This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Such a beautiful blend of old familiar faces and new faces. So greetings from Green Gold Farm to city center. Very nice to be here. A young monk performs tea ceremony, hanging kettle sways slightly. I was so pleased to be asked to talk today on this occasion of Suzuki Sensei's 100th year of life. That in itself is a miracle. but also to celebrate the publication of her 100 haiku poems, collection of poems, and a book called A White Tea Bowl, which I have right here.

[01:11]

Beautiful book, if you haven't seen it already. I have great hopes there are these for sale wonderfully. So, afterward. Wonderful book. I also wanted to, along with congratulating Sensei on her birthday, I wanted to thank Kate McCandless, who I don't think I have met. Is she here? Oh, hey, Kate, thank you. Thank you so much. It's a beautiful, beautiful creative act you've done here for all of us and for Kaz Tanahashi-san, who I hope also might be here. Thank you for this tribute to... our wonderful sensei. So when I first heard the title of this collection of poems, A White Tea Bowl, I thought to myself, I've never seen a white tea bowl. And then the next thought was, I'd really like to see it, you know, a white tea bowl, especially that one.

[02:13]

So people who study tea ceremony are kind of like that. You know, they really want to... get a hold of things. They like to touch them and look at them and turn them over and talk about them endlessly. So that's part of the delight of entering the tea room, is you're going to find out something about all of these objects that have been placed there for your pleasure on that day, only that day, not to return again. So along with the appreciation of the objects come what are called transmission stories, And it's the transmission stories that imbue the objects with their authority and their aura, that kind of strength of their presence. You might sense when you see an object that it's very special, but then you hear the story and something else happens inside of you that really deepens that appreciation.

[03:15]

For example, my teacher has a tea bowl that she brought out for the first time a few years ago. None of us had seen it. And after we drank tea out of it, I said to my teacher, where is this from? And she said, my mother gave it to me 70 years ago when I was a little girl. So there I am holding this tea bowl that connects her to her mother long gone. and to herself as a child, also long gone. So that's the power of these objects. It's a wondrous thing, actually. And Suzuki Sensei has memorialized a tea bowl, the white tea bowl, in this haiku. I pour sencha into the white porcelain tea bowl he loved. I pour sencha into the white porcelain tea bowl he loved. You know, that tells the whole thing, doesn't it?

[04:18]

I would imagine Suzuki Roshi had, most recently, had passed away. So, in the tea room, the next thing that you would look at is the tea scoop, called the chashaku. And we have at Green Gulch, maybe here as well, and my teacher has some chashaku that had been carved by Hoitsu Suzuki, Suzuki Roshi's son, Those are always very special. They're like old friends when I get to use one of those. His hand carved this beautiful little scoop. Then there's the chasen, the whisk that you use made from bamboo. The natsume, a lovely little lacquer tea container. And when you open the tea container, there's a mountain of powdered green tea sitting in there. One of the first things you're taught is don't You know, don't make an avalanche on the mountain. Take good care. So you use the scoop to take little tiny bits of the mountain and put it into the tea bowl.

[05:24]

So one of the other objects that I was, I don't know, startled's not the right word, but moved, deeply moved by, was a basket that was in the... which is the little alcove in the tea room where the scroll is hung, and maybe the kogo, which holds the incense. And there was this woven basket, and when you first enter, you admire the objects in the tokonoma. So I looked at the basket, and I noticed there was a repair to the handle of the basket. And I asked my teacher, oh, what happened? She said, oh, yes, it came apart, and Suzuki Roshi repaired it. with that little bit of rattan. So once again, it's like, oh my goodness, you know, you could still see the trace of his hand in that basket. So when Mrs. Suzuki, Suzuki Sensei, returned to Japan in 1994, her good friend, who now my tea teacher, Mrs. Nakagawa, agreed to accept some of her American students as tea students of her own, which...

[06:38]

I am deeply grateful for that. Now it's 20 years that I've had Mrs. Nakagawa as my teacher. So when you begin to learn the tea ceremony, the first thing you do is study being a guest, how to enter the room, how to appreciate what's there, how to handle the objects, not holding them too high. off the ground, so if you were to drop them, they're not going to break. So all kinds of very practical things that you learn. And then you enter, you learn to enter into the room, sliding on your knees. You learn to bow to the other people in the room. And then you watch as the host comes in and refreshes the charcoal, begins to whisk the tea, sends you a sweet, wonderful okashi. Then you receive the thick green tea on special occasions or thin green tea. And by the end of it all, you are so completely full and content that you couldn't possibly take another bite of anything.

[07:44]

The utter contentment that comes from this whole series of very delicate and lovely experiences that kind of flow by you during the course of the tea. And finally you slide out the door and back into the world that's been hidden behind the shoji screen. So I think that tea is all about feelings, as far as I can tell. It's how I feel. It's all about feelings. The feelings that come when you're with old friends are the feelings from learning new things or from admiring and honoring age-old craft. that kind of feeling. But I think it also comes from the dance. I think what hooks a person on T actually is the movement of it, the dance. And it starts with your own tiny toes being wrapped in this tight, white tabi.

[08:48]

And... Little by little, you learn the forms, and then eventually the day comes when you're asked to be the host and to make tea for your guests. So the first step is to wait outside the screens while the guests are settling themselves in the room, and this is an auditory skill. You have to listen until the guests are settled before you open the door, and you can't see them. So this is a mistake that I often make. By being impatient, I open the door too soon, and it's kind of like walking in on someone who's getting dressed. They all go, ooh, like that. It's like, oh, I'm so sorry. And I close the door again, and I try to count or do something to, you know, to be patient. But it's always, these kinds of mistakes are a big part of the ceremony. We make each other laugh quite a lot by our mistakes. So you enter the room as the host, you bring certain objects with you, and then you kneel down in front of the fire and this hot iron kettle, steaming kettle.

[10:00]

And then you bow and you say, please make yourselves comfortable, which is strange because everyone's sitting in Seiza. And if you've ever sat in Seiza, it's not likely you'll be comfortable for long. But anyway, Chano Yu... actually means hot water for tea. So that's the Japanese word for what we call tea ceremony. Cha is tea, you is water. Hot water for tea. So then you take a few deep breaths and then you have to completely let go. Because there is absolutely no way that you can remember what to do next. You know, imagine trying to think your way through a tennis match or a gymnastic routine. You can't. There's no way. Your body is what's learned, the tea ceremony. Your hands and your feet and your eyes, they work together. In fact, thinking gets in the way, just as in Zen practice.

[11:05]

Your thinking's in the way. It's the only problem you have. So you need to rely on your body, and your body's been carefully taught over... Many, many weeks of repetition, these exquisite and intricate forms and procedures and patterns that you practice again and again and again with your hands and so on. So if you miss one step, you very quickly realize that there's absolutely nowhere you can go. You can't move and you have to sit there frozen. Because where you're supposed to put this thing, something else is in the way that you forgot to move. So it's kind of this wonderful moment, you know, that moment of being frozen. Because tea is in fact a very tightly woven net of very highly visible consequences. And there are only very few elegant ways to escape from consequences.

[12:07]

And this is another opportunity for your fellow students to giggle. as you forget to add water or where to put the whisk or many other things. It's always amazing how many new ways you can make a mistake when you're doing tea. So my favorite of all the mistakes I've ever heard of is a rather famous one. I'm assuming it has to be famous because it made it all the way here from Japan, and it happened many, many years ago. So there was a gathering of a lot of people, maybe as many as are in this room or maybe more, and there was a venerable old tea lady making tea in the center of the room. And this particular form she was doing is quite challenging. The kettle is hanging from an iron chain on the ceiling. So as with the young monk in the first haiku I read, if you don't do everything exactly the right way, the kettle starts to sway. So she was doing all of this impeccably.

[13:07]

The kettle hadn't moved. And there's one place in this ceremony where you have to lift the kettle, which is quite heavy. It's full of water, iron. You have to lift it up and unhook the chain, re-hook it a little higher, about two lengths, let it go, do some things with the fire, then unweight the kettle again, unhook the chain and re-hook it back where it was before. Sounds simple? So she did this and everything was going fine except her eyesight wasn't so good so she missed linking to the chain and the kettle fell into the fire and this great cloud of ash went all up in the air and over her. So that's not the story. She did not change her expression at all. She reached down She lifted the kettle, she re-hooked it, and she continued making tea. That's the story.

[14:08]

This is what I call supreme emotional intelligence. So for those of us of lesser emotional intelligence, when we freeze, there's nothing to be done. We just have to wait until our teacher says to us, either kindly or not, here's what you need to do now to get out of this problem. So I was thinking that, you know, I was remembering Suzuki Sensei's voice ringing in my ears over these many years now. Fusan, many times I tell you, little front, saido, saido. You know, and I'm like, hai, Sensei, sumimasan, I'm so sorry. Fusan, many times I tell you. Well, little front, saido, saido is actually English for... hold the tea bowl first a little bit in the front, then to the side, and then to the other side before you set it down. Little front, side-o-side-o, you know? And it's like... Now, of course, there are other times when it's side-o-side-o little front, so it's hard to remember which it is.

[15:17]

It was hard for me. And so, therefore, Hussan, many times. It's probably her voice is most clear, right, in those times of... And I'm sure all of her students feel the same way. Each one of us thinks we were the worst student that she ever had. So anyway, if all goes well, which it rarely does, it takes about 40 minutes to navigate the minute instructions required to make three sips of green tea. And all the while, your knees are on the mat. at a level of discomfort that it's sort of hard to imagine anyone would voluntarily withstand. But you do. It's amazing. You stay there until you're done. It's always amazed me, you know, because I do it. I stay there until I'm done. This is when the writing on the scroll really comes to life to me. For me, it's like Zen and T are one.

[16:18]

You stay there until you're done. And this is what Shakyamuni Buddha was doing under the tree. He sat there, although there were lots of voices, like Mara the evil one, whispering sweet nothings in his ear, get up young man, run for your life. But he didn't, he stayed there until he was done, until he understood the cause of his own suffering, and ours as well. So the instructions on how to make a bowl of tea have been kept alive for the most part in Kyoto for centuries now. And there is a huge, huge consortium of tea practitioners and growers and craftsmen, craftspeople, and patrons who to this day continue to honor and practice the way of tea. So I have decided after nearly 30 years of studying tea that the entire enterprise was designed to challenge and thereby re-educate our neuronal pathways.

[17:29]

You know, the pathways of form, of feeling, of impulse, perception, consciousness, the five heaps or five skandhas that are taught by the Buddha as how we create the self. And even though the self does not truly exist. It's an illusion. It's the only thing we've got that can be educated. We can work with it. We can talk to it. We can instill in it a kind of faith or belief that there is a way. There is a way to live. There is a way to practice. When I first decided to ask Suzuki Sensei if I could study tea, my motives were less than pure. I had no idea what tea was, and I wasn't particularly interested. I wanted to get close to Suzuki Roshi, who had died several years before I arrived here. And I knew that Zen Center was the inspiration of this amazing teacher, that everyone that I met here who'd known him was grieving.

[18:42]

And I had a feeling that the person who knew him best and probably was grieving deepest was his wife. So I wanted to study tea so I could hear stories about Suzuki Roshi. Stories which she rarely told. You know, she didn't have to because Suzuki Roshi was not gone. He was embodied in all of the people who loved him. And he still is. And so is she. And that's how it works. You know, our teachers are embodied in the love we have for them and those things that they've taught us that we treasure about ourselves. The things I like about myself best are things that I've learned from my teachers and I know each and every one of them and what I have to be grateful for. I love Suzuki Sensei because she was my teacher. Lifting heavy things as if they are light and lifting light things as if they are heavy.

[19:47]

This is a lesson from the tea world and from the Zen world as well. I think all of us can think of those people who taught us when we were young, of course, beginning with our parents, who helped us to learn to walk and talk and put on our shoes and hopefully clean our rooms. You know, that's our first tea. No? Somebody says no? I'm going to talk about that next week at Green Gulch. Cleaning your room. Anyway, then we go off to school, you know, and we have these teachers who are from the wider world who have had a great influence on us. And my first real teacher was named Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown was my third grade teacher and he took our class out beyond the asphalt and behind the chain link fence into the field of weeds. And then he turned over a big rock and And all of these little creatures, creepy little creatures, went scurrying, trying to get out of the light.

[20:52]

But it was so disorienting to see that the world was more than what I thought. It was not just human, and not in control, and deeply mysterious. Disorienting. I love Mr. Brown. And I love Suzuki Sensei for that reason, and I love Reb for that reason, and I love many of you who I know and have known for years for that reason, because you disorient me again and again. Throw me back into the great mystery of our amazing life. There are some well-known stories about the practice of tea. Some are from within the tea tradition and others from the Zen tradition. because the roots of tea and zen are deeply entwined from their very earliest beginnings in China, long, long ago, many centuries ago. There's even a rumor that the tea plant grew from the eyelids of Bodhidharma, who he tore off his eyelids and threw them on the ground so that he'd stay awake during meditation.

[22:00]

So that's our first ancestor, our first Zen ancestor in China, Bodhidharma. Do you see the Daruma dolls? They have these big eyes. That's because there's no eyelids. They're growing tea plants. Something to scare the children, right? So... I think it's more factual that the drinking of powder green tea, which is called matcha, came into Japan from the Song Dynasty, China, around the 12th century. And it was brought by Zen monks who had gone to China to study Zen in the great monasteries of the Song. And it helped them to stay awake during meditation. And it also was a very good medicine because green tea is full of vitamin C and caffeine. In fact, a sweet and a big bowl of tea is probably a lot nicer buzz than a cup of coffee by far. It's a smooth awakening. It wakes you up in a smooth way rather than the caffeine of coffee, which is sort of bumpy road sort of thing.

[23:04]

It didn't take terribly long for Japanese culture to realize that tea was more than just a medicine. It was also a very delicious beverage. As a result, the various classes began to compete in who had the best tea plantations. Given the way humans are, tea became a major industry in Japan over the centuries, and it still is. In fact, for a long time, within the first couple of hundred years of its introduction, The utensils and the brand of tea and who had the best and most expensive things made tea a kind of sport or entertainment among the merchants, the samurai, and the upper classes. They showed off their very fancy equipment and their tea rooms and that kind of thing. And then they told poems. They recited poetry at their various gatherings. And tea was kind of a beverage that was served at these poetry gatherings. And then in the 15th century, something rather remarkable happened when the host, rather than having the tea brought in by the servants from the other room, began to make tea themselves in front of their guests.

[24:19]

This is a big change. People would see you doing this. So this was the very beginnings of the tea ceremony in itself. And then along came Sen no Rikyu, who's the great master of tea in the 16th century, who perfected the art and actually... created a fine art out of tea ceremony, by returning it to its monastic roots. He moved tea away from this kind of entertainment, sport arena, to a spiritual practice. Tea and Zen are one. So the simplicity, the aesthetic ideals of what's called Wabi Sabi, of a devotion to simplicity in daily living, and to the... a revering of old and tattered things, as having imbued with this aura, a special quality. So there's much written about wabi-sabi. I'm not by any means an expert, so if any of you, there's long essays you can read, but it helps you to understand how these roots, the Zen and Ti roots, have grown together, particularly from Rikyu's time on.

[25:31]

So one day, Riku was invited by a tea grower, a farmer, to come for tea. The tea grower was very fond of the tea ceremony and practiced as often as time allowed, which for a farmer isn't very often. Riku arrived at the old man's tea house, bringing with him one of his promising young disciples as the second guest. And being very nervous, his hands were visibly shaking. And then the grower made a number of very obvious mistakes. And yet at the finish, Rikyu said to him in all sincerity, this tea you have made is the finest. On the way home, the disciple asked Rikyu how he could have made such a comment given the amateur performance of that man. Rikyu said, he made tea for me with his whole heart. So right there you can recognize our practice. wholehearted practice, wholehearted practice of the way.

[26:35]

It's one of the Dogen fascicles. And this is the key. It's not the performance. It doesn't matter. Drop anything. It doesn't matter. Drop the kettle into the ashes. Go ahead. Then pick it up again and keep going. It's wholehearted practice. And each one of us is called on to behave in this way, no matter what you're doing. With each object that you hold in your hands, you bring life to that object. Your life is the life of the things you touch and how you touch them. Are you reverential? Do you love your toothbrush? It's doing great things for you. So take care of it. Take care of your body. Take care of the objects that are in your life. So when I think about Suzuki Sensei, wholeheartedness is definitely the quality with which she did everything. She was wholehearted when she was teaching us tea. Frustrated, yes, but wholehearted. She was wholehearted in doing her exercises up and down the hall.

[27:39]

I think 2,000 steps she would do every day. Still does. A little slower. She was wholehearted when she sang children's song at the top of her lungs on top of a table here in the dining room. And she was wholehearted when she would bow at the kaisando to the wooden statue of her husband. And also when she would bow to each of us. And she's still wholehearted. Maya, my dear friend Maya, who's tea master in her own right over at Gringolch, and I went to Japan last fall. It was my first visit. After many years dressing like this, I finally went to Japan. I thought, maybe it's time. I should go find out more about where my tradition comes from. It was a wonderful trip. Wonderful, wonderful. And maybe the highlight, certainly the highlight of the trip. was going to visit Suzuki Sensei. She's beautiful. I mean, the picture is in the hall. You can see it. She's just beautiful.

[28:40]

No glasses. She sat in Seiza for an hour and a half. She spoke English wonderfully. She was so lively and funny. And she had all these albums with pictures of us. almost like her, well, yeah, her family albums, you know. We looked through these pictures of all of us who were here when she was a young 50-year-old woman who stayed behind after her husband passed away, you know, for 30-some-odd years. And there we were, these young people, you know, in our 30s, 20s, and 30s. It was just amazing to see what her treasure of photographs of by the young Zen Center students. And then she pointed at this tea kettle that was in the corner, and she said to me, Fusan, there's your old friend. And that was the kettle that used to be up in her room here that I struggled with week after week.

[29:42]

Your old friend, Fusan. I think she knew that Zen Center needed her to stay, you know, while the new growth, the shinmei, developed some strength and began to flower. She brought with her this thread of temple life. Drinsuin is a very lovely temple. Real people live there, and they have real children with real toys. It's a wonderful, lively place, and people are in and out all day long. They're all good friends, old friends. It's the kind of temple I hope all of us someday will be able to enjoy and create for others, community temple. So she gave to us this kind of profound connection to this culture that Suzuki Roshi had tried so hard to share with us in this simple and profound understanding of Buddhist teaching. And she took so many of us under her wing personally, but at the same time it wasn't personal. She wasn't my parent and she wasn't my friend.

[30:44]

She was my teacher. She was many people's teacher. And I think this is something that's a very special relationship that we all need to understand. Who are our teachers? How do we treat those who teach us? And I think it's a boundless answer. There are so many, so many people from whom we've learned many, many things. So she taught Dharma, and her husband taught Dharma, and her son and her grandson, and I think the little three-year-old is going to be teaching Dharma someday. And they've all taken the long plane ride to America to help us. to help us to learn. And I think we are learning. I feel we are. I have great faith that we are. But I also feel like we shouldn't be too sure. We should really wonder if we're learning and how we're learning and is it deep enough? Do we have that strength to carry this tradition forward to the next generation to come? Would we be willing to stay 30 years in a strange place like America so that this dharma can deepen?

[31:50]

and can grow. There's among the many things we need to learn is how to be a good host and how to be a good guest. It's kind of the core elements of the tea ceremony and also the core elements of Zen. Host and guest, guest and host. It's a profound social form and I think among all the cultures of the world, the Japanese tea ceremony has perhaps evolved this form to the highest. and most essential expression. Host and guest are not two, but they're also not one. There's something that each has to learn from the other. And in that relationship, things turn. Point of view, your understanding, disorientation. Sometimes host, sometimes guest. Which one is it? How can you tell? There's another very good story.

[32:54]

This one is from the Zen tradition about a tea gathering of two Zen monks and a local samurai lord by the name of Sendai. A monk named Tetsugyu had invited Lord Sendai to tea when his Dharma brother Cho'an dropped by for a visit. Lord Sendai invited Cho'an to join them. Tetsugyu had chosen an especially precious antique tea bowl that Lord Sendai had given to him. which he set down on the tatami mat as he began to make tea. After drinking the tea, Lord Sendai, following the tradition, admired the bowl and then passed it to Chohan so he might admire it as well. Chohan suddenly reached out with his ceremonial stick and smashed the tea bowl. Now look at the authentic tea bowl that exists before birth, Chohan said. Tetsugu turned pale and nearly fainted. But Lord Sendai remained upright and present, saying to Tetsugu, I gave you that tea bowl, but I would like you to give it back to me now.

[33:58]

And before you give it back, please have it glued together and have a box made for it. And on the box, I ask you to write the name of the bowl which I will now give to it, the authentic tea bowl before birth. I will reverently pass it on to my descendants. So this story is about tradition. It's about whether or not we are simply holding on to the tradition without understanding its essential meaning. So for a Zen student, the essential meaning of things is that they don't exist in the way that we think about them. Not even a little bit. They don't exist in the way you think about them. that their fundamental characteristic is no independent, inherent existence. They don't exist outside of everything else. So if they have no inherent existence, what difference does it make if you break it or not? Whatever.

[35:02]

So that's Choan, you know, breaking the ball. That's one extreme. And then there's Tetsugu, the other extreme. who is possessing the bowl, you know, like Gollum with a ring. My precious. So that's the other extreme. But our practice is the middle way between the extremes of attaching and disregarding, disrespecting. What's in between those two? Well, Lord Sendai had a really good response. Glue it back together and I will save this bowl and pass it to my descendants because it's got a great story. It's the story that imbues the object with its aura and the strength of its presence. So the essential meaning is that there is no essential meaning referring to something other than itself. This is kind of good news. So while making tea, make tea. While eating lunch, eat lunch.

[36:03]

While washing the dog, wash the dog. It's as simple as that. And yet hardly anyone can do it, can pull it off. It can pull off the veil of concepts that we have laid over whatever it is that we think we've got there. Like, well, that's my dog. And I love that tea bowl. And I think I'll have turnip soup for lunch. That's the way we think. So practice isn't a matter of time or of duration of time. It's always exactly what's happening right now. For example, right now. This is our practice. This is my practice and it's your practice. I think I'm talking, you think you're listening. I'm not sure. You aren't either. But here we are, together, at last. It's always exactly what's happening and it's always in the form of yourself as guest and host.

[37:05]

Host and guest. Are you my guests? Or am I your host? Or are you hosting me? How can we say? We can't say. It's both ways. You're my guests. I'm your host. You're hosting me. I'm your guest, right? Wonderful thing that we can't say. So whether we're walking or kneeling, serving, being served, receiving, giving, when the practice of awareness, in the practice of awareness, there's this constant stream arising. of non-separation, of no two things, and no solidity, no one thing either. That's a nice, tempting one. Oh, it's all one. Nah, not exactly. Break the tea bowl. Nothing to hold on to, nothing to break, no one to protect or to hate. How about you? Would you like a bowl of tea?

[38:08]

Would you like a bowl of tea? I think there's going to be some, actually, just a minute. So the last time I had tea with Suzuki Sensei, the last class upstairs, I was having some trouble making tea because I kept crying. And anyway, I managed to finish whisking the tea, and then I looked down in the bowl, and there were all these tiny green lumps. Yeah, it's not good. So I turned the bowl, little front, side-to-side-to, and I turned it, and I... passed it to sensei, and I bowed, and I said, I'm so sorry, sensei. Forgive me for the lumps. And then when I looked up, she was smiling at me. And she said, Fusan, please enjoy the lumps. First calligraphy of the year. Today again, I write. Beginner's mind. Thank you very much. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[39:30]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:33]

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