This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. I'd like to introduce our guest speaker this morning, Tim Burkett. Tim met Suzuki Roshi, our founder, when he was a 20-year-old student at Stanford in 1964 and began practicing with him. And he's here today to celebrate the publication of his new book, Nothing Holy About It, The Zen of Just Being Who You Are, which includes some stories about practicing with Suzuki Roshi. His former work life, he was the CEO of a non-profit in Minnesota that helped the mentally impaired and drug-dependent or chemical-dependent people.

[01:15]

And he's a psychologist. And Dharmair of Norman Fisher, and the guiding teacher of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, which is in our village. So thank you for coming. Very welcome. Hi. Hi. A little larger group than when we practiced up the street. A little bit larger. I just want to correct one thing. I'm not Norman Fisher's Dharma heir. He did write a beautiful forward to my book, but I'm in the Katagiri Roshi lineage. Katagiri came to Minnesota just after I did. And actually, Karen Suna is the one who... gave me transmission. So just a factual. But other than that, it was a very beautiful introduction. And I'm so happy to be here. So yesterday, I walked over to Sukhoji, where we used to practice.

[02:22]

Of course, it's no longer Sukhoji, but it's just up Laguna Street, where I practiced. I moved between Sacoji on Laguna and Bush and Tassajara and Palo Alto. Suzuki wanted to start a group in Palo Alto, he said to me one day, late 1964. See, that makes me really old, doesn't it? I must be really wise, right? Because you... the Japanese and the Chinese equate age with wisdom. I know Americans don't, but that's what we want, right? So I went over there yesterday, and it reminded me, I looked in, and Wanda, the editor of my book, and my own Darmier, who's back there someplace, Wanda, are you here? Oh, okay. She took my picture in front of the old Jewish synagogue we used to practice in.

[03:27]

It doesn't look like a Jewish synagogue anymore at all. And we talked to the guy across the street where I used to live, and he's selling a little second floor place I rented for like 75 bucks a month for a million dollars. Ooh, that's San Francisco, I guess, huh? This book, as Rosalie said, is a combination of vignettes from my experience with my teachers, specifically, mostly Suzuki, but also Katagiri and Chino Sensei, or Chino Roshi, who were all my teachers, and my teaching over the years, as a teacher myself. And it includes the stories that I've woven into my teaching. It's good to have these stories to enrich our teaching. And our teaching's not too boring.

[04:28]

Sometimes it can get boring anyway. We have to think up new stories. So this book is about my journey, beginning when I was 20 at Stanford. And it's also about how Zen teaching and how Zen practice can really transform our lives, any of our lives, anybody. All of us. All of us. So the first story I want to tell, which I think is in the book, but I don't know where it is. It might not be in the book. So yesterday we went over to Sukhoji, to the ex-temple over there, and I looked into where the big auditorium was. Because there was a big auditorium in there, we sat on the second floor. And generally at a sitting there would be about eight of us. Sensei, we call them, and about eight of us. But then on Saturday nights, Suzuki went to the movies. Because in the big auditorium there, they had Japanese grade D movies, I would say.

[05:33]

You know, Samurai, Shoot'em Up, Blood and Thunder movies. And he went every night, every Saturday night, to the movies. And it was part of his obligation to the Japanese people to join in their activities. And this was one of their activities. But I would never do that. Those movies were yucky. I went over to North Beach to see the really, really heartfelt, moving, artistic movies. So once I was having some problems with my practice, you know, you'll always have problems with your practice. It doesn't matter. But those problems can be opportunities. They really can. each one. So I was having a lot of problems. It seemed like in my sitting I had been really good for a while and then something happened in my life and all sorts of stuff was coming up. All kinds of memories and fears and I was repeating them over and over again and they wouldn't stop and I was projecting them into the future.

[06:41]

I was rehearsing how I wanted to be different. So I was having a really hard time. And this was on a Sunday that I ran into Suzuki, and I didn't say to him anything about what was going on with me. I said, did you go to the movie last night? He said, oh, yes. He said, I go to all of them. I said, oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you have to sit through those, but that's part of your job, I think. He said, I like them all. I like them all. So, can you do this? Can you like all these movies? Can you just be with them? Just be with them as they are. Don't challenge them. Don't judge them. Just let them do their dance, do their color. If the samurais are going to kill each other, let the samurais kill each other. Just open your heart in stillness to them.

[07:42]

Just be with them. And what happens? They're just movies. They're just movies. And you really will find that you like them all. You really will find that. This is not some high teaching. This is true from your heart. You'll find this. You'll find this. In your heart, you'll find it. So that helped me. That helped me. Now, I always tell Wanda, where's Wanda? I always say, oh, he just did these things coincidentally. It had nothing to do with me. But she says, oh, well, he knew what he was doing. He knew what he was doing. Well, me, I don't know. As a teacher, I don't feel like I know what I'm doing. But that's okay. I do it anyway. I do it anyway. Maybe he didn't know on a conscious level, but if we go deep, we know how to be in the world. even though our consciousness doesn't know, we know. We. Not little Tim, but we.

[08:44]

We. We know. We know. Because we know stillness. We know that nature, that joyous stillness. So, now I want to read a story. And this story could be called... It's called, in the book... It's called Too Much Emptiness, A Cup of Tea, but it could also be called Too Much Stillness, A Cup of Tea. After an eight-week retreat at our monastery in Carmel Valley, which was named Tassajara Zen Monastery, anybody ever heard of that? I was just there yesterday. I was just there yesterday giving a slight variation of this talk. It would be boring if I did the same thing over and over again. The mind gets bored so easily, doesn't it? But we can just watch that. We can just be with it. We don't need to judge it. It's just what's happening, right?

[09:48]

After an eight-week retreat at our monastery in Carmel Valley, I returned to San Francisco and immediately took a bus to the D. Young Museum. In those days, the D. Young Museum had the best collection of Asian art in the country. It was really wonderful. And I know it doesn't have that anymore. There's some other museum. But in those days, it was the place to go. I just loved it. I took the bus to the Diyan Museum. I was still in the afterglow of a long retreat. In a meditative state, I walked through the museum, slowly, soaking it all in as I made my way to the Asian section. When I came to the first Buddha statue, I stopped. Or rather, I was stopped by it, captivated by the peaceful expression that seemed to mirror what I was feeling inside. I felt an incredible stillness emanating from it. When I looked into the Buddha's eyes, there seemed to be opened to pure space.

[10:50]

I felt as if I were teetering on the edge of something. Instinctively, I turned away. But just a few feet away, there was another statue. Its eyes were also like deep holes into no-thingness. Infinitely vacant eyes were everywhere. I was overwhelmed and by now completely disoriented. With difficulty, I managed to get back to the bus. Still disoriented, I headed straight to the Zen Center. I stumbled up the stairs and plopped down on the couch in Suzuki's office. He greeted me in a friendly but mildly concerned manner. and then asked what was going on. I told him about the statues. The spaciousness emanating from their eyes had pierced me to my core. There were no thoughts bubbling up in my mind. My body felt awkward, unable to adjust to the sudden shift. Which statues? Suzuki asked, which seemed totally irrelevant.

[11:54]

But I told him where I had been in the museum and described the statues I saw there. Let's have a cup of tea, he said. That's the end of the story. So I sat and drank tea with him. I don't remember any conversation. And then I went home and went to bed and got up and went to Zaza. And I was fine. I was fine. We think we want to let go of our small selves. We think we want deep silence. But when it comes, when it comes and we let go of everything we know, We let go of everything we've learned. We let go of all our words and all our expectations. Sometimes it's more, really more than we want. It's more than we want, and it can be scary. So my teacher was just grounding me in the physical by just being there with me, just having a cup of tea with me, just saying nothing but just be here, just be here, whatever. So...

[12:56]

Somehow that rubbed off on me. As this, I'm sure, is rubbing off on you, this practice. It just rubs off. Often it doesn't seem like it. It's taking, but it is. If you're doing the practice sincerely, it is. It's taking. It's taking. So the next part I want to read is living beyond the fear body. If we do this practice, we begin to see the fear body and see how we're really, we think we want deep silence, but we don't. It's too much for us. Our little selves are always yammering, always worrying. Do we really want to let go of that little self? It's your secure point. Can you let go of that secure point and just come back to this, whatever it is? Are you ready to do that? That's what my teacher taught me how to do that. Well, I was saying very much. By how he was, not by what he said, right? he was.

[13:57]

Once as I was driving Suzuki home after our Palo Alto sitting group, my teacher wanted me to start a sitting group in Palo Alto since I went to Stanford. And that's the origin of the Los Altos sitting group. And I was in my beginners and I heard him give those talks as a young man. Anyway, he wanted me to start this little group in Palo Alto. It was tiny. And I drove him home. back to San Francisco. Once, as I was driving Suzuki home after our Palo Alto sitting group, he asked if I would take him to an area in Hillsboro. He wanted to visit a woman who contacted him about Buddhism. He had never met this woman. He had never met this woman. He had never met this woman, but he felt he should go visit her.

[15:02]

Well, I wasn't too happy about it because I was supposed to be in class, but I did it anyway. Actually, I was happy about it. I was. His directions weren't good. We drove around for some time before we found the house. It was on a large, spacious estate in a wealthy suburb. Suzuki said, you stay here. I'll go up. So I waited. But after only about five minutes, he came back. How'd it go? I asked. Very interesting, he said. But not the woman I thought. Wrong woman. Then he started to laugh. She thought I'd dare to wash her windows. He exclaimed with delight. But I didn't bring my squeegee. It was easy to see how he'd made the mistake.

[16:04]

A Japanese man dressed in a simple black jacket and baggy black pants. This was 1965. Hardly anybody here remembers 1965, but I remember. I grew up in Palo Alto, and the only Japanese I ever saw before I met Suzuki Roshi, we either cleaned our house or were gardeners or... move the garbage because the Japanese during World War II had all been sent to relocation camps. They'd lost everything. They'd lost everything. It's an infamous part of California history and American history that we did that to them. So she thought it was natural for her to think that. Natural to think that about him. I say in my book, even 20 years later, the only Japanese folks I saw in the Bay Area were laborers except for Suzuki. So when Suzuki went to the wrong house, it's sad but understandable that the woman thought he was there to wash her windows.

[17:09]

The fear body feels demeaned by this kind of thing because it's always concerned about having a place in the world, what others think of you, what you think of yourself. But We can move through the fear of body and live beyond it. We can't bypass it. Spiritual bypassing doesn't work. It doesn't work, but we can see it and see through it and see beyond it. He lived beyond the fear of body. He could accommodate himself to his environment without getting caught by it because he was bigger than his environment. We're big. We're huge. We're huge, but it's not solid. It's open. It's open. It was more as if he had pulled a practical joke on her. So for the next year, he kept mentioning to me, he didn't know where his squeegee was.

[18:11]

Maybe he should go back to that woman's house. Did I know where she lived? I had no idea where she lived or even who she was. So it was like he'd spread this great joke on her. So we can develop this resilience. You will. Through your practice, you'll develop this resilience. You will. That's my promise to you. I promise that to you because I'm just nothing. I'm nobody. I screwed everything up. And look at me. I'm still screwing everything up. Look at me. You can do it. You will. You will. So the next... So living beyond the fear body, then we just see the movie. We're not captivated by it. We're not captivated by it. So the next little vignette that I want to read is about desire, because it's desire that makes us cling to different parts of the movie, want the movie to be different, want it to go a certain way.

[19:15]

Only the artful movies do we want to see. We don't see blood and thunder, but we're always getting blood and thunder in here. So let's make peace with it. Let's come back and just be still with it. Just be still with it. Okay? This one, remember adolescence? This is from my own adolescence. Any of us who teach the Dharma, we just teach from our own experience. Remember falling in love for the first time or even the second time, being in that semi-conscious, dreamy la-la land. I used to drive around my girlfriend's house at night when she was in with her parents. I would just drive around the block. That was my kin-hin. Just driving around the block, driving around the block, driving around the block. I didn't know much about kin-hin then, but I was in kind of a trance.

[20:15]

My own kin-hin, right? Instead of the big kin-hin. But the little kin-hin is okay, too. We sometimes get in trances. It's okay, too. That's part of the big kin-hin, the little kin-hin. It's okay. We do that. We get in a trance of desire sometimes. All of us. When we meet someone we're attracted to, even their faults are appealing. Suzuki Roshi, his faults were very appealing to me, because I wasn't attracted to them. They're still very appealing to me. And often, if we overdo this, if we deify the teacher, as I did Suzuki, well, sometimes we're not seeing the person. Sometimes we're only seeing our desire. Right? Sometimes we're not seeing the person. Katagiri Roshi, who was my second teacher, used to come here, and when he would come back, just after Suzuki died and then for a while after that, he'd come here and he'd come back and he said, Suzuki's picture is getting bigger and bigger in San Francisco.

[21:20]

They started with just one little picture, and now they're building a big statue, and now they're building a hall, which is wonderful, but we need to sort of be careful. This is the deity. Let's take care of this deity. This is our deity. We're lucky to have gotten this deity right here. And he's inspiring us about how to manifest this deity that we are, don't you think? To manifest it. Often in meditation we are besieged by desire. One desire after another they cycle through our mind endlessly. We're alone with them with nothing to distract us and no way to fulfill them. We can only look at the endless parade of desires. If you sit in meditation with devotion, you will have to see and endure your desires. Anybody notice that? Anybody notice that yet? If you haven't, well, I'm inviting you to the party. I'm inviting you. After a while, we realize how irrelevant the object of desire is.

[22:25]

It's desire itself that perpetuates our suffering. We use desire to cover up all sorts of difficult emotions. If we're insecure, we set goals that prove our self-worth. We use goal setting to cover deep hurts or painful memories. Avoiding difficult emotions perpetuates them. The cycle repeats itself with even more intensity. Can we accept our desires graciously? Can we do that? We can, don't you think? When we sit on our cushion and see one desire after another, and feel how consuming each is, maybe we can remind ourselves it's just a movie, just a movie. If we remain on our cushion, graciously we're accepting them, even if we aren't. We're not. We are. We are, just by sitting there, just by letting the movie pass. It may not feel gracious on the inside. I know it doesn't, often. But when the bell rings, and then the desire is all of a sudden, it's gone. When the bell rings,

[23:26]

we recognize how little that desire actually means to us. Right? Do you recognize that? When the bell rings, it goes, ah! Often it was just this temporary distraction from the pain or boredom that was coming up, our desire. Developing this gracious attitude is what sin practice is about, I think. I think it's about anything. And this is the beginning of our liberation. but not big fancy liberation, just opening to this and taking care of this, being part of it, enjoying it. That's all. And we learn to carry our desires lightly as Zen practitioners, like butterflies alighting on our shoulders. Sometimes a monarch butterfly, sometimes a swallowtail butterfly, sometimes just a cabbage butterfly, sometimes a yucky moth. But that yucky moth is beautiful. It may make you anxious, but just look at its wings spinning.

[24:28]

Look at its fluttering. Feel its confusion as it's going toward the light and it thinks you're the light. Feel that in your heart. It's confusion. When it flies off, another one will come. I noticed that this morning in my zaza. Another one coming. Oh, what a surprise. Here's another one. But if we don't get clingy or judgmental, no problem. It's just here. It's just here. We welcome it. It's just here. So if you learn nothing from Zen practice, I think you can learn to carry your desires lightly. I think you can learn to enjoy all the movies. Or maybe 93.2% of the movies. I'm just making that up. Because there'll still be some movies you want to get away from. But if you breathe into them, if you really practice into them and through them, they're nothing.

[25:29]

They're just nothing. Because they're no thing. Because they're the universe unfolding itself right in your head. Right? Right in your head. Lucky you. Lucky you. So the next one is going to be Bob Dylan, because I have to do Bob Dylan because he was my second teacher. He was my number two man back then, before a lot of you were born. But some of you know him. Well, I think he's kind of legendary. He's gotten really large, too, like Suzuki Roshi has. If you read about his early life, he won't be so large for you anymore. Well, I won't get into that. This was about the time Bob Dylan came out with his album, Bringing It All Back Home. Four lines from two verses in the song, love minus zero, no limit, became my mantra. And we didn't have mantras back then.

[26:32]

But sometimes you need a phrase to help you. You need a gata. You need something to put on your refrigerator to help you. Suzuki never told me about that, but I did it anyway. And now more and more people are doing it. Good, good. So my mantra was, my love, she speaks like silence, without ideals or violence. She knows there's no success like failure, and failure is no success at all. Oh, a few of you, a few of you are repeating the mantra with me as I talk to you. The first line. My love, she speaks like silence, was about my teacher. It was about my teacher. Sensei seemed to speak like silence. Silence went with him wherever he went. Silence is already going with you wherever you go. It's just because you're all caught up in the movie, trying to diss part of it and get away from it, that you don't experience this, but it's always here.

[27:34]

Anyway, he seemed to speak like silence. It wasn't a rigid, heavy, reverent kind of silence. It was light and spacious. A brilliant silence. An ordinary silence. No big deal. It's here, just that little space between these thousand thoughts. That's your great awakening. It's always here, that little space. It's always here. This small is timelessness. This small is all life. Right? I was romanced by that silence. I sensed something wonderful in it, and I was drawn to it. I'm still romanced by that silence, but not by the silence of any one person, by the silence that's present in all beings, as all beings. After almost 50 years, now it's been 51 years, I think, since Wanda started writing this book, I'm still awed by the great silence.

[28:40]

I'm still awed by it. Wow, so wonderful to be here with you. I was just, when I walked in the door, I just felt something wonderful. It's not created. It's not created. You've created all this wonderful environment so that we can return to the uncreated, so that we can return and hold hands in the uncreated, creating something out of the uncreated, which you have done here. You are doing here. It's never over. It's never over. Always the opportunity. Always. Without ideals or violence. One reason practice became so hard for me was that I had an ideal that I was clinging to. My ideal was that I should do Zen practice with grace. But I was stumbling through it, just like I did this morning, with no grace at all. Ideals are frequently about should and shouldn't. And we need ideals.

[29:41]

but they have nothing to do with what's actually going on. Too often they provoke violent thoughts, don't they? We cling to what we should be, and we miss this, and there's a violent dissonance between what we should be and what we are, and we overlook our sins. Just showing up each morning and evening was all I needed to do. We sat twice a day at Sukhoji in those days. I didn't need to... compare my Zen practice with some ideal, the more rigidly idealistically we are, the more violent we become on the inside. A couple more. The next one is from the chapter, Suzuki Roshi's Counterculture. I think many of you already know this story, but that doesn't matter.

[30:43]

Use your beginner's mind and enjoy it as if you heard it for the first time. It will be for the first time because it's never been told this way, right? Isn't that right? Eight hundred years after Dogen, Suzuki Roshi breathed life into Buddha's original counterculture. You guys have studied Buddhism. You know that Buddha did a counterculture in India. I've been to India, and there's still, although they say there's no, and my daughter-in-law is Indian, there's no caste system. There's still a huge caste system. And as my daughter-in-law was telling me, it's not six castes, it's like 19 castes, and it's all based, it has a lot, well, I won't get into that. But Buddha, he was a radical, and yet he didn't get in trouble because he was resilient. He challenged without challenging. He challenged the whole caste system by ordaining, accepting, loving, embracing everyone. But he didn't make a political statement about it. And I'm not saying it's not bad. You shouldn't make a political statement.

[31:46]

Make a political statement. That's important, too. But he didn't. He just showed a different way of being, a counterculture way of being, where you include all beings and you love them all equally with your heart and mind, right? Yeah. And then the Chinese Zen. Chinese Zen was a counterculture. And I don't know how much time I have left. How much time do I have left? Pardon? Ten minutes. Well, there was a counter... Zen started as a counterculture in China. And then Dogen really didn't like the Buddhism in Japan. He thought it was stultifying. He thought it was rigid. He thought, well, you can read it. That's why he went to China. And then he brought a counterculture back. It was just him. But he tried to... And he did. He did. Well, Suzuki felt the same way. So anyway, everything Suzuki Roshi did seemed to arise from the ground of his being.

[32:49]

The same ground as Buddha in India, Bodhidharma in Hanshan in China, and Dogen in India. Japan. Like Dogen, Suzuki felt that Buddhism in Japan had taken on a corpus of fear. He actually talked to me about this, only he didn't use the word corpus. He probably would have had to go look that word up. He came to America seeking an anicle of fresh ground to cultivate. He found it, but he didn't exactly find what he was expecting. He discovered a wellspring, but it was unlike anything he could have imagined. On November 13, 1967, to raise money to buy Tassajara, we organized a Zenefit held in the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. The concert featured performances by the Grateful Dead, the Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Janis Joplin, artists who have since become legendary. And after I gave my first talk on this book, someone sent me online the poster.

[33:54]

from our Xenefit in 1967. And the poster mentioned this big Xenefit that was coming up with the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother and the Holding Company, but it didn't mention Janice Joplin. And I thought, well, what's the deal there? And my friend said, oh, well, she was just a member of the Big Brother and the Holding Company. She was just a member. And so she hadn't risen to star prominence yet. But I also, when I... At the same time, I worked in the downtown post office. It was down on Market Street then. I worked in the basement as a mail handler. And two of the guys I worked with were in love with Janice. I mean, they'd never met her, but they were just deeply in love with her. Deeply in love with her. Anyway... I didn't usually go to the Haight-Ashbury, but I don't even know if the Avalon Ballroom is in the Haight-Ashbury, but that's what I said before. I didn't usually go to the Haight-Ashbury because it wasn't my scene, but I went to the Zenifed.

[34:57]

I was one of the people who organized it. I had to go to the Zenifed. But I just had a little role. I just had to do work. Manual labor, right? The Zen of manual labor. Anybody ever heard of that or tried that? I got a lot of stories about Suzuki. I better not tell them because I don't have time, but about not having time. I will tell a story. It'll only take two minutes. So we had this group in Palo Alto that I started that he wanted me to start. We only had like four or five people come the first few weeks. And afterwards, he rolled up his sleeves and he started cleaning the place and washing the dishes. And And he didn't do it in a paternalistic way. He didn't do it in a judgmental way. He did it in a great way, you know? Let's help, let's help. And I said to him, well, Suzuki, I didn't say Suzuki. I probably said, Sensei, we have to go to class. We're Stanford students. He didn't realize that going to Stanford was a big deal, right?

[36:00]

Big deal, supposedly. Supposedly, till you're there, right? Things are a big deal till we're there. Then they're just, oh. I want to be somewhere else. I want to have another movie. This movie is too boring, right? Different kind of butterfly. Anyway, I said, we have to go to class. And he said, oh, okay, go to class. Next week we'll start a half hour early to do our work. I said, but we're already getting up at 5.15. He said, that's okay. That's okay. He said, I'll come down. I'll be here to work with you. What was my choice? What choice did I have? Roll up my sleeves. Follow my teacher. Wonderful. Just one sweep of the mop. All beings are here. Delightful. Aren't we lucky? Aren't we lucky? We didn't even do anything to deserve this.

[37:02]

Forget karma. We just got it all. Sometimes we hurt people and then we have to That's another story. But I'm running out of time. Okay. The auditorium was full. Light effects emanated from strobe lights and lasers mounted throughout the theater. Pungent odors filled the air. Anybody have any idea about what those odors might have been like? People were dressed or undressed in an amazing variety of regalia. And the huge sounds of 60s rock boomed from the stage. Katagiri Sensei, my second teacher, had been in the United States for only two years at the time. He was reserved, quiet, and a very gentle presence. I remember seeing him standing anxiously in the shadows, half hidden and looking quite out of sorts, and unsettled in that crazy environment. He looked as if he wanted to run away.

[38:02]

I'm sure he did. I'm sure he did. Suzuki had already been here in San Francisco for about nine years, I think, so he'd been with us. He had kind of gotten used to us, and also he had done this resiliency practice for many more years than Katagiri. Katagiri was just in his early 30s at the time. Resiliency practice takes a while, you guys. It takes a while. And on the way, you feel less resilient rather than more. You do. You do. You feel rotten because you're up against the fear of body. Who wants to be up against the fear of body? But here it is. Here it is. Sooner or later, you feel like you don't have to be against it. You can see through it. You can see for miles and miles and miles. Right? You can. He sat in the front of the roll of the theater with lights flashing on him from all directions.

[39:07]

What a memorable sight. I could see his bald head like I can see Ed's. I was sitting like a few feet from him and I could see a light show on his head. It was cool. It was cool. His head was even more shiny than yours, Ed. You should shine yours up so your students can watch the light show. Surrounded by utter chaos, he was completely relaxed and seemed totally in his element. He was looking around, smiling, taking it all in. I think he was grooving on the whole thing. Finally, the last performer, the amazing blues singer Janis Joplin, took the stage. She gave it her all. Talk about shedding the fear of body. In front of a thousand people, she bared her heart and soul in a classic Janis performance. Then it was time for Suzuki to say something to the crowd. The auditorium grew silent as he crossed the microphone. When he spoke, his voice was calm and warm.

[40:10]

At first, I think your way very different from ours. But now I see, not so different, not so different. The crowd roared, and the women danced, and the guys did too, in their dress and undress. Suzuki was touched by Janice's ability to shed her fear body and give her whole heart to others. People responded to her in a visceral way, like my friends in the post office. Janice imbibed the music. It seemed to come from the ground of her being. But she didn't have a practice that cultivated resiliency. She could bare her soul on stage in front of people, but privately her life was tragic. Less than three years after the Zenithet, she was dead. Now I'm going to read one more. One more. Quick short vignette.

[41:13]

Not longer after I had my first enlightenment experience at Tassahara, I went in for Dokusan with Suzuki. He looked at my shoes strewn by the door where I had kicked them off. They were dirty and disheveled. His were tidy and placed carefully side by side. I say here, I had never noticed that before, but I don't think I could have been that dense. Wanda said that I was that dense. I don't know, maybe I am. And so Suzuki said to me, now that you are so-called enlightened, it's time to take care of those. Ooh. I wasn't interested in my shoes. Zen was an opportunity to transcend the physical, to experience something beyond ordinary. I was often frustrated by Suzuki's reluctance to give us the real stuff. What did my shoes have to do with emptiness?

[42:16]

What did my shoes have to do with spaciousness? Skipping to the very end now. Today, we stay connected with the world through what we do, not what we think, not who we are. Suzuki Roshi said, there are no enlightened people. There is only enlightened activity. Very important. Very important. Then you're not trying to get something. You're just being in this activity. Then all people are enlightened just in doing this activity together. Today, people frequently come to Doxan with me to talk about their ideas about Zen. I don't want to be rude, so I listen, but I'm not very interested in that. The bigger question is, what are you going to do, and how are you going to live? Life as a human being is very short, getting shorter and shorter.

[43:17]

I'm noticing that. But it's always very short. We don't have much time on this earth to do the things we really care about. to be the person who we are and who we really want to be, we're very short. So what are we going to do? When Ram Dass asked his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, how can I be enlightened? Baba answered, love people, feed people, love people. Later Ram Dass went back again and asked, but what's the best path to awakening? Baba said, feed people, love people, feed people. So Ram Dass, as many of you know, I saw Ram Dass when he was still Richard Alpert at Stanford. He came to talk to us about LSD. Then I saw him when he was first Ram Dass. Well, I've seen him a lot of times, but I don't have time to talk about that. So Ram Dass worked to help us establish a community, you remember that, based on Baba's teachings in the United States. Those of you who are older remember that. But he went back to India because he totally failed.

[44:18]

He'd totally blown it. The whole thing was not working. So he went back to Baba and asked, Well, what's the best technique for establishing community, Baba? Baba said, love people, feed people, love people. So to forget the self, that's forgetting the self, and we do that. To study Buddhism, and that means to study the self, not intellectually, but just look at it, look at the fear of body, look at the butterflies, look at the movies, in your kind, open heart. Study the self, and then you forget it. And then you're intimate. with everything. At the moment you do this, the moment you study, you're already intimate with everything because you open your heart and you settle right here. So I think that's all I want to say for this morning. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive.

[45:18]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[45:32]

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