Good evening. So can everybody hear me here? Yeah, I'd like to just take a moment to introduce you to people who may not know you there because you're not here so often. Ed is a long time student at Zen Center, was president of Zen Center many years ago and is now chairing on the board and was a student. When Suzuki Roshi was still alive which is one of the particular reasons I wanted him to get a talk during this practice group for yourself, for the years of Suzuki Roshi. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you, Blanche, for inviting me. It's certainly a treat for me to be asked to recall 40 years ago, 39 years ago, when I first met Suzuki Roshi. and maybe share a few stories with you.

[01:11]

So I think it's kind of like almost a way-seeking mind talk when you're talking about the first time you met Suzuki Hiroshi. I was a young man then. I know during this practice period you've had Blanche and Yvonne and Ed Brown and Steve Weintraub talk to you. Those are all people that lived with Suzuki Hiroshi for years and practiced with him for years. That's not the case with me. My stories are about someone who was a guest student from time to time during the last two years of Suzuki Roshi's life. I was a graduate student in mathematics at the University of New Mexico. And so this tells a little bit about how Suzuki Roshi related to someone like that, not a full-time residential student. So I guess it was, I was 25 years old. working on my Ph.D., and instead of building nuclear rocket engines, which is what I'd been doing the previous summers, at Los Alamos, I took off in my bus in search of the truth, and one of the places I thought I would drop in at was the Tassara, because I had read Three Pillars of Zen and heard about this famous Zen teacher that was there, and I just basically drove down the road thinking, well, maybe I'll just go to the Baz or something, and walked in the office and said I had some interest in Zen, and before I knew it,

[02:32]

Reb was giving me zazen instruction, and that evening I was sitting in the zendo. It's as if you're actually walking around hitting people. So I knew nothing about Zen. And there I was, you know, getting up in the morning chanting in Japanese, which is mostly what we did in the service then, and following the schedule and doing all this stuff. And so I'm just going to... share something from the first lecture I heard by Suzuki Roshi at Tassara. This is July 8, 1970. And I don't know about you, but I've probably heard a thousand Zen lectures. And most of the time, you know, after I come out of a Zen lecture, somebody says, well, how was it? And I say, it was a great lecture. Well, what happened? What did they say? I couldn't remember a thing. You know, it's just like this beautiful lecture. But anyway, there was something about this lecture that I heard from Suzuki Roshi that stuck with me all these years. So I actually looked it up And we have transcripts of all these lectures. And this is one of the ones that hasn't been translated into Not Always So or Zen Mind Beginner's Mind.

[03:38]

It was a lecture on the first echo. You know, in the morning when we do service, the kokyo does an echo after we do the first chant. And the first echo, basically, we're dedicating the merit of the previous chant to Shakyamuni Buddha, Bodhidharma, Dogen, and Manjushri. So he's carrying on. because we did this in Japanese, the Kokyo did this in Japanese back then, explaining all these Japanese terms to me, and then interspersing it with a long story about this guy Dogen going on a boat trip somewhere or something. And it was like, I didn't know anything what he was talking about. The Japanese stuff was totally lost on me. And the Dogen thing seemed like one of those little storybook stories that you had when you went to Sunday school when you were six or something. It was just completely lost on me. except for the fact that he kept laughing and laughing through the whole thing, and I just kept thinking. And besides, for two days I'd been watching him, and there was something about him.

[04:39]

I knew there was really something about him. And in spite of the fact that I wasn't following the lecture, I really loved it. But then it came to the question and answer, and I don't know about you, but I love reading the question and answers in these old lectures of his. So since he'd been talking about Dogen, and how we're dedicating the merit to these Buddha and Bodhidharma and Doga, the students started asking him about, well, what would he be called when we were going to dedicate the merit to him? And so there was some long question about, you know, they refer to Ehe Doga, and so he was saying, well, would we refer to you as Zen Shinji Shinryo, because name him after Tassahara, Zen Shin Shinryo. And Shinryo said, no, no, no, my name is Shinryo. And I love this part here. He says, someone finally says, well, what should we call you?

[05:41]

And Suzuki Roshi says, that's up to you. Laughing, laughing. Whatever you call me, it's okay with me. Anyway, I don't listen to you. It's like that wonderful story about Haquan when he, you know, the village girl thought she got pregnant. She didn't want to tell her parents that it was the neighborhood peasant boy, so she said it was Haquan up at the temple. And so when the baby was born, the parents took the baby up to Haquan and said, you know, you terrible priest, look what you've done here. You take care of this baby, you know. Is that so? Is that so? It takes the baby for a while. And then a year later, the peasant girl, you know. confesses that it really was this other boy. So they go up to Hakon and say, oh, you're such a great priest. We're so sorry. You're so wonderful and handsome. Is that so? Is that so? You know, it's like, that's that same sort of thing here. He doesn't listen to us telling him how great he is, right? Because he's just living his life, Suzuki Roshi is. So anyway, this continues on for a while. And finally, one of the students says, well, what does Shunryo mean?

[06:45]

What does your name Shinryo mean? Shinryo's name means, I looked it up in David Chadwick's book, it means excellent emergence. But Suzuki Roshi didn't say, oh, my name means excellent emergence. He just says, not much. And so then they said, so Roshi, would you tell me And this is what Roshi said. You, you must be a great teacher, you know, not me. You must use your name, but I'm okay. I'm here anyway drinking a lot of water. It was very hot at Tassar in the summertime. I mean, it was, you know, incredibly hot. My teacher died when I was 32 years old, so I was not so lucky, you know, in this point. So I want to live as much as I can, laughs, you know.

[07:49]

I was very weak. I didn't think I would live to be more than 50 or 60. But 66, that's how old he was then, is six years extra. Now I become greedy because of you. Ten more years. Give me ten more years, all right. I am asking Buddha, you know, give me ten more years. Then you will be a, you know, 40 or 50. You will be a good teacher if you try hard. So, Sukhiresh wanted to live 10 more years, not because he wanted to live 10 more years, but because he wanted us to be better students. He wanted us to be good teachers. For us, he wanted to live 10 more years. You, you must be a great teacher, you know. not about Suzuki Hiroshi, it's about our practice. It was so beautiful the way he always put our practice as what he was working for. It was all about his students.

[08:52]

Of course, when I heard that, by this time I already knew that I was going to come back and study with Suzuki Hiroshi and I was so pleased to hear that he was going to live 10 more years because now I could go back and get my Ph.D., and then come back and spend eight years studying Lusofa Sikiroshi. This is going to be great news for me. Anyway, so it goes on here. He says, if you follow the Buddhist way, you will be sure to be a good person. That is quite, I'm sure about that. Each student here you know improved a lot. That is very true. So if you live, if you practice our way maybe five more years, you will be a quite different person. This isn't like not always so or Zen mind, beginner's mind, where the language has been cleaned up a little bit. This is just a raw transcript. Our way is difficult. Why is it difficult? It is because it is too simple. Laugh some more. I love his laughter in his lectures.

[09:55]

I was at a poetry reading with Gary Snyder a week ago, and I asked Gary, because he met Suzuki Roshi when... over at Sakoji, Gary was living on Pine Street, and he had dinner with him, and Sakoji says, you know, American students are too serious. They don't laugh enough. So Sakoji, even though he carried great responsibility, he laughed all the time. It's like nothing happening at Tassara. So he's telling us why it's difficult. It's like nothing happening at Tassara. All day long, day after day, we are carrying stones and building cabins and scrubbing floors, eating some food. He's got Tasara down. You know, it looks like nothing's happening here. He laughs no more. But something great is happening here. I am quite sure about that. Then you will know what is Bodhidharma or Dogen or Buddha. You yourself are Buddha. Then you will recite Sutra with full joy, you know, to pay back their mercy. Can you imagine Siddhartha Hiroshi sitting there and saying something great is happening here?

[11:01]

to you, you know, because we were just like you guys, just a bunch of young kids. And he was so encouraging to us about our practice. And something great was happening there. Of course, Suzuki Rishi didn't live 10 more years, because even great Zen masters don't know such things. And I remember when I came across this, and I came back in the winter of 70 and the next summer of 71, and I had opportunities to talk with Suzuki Rishi, to express things to him, and I... sometimes didn't because I was suffering too much and too kind of into my own trip.

[12:09]

And then when he died, I had missed that opportunity. And I remember when I read this part of a lecture from Just Being Yourself, Just Being Yourself in Not Always So. I think it came out, it was a lecture that he gave in 671. He said, That is not difficult when you decide to be honest with yourself. Oh, the title of the lecture was expressing yourself fully, he says. To be honest with yourself and express yourself fully without expecting anything. Just being yourself and being ready to understand others is how to extend your practice into everyday life. We don't know what will happen if you fail to express yourself fully on each moment. You may regret it later because you expect some future time. You miss your opportunity and you are misunderstood by your friend. Do not wait to express yourself fully. So, you know, we think, oh, I've got 10 more years to practice with Ziziki Roshi.

[13:13]

I don't need to really practice with him fully now. And I think maybe you guys think that sometime. Oh, well, I'm not feeling so good today. I'll practice fully tomorrow or the next day or in a month or something like that. But we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what opportunities, what things will change. So take your opportunity. Don't miss it. Share yourself with your friends, your teachers, while you have the chance. Time moves quickly. So I want to tell you a couple of personal interaction stories with Suzuki Roshi. Since this Wednesday night is kind of an intimate setting, I'll share one story which would be considered embarrassing by almost anybody, and one sort of intimate story. So the embarrassing story is the following. So I've been at Tussar three or four days.

[14:14]

I'm on an alternate schedule. I'm... doing dishes. So I got off early and I really, I hadn't got a bath the previous day. I really wanted to get to the baths. How many people here have been to Tassara? Has everybody been to Tassara? How many people haven't been to Tassara? Quite a few. Okay. You should go to Tassara sometime. So anyway, back in those days, the baths was across the stream. And the procedure for taking a bath was there were two rooms which had kind of bath plunges that were about the size of this mat. And you'd wash off in there and then go into the big hot plunge like they have in the new baths. And usually during bath time, there were like 40 or 50 of us. So three monks at a time would jump into the little tub and wash off with soap before going into the plunge. So you got the idea there was a little room and there was a kind of a bathtub and three of you would get in and wash off together.

[15:16]

So I'm rounding the corner to go and have this bath. And as soon as they come around the corner, there's Suzuki Roshi, absolutely naked, sitting on a little bench with a pail in front of him. And he's washing himself off. And he's filling up that tub to take his bath. And I'm stunned. I'm just standing there going like, because I had been wanting to have an interaction with him. He's been wandering around for three days. I haven't had a chance to have a conversation. But here he is, but maybe I'm not supposed to, you know. So he looks up and he says, do you want to take a bath? So I think, yes. That's why I'm here, I'm going to take a bath. Then I think, well, maybe I'm not supposed to join him. So I say, well, I'll just go over to the big plunge, you know. And then he says, well, usually we wash off before going to the big plunge. So I think, oh, well. Maybe it's just like with the students. I'm just going to join him in this little tub. We're going to wash off together.

[16:19]

I'll have a nice conversation with Roshi, kind of get to know him a little bit, and then go into the big plunge. So I walk in. I'm taking my clothes off. He's doing something. You know, his plunge is now almost filled up, the little plunge to take a bath in. And I'm all undressed, and I turn around, and I sort of, I'm still not quite sure what's going on here. So I look at him, and he gestures to me, get in the plunge, you know, you know. So I slip into the plunge, and now all of a sudden, magically, he's all dressed, and he's walking out the door. He's leaving. And this had been drawn for him to take a bath in, and I was in it. I was raised well. I mean, I was an Eagle Scout. I got straight A's. I mean, I don't drive Zen masters out of their baths. That's not what I do. I am just... horrified when I realize what's going on here. Just, can you imagine?

[17:19]

I'm sitting there in this tub looking at him, walking out the door, and he pauses at the door and turns around and he says, he smiles and he says, don't worry. Don't worry. turns down and walks away. That was it. That was my first conversation with Suzuki Roshi. That's not in the tradition of, you know, jiaojos meaning nansen, you know, with the winter days and I hope your health goes well, etc. This is not that way. So I guess part of the theme was, you know, what is the compassionate teaching of Suzuki Roshi? I would say that was at least Kindness, wouldn't you say? Somebody stumbles into your bath and, I mean, he could have said, well, this is the private bath time of the Roshi, you know, could you come back in a half hour?

[18:23]

There's a zillion things he could have done, but no, he just sort of like, you were there and things happened and it turned out that he didn't get a bath and that was okay somehow with him. Because, like, for him it was, who knows what for him, I'm just imagining that for him... Meeting people, meeting students, interacting with students, even if you were just a new guest student with long hair and an orange T-shirt, it didn't matter. He just, that was more important than a bath. You see, kind of interesting, huh? It's kind of, so anyway, I think of that as kind of like just sort of ordinary, really nice kindness. I think of that with respect to all our forms. Like, we have a zillion forms around here in Zen Center. I mean, new people come in and, you know, try to eat with us. You know, Orioki is like, you know, whatever. But anyway, you have to step through the Zen with the left foot on the left side, the right foot on the right side. You know, there's all kinds of bowing at various times, which is impossible to understand.

[19:25]

So I would imagine some of you are probably making all kinds of forms mistakes around here. not quite doing it exactly right. Maybe somebody looks at you like, well, that wasn't quite right. So when you think to yourself, you can say, well, at least I didn't drive Suzuki Roshi out of his bath. And I missed the bow in the morning when the abbot came around. And Suzuki Roshi was okay with that, so maybe it's okay that I can make all these form mistakes around here as I'm doing my... my learning about Zen. So I'm going to tell one more story. So then I go back to graduate school and

[20:28]

But now I've gotten all messed up because I was busy working on my PhD and then I went out and I met Suzuki Hiroshi and now all I'm thinking about is enlightenment and whether I'm going to be enlightened or not and whether all those psychedelic drugs I took are going to interfere with my getting enlightened. But this is all messed up with something like all of a sudden I'm not doing what I was supposed to be doing, which is doing my PhD. I'm going through a kind of a life crisis thing. So I decide that... Suzuki Roshi is the only person that can answer this question about whether I can get enlightened or not, and I'm really distressed. So it comes to Christmas break, because I was teaching at the university, and I just impulsively jump on a train and train out here to San Francisco to check in as a guest student. I'm busy reading Narcissus and Goldman by Hermann Hesse and Nietzsche.

[21:33]

Yeah, I'm good and evil. I'm really sorting this life thing out. And I arrive here and check in as a guest student. She's here in the building. It's great. So I'm going to get my chance to ask him this important question about my life. And so I go up to Yvonne. You know Yvonne. She gave a lecture here. She was his assistant then. And I explained the whole thing to Ivana. I met Suzuki Hiroshi last summer as a guest student, and I got this important question, and I need to talk to him. And she says, oh, Suzuki Hiroshi is very busy right now. I don't think he can fit you in, but you could write him a letter, and he would answer it. And I'm going to myself, no, I'm just being... she's just pushing me off you know i could write a letter and he's never going to answer it you know i was really bummed out about this i'd come all the way from new mexico i'm trained to see him and ask him this important question so i'm really bummed out i'm actually pretty depressed to tell you the truth at this point in time and so i am but i'm i get upset you know i'm working over there that was back when the two offices were connected you know where the library is now the second room

[22:45]

That was the second office. There was the front office and the second office. And I was sanding a desk back there. This was in 1970, so we just bought the building a year earlier. We were doing a lot of fixing up of the building if you were a guest student. So we were redecorating that room. And all of a sudden, Yvonne walks in with Suzuki Roshi. And she wants to show him what they're doing, decorating the room. And so I think, I don't know if I had a power sander or whether I was hand sanding, but I stopped what I'm doing as Ivan's pointing out various things, and I'm standing there. And the phone rings in the front room. And the secretary says, Ivan, it's for you. So Ivan leaves the room. There he is. He's five feet away from me. Suzuki Roshi is five feet away from me. I can ask him my question. But I don't know.

[23:45]

Nothing's happening. Either I can't actually say my question or I don't know. And I'm looking at him. So you have to listen carefully because this is the part of the story that is... I'm looking at Suzuki Roshi and I see... my face in his face. He literally, his face deforms to be me, like looking at a mirror. And I'm looking at him, and he's looking just like me, and I see myself, but I don't look at all like what I'm feeling. I look like this young, 25-year-old, strong, intelligent, energetic, vibrant person, with this little kind of sheen of depression over his face, kind of like a veil. I'm looking at him. And just then, Yvonne comes in, goes back to himself, they walk out.

[24:52]

That's the story. of magical, isn't it? A little bit like a shape-shifter or something. So anyway, that's kind of one of those stories that hangs with you for a while, because what was going on there? What was that about? You know, the Avalokitesvara is usually has a thousand arms and hands to touch you in each hand, an eye to witness your life. Someone to actually witness your life, someone to actually see your life at a given moment, that's like compassion. Somebody knows who you are.

[26:01]

Someone actually feels you deeply and is with you for just a moment. That's one way to think about the story. Another way to think about it is, you know, I think there's this... I don't have it here. Or maybe I do. There's a great lecture... titled Beyond Consciousness and Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. Or she quotes Stogen and says, you should establish your practice in your delusion. You know what I mean? Establish your practice in your delusion. That is, oh, no, I'm going to only practice when I'm really feeling calm and together and not so mad or not so disturbed or not so greedy.

[27:03]

No, I'm going to establish my practice some other place but here. now with the crazy person that I am. And so what does he mean, establish your practice in the midst of your delusion? To realize your pure mind and your delusion is practice. So even in the midst of your delusion, you have your pure mind. You don't know it because you're so busy involved with your depression or your anger. You're so consumed with who you think you are, that you don't even see this other part of you. You don't even see this enlightened being that's happening there. So, of course, this is a girl she says in that lecture. The best thing, so when you say this is delusion, that is actually enlightenment itself. Oh, this is delusion and don't be bothered by it. So, you know how we get caught up in our... our stories about ourselves.

[28:04]

We all have a whole bunch of favorite stories that basically allow us to run ourselves down or build ourselves up or one of those two things. And we believe them. We create a whole world that we live in that is this story. I have a therapist friend who calls them pathogenic beliefs. We have these pathogenic beliefs about who we are. Pathogenic means suffering-causing beliefs. Most of them are unconscious, but we have this belief that we picked up when we were two or three years old. And these stories that we build out of these beliefs just cause us enormous suffering. And we can't even see what the real world is. We can't even see who we really are. So, of course, what Suzuki Roshi is talking about here is right in the middle of one of those stories where you think of yourself as this particular person usually bad thing, just go, well, maybe so, but maybe not.

[29:07]

Maybe this is just my pathogenic belief. Maybe this is just my story. Maybe this isn't really who I am. Maybe I'm not really this person. Maybe I'm something else. And he says, when you're able to see that and see that this deluded story that you're running through your brain is just that, a delusion, and not be bothered by it, you're liberated. You get that, what I'm saying? That makes sense? Make total sense. We just can't do it. I mean, it makes complete sense, but, you know, tomorrow I'll be running some story in my head, and you will too, and you'll just forget. So part of what happens, what I think about when I think about this meeting, Shizuki Hiroshi, in the office is, oh, I was a little bit... caught up in my depression about not being able to meet him, not talking, this problem about whether I'd be enlightened or not. I was all engaged in that whole storyline. And I just didn't even notice this whole other part of me, this part of me that was very alive and awake and doing all this other stuff, because I was just ignoring it, because I was so caught up in my problem.

[30:21]

We get so caught up in our problem that we forget that we're alive. I mean, we're actually this human being that's living this life. And so part of that little story is something about maybe, oh, well, yes, you've got a little problem you're worried about, like whether you're going to be enlightened or not, but we're just, just, you know, I can't even tell you what it's, anyway. but you forgot that you're alive, by the way, and standing in front of me, who's a Zen master. Anyway, I leave you with that story just to ponder a little bit. I think about it from time to time, wander back and forth, and kind of wonder about what that all means. And Jordan told me, or maybe Greg told me, that if I ended a little bit early, which I am about seven minutes early, there'd be an opportunity for someone to ask a question if they wanted to.

[31:24]

So I think what I'm going to do is give you just a minute or two to ask a question if anybody wants to ask a question. Any questions? No. I never did. Remember that when I referred to this little section here about, I had chances later on, but express yourself fully. Don't think that you've got forever to do these things. So there's a kind of sadness there. On the other hand, don't you think maybe he answered my question in some way? I think maybe he answered my question. Or I did. Anyway, the question got answered. Yes? Did you ever find out what the protocol would have been for the bath?

[32:30]

Oh, you mean when he said, are you here to have a bath? I would have said, no, I'm here to understand the Dharma. And he would have said... And he would have said, oh, where did you come from? And I said, oh, I came from Holy Mountain Temple. And he would have said... and he would have said, oh, did you see the holy image? And I would have said, no, I see a bathing Buddha here. And he would have said, oh, excellent, answer. no pause, absolute movement with the event?

[33:43]

Well, I don't have anything from today. I'm not going to tell a story one of my friends, but I hear many stories like this from students and stuff. A student came and told me they were home with their sister, that they'd have a very contentious relationship for many, many years, and they'd get angry and fight. Anyway, it's impossible. They'd never been able to relate. And it was one of those moments where she was just standing there, and she just took the risk and shared something and broke through this disconnect that had been happening for so long. between them. It takes courage a lot of times to actually just all of a sudden take the risk and know when to take the risk.

[34:50]

It always doesn't make sense to take the risk. I mean, it was the right time to do it, but I don't have a good example. Sorry. Think of a good one for yourself. Do you have a good one that you've done today? friends of mine, people I've had in my life who are deeply hooked into their stories. Their lives are often stories that proliferate out of traumatic experiences. So in my conversations with them I often find out

[35:52]

Do you have any ideas and suggestions how to encourage them? Well, it's so difficult. Just being with someone when they're in that place sometimes is all you can do. They call it a complex. We get gripped with these complexes. They're so powerful, they take us over. And it's like we cannot see past our suffering because we believe so much this story we're in. It is amazing. And it doesn't matter. What I'm surprised by sometimes is I'll be familiar with a particular story and I'll be pretty good at, oh, yeah, that's that same old thing and not believe it. And then sometimes it'll just come roaring back again and capture me. It's a continuous practice.

[37:03]

Anyway, I think sitting helps. If they're a person that can sit, if you've invited them to sit and they find it works, I think sitting helps. I think when we sit in this posture, when we practice Zazen, we do get some composure and stability with respect to those stories because they're going on in our heads and we really do have some stability, some power to deal with them. So if you can encourage them to sit, and it works. I have many friends that don't sit, so then I just have conversations with them and try to convince them that it's not real. It's difficult. That's why there's so much suffering. Yes. Well, first of all, it means just being yourself, accepting yourself for who you are, really.

[38:19]

And that means experiencing yourself, not pushing parts of yourself away that you don't, you know what I mean? So the practice of actually accepting who you are at every given moment as okay and that that is your life that you have at that moment is the first step. And then if you can get to that place and be with yourself, you'll know how to share it with someone else. How do I practice that? Well, it's just the moment-by-moment effort to just be with yourself.

[39:21]

Accept what the situation is in front of you. Accept that this reality that you have at this moment is the only Buddha there is. This is it. And the more you can remember that, or a Suzuki Rishi, sometimes you have to remind yourself, oh, this problem I'm involved in is not more important than the fact that I'm alive. Just remember, oh, I'm alive here. Pay attention to my breathing. That's a thing I do a lot. Oh, yeah, I'm here, I'm breathing. That's good. Get back in touch with your body, your posture. It's the basics. It's the blocking and tackling of Zen. I've been informed that you guys have to go to bed at school night, as the way Greg put it, at 8.30. So I just want to end with just one comment, which is this first lecture I chose was about an echo where we pay our respects, we offer our chanting back to the teachers that have brought us this practice, Buddha, Bodhidharma, and Dogen.

[40:33]

And now when we chant, I think we offer it to Suzuki Roshi, Shogaku Shinryo. But in this lecture, Suzuki Roshi said, If you want to repay Buddha's kindness, if you want to repay Bodhidharma's kindness, if you want to repay Dogen's compassionate kindness in bringing this practice to you, the only way to do it is to practice, is for you to practice. That is how you repay the kindness of Suzuki Roshi, bringing this practice to us.

[41:11]

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