happening. Is it? It's okay. Okay. So, good evening. My name's Yvonne Rand, and I'm very happy to be here. I, when I This was true when Bill and I were here last year as well. I walk around to see the traces of Suzuki Roshi, his rock work and those water bowls that are around the Kaisando and his garden. I remember the young woman who spent the winter carving those bowls. This is a yucca leaf that came from a plant that when Cabin 4 was where the Kaisando is now.

[01:15]

You all see it? There was a yucca plant back there and when Suzuki Roshi needed to get a calligraphy brush, which he didn't have with him at the time, He took a leaf off the yucca plant and mashed the end of it to make a brush. And that's what he used to do the calligraphy for a Zen mind beginner's mind that's on the cover of the book. And after Suzuki Roshi passed, Mrs. Suzuki gave those of us who were his disciples something of his. She gave me one of his jabon, which I could probably put on my little finger, but hardly my whole self, and this brush, which I keep hanging in the meditation building that we have where I live up in Mendocino County.

[02:28]

And under it, come on in. Go ahead, be embarrassed. And I also have a piece of paper that he wrote to a couple who were getting married here at Tatsahara that he wrote out, do not say too late. That was his advice to a couple about to marry, which I thought, I've... thought that that was actually quite good advice. My daughter when she was young thought it said do not stay too late but I suppose that's one possibility. So I brought this yucca leaf transformed into a sumi brush to share with you because for me

[03:33]

I can still sense Suzuki Roshi's hand on the leaf and in the making of the brush. He needed a brush and he took what was right under his nose to make what he needed. Mosquitoes are like B-29s. And even though I've lived with this brush for a very long time, since Suzuki Roshi died in 1971, I still feel his presence when I look at the brush. And I feel some inspiration to look at what's right in front of me for what I need.

[04:36]

Some of you may be surprised to know this, although I think some of you may have had some sense of this from those of us who were lucky enough to live and practice with him. There was a certain point where, after Tassahara was started as a practice place, when Suzuki Roshi felt unable to be the kind of teacher that he wanted all of us to have. And so he invited Tatsugami Roshi to come and be the teacher here. Of course, Tatsugami Roshi thought Tatsuhara was quite splendid and thought that what he'd like to do is be the abbot. And there was a little bit of difficulty about his expectation and what was a fit for all of us and in particular for Suzuki Roshi, who all of us wanted to continue having as a teacher.

[05:59]

So we finally invited him to go back to Japan and we didn't invite any more high-ranking Zen teachers to come and take over, for which I've always been very grateful. When I come here, which has not been as often as I would like, but when I am here, I look around for places where I can sense Suzuki Roshi's hand, mostly in the rock wall building, below the kaisando in the sidestream wall, and of course up in the ashes site. One of the things that I hope that those of you who are practicing here now will keep in mind that the more you go back to the teachings that he left us, particularly thanks to Trudy Dixon and the work she did with Zen by Mind, Beginner's Mind, in shaping his teachings in a way that makes them accessible,

[07:31]

I hope that we can keep his presence here, his tracks here taken care of. I'd like to tell you a story. It's a story I told, I think, at the Zen Center reunion a while back. It's, I think, a story that describes very well his ability to have very good boundaries and limits and also to have an extraordinarily kind heart. There was, fairly early on in Zen Center moving to the Page Street building, a young man who was quite disturbed of mind He somehow came in through the front door and it became rather clear, rather quickly, that he should probably not have been let in the front door.

[08:46]

And nobody quite knew how to get him back out the door again. And Suzuki Roshi came down the stairs and walked up to this young man and directly looked at him and started talking to him. and really engaged with him but as Suzuki Roshi was engaged with this young man he would take one step towards the front door and the young man would take one step to stay with him and then after a little while he'd take another step so he continued doing that until he got to the front door and then he opened the door and held it open and held the door ajar while he stepped out on the front porch. So gradually the young man stayed with him.

[09:47]

They kept talking. And once the young man was quite firmly out on the front porch, Suzuki Roshi said, well, I'm very glad to have had this visit with you. And I wish you well. And he stepped back inside the door and shut it firmly. I was a secretary of Zen Center at the time and was sitting in the office with the door open, kind of watching all of this. Because, of course, several of us were trying to figure out how do we get this person who's very agitated and clearly was quite upset. What do we do? How do we get him out the door, having inadvertently let him in the door? And the teaching that I got from watching Suzuki Roshi was how much can be accomplished as long as there's no aversion.

[10:58]

I didn't have any sense that he was trying to get rid of this person. And at the same time, he understood that the appropriate thing was for him to go back out the front door and continue with whatever his life was about. But in the meantime, he stayed very engaged with him. And for some reason, witnessing that episode and looking at when he needed a sumi brush, how he made one from a yucca leaf. In both cases, he was really demonstrating what's, from my perspective, what's possible in looking at what's right under one's nose with respect to what one needs. And as I think any of you who spend time looking at the stonework that he did down here, it's very clear how much he loved rocks.

[12:14]

He nearly killed himself moving one of the biggest rocks into the wall. The strain of getting the rock into place. He had Alan Marlow helping him, very tall, six feet something, two or three inches tall, very strong. And finally, Suzuki Roshi said, Alan, go away. I'll do this myself. And how he moved the stone, none of us could fathom at the time, except that he loved stones. And he really wanted that stone to go into the wall where he had envisioned it being. The young woman who was here for the two practice periods, who cut the water bowls that are in the garden in front of and to one side of the Kaisando, loved stones the way he did.

[13:36]

Her expression with what she did with the stones was, of course, quite different. But Suzuki Roshi was very, how can I say it, very sympathetic about her love of stones and very enthusiastic about having stone cutting, making those water bowls be her work during the practice periods. letting her do what she loved and what he loved as well. So what I hope each of you can keep in mind in terms of keeping Suzuki Roshi's spirit alive and well here at Tassara is that you will let yourselves see what you need and want to do what you're trying to do that's right under your nose.

[15:05]

Not very long after Zen Center bought Tassahara, a very dear friend of mine went to Japan, went on a round-the-world trip and ended up in Japan at Aheji Monastery where he was ordained. He was killed in a train accident in Tokyo when there was a break from the training period at Aheji. My friend had left me with all of his papers and books and the things that were precious to him, big trunk full of stuff. So I went to Suzuki Roshi and I told him the story about what had happened to my friend and he said, bring the trunk to Tassajara and get a Jizo figure. This was my first encounter with Jizo Bodhisattva. Get a stone Jizo figure and bring it with the trunk.

[16:10]

And I'll help you. So I did. I came down with the trunk and the Jizo figure. And he made a fire ring. And we put everything that was in the trunk, except for the books, which anything that looked like it would be of interest to. put in the library here we did, but everything else we burned in this fire ring. And then we used those ashes to make an ashes site for my friend in lieu of having any of his bodily remains. We had all his other remains. And then Suzuki Roshi did some stone work over where the ashes were buried and we placed the jizo. And I remember my gratitude to him for helping me lay my friend's remains to rest.

[17:18]

His capacity for not only sympathy, but actually having some sense about some ritual or ceremony that would help settle the passing of my friend. And I think that for any of us who were fortunate to study and practice with Suzuki Roshi, you'll hear other stories not so different from this one with respect to his capacity for sympathy and support for whoever was in front of him with some suffering. As we were driving in Monday morning, this road, the road in, is so familiar to me because, of course, during the years after Zen Center came to be here and before Suzuki Roshi died, I was one of the people who would drive in between here and San Francisco and back.

[18:51]

And he would very often sleep for the entire drive. And then we'd get home. You know, it would be late. I'd be looking forward to going to bed. And he'd wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to give me a little teaching. One Thanksgiving, after we were here for Thanksgiving dinner, we drove back to San Francisco. He's sleeping. deeply the whole way and we pulled up in front of Sokoji and he woke right up and began to give me a teaching on trust. And his opening statement was, I don't trust anyone and I don't recommend that you trust anyone either. What? but of course what he was really pointing to was the importance of living one's life in a way that one can become in one's relationship with oneself as trustworthy as one can be and to not wait until the world trusts me

[20:22]

but to begin immediately living my life in such a way that to the best of my ability, I can be trustworthy. And I thought, I can remember and it still comes up when I think about sitting in the car for a couple of hours late into the night with his giving me this teaching. how blessed I was to be in that situation and to be able to receive that kind of guidance from him. But of course he did that with many of us. He was not stingy at all. I understand that you may be a little short-staffed, that you're all working exceptionally hard.

[21:25]

And now it's unlike last May, not cold but hot. And following your practice schedule along with doing the work that you do to carry the guest season is, I'm sure, not so easy. And I would hope that you can, in whatever way you can, remember what Suzuki Roshi hoped for all of us in establishing this place as a place for practice, for the cultivation of the heart-mind. And to not get so sunk into studying and training our own mind, but also being able to welcome whoever comes here for a visit with kindness and generosity.

[22:37]

You never know what the effect will be for someone who comes here and has a positive experience from being here. And sometimes we hear from someone some years later about some positive experience they've had, and sometimes we don't. There's a practice that comes out of Zen in Korea in particular, a great Zen teacher who is particularly fond of this practice, the practice of the cultivation of the mind of don't know. And I want to recommend that for any of you, especially if you feel stuck

[23:46]

for any of us who has the habit, particularly the habit of judgment or whatever kind of reactivity, that one of the ways of melting away unwholesome states of mind is to just on the inhalation and the exhalation just keep reciting over and over and over again, don't know, [...] don't know. Because, of course, far more of the time than we sometimes realize, that's actually the most accurate description of the mind. We may feel embarrassed, but it's what's so. is don't know. Don't know what you're going to say, don't know what I'm going to do or say, which doesn't mean I don't have a capacity for a clear intention, but I have no way of knowing how things are going to be in the next moment.

[24:56]

Suzuki Roshi knew he loved stones. But he didn't have some picture in his mind about what a wall would look like or this really amazingly large stone that's in a pond at his temple in Japan, which somehow he got from the flat at the bottom of the mountain up to the temple grounds and into a... pond. That's the stone. Those of you who remember the stained glass windows that are between the kitchen and the dining room at the city center. One set of the windows is a portrait of Suzuki of Katagiri Roshi's hands in gasho and the other with this finger here bent.

[26:07]

is Suzuki Roshi. That's the finger that got crushed when he moved that stone up from below the location of Rinsulin, his temple in Japan. Every time I see that window, I think, ah, there's the evidence of his love of stones, even if it was foolish or improbable. He didn't care. He just loved the stones. So I think that another way of understanding what he was talking about in this notion of beginner's mind is really the mind of don't know. A true beginner doesn't know how something's going to turn out or what something's going to be like ahead of time.

[27:15]

It's much more like having a blindfold on and groping into and through some circumstance or another. I'm not sure where we could put the brush while Bill and I are here, but I'd like to put it somewhere where you all can look at it at your leisure. I was actually sad to not find a yucca there behind the Kaisando. Vanished, impermanent along with everything else. But anyway, we have this yucca that is a sumi brush, and I'd like to share it with you for the time that we're here.

[28:20]

So I wonder if any of you has anything you'd like to bring up or ask about? Yeah, please. He mostly listened to this young man who had a lot to say So it was much more that he had a very friendly look on his face and He was standing right in front of him. There was no sense of him being afraid of this young man. There was no sense of his having any kind of aversion or wanting to get rid of him. He was just there standing with him. And at the same time, his feet were sliding slightly towards the front door.

[29:33]

So he was 100% with the young man and he was 100% with guiding him out onto the front porch and on his way. It was quite remarkable to watch him because, of course, the rest of us had tried to get this young man out of the building with absolutely, you know, the more we tried to get rid of him, the more determined he was to not go anywhere. I remember hiding behind the door into the office and watching what was going on. I couldn't quite believe how easy it was for Suzuki Roshi and the young man to go out through the front door and get on the front porch without any, no hint of aversion on Suzuki Roshi's part. I don't remember him saying much.

[30:38]

Mainly I remember him really listening to this young man. Yes? Yes? I don't remember, although we surely had mosquitoes, but, you know, I don't remember. I do remember being in a teacher's meeting with Western Buddhist teachers in a meeting in Dharamsala with the Dalai Lama and watching His Holiness sit there with mosquitoes on his arm, taking his blood. without him moving or swatting them away or anything like it. And I thought, I'm not there yet. What I hear you saying is when you walk around here,

[31:59]

and can still feel places and energies as you can see. And hoping that we can kind of keep the traces of doing that. And I guess I wonder about that for so many of us now that didn't have that opportunity of what that really means. Well, you know, his Historically, Zen Center has not been very good at keeping track of our history. So in a way, that's partially what I'm talking about, is how do we keep track of our history without hanging on to our history? And that's complicated, I think. Because I also think that a place like Tassajara inevitably goes through changes, you know, witness the effects of the fire.

[33:14]

And Diane Renshaw was saying when we talked, I guess, this morning about how there are some flowers that only the seed opens only if there's been a fire, but there's some flowers that don't only open if there's ash. There's some flowers that need the nutrients. It's nitrogen, is that right? Is Diane here? Yeah, you say it. Well, yeah, the fire comes through and it burns, but at least it's very fertile, rich ground behind it. So in a way, what I'm really bringing up has to do with what's our collective and individual relationship to change, which is inevitable.

[34:19]

Yeah, please, go on. I guess what I hear you pointing to, and I hear people speak when they speak about him is sort of his openness and his warm heartedness, and maybe even in I don't know, mind knowing how it should be or is or something and so that's kind of you know how do you how do you stay open curious and also not lose track well i i think that's an important question i mean i I sometimes will go for some period of time when I will not remember certain experiences I had with him, but in certain contexts, then those memories come up quite vividly, like just now. One time, I was driving Suzuki Roshi and Mrs. Suzuki back to San Francisco.

[35:26]

Suzuki Roshi and Oka-san wanted to go to Monterey to have some lunch on their way home. So we went to a restaurant that was kind of overlooking the water and we had a quite nice lunch. I don't remember how the subject came up, but somehow the subject of what was important to Suzuki Roshi came up between Suzuki Roshi and Mrs. Suzuki. And she said, with a certain fierceness, all you care about are your students. You are a terrible husband. And he said, you're absolutely right. And he didn't bat an eyelash. He said, you know, that was just how it is. They're the most important to me. And I'm a lousy husband.

[36:29]

He wasn't about to get into an argument with her. He thought she was completely right. And there was a kind of vividness in his clarity about what really mattered to him. All of us. Yes. What did he have to say about Tassajara, this location in general and as a monastery? Do you remember? Oh, well, I remember when we came down to look at this place with the possibility of Zen Center Bayan. And he was very immediately convinced that this would be a great place for practice. And There was one donor who gave Zen Center, I think the purchase price was $300,000.

[37:32]

Hard to believe, but in those days it was a lot more money than it sounds like today. A major donor gave Zen Center $150,000. And the other $150,000 came in donations of $25 or less. And I think it's important for all of us to keep in mind that this whole venture began with that kind of support from lots and lots and lots of people who made very small donations, but that's what they could do. And with a sense of wanting to support the kind of vision about having a place where deep and sustained practice and training could occur. A lot of those people are no longer with us, but a lot of them are still.

[38:38]

And I deeply appreciate all those people kind of at our collective back supporting this adventure that has to do with studying and training the mind. Yes? Is there another teacher who has, in a way, taken Suzuki's place, or will there be? Well, there have been and are other teachers, but I think it's a mistake to think of them as taking Suzuki Roshi's place, but certainly people who take the teaching seat. That's continued to be the case since he passed. Yeah. And, you know, Zen Center is complicated because there are these three practice places that need to be taken care of and attended to and with practitioners at each of them.

[39:43]

And it's become a quite complicated venture. How do you feel about that? recognize that what Zen Center has taken on is complicated. And there have been times of great mistakes that I think by and large the community of practitioners have been willing to look at and benefit from uncovering what needs to be uncovered. And I appreciate that deeply. historically, about the Zen Center community, which is continually changing. People come and come and go, along with the water in the stream and the wildflowers. Yeah. All right, now I think we all turn into pumpkins at 9.40, and it's five minutes past, so... So take...

[40:51]

Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other, but mostly take care of yourselves and keep each other company. And thank you very much for having us here this week. It's quite wonderful to be here. Please.

[41:13]

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