This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. So, I want to express my gratitude to you all for being here and for appreciating Tatsahara. Tatsahara is here because of Suzuki Roshi. Three years ago, Sojin and I did a summer workshop

[01:00]

in which we wanted to bring forth some of the basic teaching of Suzuki Roshi. It was the 50th anniversary year in 2009 of Suzuki Roshi coming to America. And so that was three years ago and then we had a little bit of fun, so we'll do it again the next year. And so last year we had more fun. And then so this year we're doing it again. And now we're completely tired of it. But then that is the challenge that Suzuki Roshi said about Zazen. The most difficult thing is to keep making it fresh. So with repetition, we keep coming back and how to make it fresh. So even though, you know, we've been doing this... We're still experimenting with, you know, how does it work for the two of us.

[02:06]

And we thought, well, we'll take this experiment even further, and this fall we're doing a practice period here at Tassajara. We're doing the whole 90-day ongo, and we'll see how that goes. But we thought that today, this evening, we'd talk a little bit about I think, well, what comes to mind is the whole matter of how to extend zazen into activity. How to extend zazen into activity. Is it different? Is there a difference? Is zazen an activity? That's how you take care of your mind. How you take care of your mind as manifest in whatever it is that you're taking care of. So fundamental teaching is to regard everything that you're working with as yourself.

[03:10]

So Suzuki Roshi, as I understand it, I should say that actually I never met Suzuki Roshi. So people sometimes assume, since I'm talking about Suzuki Roshi, that I met him. I never met him while he was living. So I keep meeting him everywhere I go. But I did come, my own history with him is, I had decided that I would go on a pilgrimage in Kaktisazen, and I left Chicago where I was living, there was a little Zen group in Chicago, and then I went east, and I was sitting in New York, Zen Study Society, with Edo Shimano, this was in December 1971, and one night he announced that Suzuki Roshi had died. And I thought, well, what was going to happen at San Francisco's Incident?

[04:12]

Suzuki Roshi died. And so I asked around, and people said, well, he turned it over to an American. And I thought, that shows a lot of confidence, actually. Trusting the practice to an American. And so I thought, well, I should come and check it out. So I hitchhiked across the country and came to San Francisco, arrived a few weeks after he died, and, you know, I've kind of been around ever since. In the course of it, I sat a sesheen, and with Katagiri Roshi, and then sat another sesheen, And the second session I sat, the first session they would barely let me sit because they said, well, you haven't even done a one-day sitting. And they said, well, maybe if I said one day, the first day of session, that would be the one-day sitting. And then they sat the next day.

[05:20]

After the third day, they said, okay, well, you can sit the seven days. But the next session, I just wanted to sit. And the next session, I came and I sat and then somebody said, oh, you're on the serving crew. Oh, I have to be on the serving crew. So I went and I got this instruction and then while we were getting this instruction, someone said, well, the serving crew serves, I think it was lunch, every day. And I started to complain. Wait a minute. I didn't sign up for serving crew. And Sojin was a senior student. He was standing right next to me. I was complaining. Serving crew again the next day? And he said, it'll do you good. I remember that. So this was my introduction to...

[06:23]

Extending the practice of sitting into serving. And it's still doing me good, maybe. So he's been teaching me in that way, you know, from time to time. Telling me, okay, if I'm having some difficulty, it's good for me. Maybe. So that's my introduction. Well, I wanted to say, yeah, yeah. Thank you for the introduction. We thought, well, what, you know, we've been talking all day about this subject. And I was thinking, well, what more is there that we can say? But it's endless. So you inspired me to say something about our activity. And you know, during the summer, as we all know, summer emphasis is on work.

[07:31]

And today, Greg Mutanto said to me, you know, he said, there aren't so many guests this time, you know, it's a little worrisome that the guests, because of the economy and weather and stuff, But he said, but the students, he said, the students are just working their ass off. He said, they are so into it. And so he said, I'm so inspired by the students' activity at the students' practice. And it was really, it sounded wonderful to me. So I congratulate all of you on your great practice. Usually at this time of year, at this, we go into practice into, This is the summer practice period. It's not just the summer session. It is the practice period. And we go in with enthusiasm, more or less. And then it reaches a peak toward the middle.

[08:34]

And then everybody starts thinking about what else they could be doing. And they think about whether they should go to school or continue or I'm getting awful tired and this is just work and all this, you know. And so it's important to get a little boost at this time of year to refresh our practice and make it really vital. And Suzuki Roshi was always talking to us about how to arise fresh at each moment. Because our practice has a kind of repetitious quality, right? Zazen every day, the same, you know, it looks the same. You know, every day looks like yesterday in a certain way. We get up in the morning and we go to Zendo and we sit Zazen and then we go to work and then we have this routine.

[09:37]

But he would say, unless you realize that you have never done this before, you're going to get stuck. So the practice has this repetitious quality, but it's up to us to understand and to bring each moment of our practice to life. Otherwise it just becomes a dead routine. So how do you keep your practice from becoming a kind of dead routine and make every moment come to life and be vital? So that's the great mystery of practice. And it's very important. If you practice, if you chant the heart sutra over and over again, you may think, oh, I've done this before. But actually, you've never done it before. You've done something like this before, but you've never done this particular activity before because there's nothing in the universe that can be repeated.

[10:39]

And if we realize there's nothing in the universe that can be repeated, what are we doing? I've done this before. I remember Suzuki Roshi talking about characterizing somebody as saying, oh, I've done this before. And he said, you have? You've never done this before. You think you've done this before, but it's not so. And the spirit of repetition, what seems like repetition, of doing certain acts that seem to be doing it over and over again, is because it's very difficult for us to be in the moment, to just appreciate each moment. And the Soto Zen practice is to

[11:45]

not to do something for its own sake. To not do something, to not get caught by thinking about the result of our activity. And so the activity doesn't go anywhere. Because we're used to having a result, or if I do something, I want something back, some result. So he always emphasized, when you wash the windows, just wash the window. When you sweep the floor, just sweep the floor. Without any idea that you're doing it for some reason other than doing the activity itself. Because in practice, the activity itself is making you. You are being created through your activity. You are being reborn moment by moment through your activity.

[12:49]

So washing the window is not... It doesn't matter whether the window is clean or dirty. You don't wash the window to clean the window even though that happens. The purpose of washing the window is to bring you to life. So you do wash the window with your total being which brings you to life on this moment. We sweep the floor not to get it clean, but simply to bring you to life. So if you have some alternative reason for doing that, you miss something. You miss this moment. So it's different than mutual activity. If you just simply come here and do these tasks as if you were doing something in another world. then it just looks like drudgery. I could be in a restaurant cooking or I could be, you know, sweeping the floor in a school making money.

[13:53]

That's not what it's about. It's about how you bring yourself to life, how you bring your surroundings to life. So it's called pure practice, which means practice not for some other reason. Purity of practice means non-discriminating practice. So the term purity means non-duality. That's pure practice. It's not the opposite of impurity. It's simply one total exertion to do one thing. So that's the spirit of practice. And in the summer we have this opportunity to do it through our work. During the practice period we had more zazen. And it's a different paradigm, but the summer work practice period is based on working.

[14:56]

And not only that, but working for the benefit of others. Taking care of people who come here. While you're working, they're playing. But that's our generosity. So we have this opportunity to be generous to people through our activity and to create an example of what it means to do selfless activity. So, Suzuki Roshi will be very pleased by how things are going here at Tassahara right now. I remember when we first started Tassahara. It was fun, but it was difficult, and it was primitive. Not so different than it is today, but it was different.

[15:59]

I remember we had a lot of characters. Almost everybody was a character. And now, you know, people are more... I don't know what it is, but because... They're all above average. They're all above average. But the practice has more of a shape than it did in those days, right? So we were just forming the shape of practice over these first years. And pretty interesting. So, you know, Suzuki Roshi gave his whole life to us. He had a life in Japan, you know. He did have a life in Japan. And he had a temple with lots of parishioners.

[17:02]

And when he came to America, 59, he said, I'm just going to come. Well, he was invited to be the priest at Sokoji, because the priest at Sokoji in San Francisco, Sokoji Temple. And he said, I'm not going to study anything about San Francisco or look at a map or something. I'm just going to come and see what's there and just meet it without any idea about what San Francisco is like. So this is the basis of his practice. It's just like... washing the window to wash the window. He just came to San Francisco to come to San Francisco, even though there was a reason, right? There was a reason to come, so he came. But he didn't want to form any idea about what was going to happen. And he just met with circumstances and had an open mind, and by and large, all this happened.

[18:12]

He didn't plan this at all. It was not his plan. He never did plan. The people who came to see him, he sat Zazen every evening at 5.45, and people would look in the phone book for Zen and call him up. And he'd say, well, I sit Zazen at 5.45 every morning. You're welcome to come. And they would sit in the pews at Sokochi Temple, which was once an old synagogue. And the Japanese congregation, when they were in concentration camp, collected their money and bought the temple. I'm trying to remember exactly where I was. So, you're right, he had nothing in mind.

[19:17]

And so every step of the way, the students would come, and they would form the Sangha, the old primitive Sangha in the 60s. And he just did what they wanted him to do. They just said, can we do this, can we do that? And he said, yes, do this and do that. He just sanctioned, he gave us the... the forms to practice with. And we all submitted to the forms to practice with, not each other. He didn't give us too much. He gave us just enough to have a way of practicing. He was strict, but he was also very soft and flexible. And every Saturday we would work. work at the temple and clean the temple and all this. And it was a wonderful feeling to be able to work together.

[20:20]

And we just carried on that initial way of practicing together and working together and sitting together. And then Richard Baker managed to have Zen Center by Tassajara. That was something. It was a resort. And mostly what we did was work. The early days of Tessa Heart, we had zazen in the morning, and then we'd work all morning, and then we had zazen at noon, and then after lunch we'd work all afternoon. And there was lots of work to do. And I felt This is just great. Something's not being handed to us. We're like pioneers doing something together to make this thing happen with the inspiration of our teacher.

[21:26]

Everybody had that feeling. We built that kitchen. That was our biggest project, to build that kitchen, collecting all those stones, putting them all together. building the inside and the structure. That was an incredible project. It was all students. It was just us building that stone building and fitting it all together. So that kind of working together was very inspiring. And then, of course, when Richard Baker took over after Suzuki Roshi died, he continued to... But for Suzuki Roshi, his understanding was, he said, sweeping first, zazen second. That's very interesting because our tendency is to think, well, zazen is the main thing, right?

[22:32]

But for him, zazen and sweeping were not two different things. He wanted us to understand that our work practice was exactly the same as our zazen practice. And everything that we did had the same quality. Zazen practice, work practice, study practice, everything. Kitchen practice was all the same. I remember we used to have different people working in the kitchen because we felt that we should be sitting zazen instead of spending a lot of time in the kitchen. But that was not the case, because kitchen practice is considered the same as zazen practice. So I remember when Tatsugami came in 1970, a year before Suzuki Roshi died,

[23:39]

Suzuki Roshi was too ill to actually lead the practice of Tassahara. And Tatsugami had been the ino at Eheiji in Japan for 10 years. And he was invited to come. And when he did, he created the monastic practice as we know it. We created the doan ryo and the kitchen ryo and all those formations that we practice in. And it was the Suzuki Roshi Sanction. And work practice is always a big part of it. He said, the kitchen crew works during sashimi. That's their sashimi. And that's pretty much what we do, except that we you know, pledge a lot, but, but still, so all of our practices is, is, whatever we do is practice.

[24:45]

So when we said zazen, we don't practice to, uh, to attain something, right? That's not practice. That's not zazen practice. Zazen practice is to express our, just not our understanding, but to express our, enlightenment. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

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