This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Somehow, the last few days, I've been what we call conscious of time. We have different words for different things. And while I was waiting to come into the Dharma Hall, I was realizing that I started practicing Zen 50 years ago. It's a little hard to believe. 50 years. What is it?

[01:02]

What is 50 years? I started in May of 1965. And I'm still here, so to speak. I even still have hair. Mine. And I can still cross my legs. That's not bad. Pretty nice. Some of my friends now sit in chairs to meditate. See how long it lasts. And when I started, I thought that my practice of Zen would change the world. It's a little hard to tell. Have you noticed how it's changed the world? And it was especially apparent, the 30th anniversary of my ordination as a Zen priest, I was ordained on September the 11th, 1971.

[02:15]

So the 30th anniversary, I was all sat morning meditation, looking forward to, I've been a Zen priest for 30 years. And then, you know, the planes hit the towers, and we went to war in Iraq, and so much for Zen practice, saving the world. Well, anything we do, you know, it of course brings to mind, you know, various Zen sayings, you know, whatever you say, whatever you do is of no avail, one Zen master said. And his disciples said, Yes, but not to say and not to do, that's also of no avail. So are you going to do things or not do things? And then how will you know what difference it makes?

[03:16]

And even for myself, of course, I can't look back and say, yeah, well, look what my life would have been if I hadn't practiced. How would I know? Sometimes when I was studying, you know, living at the Zen Center and studying with Suzuki Roshi, I thought... Now I can't remember what I thought. It's a senior moment. Oh, I know what it is. The hawk went away again. No, I felt so grateful to be at Zen Center. And I felt so grateful to know Suzuki Roshi. And I thought, I want to be that kind of person for other people.

[04:21]

I want to be somebody who can be helpful in that way for other people. The way that Suzuki Roshi... meant so much to me and felt so important and as though he'd saved my life. I don't know what I would have done with my life if I hadn't met Suzuki Rishi or what would have happened. I was pretty disoriented at that time. I had... I wasn't going to go to college, but... At one point, the senior dean of the high school called me and said, and I said, what's up? And he said, you haven't applied to any colleges. And I said, yeah, I'm aware of that. I would know if I had. And he said, well, yeah, you haven't. And he said, well, why not? And I said, well, school is boring.

[05:25]

This is if you're smart. School is boring. I mean, it's boring for a lot of people, but in my case it's because I was smart. And I could sit in the back of class and read books, but most of the teachers wouldn't let me do that because they said, put that book away. We know that you can get an A in the course without listening to anything that goes on, but the other students can't, and you're setting a bad example, so put that book away and be bored. They literally, you know, told me that that was what school was for, was to sit there and be bored. Aside from the fact that the information is itself boring, what does it have to do with me and my life? It's mathematics and, you know, dates and, I don't know. So he said, well, college is different.

[06:28]

College, even if you're not interested in the classes, there's a lot of interesting things going on on campus and there's speakers who come and you'll have a good time if you go to college and you meet people and all the rest of this stuff. So I applied and I went to a college called Antioch. It's in Yellow Springs, Ohio. It closed for many years there because they... went bankrupt by trying to expand to too many places. And they now reopened the campus, and I think in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Anyway, I didn't last long. I dropped out. So, and you know, this is the 60s. And there was a certain encouragement to do this. You don't hear this encouragement anymore now. You know, turn on, tune in, drop out. That's not the lingo nowadays. Now it's become a techie and work for Google and get on the Google bus and, you know, have high-priced real estate and drive up the property values in San Francisco and even up here in Marin County, you know.

[07:41]

It's spreading. My poor tenant, she keeps worrying, like, you're not going to raise the rent to market value, are you? Like 50% more than it's been over all these years. even with moderate raises anyway. And one of the main things that happened there as far as dropping out of college, my brother, it was the year before Xerox machine came along. So my brother was copying Zen stories from a book called Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps. There were two books on Zen then, Alan Watts' The Way of Zen and Paul Reps' Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Anyway, one of the stories that he hand wrote to me was about a young man who writes home to his mom about how well he's doing in school. And he gets a letter back and says, dear son, I didn't raise you to be a walking dictionary. Why don't you go to the mountains and attain true realization?

[08:42]

And I thought, that's for me. I had been taking social psychology. I wrote a paper about alienation and anxiety. I got an A on the paper. And I was alienated and as anxious as ever. I mean, does that tell you something about school? Where do you learn anything about actually working with your anxiety and alienation? Where? I mean, you don't get that in school. And people don't teach you that stuff. You know, if you're going to find out anything, you decide, you know, to find out something and see what you can find out. So the end of the school year came and I dropped out and it said reasons for leaving. I put, well, duh, go to the mountains and attain true realization. Then that's when I came to the Zen Center in San Francisco. My brother, who then had been at the Zen Center at that time and was there for several years after that, has since became an Episcopal priest, and now he's been a Catholic for 35 years.

[09:51]

And one of his three sons became a Catholic priest. So it's sort of running in the family that we're in this profession. What do you do for a living? Oh, I sit facing the wall doing nothing. Yeah. I had a very... Oh, never mind. I had a very... Just briefly, I had a very bad experience one year. I went to Wales, and I was supposed to tell them what I did. It's called the Do Lectures. What do you do? And I... At some point, I got a little overawed and ashamed. Like, no, I'm sorry. I sit and face the wall. I sit and do nothing. And, you know, because the... The person right before me had just gotten up. And then they have a big video screen like at the TED Talks and stuff. And mostly people have stuff to show on the video. And they're just showing slides and then talking about their slides, most of them. And he had a slide of, there was a big thing there, a framed piece, glass, and all these little cards, which you couldn't see.

[10:57]

But he said, and my wife gave this to me on my 50th birthday. It's the business cards of the 53 companies I started before I was 50. And what have you done, Mr. Brown? Oh, you dropped out of college, did you? This is sort of in the same vein of one of my best friends from high school then became a judge. And he was the judge out here in Marin County at the Civic Center. And every so often, I would be called for jury duty, and I'd be out there, and I'd run into him. And sometimes we'd have lunch together. And one year, I was actually called to jury duty in his court. And I was sitting there in the jury box.

[12:00]

You know, there's 25 people. And he said, Now, if any of you have any real reason why you can't be here to serve on the jury, you let me know. Now, I don't want any of those California touchy-feely reasons. Anyway, at the first break he said, Mr. Brown, would you approach the bench? And I came up and he said, Ed, you don't look very happy. And I said, I'm not. I said, what's up? I said, I'm supposed to be at a workshop at 11 a.m. this morning. He said, well, why didn't you tell me? I said, it's a California touchy-feely workshop. I mean, literally, it's a workshop on hands-on healing.

[13:01]

Anyway, he said, get out of here. And did you want me to get you out for the next two years or five years, for the next five years or from now on? I said, if that's all right, if that's OK and you can do that, it's fine with me. Anyway, I brought him up because then I later went to dinner at his house. And he said, Ed, it's really too bad, but you were one of the smartest kids at San Rafael High School. and you haven't done anything with your life. So much for being a Zen teacher, so much for writing the Toss Iron Bread book, which is only one of the hundred best cookbooks of all time, so much for being a co-author of the Greens cookbook, which is another of the hundred best cookbooks of all time, and so much for trying to benefit people and heal yourself and others, so much for that. The world doesn't

[14:07]

isn't going to be able to see it. You don't get credit for working on your life, for studying yourself. This is a non-credit course. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't take it seriously. So I just heard from Arlene this morning, I think it was one of Dagon's favorite sayings, and it was something like, no, take it seriously, but don't treat it seriously. Something like this, anyway. Excuse me for such a long preamble to my talk. I wanted to remind you this morning of a number of things. One is that you are you. This is actually from Tibetan Buddhism, from Ergyel Rinpoche.

[15:12]

He said, we have a secret teaching, a key teaching. You are you. Don't forget. And he said, mostly you want to get somewhere in your life. And Sizzikarashi said very similarly, you're sightseeing. You want to go to some beautiful spots. And the Tibetan master said, you are you. You want to go places, but you don't know where you are. You don't know where you're starting from. You don't know you. So get to know yourself. And I decided a really good way to do this without knowing any better was to sit. You sit with yourself. And I decided I wanted to be able to sit still with myself. Very simple.

[16:16]

So I did. I practiced. And this kind of, you know, grows on you or it doesn't. Some years later, I was doing a sashin at Page Street. I think it was before we had the wood floor and the zendo there. It was white and black linoleum tiles. You know, old school. And Suzuki Roshi was there leading the sashin. And sometimes he would, not very often, but once in a while while we were sitting in Zazen, he would start talking. And when he started talking, I think we all listened very carefully.

[17:18]

And that morning he said, you think that I'm the teacher and you're the student, and I will tell you things that you don't understand. that you think I understand and you don't understand. That's a mistake. You think that I'm going to enlighten you, that I'm going to help you know yourself better and know life better. That's wrong thinking. The teacher is also the student. The student is also the teacher. Sometimes the teacher bows to the student. Sometimes the student bows to the teacher. At this point, I was starting to think, if I'm the teacher, we're in trouble. And I think this is pretty common.

[18:21]

We kind of think, my life is not going that great. Maybe somebody else knows how to do it better. How I could do my life better. Maybe they could tell me what to do. This happens all the time. Maybe I better tell you the rest of the story. But he said, sometimes the teacher is the student, sometimes the student is the teacher. And he was going on like this. And then at some point, as he would do at these times, he leapt to his feet. And he had a little stick like this, but it was straight, a little bit longer. And he would go around and hit everybody. And when you knew he was coming, you would lean, put your hands up and lean, get your head out of the way. And he would hit you twice very quickly on your right shoulder.

[19:25]

And everything would disappear. There was no up or down. There was no past or present, future. There was no time. There was no space. There was nothing. And then you'd wait for it to come back, and pretty soon it would. It's one of the ways that Zen people had to give you that experience. We don't do that anymore because it's primitive. It's barbaric, you know, to hit people. And especially if women are hitting men and men are hitting women, it's not politically correct. Even if, you know, and of course, Americans hitting other Americans are not the same as getting hit by your Japanese Zen teacher. So, it's complicated.

[20:30]

But he hit the first person and he said, who is the teacher? Bam, bam. And then the next one, who is the student? Bam, bam. Who is the teacher? Bam, bam. Who is the student? Bam, bam. And after five or six people, he ran out of breath and just went around. It was about 90 people there. The whole sender was full and the whole entryway there, if you've ever been to Page Street. And he hit everybody. And then he went back and sat down and we all just sat there. Who is the teacher? Who is the student? So really, I wanted to say today, I'm honored to be here. And I'm honored to be here with all of you. And that you would come. And that you would be undertaking this study of the way. It's so important. And it's related, obviously, to this story.

[21:34]

Who is a teacher? Who is a student? And although many people know many things, you have to find out for yourself. Each of us has to find out for ourself, how do I live my life? How do I decide what to do? What is it I want to do? How do I want to live? How do I spend my time? What do I do with my day? And some people, you know, Suzuki Roshi's expression for this was beginner's mind, which was, you know, became quite popularized. In the expert's mind, there are a few possibilities. In the beginner's mind, there are many.

[22:36]

And he would encourage us to resume, come back to your beginner's mind, where you find a way. And he used to say, if I tell you what to do, you'll probably try to do it. And when you try to do it, you will abandon your own capacity to find out the way for yourself. Because you're just going to do what you're supposed to. You're going to do what I tell you. And you're going to stop trying to find out for yourself what to do. You'll stop. So I don't tell you much. I wish I could be more helpful. There's these two kinds of teachers, the one kind of teacher who's masterful, and if you do what I say, one day you might be as masterful as I am.

[23:48]

But actually, if you're spending your time doing what he says, how are you gonna ever be masterful? What you're learning to do is what he says. You're learning to do what somebody else says. And so much of our life is just this goes once through everything, you know, doing what you're told. What should you eat? You know, there's the arguments for being vegan and the arguments for vegetarian and the arguments for carnivore and omnivore and paleolithic and fat-phobic And, you know, and then high fat and, you know, what should you eat? Which club do you want to join? Oh, I want to be a member of that club. Or are you going to find out for yourself how to eat? Several years ago, there was a letter to the editor in the Sun magazine, you know, it was about dieting and

[25:00]

a woman wrote in and said that she was wondering if any diets ever worked. And so she went and found 11 people who had lost 25 pounds or more and kept it off for five years or longer. And it turned out they had one thing in common. They'd each figured out for themselves how to lose that weight. She wrote a book about this. And it had been turned down at that time by 11 New York publishers who all said, nobody wants to hear this. People want to be told what to do. But who's the teacher? Who's the student? And beginner's mind is also another word for what in Zen, and Suzuki was using the expression also, way-seeking mind, the mind that seeks the way.

[26:14]

Very important, you know. And he said, he used to say very simple things. You know, like at the end of Sashin, one year he said, some of you had a really good Sashin. You were concentrated, you sat pretty still, and you had some really powerful, strong experiences. It's over now. It's time to do something else. See what you can do now. You don't rest on your accomplishments. You study the way. And some of you, he said, you didn't have a very good time. I was in the second group, you know. You moved a lot. You had a lot of pain. You wiggled. Your back may have hurt. Your knees. You couldn't concentrate very well. Sishin is over now. Find something else to do. And he would say, you might think you're a good student. You might think you're a bad student.

[27:18]

A good student is somebody who's studying how to be a student. If you're studying, whether you're a good student or a bad student, if you're studying how to be a good student, that's a good student. Same with being a good wife or a good husband. you may think, I'm not so good, I'm good, I'm not so good. Your partner may be saying, you know, whether you're good or not good. And then he said, but if you're studying how to be a good partner, that's a good partner. So that's about all I've been able to do. I haven't gotten anywhere in 50 years. But I know how to study. I know how to be a beginner. I know how to start. I know how to study how to be a good person. So I continue, I go on. And that, of course, brings up one of my favorite senseins. Awkward in a hundred ways, clumsy in a thousand, still, I go on.

[28:22]

That's one of the teachers in our lineage. She said that. That's my school. Yaku-san again, daio-sho. And just recently, this year, I opened up Kaza's book on the essential Dogen, and there it is. And Dogen, this goes back, you know, to Dogen, the founder of Soto School in Japan. The practice of beginner's mind is the essential original enlightenment. Is the essential original realization. practicing beginner's mind. You're the student. You're the teacher. You find out what to do with your life. You study what to do. It's up to you. And of course now, people don't understand.

[29:22]

It's not like you're going to study for a week or two and then get somewhere where you don't have to study anymore. I started out like that. I was going to get enlightened in a year or two. And then lord it over people. I'm enlightened, you're not. Should be good for something, shouldn't it? But all I learned was to keep practicing in a beginner's mind, finding my way, trying things out. I think about this a lot to some extent. Am I going on too long? Excuse me, if I am. I'm working on a book about food and cooking in Zen, and I'm finding it very difficult. Because nobody wants to hear that they have to figure it out for themselves. Where are the recipes that will tell me how to cook?

[30:26]

spectacular, impressive dishes without much effort that are really impressive and that I don't have to stress over. That where I don't have any stress and I can make these masterful things and I'll just do what you tell me. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it. And I, excuse me, I want to say, you know what, grow up. Get over it, you know. Who are you? Who do you think you are? What do you think you're doing here in this world? You want to learn to cook? You know, start cooking. Start noticing things. And you know, I come back to Zen Master Tenke, and he says, see with your eyes, smell with your nose, taste with your tongue. Nothing in the universe is hidden. What else would you have me say? And of course, what you'd have him say is, how do I do without any stress, without any worry, so it all comes out great and everybody loves me?

[31:26]

And they bow down at my feet and kiss my toes. I mean, I don't know, what did you think? And Tenke will say, you know, that's an upside-down view. It's not going to happen. There's no such thing. I watched Chef's Table, a few episodes of Chef's Table, and so far everyone, you know, they have this moment or time in their life, they've been going along and studying how you do it. And they've apprenticed at restaurants and worked, you know, worked and worked and worked. One of the ones was a chef from Patagonia. I forget his first name, but Millman, his last name. And he'd learned, he got somehow really enamored with food as a young boy. And at some point he He said, one day at school, there were these kids from Australia, and these four girls from Australia got up on the table, and they put on some rock and roll music and started dancing.

[32:38]

And he's like, I dropped out of school after that. I thought, there's another life? Anyway, he got interested, and then he went to France, and he couldn't get work, so then he wrote to the 22 three-star restaurants in France, and they all wrote him back, and several invited him to work there. He said, I want to learn cooking. I'm from Patagonia. So he learned how to do French cooking. And he started doing this back in Buenos Aires or someplace. And a whole group of these Frenchmen came. And afterwards, one of them said, can I talk to you? OK. And this wasn't even a chef. This is just somebody who's in this French. And he said, you know how to do French cooking perfectly. And it's no good, you know. You're just doing it by the book and by what you've learned.

[33:41]

That's not good enough. And he realized after that and thinking it over, the man was right. He needed to do his cooking. He needed to do his life. Offer what he had to offer, share what he had to share. And then he started all these restaurants, and now he has some place. He lives on this lake a hundred miles down the road from anywhere, and people drive out there to eat. He has restaurants in a bunch of places, and he says, oh, I'm on the plane three or four days a week because I fly to my different restaurants. Anyway. But every one of these chefs got to a point where you're doing what you've been told. You're doing what you learned.

[34:42]

Now, when are you going to start doing you? When are you going to start doing your life? It's time. And then... step forward into your life, find, you know. And then for that, you need to know who you are. You need to know what's inside, you know. You need to know your core in Zen, true nature. What is your true nature in Suzuka? She said, you should know your true nature and express yourself fully. That's a different time when he started talking in the middle of Zazen. And he said, don't move. Just die. Nothing will help you now, because it's your last moment. Not even enlightenment will help you now, because you have no more moments. What were you trying to get to?

[35:47]

Where are you? Where are you? And then how do you bring that out? How do you share that? What's in your heart? What's your felt sense? What's your aesthetic that you have to live up to, that you have to measure yourself against? It's not somewhere else. It's not outside. It's yours. So I have a poem for you now, which is not my poem. But I've memorized it. So I can recite it. So it's as though it's mine. But I like this poem.

[36:48]

And it has a little bit of the feeling that I'm talking about today. And I'll say a couple more words. We'll call it a day. It's a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. It's called Red Brocade. The Arabs used to say, when a stranger appears at your door, feed him for three days before asking who he is, where he's come from, where he's headed. That way, you'll have strength enough to answer. Or by then, you'll be such good friends that you don't care. This is how we practice at Zen Center, and people wonder, you don't seem very friendly. Well, it's going to take us a few days. We're sitting together, and we'll be friends before you know it.

[37:51]

And we'll feed you. There is lunch today, isn't there? And there is lunch today, right? Yeah. Let's go back to that. I'm coming back to the poem. Let's go back to that. Rice? Pine nuts? Here, take the red brocade pillow. My son... My child will serve water to your horse. No, I wasn't busy when you came. I was not preparing to be busy. That's the armor everyone put on to pretend they had a purpose in this world. That's the armor No, I was not busy when you came. I wasn't preparing to be busy.

[38:57]

That's the armor everyone put on to pretend they had a purpose in this world. I refuse to be claimed. Your plate is waiting. Here, we'll snip fresh mint into your tea. So one of the ways I think about this these days is how to... We have a lot of things to do and take care of. We do at times get busy because we need to earn a living and so forth in this world. And at the same time, if you're studying...

[39:59]

Being a student, being the teacher, being the student, finding your way, beginner's mind, seeking how to do this life, your life. You know, it's to connect your inner world, your spirit, your soul with the outer world. This poem expresses that, you know, here. You can feel it in the poem. We do this, you know, when we serve each other in the zenda, we bow, serve food very carefully. It's very important to serve attentively, carefully. And, you know, in our world, you know, it gets, we're much more involved with our head. What matters? But if you ask your heart or your hara, your felt sense, what matters?

[41:07]

It's inside. It's inside that matters. It's in you. Something inside you says, it matters. I will do this. I will share this. I will give this food. I will offer this. And, you know, for instance, if you ever think, which, you know, most of us at some point in our life, you know, we're wondering like, who cares? You know, mom and dad have died and, you know, who cares? And you wonder. And then sometimes if you're the cook, you work and work and work and nobody seems to say thank you particularly. They just want to tell you it needs to be better tomorrow. And then so at some point, you know, it comes from inside. I care. I care. This is important to me. My life is important. And what I do with my life is important.

[42:10]

It's important to me. And I want to find a life that serves me and serves others and does benefit to me, benefit to others. How do I do that? So this is very important, and I can't... give you the answer for your life. But I can say thank you for your effort and for being here today and please, on your way. All right, thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click giving.

[43:15]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[43:19]

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