You know, I think most of you know, we are in the midst of a practice period and in that practice period we are concentrating on a teaching by Dogen Zenji, Bendo Wah, which means a talk on the wholehearted practice of the way. Well, as you can see, you know, there are things going on here, very exciting things going on around here. And I find myself wholeheartedly engaged in some of the preparations. In particular, sewing a teaching robe for the new abbot and sewing a Nanjo Kesa also for Hoetsu Suzuki Roshi, who's coming for the ceremony and who expressed a desire to have... and then said, oh, I'm naughty for asking, aren't I?

[01:05]

And actually, I said no because I was very excited. It's the first thing he's ever indicated that he would like that we could do for him after all he's done for us. And he's done a tremendous amount for us. You know, he's the one who Because Suzuki Roshi died so early before he'd given Dharma transmission to all the people he ordained, which he had wanted to do, Uitsu completed Dharma transmission with a number of the more senior people so as to keep Suzuki Roshi's lineage going and flourishing. And he's... I've gone over there with groups of people to do a practice period at his temple because there's a small monk's training hall there. A real monk's training hall where you sleep and eat and sit in the training hall.

[02:10]

You don't have any private space at all. You have a tatami. Then you've got somebody else next to you on the next tatami. Fabulous way to practice. Very intense, very difficult. Went over there with a bunch of middle-class American women. Most of them psychologists. There were several other psychologists. But all of them, you know, established enough to run their own lives. And here we were living with... one tatami each and a tight schedule. And it was really interesting. We had in our initial schedule that we worked out before we went over there, we had a, you know, we sat in the morning and then we worked in the afternoon pretty much like Tassajara.

[03:14]

And we had a 15-minute tea break during the afternoon work period. And rather soon it became a 45-minute processing break, where we had tea and sort of processed all of the, you know, all of the difficulties of living in very close quarters like that with a very tight schedule. Oh, itsuroshi calls it potato practice. He said, you know, when you, You dig up potatoes, it all got dirt on them. You don't pick up each potato and scrub it. You put them in a bucket with some water and you stir them around and they bump into each other and they clean each other up. Or sometimes compared to a rock tumbler, you know, where you put some rocks and some water and some abrasive into a container and you put it on a roller and it just keeps rolling and they keep bumping into each other with that abrasive in between. And then they make these beautiful polished stones.

[04:19]

So we did our one-month practice period that way. And as I say, it was pretty difficult. He was very encouraging all the way. I mean, he didn't make fun of us at all watching us stumbling around trying to be monks. He was just totally encouraging all the time. And... Besides it being difficult, it was very bonding. That group of women have gotten together every year since 1992 when we went over there. And I've been back a couple of times with other groups, but this particular group, this first group, still gets together. We call ourselves the Sangha Sisters. Most of them are teachers by now. And it's, you know, I will be forever grateful to him for saying yes, you know, and for encouraging us.

[05:30]

So I was very happy for the opportunity, but it's not done yet, and I've been over there sewing like crazy all day today and yesterday and last night and, you know. And I was thinking about, well, what am I going to talk about? Then I'll have to talk about wholehearted sewing. But I have to say that the wholeheartedness of the people that I met here when I came to practice, the wholeheartedness with which Suzuki Roshi moved rocks and worked in his garden was the thing that people talked about, the experience of working with him moving rocks and making a garden. And I have a picture on my wall of him sitting out on a rock in his garden just laughing and having a wonderful time. Working his butt off, but having a wonderful time. And I got into this sewing because there was a woman who came over here to teach sewing

[06:45]

And she was just completely into it. She was just totally wholehearted about it and had total faith and devotion in sewing Buddha's robe. And that's what I liked about her. I've never sewn in my life. I mean, my eighth grade sewing teacher said to me on the second semester, Well, the first semester, I'd taken sewing, and I had also made a big fuss to be able to take manual training, too. That's what they called shop in those days. I took manual training and learning how to use a lathe and work in the shop. And she knew I'd done that. And so after the first semester, when we tried to make it, well, some people made dresses. I tried to make a dress. I never got the sleeves in right. And before the second semester, this was during the deployment, She said to me, her name was Miss Violet Tyler, she said to me, Blanche, the project for this semester is to make a garment out of wool, you know, like a jacket or a skirt.

[08:01]

And well, wool is much more expensive than cotton, and I don't think you should waste the fabric. Would you refinished the sewing machines? Because she knew I liked to do shop work. So I refinished the sewing machines. I stripped varnish off of that beautiful quarter sawn oak that the old Singer treadle machines had built out of. And refinished them. I got an A in sewing. And that's the last time I ever had anything to do with a needle and thread. Until, let's see, in Girl Scouts, I had to learn how to sew on a button and make a patch, I think. Anyhow. And so I had nothing more to do with sewing. And then I was told that there was this woman teacher coming over here. And so I made arrangements to take a vacation and be here when she was here.

[09:04]

And, you know, I'd pretty much never done any traditional women's work except have kids. I was a chemist. I was a mathematician. I was a car mechanic, but I was, anyhow, I'd never sewed anything. But she came from a traditional culture where women did traditional women's things. She was teaching sewing. I had not known that when I arranged for the time off. But she was so wholehearted. She was so devoted to what she was doing that I was just captivated. And I wanted to... A friend of mine said, if she'd been teaching TV repair, I would have studied TV repair. She was just really totally into what she was doing. And that feeling was very, very appealing to me. And that's what I think of when I think of the wholehearted way of just...

[10:10]

pouring yourself into what you're doing for the joy of doing it. I was in our small group this afternoon at the practice period tea. Jung brought up from memory a quotation from Zen Master Hongzhi from Cultivating the Empty Field. Traveling the world, meeting conditions. The self joyfully enters samadhi in all delusions and accepts its function, which is to empty out the self so as not to be full of itself. Traveling the world, meeting conditions. So that reminds me, this meeting conditions, reminds me of Yunmen when he said to his monks, what is the teaching of the Buddha's whole lifetime?

[11:22]

And he answered for them. He did that a lot. He would pose a question and then he would answer it. He said, an appropriate response or what's generally... translated as an appropriate result.

[11:39]

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