Good evening, everyone. My name is Barbara Mocktinger. My dharma name is Kie Joshin, taking refuge, always intimate. And I'm wondering how many of you may be here for the first time tonight. Welcome. We just finished a sashin, a seven-day meditation retreat, on Saturday. And in the middle of the sashin, we had a memorial for our founder of his 48th year of his passing, Suzuki Roshi. And both of those events really... I felt so deeply...

[01:17]

so much gratitude and connection to our lineage of this temple and the founder of our temple. And I wanted to share some of that tonight. I wanted to kind of share with you some of the stories about Suzuki Roshi's early days here at Zen Center. kind of what life was like here in the temple when he first came here and how that life kind of took root and spawned what we have today as San Francisco Zen Center, how we can today be practicing and having sashims and continuing in our current culture what Soto Zen practice that he brought to us. So we have this great treasure, and I've always been drawn to these magazines called The Wind Bell.

[02:24]

And these started out, he came to the United States in 1959, and these started being produced two years later by his students. So the first issue was December of... He came in 59. I don't know if I just said 69. He came in 59, and then the first issue was in December of 61. So these are treasures, and they're like living scrapbooks of what, and they contain the energy of what was being created together with the American students and the Japanese congregation with whom... to whom he came initially to be the head monk for. So I have... I'm going to read some of these and share some stories. And in the process of kind of looking through, you know, the history and wondering what was it like when he came here, we have these stories, like...

[03:39]

one of the main origin stories is he came and he said to people, I sit every morning at 545, come sit with me. And that's kind of how things got started. That's one of our stories. But it actually, the context of the times, there was a booming beat generation happening in San Francisco. And there's a wonderful connection that that actually I've just been learning about, where the priest who had been running Sokoji at the time, his name is Wako Kazumitsu Kato. It might be Kato, but I'll call him Kato. And he was a young man, and he was an amazing man. And he was very much involved in... the burgeoning beat and zen community that Alan Watts was leading at this place called the American Academy of Asian Studies.

[04:53]

Alan Watts was running it and was the director. And they were already practicing zen and studying zen. And Alan Watts had written a lot of books about zen. Millions of copies of books about zen had been So there was a huge interest in Zen and especially among the beats. So some of the early students at that academy were Gary Snyder, you know, Claude Dahlenberg, who became a Zen Center, important Zen Center founder, founding student. He had been following Alan Watson. He was a... working as a janitor at the academy with Alan Watts. And that's where Della Gertz and Gene Ross and Betty Warren were practicing there. So within a month of Suzuki Roshi arriving, Kato invited him to come and teach and lecture at this American Academy of Asian Studies, which, by the way, is now CIIS.

[06:03]

It kind of morphed into that. And the first time he came there, he had everybody get onto the floor and sit zazen, and he gave them zazen instruction. And Kato had been teaching there and working with Alan Watts on a couple texts and working on a project with him to study Chinese classics and to teach him about Zen Buddhism. there was already this wonderful connection when Suzuki Roshi came. And so students started to come a lot based on Alan Watts and the whole movement there. And some of the people they were involved with were Ferlinghetti and, you know, the whole, let's see,

[07:05]

Anyway, the whole bead movement was taking place in San Francisco at the time. So... Just a little story about Cato. He ended up becoming a professor at UC Berkeley, and he ended up being invited to teach down at... the Zen Shuji temple in L.A. with the bishop down there. But he was assisting Suzuki Roshi with translation, and his story is quite amazing. If you get a chance to read it, he's written a kind of autobiography about what it was like to be Japanese-American. He kind of likened himself to Dogen when Dogen went to China. how he had to come here. He knew no English. He didn't know the culture. He didn't know, he didn't know anything about American appliances.

[08:11]

He tried to get jobs as a kind of housekeeper, but he would get fired because he had no idea how anything worked. And, um, at one point he was a, went to do farming and, um, he talked a lot about how the Japanese American community had, um, lost everything during the world war two. And, and, um, you know, and how they kept on, you know, with the Sokoji, how they kept on paying for the temple, even when they were in, in turn, they made sure the temple had continuous support so they could come back to it after the war. So there's a lot of stories about the Japanese-American practice, and I'd like to learn more, actually, about how the interaction between the Japanese-American congregation and the Western students. There was one story I came across, which is that George, there's a Japanese man at the time named George Hagiwara, and he had been a member of the Japanese congregation.

[09:22]

And he was one of the few members of that community who were friendly with the Zazen, they called them Zazen students. And his family had founded and been caretakers of the famous Japanese tea garden in Golden Gate Park. They lost a fortune during the war, but they were still better off than most. And when they heard from Suzuki Roshi how cumbersome it was to sit zazen on the pews in the temple, he talked with other members and took up a collection. And they ordered tatami mats from Japan to go around the edge of the room and also bought grass gyoza mats, and black cloth to make zafus. So they helped really contribute to the zazen culture that would end up kind of taking Suzuki Hiroshi away from their congregation and splitting off so that he could devote himself to the Westerners who wanted to study zazen. So...

[10:24]

And this priest, Kato, is currently alive. He's 89 years old, and he's still associated with Zen Shuchi in Los Angeles. And he has a temple in Japan. One other thing about him that's really fascinating is that he, when he was in Japan, and he was a temple, a son of a temple priest, and he located, he found in an attic in his home a very, fragile copy of the Shobogenzo. And he discovered it, and he devoured it. He devoted himself to studying the Shobogenzo, and it was extremely meaningful to him. He liked to... The story from the Tenzo Kyokun, really, he talked about in his book how the story about, you know, Dogen's trip on the boat and with the... There's a story in the Tenzo Kyokun.

[11:28]

Anyone who's worked in the kitchen would know this story. But the old man who's selling mushrooms, Dogen goes up to him and saying, well, why don't you delegate this to some junior person? Why do you take care of the mushrooms? And he says something like, this is something like... no one can do it but me, and this is my responsibility. It's much more poetic, but that story really meant a lot to him when he was especially starting out in America, and he told himself that story a lot to inspire him. So he's a beautiful person who had a big part in the causes and conditions of our origins. of Suzuki Roshi's coming and starting out in his temple. So one other story that's, there's a kind of common knowledge that Suzuki Roshi was absent-minded.

[12:39]

And there's several stories that I came across. And by the way, one of the great resources of all of this and of anybody who's interested in our heritage and our community In knowing more about Suzuki Roshi, David Chadwick was an original student at Tassahara and at City Center with Suzuki Roshi. I don't know when he started, actually, but he was part of that original group of people. And he went on to write an amazing biography of Suzuki Roshi called Crooked Cucumber. And after that publication, he's maintained to this day a site called kyuk.com. And he's kept track of every single person who was ever involved with Suzuki Roshi and the Times at Tassahara and the Times at City Center. And he has all these notes from his interviews, like his interview with Keito was, he had three different interviews with him to talk about what it was like with Suzuki Roshi and what were the times like.

[13:46]

So I highly recommend it. And besides that, David Chadwick has scanned every single wind bell from its beginning to the last one. And you can read every single one of them online. And they are just, every single wind bell has amazing stories. And they all contain a Dharma talk by Suzuki Roshi. But they started out as kind of newsletters. And part of the purpose was to let people know about, to come to this, and sit with Suzuki Roshi. But the news, I'm going to read a little bit of some of the news articles, but they show so much of the enthusiasm. You just get this palpable feeling of life and enthusiasm coming out from all of those issues. So there's this one story from his autobiography. And I'll just read that because I think it's kind of, I think the word apocryphal, it's an example of Suzuki Roshi.

[14:53]

Shunryu Suzuki first surprised me when he arrived at the SF airport. I believe it was around 9.30 in the morning. The members of Sokoji and I prepared two or three big signs on which was written in bold Japanese letters, Welcome, Reverend Suzuki. At the airport, several of us were holding our large signs, making sure we were visible as arriving passengers passed by. There were a couple dozen of us lined up, eagerly waiting to meet our new priest. A slightly built priest, wearing a Soto Zen robe, was among the crowd of passengers walking to exit the flight terminal. We thought he must be Reverend Suzuki, but he continued walking along with the crowd, looking straight ahead, paying no attention to our signs and Japanese faces, As he passed by us, we thought there must be one more Soto. I missed something. Soto Zen priest. Oh, yeah. We thought there must be one more Soto priest emerging from the exit. None appeared. So I ran after the priest and caught up with him. I asked, excuse me, are you Reverend Suzuki?

[15:56]

He looked at me and said, oh, you must be a person from Sokoji. You are Kato-san, aren't you? Oh, how good of you to come here to see me. The Sokoji members caught up with us. Suzuki was calm, but everyone in our party was in a quandary, whispering and asking each other, is that Reverend Suzuki? Suzuki realized that the group of people gathered there were there to greet him. He smiled and said, oh, what a big party. Are you all coming to see me here? My, I don't know what to say. Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody. That is how we first met Reverend Shinryu Suzuki as he entered the United States. So there's other stories like that, almost identical. So one of his early students was Della Gertz from the Institute. And one of the remembrances from the cuke.com website is just very sweet.

[17:05]

What I remember especially about that evening, I met Suzuki Roshi in June 59 when Dr. Kato brought him to our class in Zen Buddhism at the then Academy of Asian Studies, and Alan Watts was the dean at the time. What I remember especially about that evening is that it ended with everyone getting on the floor around the room, facing the wall, and Suzuki Roshi teaching us to meditate. Betty Warren and Jean Ross were there. Later... we were in the first lay ordination ceremony. In almost every talk, Suzuki Roshi encouraged us to have faith and confidence in our Buddha nature. This teaching still sustains and encourages me. What was wonderful about Suzuki Roshi is that he thought I was wonderful. Everyone had that same feeling. You felt he was there just for you. There's another funny story.

[18:16]

Oh, this is almost the exact same thing. This is from Kato. One day I was carrying Suzuki Roshi's bag as an attendant. Some priests were going to visit Sukoji. We went to the airport and I just followed him. A whole bunch of Japanese came toward us and Suzuki was supposed to meet them. They were so visible because they were all wearing robes And Suzuki was wearing a robe, and they all looked at him, and he just didn't notice them. A whole bunch of shaved heads. And after we passed them, I said to him, aren't they Japanese monks? Did I miss them, he said. Oh, I see. Maybe that's them. Go ask them. And of course it was them. That sort of incident was numerous. In that sense, he was absent-minded. Maybe he was thinking or maybe not thinking. things from the early windows in 62 so this was he came in 59 and in 62 one of the on the back of the window they would say you know there'd be an incorporate there'd be you know notes on the back and and it said

[19:54]

Zen Center became an incorporated nonprofit organization under the laws of the state of California. As you know, our general purpose in forming this organization is to provide a fund for the building and maintenance of a center in which lay people may practice and study Zen. So that was one of his first intentions, was to find a practice center and teach lay people. But eventually, he did ordain... somewhere I have it, how many priests and a lot of lay people. There's one other thing that I noted. If you go to suite two, there's a calligraphy outside of the rooms where Suzuki Roshi and his wife Mitsu lived and where our central abbot, Ed, lives now, and it's hand-painted calligraphy. And it's been there all this time. And so if anyone's curious, Here's what it means.

[20:56]

It's Joun, J-O-U-N, and it means literally to glide cloud or to ride on cloud. So it comes from Dogenzenji's Sansui Kyo, Sutra of Mountain and River. He says the water has life of riding cloud. People think water is running, you know, flowing in the stream. But water has also, you know, the merit of driving cloud. Cloud itself, it may be water. It is... Anyway. Then he goes on to talk about the first principle. And there's so much in his lectures that just completely... I can't even follow. Like, first principle. And he went through the whole Blue Cliff record... starting in like 62, every single Wednesday, practically, he'd give a lecture and he went through the whole Blue Cliff record and he'd go into these long commentaries on these koans.

[22:05]

And most of them are just really beyond me. And I have a lot of admiration for the students at the time who could listen to him in his halting English and have him speak about these very difficult subjects. And his first talks were on the Heart Sutra, and form is emptiness, emptiness is form. And everyone was grappling with these concepts. And I feel I probably wouldn't have lasted very long had I gone to their door. And people sat zazen. It started out like hour-long periods. He started out having sashins and sittings immediately. within a month or so. He was having sittings. And initially they were like hour-long periods, but I think gradually they became 40-minute periods with a 10-minute kin-hin. And he was very strict, and people didn't move, and I think not that many people stayed.

[23:14]

A lot of people were curious, but not that many people stayed. So... I'll just share a couple other things. One is there's a lot of flowing of students going to Japan and Japanese priests coming to America at that, you know, even starting at the turn of the century. Zen, like, around 1962 or 3, they were celebrating the 70th year anniversary of Zen coming to America. So Zen had... come like around 1895 with the World Parliament of Religion Conference. And it mostly was the Rinzai tradition and Rinzai teachers who would come here. And mostly they were on the East Coast. And while Suzuki Roshi was here, he would fly off to the East Coast and teach at these centers. And people from those centers were always coming to...

[24:17]

practice with him at both Tassahara and City Center. So there's a lot of interchange. And at one point, Yasutani Roshi and Soa Nakagawa were from different lineages, and they came to Tassahara and taught. And there was sort of more kind of harmonizing at that point, and they were welcomed. Currently, Yasutani Roshi has a very bad, there's a bad feeling about him because he was one of the Japanese priests who were very pro-war. And so, but at the time, he was welcomed to Tassajara and he was very well, you know, it was a beneficial exchange. So, There's one story I'd like to share, which is there's a wind bell from 1969.

[25:23]

And the intention was to have a whole issue of the wind bell devoted to the Rinzai priests who had come to America and established Zen in America. And one of the first... Japanese priest who came was a man named Soen Shaku. And he was the one who came to the World Parliament of Religions in, I think it was around 1865, 1895, sorry. So this whole issue has a wonderful, you know, each center and each teacher, there's a whole section about them. So On the cover is the picture of him from 1888, and it's taken in a place called, I don't know if you pronounce it, Ceylon. It's Sri Lanka now. And so it's a very stern-looking fellow, and there's a lot of small print, but I'd like to read it.

[26:29]

This fellow was a son of Nobusuke Goemenichinose of Takahama, the province of Wakasa. His nature was stupid and tough. And this is an autobiography, by the way. He's talking about himself. His nature was stupid and tough. When he was young, none of his relatives liked him. When he was 12 years old, he was ordained as a monk by Ekai, abbot of Myoshin Monastery. Afterwards, he studied literature under Shungai of Kenan Monastery for three years and gained nothing. Then he went to Midera and studied Tendai philosophy under Taiho for a summer and gained nothing. After this, he went to Baizen and studied Zen under the old teacher Gison for one year and attained nothing. He then went to the east to Kamakura and studied under the Zen master Kosen in the Ngaku Monastery for six years and added nothing to the aforesaid nothingness.

[27:31]

He was in charge of a little temple, Butsunichi, one of the temples in Ngaku Cathedral for one year, and from there he went to Tokyo to attend Keio College for one year and a half, making himself the worst student there, and forgot the nothingness that he had gained. Then he created for himself new delusions and came to Ceylon in the spring of 1887. And now, under the Ceylon monk, he is studying the Pali language and Hinayana Buddhism, such a wandering mendicant. He ought to repay the 20 years of debts to those who fed him in the name of Buddhism. So, you know, a lot of these windballs, I see things like that, and I just would never think of reading them, and I just gloss over them. But when I read this, I really, you know, by the way, he's considered like a great teacher. and a wonderful master, and he really was one of the founders of Rinzai Zen in America.

[28:36]

Anyway, I really related to his self-assessment, and I really feel like, you know, his nature was stupid and tough, and when he was young, none of his relatives liked him. I can really relate to that. I think that... I think that describes me pretty well. And the nice thing about practice is you can wear down some of these parts of your character and you can cultivate acceptance and you can cultivate other qualities that kind of become more prominent. So even though this may be a teaching about no attainment or about the emptiness of things, I think it's also literally... helpful and it also shows some of the humor that a lot of these teachers had and brought to their students and Suzuki Roshi just you hear these tapes where he's laughing constantly and I just think the humor is really a wonderful element to practice so I think I'm done with my presentation and

[30:00]

I was wondering if anyone had any comments or questions or things they'd like to share. Start with Nancy. Well, for one thing, From the moment I came to Zen Center in 2000, I think what happened was I didn't bring enough warm clothing and I ended up in Goodwill at Green Gulch. And there were all these wind bells there. And I was immediately drawn to collecting wind bells. And so I have pretty much a full collection. But I often don't refer back to them. But when I, you know, just, it's hard to, you know, the feeling of connection is something that comes and goes for me.

[31:02]

I don't always, can't remember it. You know, the gratitude and the sort of like feeling like I'm part of a family, this spiritual family. And this spiritual family, I can practice here. And it just was a wonderful family feeling. And then when I, I just think I got curious about... this question of what was it like when Suzuki Roshi came in 59? What was the background of that story? And I started reading and then I just kept on digging more and more until I got so absorbed with Kato's story. And Alan Watts, there's so much to study about how he came to be. He was a fascinating person. He was writing about Zen and when he was 17, I think he wrote a book on Zen.

[32:02]

So there's so much to study and learn about. And I feel like these are our ancestors. So it's been very enjoyable. Thank you. Well, there's this one passage that kind of summed it up where I think it was Kato saying he was very strict, and then when Zazen was over, he was a very friendly man. So I think he was very strict in the Zendo, although he also was compassionate. He wasn't a mean person. People felt so loved, even...

[33:09]

Apparently he had the strict quality in zazen and, you know, trying to, in the zendo, and he also was very warm. Hi, Lucy. I think today, you know, as I was reading about Keito and reading about the Japanese experience, you know, going through the war and the discrimination and the hardships, I just felt this, you know, my heart opened to the experience of the Japanese American community.

[34:23]

And... And a question like, I'm not very connected to these roots right now in my life. And kind of just a question how, like wanting to even reach out to Kato and say thank you. Well, thank you all so much for your attention and allowing me to share my enthusiasm. And I also want to just say thank you. This is my first talk since I wish you so last fall. And I just re-listened to my two talks. And I never expressed my gratitude to my teachers during any of my talks.

[35:26]

And I think partly it was because I... was ambivalent about giving talks because they were so hard. But I do want to express my gratitude to Ed for inviting me to Bishu So last year, to Vicky for your teachings and support, and to all of my friends and SONDA members for all of your support. Christina. So thank you all very much. May I...

[35:56]

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