradition. What a marriage that would be, I thought. It would be good for both. And in thinking about that, I thought, how do you do that? And I thought that the first requirement was not to run around lecturing about it or writing books about it or something. The first requirement was for me to have his practice. That's a tall order, for me to have his practice. So I started looking at myself, at my own practice in my own life. And I searched for my own qualities to see what they were

[22:20]

and to measure them up against him. And I started looking at who am I. And I started acknowledging my own tendencies, my own rough spots, those places where I didn't measure up to this practice that I was now becoming very familiar with or having a good feeling for, getting more and more familiar with and feeling it more. I began to see where I didn't have those qualities. And it was a real awakening because I discovered that it was the very first time in my life, and by this time I was about, maybe close to 40 years old, maybe 38, 37, 38 years old. This is the first time in my life that I'd been really honest with myself. Really honest. Up until that time I thought I was being honest with myself. Most of us do. We think we're being pretty good about that. I realized I hadn't been honest with myself until now. And that's a painful awareness.

[23:22]

You begin to look at yourself and say, gee, look at what I do here, look at what I do there. I've been doing this all along and I haven't been facing it. I've been oblivious to it. I wouldn't say I had been dishonest with myself. I would say I began to understand what's meant by delusion. And how easily the mind fools itself into thinking that it's okay and turns away from those parts of itself that it really doesn't want to know about. So I think that's the first time, because I wanted to understand how to take Suzuki Roshi's practice and bring it into America, I started to look at myself and I started to become honest with myself. And it's a very painful experience. And then I began to realize what Dogen meant. He said, to study Buddhism is to study the self. I had been looking at myself and going through the painful experience of acknowledging all the stuff. And I read Gendry Cohen. He says, to study Buddhism is to study the self.

[24:23]

And I said, well, sure. Everybody knows that. And then I realized, wait a minute. No. No, we don't. Until something happens to cause us to really be honest with ourselves. We don't do that. We don't look at ourselves normally. So Dogen says it. And it was Roshi's way that prompted me to start looking at myself honestly that way. Why did I do it? Well, I guess it's because I had now, very fortunately, had in front of me a spiritual role model. Spiritual role model in the form of Suzuki Roshi. Very fortunate that when he came to this country, he didn't go to Los Angeles or New York or St. Louis or someplace. He came here where I lived. Wow, what a break. What a break for me and for us. So maybe, maybe what I'm trying to say

[25:23]

is that the mark of a really great person is someone who moves people to change themselves without lecturing, without admonishing. He moves people to change, he or she moves people to change themselves. Encourages them to make their own discoveries about themselves. And they do it effortlessly. Just sitting there in the boat. Without direct intervention. Without direct intervention. And that requires great confidence in yourself as this person. Great confidence in yourself to not want to reach out and intervene and interfere. Great confidence in your own way. And also great confidence and trust in other people that they will make their own discoveries, they will make the effort, they will find their own way. You don't have to get in there and interfere and intervene. Just give them this wide meadow. And of course another mark of a great person

[26:26]

is someone who not only causes individuals to change but causes whole societies to change. Causes whole societies to change. And so he, Suzuki Roshi, wanted to bring this practice to America to have it influence this country. He saw a great opportunity here. So the challenge for us, I guess, as a society, the challenge for us is how to do it. How to do it, how to bring his practice here without losing the original spirit. And that's going to be a challenge because we're all going to have our own ideas about how to do it and express it in hundreds and hundreds of different ways. So we have a real challenge how to do that. But I think that was one of the marks of his greatness is the capacity to change an entire society. Each of us has been changed. Each of us has been changed by him. I know I have. How do we, can we do that?

[27:27]

Can we help make that happen in our whole society without interfering, without intervening with the same fisherman's attitude that he has? So that's, I think, what's ahead of us in the coming years. And it's a great challenge. It can be difficult and it can also be a lot of fun. So does anybody have a question? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Les. And now Catherine Dennis. Good morning.

[28:31]

Thank you, Les. I, yesterday I had a, is this the right distance? I didn't understand why I felt so much sadness, especially in the early part of the day. And then when I heard Suzuki Roshi's voice again, I realized how deeply touched I am by his voice now, still. And I felt again the quality of his life, my own feelings of not being able to fully meet him and realizing how much he brought to me

[29:37]

and how I felt I wasn't big enough to meet him. But I also felt again, I think last evening, the openness that I, that drew me and held me. When he talks, he takes it all away. He, instead of closing in and making you feel as if you should be a certain way, it was like, again, takes it away. So anything is okay, anything that you are, any funny, weird, incomplete way you are, is okay. And I think when we met him, I think this is true for all of us, when we met him, we felt so acknowledged, just that I had never been that met or that acknowledged in my life.

[30:38]

And it was so complete, there wasn't anything more I needed to prove, I think. So for me, maybe the first quality is, and I don't do this so well, is to be with people that I'm sitting with in such a way that they feel safe or acknowledged or met. With, I want to say with, what did we say, with no conditions. And in the midst of the conditions that arise for me sometimes, to give those away too, because those are maybe just conditions that make me more comfortable, and maybe the person's path is something else. One of the things that, as Les was talking, some stuff came up that I hadn't thought of. One morning at Sokoji,

[31:40]

I think it was Saturday or Sunday morning, somebody came up to him, he was standing on the steps, and said, you know, you have a big gathering here, there are a lot of, you know, Zen Center is big. And his hands came up and he said, and he went, poof! You know, and he gave it away again. He understood the cyclical nature of reality, and institutions grew and got strong, and something else happened, transformed. Again, it was like feeling, that was such a release from my, trying so hard to be perfect, trying so hard to be okay, trying so hard to understand and be good. I was one of those who was afraid of him.

[32:55]

We were talking this morning, I was with him for about five years. He, you know, awed me. And I think Yvonne and maybe Laura said this, after his passing, I, the shadow that he was, or the light, the transparent light, the radiance that he was, I could see more clearly. It's kind of funny to say this, because he had such a direct, immediate impact. But I heard one day, sometime after he died, I was walking in a field, I was very relaxed and open, it was a wonderful day, and suddenly his voice came up. And it was, whatever I was thinking of, his voice, the teaching was the correct, you know, just what I needed at that time. And I thought, oh, he's right here, I'm carrying him.

[33:59]

That was so surprising to me. Just as everyone has said, when you bowed to him and he looked at you, it was like, what just happened? I remember once seeing him on the path at Tassajara, and we bowed to each other, and we looked at each other, and it was like, what just happened? It was, I don't know whether he saw through, I didn't have the language, I thought he, you know, we had this myth that he could, we were transparent, he could see everything about us, and I, I don't know, I didn't really feel that that was always the case. You try to have a conversation sometimes, and you could, he, you know, you could really go around in circles sometimes. But people were always saying they'd go in to see him in Dokusan, I think, and they didn't have any problems anymore.

[35:03]

I've been talking in the groups that I sit with now about Suzuki Roshi in preparation for this morning, so stories have been coming up for me, and one of them I remembered, and I know we're not talking about the magic side of Suzuki Roshi, because the thing that grounded me was his, the selection that you made, Gil, about standing on your own two feet, the most important thing, and sitting on the, and sitting on your black cushion, and of course, that's the most important thing, it was for me, permission to find my own life, and how to do that, and I was interested in what Ivan said about he could only teach us his way, and then we had to figure it out, what was appropriate, and that's very helpful to hear. What did I, oh, so when I was his anja at Tassajara,

[36:13]

I had, my seat in the zendo was a little bit below, the altar was elevated a few feet, two or three feet, and my seat was the first seat in one of these middle rows, and it was a few feet from him, and I noticed one day, when I was sitting zazen, I was sitting fantastic zazen, my body straightened up, everything was clear, I'd never sat that kind of zazen, and I thought, gosh, you know, I must be, I must be capable, something like this, and then it happened again, and then sometimes I noticed it didn't happen, and it took me a while to get it, that when he wasn't in the zendo, I was sitting in my body and small mind, and when he was in the zendo, his energy was felt by my seat,

[37:19]

and I don't know how far, it was very interesting, wow, when he died, Baker Roshi asked, or asked for volunteers, or asked me and some other people, Rick Morton, I think, we went to the mortuary and sat with his coffin, it was a privilege and a pleasure to do, so I sat, we sat, his instructions were to sit in zazen, but when visitors came, people came, mourners, to relax our posture so they wouldn't feel too, you know, put off by our zazen posture, I found that sitting in that room with him in his coffin, it was just the same as being in the zendo with him, this was the third day, he died on a Saturday morning, this was Monday,

[38:19]

I spent much of the day, his energy was still strong, and I realized, gee, when Suzuki Roshi dies, he doesn't go away, he doesn't go anyplace, that was the first time I had that experience, it may have been different, days four or five or six, but on the third day, and I remember walking over and just looking at him and wondering if he was going to speak to me, I absolutely trusted him, I felt like my relationship the first time I met somebody I could absolutely trust, integrity, I was used to people talking out of two sides of their faces, he was the first person I met

[39:20]

who didn't do that, he didn't talk about people behind their back, that kind of thing, it's so important to me now with the students that I work with, to try to come into that kind of integrity, I'm so grateful to be reminded again how important people count on us to be that kind of anchor, somehow, and people, students here, I'm a little embarrassed to say, people are looking, want us, I don't think, I can't be Suzuki Roshi, but the quality of openness and giving it away and accepting people in the way in which they truly are, not how I would like them to be, that's something to grow into, and I guess both Laura and Yvonne said

[40:24]

it takes some years to grow into that, and I think for me it has taken needing the responsibility of my own groups, my own sitting situation outside of the institution, to have to take that responsibility and to have to find for myself what I know and what I can do, and so I feel strongly and want to encourage people to take that responsibility on themselves, I think that's so important as a way of finding out who you are, just as Les had the opportunity and now others are doing. He was completely thorough, Les talked about it, care and thoroughness, I've been noticing that I always, when I, a matchbook, when I open it to light a match, I always close it again,

[41:24]

make sure it's tucked back in, and he taught me to do that, I guess he taught all of us to do it, it seems little, but complete, completing it, put the match cover back. The first practice period I did at Tassajara, he taught the Lotus Sutra, I think these lectures were the middle of the day, I can't remember, no, that was maybe the summer, anyway, the Lotus Sutra is a fairly large volume, he got through page 11, I think, through the three-month period, he would come to lecture with dictionaries, various dictionaries, he had, he had texts, and he would, and the first few pages of the Lotus Sutra are sort of like the telephone director, you're reading all of these,

[42:25]

are these Sanskrit names, just one name after another, and he went through all of that, it was just, he wasn't going anyplace, he wasn't in a hurry to, he just was right with each page, each line, each word, it was just an astonishing experience of presence, and nothing more important than what was right here, now, because each thing, it was like each word, each sound, was the whole universe, you didn't have to go on to the next one to make it more complete, find it all here. Once, at Tassajara, we were, we all got summoned to line up, and we all lined up,

[43:29]

So we can take a break now, for 25 minutes, and in 20 minutes, we'll ring the bell for people to come back. Thank you.

[43:47]

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