That was a change in him, or as I was working with the precepts more closely, I began to have that as a kind of lens through which I could observe him. He had a capacity for extraordinary patience for all of us who showed up to practice with him. which, you know, initially was a pretty ragtag, you know, a lot of people from the Art Institute, a lot of artists. And then once Tassajara started, hippies would show up with everything they owned in their backpack and say, I'm here. What do I do next? I want to go to Tassajara. And that was a huge shift for him. Even though he wasn't opening the front door, I was. But the impact was significant with him.

[01:02]

But I think that because he had a sense that he, at some level, wasn't going to live, it was clear he wasn't going to live forever, and maybe he wasn't even going to live as long as he hoped he would. So there was a way in which he was not tougher with himself, but... What I observed was he just became more strict. The one area of exception, he said, I remember this was after Zen Center moved to the Page Street building. He said, don't talk to me about sex. I don't have a clue what you guys are doing. I don't get it, and I am no help to you. Just don't talk. talk to me about it. And I thought that was very astute of him.

[02:03]

I mean, it was just, it didn't make any sense to him, but I don't think it made any sense what we were doing anyway. You know, we'd have a sashim, and then everybody'd go out and party like crazy and burn off all that energy that was cultivated during the Sashin with this big blast, you know, and go to the Finnish bathhouse and carry on. I'm, of course, not speaking of myself. I just broke a precept, but that's all right. Well, you know, I lived in this watershed for 33 years, including when I lived in the house we lived in Muir Beach.

[03:54]

Across... highway one from the banducci ranch and uh i got to be quite good friends with the banducci's and they were very kind to let me go walking on because they had that wonderful long level road and i could walk and sort of see what they were up to and what how was it affecting the creek and you know being a busy body that was a great treat a great treat anyway you're living in a great place Oh, well, I'll take you up on it. I'd like to do that. Yeah, thank you. Yes, whoever that is. Hi. Oh, yeah, hi. Well, that's a trust ball. Now what? But I don't know so much what Mike would like with her as a woman

[06:13]

Yeah, oh, thank you. I don't know if I know so much either, but I knew both of them when I came to Zen Center. In 1964, Trudy and Mike Dixon were very friendly with each other. And Trudy was doing, was involved in, I think she just began to be involved in the book. It was in the beginner's mind in editing that book, which was a big job. And she was getting more and more ill throughout that whole process.

[07:19]

So I didn't see her so much throughout that process. I saw Mike a lot, but Trudy, I didn't see so much. So she was working with Richard Baker, and she was working with Suzuki Roshi, and she wasn't so much in the public eye at that time. I don't know if Yvonne may know more, or Lou, I don't know if you... I think by the time Trudy began to be really sick, she didn't have much contact with the community of people practicing with Suzuki Roshi, except for a few of us who had known her before she got so sick. And there were a few of us who would go and see her on a regular basis after she was basically in bed. And one of the visits when I went to see her in their house in Mill Valley, she gave me a stone that I still have, you know, a big stone with two holes in it

[08:37]

so that depending on how it's set in the garden, it catches rain and then the birds come and drink out of it and then it disappears. And having that stone, I think of Trudy every time I look at it, but I also think of Trudy every time I pick up Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Some of you who were at Zen Center yesterday afternoon may have seen the yucca leaf that I have that Suzuki Roshi pounded to make into a sumi brush when he did the calligraphy that's on the cover of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. So Suzuki Roshi and Trudy are bound up for me together with the brush and the stone. And it's so interesting to have that kind of sense of connection with those seemingly inanimate objects. She had, even when she was very ill, towards the end of her life, she had a kind of glow about her.

[09:42]

She was fearless. That is, without fear. And a great gentleness of mine. I mean, she really was like the bloom of a long-time practitioner with Suzuki Roshi. Ed? Yeah, why don't you come up and use the microphone? I mean, excuse me, that was a why question. I'd like you to come up and use the microphone. Thank you. Hi. So, I'm Ed Trudy. when I came to Zen Center in 65. And Trudy was a very, well, bright spirit.

[10:49]

Yesterday at the Page Street, I was in the room that was Suzuki Rishi's doksan room. There's a photograph of Trudy there on the altar, on the mantle. And then, you know, it's at the left. And then on the right is the photographs of all the abbots of Zen Center. Yes. Oh, thank you. It's great to see her. Also, two weeks ago I was at Tassajara, and I walked up to the ashes site, and you know, there's his ashes there. And as you face his, there's to the right, there's space for Kadagiroshi's ashes. And then to the left, there's Trudy's ashes. I put the stone there. And the stones where Trudy's ashes are, I worked on the walls at the ashes site. And so I helped place the stone there for Trudy.

[11:51]

And I think I helped place the stone for Kadagiroshi. I can't remember for sure, but I know I did. Trudy's... I can't remember. Anyway... In the zendo at Tassajara, the old zendo that is now the student Eden area, there's people we sat across from each other. There was a partition down the middle of the room, and then some people faced the wall, some people faced the partition. And we, of course, bow to our cushion and then turn and bow away from our cushion. Trudy's the only person I know who, although she's facing the wall, would return your bow. I don't know how she did that. Because the idea usually is that when the person sitting next to you down the row, when you bow, you're bowing to the person sitting next down the row, and that person will return your bow. But they can see out of the corner of their eye. I don't know how she did that. Because then you turn and bow the other way, and then she's sitting facing the wall, and she'd return your bow consistently.

[13:00]

I guess. Anyway, Trudy has a very special place in my heart because after I'd been working in the kitchen for a year and a half or so, there was a big kitchen rebellion and people said, we don't want to work with you anymore. You're too bossy, short-tempered, mean, arrogant, and you run everything. You tell us always what to do. You don't let us do anything for ourselves. And there was a big meeting with the director. And one woman said, you treat us just like you do the bread. And then she said, no, actually you treat the bread very lovingly. And you don't treat us like that. You treat us worse than you treat the bread. Anyway, finally the director said, so Ed, do you want to change the way you work or would you like another job? I said, well, I changed the way I work, but I don't know how to do that.

[14:03]

And he said, well, you can have a little while. to see. So I went outside and I was sitting on the steps out there, the main steps coming down straight from the gate and then down the steps to what's now the student eating area, and I was sitting there crying on the steps. I'd done as well as I could, the best I could. I was only 22. And to run a kitchen, you know, serving 100 people, six meals a day, two different diets. And I didn't know what I was doing. But I'd done the best I could. And I didn't know what to do. And Trudy came along. She asked me, you know, what's happening? And she stopped. And I was so touched that she would stop. As you heard, she had cancer, as you said. And for me, she was such a beautiful person.

[15:11]

So I said what was going on and that I didn't know what to do. And she said, I believe in you. I believe in you. And I said, I don't see how you can. I don't see any reason to believe in me. I don't see any reason to believe in me. And she said, I believe in you. That's like Suzuki Rishi too. And like Mel said this morning, because Suzuki Rishi believed in us, you know, And he wasn't doing anything. We created Sin Center. If there's anybody else, I know that I can see people there who actually had intimate relationship with Suzuki Roshi. And if anybody, any one of you would like to say something, like Al, to see your smiling face.

[16:18]

Okay. If you think of something, let me know. Anybody else? Yeah, that brings to mind several things.

[17:24]

He always chose the most basic way to do things. And I remember one time when we were at Sakoji, which was on 1881 Bush Street where we started. Across the street there were some apartment buildings, some houses, and and some of the students took them over. And one time, Suzuki Roshi's wife wasn't there, and Katagami Roshi's wife wasn't there, and we wanted to go out to breakfast, have breakfast. So we went into one of the apartments, and it was totally empty. And we said, well, how are we going to have breakfast here? Suzuki Roshi got the morning paper that was out on the stump or something, And he opened the paper, opened the newspaper, and spread it out like a tablecloth. And the way he spread it out was like he was sitting out the table for royalty without thinking about it that way.

[18:37]

And somehow, bowls appeared and some little food appeared. I can't remember how that happened. But we all sat down. to this kind of royal banquet of almost nothing. And it was like totally fulfilling all the way around. Everything about it was totally fulfilling. So he just had that kind of way of taking whatever was at hand and using it and acknowledging its existence and including it in the environment. I think this may be in crooked cucumber, but one of the things I remember when Zinn Center was still at Sokoji on Bush Street was there was a corner grocery store and the grocer would take the vegetables that were getting very tired and maybe even heading towards rot and throw them out

[19:51]

in the front of the store and Suzuki Roshi would run down the street after the raw vegetables and bring them in with that being the source of what we could then make into edible food. And I can still in my mind's eye see him running down the street after a really funky melon. Sayonara. I'm going to Tassajara and I have to leave. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all very much. It's nice to be here. a little louder.

[21:04]

I think what I hear you saying, let me give you back what I think you're saying, is that there was a little conference about how you start to maintain a practice place. Is that what you're saying? Right. And so you want to kind of know what's my experience or what Liz's experience is in doing that. Well, I think about that, and I was talking to somebody about that yesterday, and I think, given the nature of our practice, which is our practice revolves around someone who is a mentor or a teacher and students. That's the configuration of the way we've inherited our practice. And I think that what's most important is to have... someone who is called the teacher or the let's call it that and that person has to be totally dedicated to what they're doing and that person Suzuki Roshi is like the model he never went anywhere he came to Zen Center and he stayed there and people would invite him all over come here and come there he'd say I'm

[22:58]

He did go to a few places, but basically he stayed at Zen Center and people had to come to him. He didn't try to get them to come to him. He just did his practice. What really impressed me about Suzuki Roshi in this case, I remember when I came to Zen Center, I was so impressed because this little man would walk out of his office into the Zendo, bow to the altar, and sit down and do zazen and then do service and then go back into his office. And he did that twice a day, every day, and he didn't seem to have other things to do. That was his life. And I thought, I was so impressed by that because he seemed so satisfied, like he didn't need anything else. That was totally fulfilling for him. And that kind of person is... called the teacher, who just is dedicated to what they're doing and totally satisfied.

[24:02]

I mean, of course, we have dissatisfactions, but totally fulfilled by what they're doing. And then other people, the people who come to practice, learn how to do that. That holds everything together. So there has to be a linchpin that holds everything together. then whatever kind of practice you want will work. That's my observation, and that's the way I've always seen it happen. When you try to organize something that doesn't have a center, it doesn't tend to work so well. Are you trying to do that? I guess what I'm saying is, are you asking a theoretical question or a personal question?

[25:22]

It's got to be zucchini. It's either scotia or zucchini. So if it's a personal question, I have something to say. So is it? It is zucchini. So then what's your question? Well, I think everything that Sojin said is true. But since I'm talking and not him, I suppose I need to say something.

[26:30]

But actually, I don't really have anything to add. I think that what she said is right. So maybe you have something to add. I know that Blanche wants to say something. Everybody has a place. Everybody has something to do that makes the temple work. That's very important, depending on the size of the temple and what you want, but to give everybody a feeling that it's their place. And often people think, well, there's that place, and I come to it and go away from it. But actually, to give the members a feeling that it's their place, and by taking some position,

[27:39]

they're holding it together. And unless they're holding it together, it doesn't work. So, I think that's the other side of having a center. Everyone else is... Whenever I go to Tassajara, I give a little talk to the students and I say something like, everyone here has a position. no matter what it is, the abbot has a position, the dishwashers have a position, general labor has a position. If you fulfill your position totally, then you're the leader of the practice period. You're leading, actually leading the practice period by your devotion to what you're doing. That's what makes everything work. It doesn't matter what position you have. If you're doing it totally wholeheartedly with everyone else, it's just like an orchestra. So... If you can think of it that way, things will work. But there are other ways that things will work too.

[28:42]

I'm not saying it's the only way. It's my experience. That's an interesting question. Some people think he did. I'm not sure that I do. He may have said something like, the reason I came was, you know, to help or to just to see what's here. When Suzuki University came to America, he said, I didn't study San Francisco. I didn't take out a map of San Francisco or learn too much about it. I just left my mind open and came. That's totally his attitude, his basic attitude.

[29:45]

I just came. I didn't think about what I was going to do, although he was invited by the Japanese congregation at Sokoji Temple to be their priest. That's the reason he came. But what else he had in mind, it could have been, you know, vaguely this or more... positively that or something. But you know how things go on in your mind. Somewhere in your mind you may think, I'd like to do something. And then when you're asked, you say, yeah, I came for that reason. But nobody knows exactly. But I think he just came. He saw an opportunity and he came. And I think he was prepared to come, but he didn't know what he was going to do at all. Just open. This may be in David's book. You're right here, David, so you can remind me, or maybe somewhere else, but I do seem to recall that somebody heard him say, because it was only 10 or 12 years after the war ended, and the war was horrific for him as it was for everybody in the country, and I've often speculated with, you know, why wouldn't it be true that he might have done

[31:00]

at least one funeral a week throughout the entire war for the young men of his town. Why wouldn't he? A million young men died in that war. And he was posted to Manchuria as a chaplain in the last days of the war, and we don't know anything about that. But again, one can imagine. So he did seem to say, and it was picked up somewhere, you have seen, speaking to us, You have seen the worst of my country. I wanted to bring you the best. Well, that makes sense to me. It's not the reason he came, but certainly something that may have motivated him or may have been in his mind that he's coming to the land of his country's enemy at that time. The war was still pretty fresh in people's minds. He was not... He was insulted on the streets of San Francisco, I think.

[32:00]

Is Peter Schneider here? Wasn't that true, Peter, that people insulted him and called him names and so forth? Yeah. So feelings were still pretty raw in the late 50s. And so I think... I think that had to have been in his mind to some extent, that to come in a sense as a peacemaker and as a healer and as an embodiment of something that transcends countries and transcends wars and which we're all human beings. I think, I'm speculating, but I think that must have been some piece of it, you know, just based on what I know. in the back, way back there.

[33:53]

but I will speak directly to, as far as I know what you're saying, is what did he give us and what did he leave behind as far as his Japanese background goes? Is that what you mean? Well, he said, I don't want to bring you the stinky Japanese practice. Stinky. Stinky. Stinky. S-T-I-N-K-Y. That was a little later. But he said, I'm bringing you what I know. What I come with is what I know, where I've been, right? But he didn't try to make us into Japanese. And he didn't compare and say, we're better than you or anything like that. But you get a lot from Japanese, even though they don't think they're saying that, they are.

[36:00]

So he introduced us to what he felt was the Zen practice. And of course he can't always separate Zen practice from Japanese. I mean, it's all connected, but the emphasis was on the practice, not on the culture. So he said, there's a lot of things that I could have introduced to you that are not your things. They're not something that you need. So he just gave us the simplest kind of practice and chanting the Heart Sutra in a monotone. When he first came, we were chanting the Heart Sutra in Japanese three times. And that was our service, besides bowing nine times. And all the rest was introduced later by Tatsugami Roshi.

[37:04]

But there was a Shingon priest who came one day and he said, you know, Suzuki Roshi has given you only the simplest things so that everybody can participate. You don't have to know anything to participate. All you have to do is be there. And there's nothing difficult. There's nothing complicated about it at all. You don't have to know Japanese. He never tried to teach us Japanese at all. His English got better and better all the time because he was lecturing to us in Japanese. So the emphasis was on how to nourish our practice, not how to and pull something on top of it from Japan. I would say 90% maybe of the ritual forms and practices at the San Francisco Zen Center

[38:27]

were not introduced by Suzuki Roshi. They were not. Tasugami Roshi came, not exactly at his invitation, but he came anyway, and introduced many of the ritual forms of the Heiji. He was in the Eno there, and that's what he knew. But I just have to say, and I think Mel would confirm that, the practice that we knew from Suzuki Roshi up to that time was very simple and not very Japanese. I mean, let's say this. The ritual forms around Zazen, bowing to your cushion, bowing away, doing gasho, bowing when you come into the room, the ritual forms that contain the group practice of Zazen, he taught that. Because I think as far as he was concerned, that's part of Zazen.

[39:30]

He taught us how to do kinhin. He taught us how to hold our hands, et cetera. So he taught us what he felt we needed to know to do the core practice. But even Tassahara, as he set it up, was quite a bit simpler than it is now. Yeah. Well, that may be true, but if any of the people in the room ever practiced with Kobin, you know that he was not a traditionalist in any sense of the word.

[40:38]

Yeah, so he was a good resource for anything that we needed to know, he knew. Uh, and, and I do have to say that the one thing that Suzuki Roshi was very strong about was learning or Yoki. Uh, uh, and we didn't much, a lot of us didn't much like that. It seems so incredibly fussy, but he, uh, am I right, Peter, that he really, he was really strong about our Yoki. I think he felt that, um, that was different than Japan. That was more like, uh, Buddhist eating. Buddhist eating awareness practice. And so, I don't know. But, you know, when you watched him do oryoki himself and served him, he was very relaxed and not so good at it, really, in the sense that we think of. You know, he dropped things or, you know, things wouldn't be folded quite right. But the spirit, you know, he would talk a lot about the spirit and the inner meaning of what it meant to eat that way and to respect the food.

[41:55]

So, Again, even in there, I would make a distinction between the fine details of it and the inner spirit of it. You know, good question. And something I hear a lot is the time, the decades go by, and a lot of this early detail about how things happened and how things came to be gets sort of lost. So this is anyway, Mel's in my take on it. You know, Suzuki Roshi brought us the simplest practice. And there was a Shingon teacher who came one time, and he said, you know, Suzuki Roshi brought you this simplest practice, but actually Soto Zen has the most elaborate chanting of any school in Japan. The most florid and baika, it's called. But he just wanted to... to simplify so that everybody could participate.

[42:56]

But also, he brought us this simple practice, but he needed somebody to shell it out at Tassahara when we started. So Tatsugami was invited. Whether he invited him or somebody else invited him, he was invited. And he came, and he gave us, in 1970, I wish you so, Peter Schneider was the director, and we would sit with Tatsugami Roshi. day after day, and Peter would argue with him. Everything that came up, Peter would argue with him. And I always thought, I always thought, Peter, why are you always arguing with Tatsugami? But now I understand. If you don't, then you just get taken over. But he introduced all the stuff that we do now, that we take for granted, was... Suzuki Roshi's teaching, but it was Tatsugami's way of setting up the monastic practice the way we do it now.

[43:58]

So I appreciated him. A lot of people didn't, but they thought he was trying to take over, you know, and so that's probably true. This was a long, arduous evolvement over a long period of time to get to this point. It looks so easy now, but I tell you, have you ever seen a male chauvinist pig? You cowards. But actually, we were actually quite nice.

[45:08]

The men were quite nice and the women were quite nice. So that's why we all wanted to evolve together to make it into a co-equal practice. But it took a long time. And you think that you got there, but you haven't. And so, you know, just over and over, just looking at and how to make this work. And it's working pretty well. It's never finished, right? Because the relationship between men and women is never finished. But the process was quite... It was a long process. And how to address... equal opportunities, you know? So that being very conscious of the balance when we have a committee, like, are there enough men or enough women to balance the gender, right?

[46:13]

So that's always a factor. And also in positions, like giving women, like, making a woman the work leader. Women sew and men work, carpentry and stuff, but mixing it all up so that there's no particular position that couldn't be filled by either a man or a woman. So those kinds of things, we really worked hard at that for a long period of time. Too bad Yvonne had to leave. because she'd have a lot to say about that question. I heard your question as, what did Suzuki Roshi think about that? Is that what you were asking? Well...

[47:25]

I'll just keep it very brief because we're short of time, and I've talked to Yvonne about this for decades. I think that it's safe to say Suzuki Roshi didn't know how to train women, didn't have any real experience of it, and probably didn't do all that well himself. But he was open to learning, and he took it as given that... women were practicing as equals here with men. That's just the way it was. And to just suddenly generalize broadly, I would say probably it's the biggest contribution of the West so far to the Buddhist tradition, which is that women are now equals, at least in terms of they're showing up in the same way that men are. Even in the Tibetan tradition, the young Karmapa shocked everybody by saying that the patriarchal spin of Buddhism from the very beginning was one of its biggest mistakes, and it now needs to change.

[48:32]

People just fell over in their chairs. He's like God when he speaks, sort of, in that tradition. So I would say that Suzuki Roshi was a traditional Japanese man of his generation, but he was very open-minded. compared to almost anyone. So that, I think, is probably the two sides of it. And I think what Mel was speaking to was more how we all had to work that out, because he left us pretty soon. Maybe you have more to say about that. Suzuki Roshi, when he was in Japan, the people who came to his talks and his teachings were... almost all women. So he had that kind of relationship with women. He was not a chauvinist. He just didn't understand. When someone who doesn't have the experience of America comes here and sees this, how open we are, it's just a shock, and they don't know quite how to deal with it.

[49:41]

But Colby Chino, when he came here, was this handsome young... The priest just got overwhelmed. And I can remember him spending a whole practice period in bed, you know, with bedclothes over his head. Yeah, he was fair game. Yeah, Christina. Thank you for that.

[52:19]

It's almost time. I just want to say that the word for that in Buddhism is lineage. We're in the lineage of Suzuki Roshi, the line, the stream, maybe. And it's a real thing. And I think that your description, that's a wonderful description, that you don't really see that you are unless you go somewhere where it's different. And you see that somehow, just by being here, you uphold it. And that's really what we're talking about, is this is the lineage of Suzuki Roshi. Yeah, and just to elaborate on that a little bit, you meet Suzuki Roshi through his disciples, but you also meet Suzuki Roshi's teachers through him. So it's just wonderful. That's what we can trace it all the way back to Shakyamuni. Is it time? It's time. Thank you very much.

[53:20]

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