That was a change in him, or as I was working with the precepts more closely, I began to have that as a kind of lens through which I could observe him. He had a capacity for extraordinary patience. for all of us who showed up to practice with him, which, you know, initially was a pretty rag-tag, you know, a lot of people from the Art Institute, a lot of artists. And then once Tassajara started, hippies would show up with everything they owned in their backpack and say, I'm here. What do I do next? I want to go to Tassajara. And that was a huge shift for him. even though he wasn't opening the front door, I was. But the impact was significant with him.

[01:02]

But I think that because he had a sense that he, at some level, wasn't going to live, it was clear he wasn't going to live forever, and maybe he wasn't even going to live as long as he hoped he would. So there was a way he was not tougher with himself, but what I observed was he just became more strict. The one area of exception, he said, I remember this was after Zen Center moved to the paper. He said, don't talk to me about sex. I don't have a clue what you guys are doing. I don't get it, and I am no help to you. Just don't talk to me about it. And I thought that was very astute of him.

[02:03]

I mean, it was just, it didn't make any sense to him, but I don't think it made any sense what we were doing anyway. You know, we'd have a sashin and then party like crazy and burn off all that energy that was cultivated during the sashin with this big blast, you know, and go to the Finnish bathhouse and carry on. I'm, of course, not speaking. I just broke a precept, but that's all right. Well, you know, I lived in this watershed for 33 years, including

[03:32]

when I lived in the house we lived in in Muir Beach, across Highway 1 from the Banducci Ranch. We'd be quite good friends with the Banducci's. And they were very kind to let me go walking because they had that wonderful, long, level road. And I could walk and sort of see what they were up to and how was it affecting the creek. And, you know, being a busybody, that was... A great treat. Anyway, you're living in a great place. Yeah, you're invited to come over. Oh, I'll take you up on it. I'd like to do that. Yeah, thank you. Yes. Whoever that is. Hi. Oh, yeah, hi. Boy, that's a trust fall. the plant, the species.

[05:09]

and the cookies that she and Mike had in their home. That's been rediagnosed for him. And May at 69 is the last time I saw her because at that time she was in Sokoji. All her energy was just to be able to go to the video about the new treatment. i know that she but i don't know so much except for her book seeing her edits I don't know so much what life was like with her as one of the biggest students in the city.

[06:13]

I would love it if you could say a few words about her. Thank you. I don't know if I know so much either. When I came to Zen Center in 1964, Trudy and Mike Dixon, who were very friendly with each other, Trudy was doing Involved in she just be I think she did begun to be involved in the book the similar in beginner's mind and editing that book which was a big job and She became she was getting more and more ill throughout that whole process See her so much throughout that process.

[07:23]

I saw Mike a lot but I Trudy, I didn't see so much. So she was working with Richard Baker and she was working with Suzuki Roshi, and she wasn't so much in the public eye at that time. I don't know if you or Lou, I don't know if you... I think by the time Trudy began to be really sick, she didn't have much contact with the people practicing with Suzuki Roshi, except for a few of us who had known her before she got so sick. And there were a few of us who would go and see her on a regular basis. after she was basically in bed. One of the visits when I went to see her in their house in Mill Valley, she gave me a stone that I still have, a big stone with two holes in it so that depending on how it's set,

[08:39]

It catches rain, and then the birds come and drink out of it, and then it disappears. And having that stone, I think of Trudy every time I look at it. But I also think of Trudy every time I pick up Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Some of you who were at Zen Center yesterday afternoon, the yucca leaf that I have that Suzuki Roshi pounded to make into a sumi brush when he did the calligraphy that's on the cover of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. So Suzuki Roshi and Trudy are bound up for me to get the brush and the stone. And it's so interesting to have that kind of sense of connection with those seemingly inanimate objects. She had, even when she was very ill, towards the end of her life, a kind of glow about her.

[09:42]

She was fearless. That is, without fear. And a great gentleness of mind. I mean, she really was like a long-time practitioner with Suzuki Roshi. Ed? Yeah, why don't you come up and use the microphone? Excuse me, that was a why question. I'd like you to come up and use the microphone. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Hi. So I met Trudy when I came to Zen Center in 1965. And Trudy was a very, well, bright spirit.

[10:49]

Yesterday at the Page Street, I was in the room that was Suzuki Roshi's doksan room. There's a photograph of Trudy there on the altar, on the mantel. And then You know, it's at the left, and then on the right is photographs of all the abbots of Zen Center. Yes. Yeah. Oh, thank you. It's great to see her. Also, Sahara, and I walked up to the ashes site, Siddhartha Rishi's ashes site, and you know, there's his ashes there. And as you face his, there's to the right, there's space for Kadagiri Rishi's ashes. And then to the left, there's Trudy's ashes. The stone there, and the stones where Trudy's ashes are, I worked on the walls at the ashes site. And so I helped place the stone there for Trudy.

[11:51]

And I think I helped place the stone for Kadagiri Rishi. I can't remember for sure, but I know I did. Trudy's... I can't remember. Anyway, in the Zendo at Tassajara, the old Zendo, you know, it's now the Student Eden area, there's people, we sat across from each other. There was a partition down the middle of the room, and then some people faced the partition. And we, of course, bowed to our cushion and then turned and bowed away from our cushion. Trudy's the only person I know who, although she's facing the wall, would return your bow. I don't know how she did that. Because the idea usually is that when, you know, the person sitting next to you down the row, when you bow, you're bowing to the person sitting next down the row and that person will return your bow. But they can see out of the corner of their eye. I don't know how she did that. Because then you turn and bow the other way and then she's sitting facing the wall and she'd return your bow.

[12:57]

I guess. Anyway, Trudy has a very special place in my heart because after I'd been working in the kitchen for a year and a half or so, there was a big kitchen rebellion and people said, we don't want to work with you anymore. You're short-tempered, mean, arrogant, and you run everything. You tell us always what to do. You don't let us do anything for ourselves. And there was a big meeting with the director And one woman said, you treat us just like you do the bread. No, actually you treat the bread very lovingly. And you don't treat us like that. You treat us worse than you treat the bread. Anyway, finally the director said, so Ed, do you want to change the way you work or would you like another job? I said, I'd change the way I work, but I don't know how to do that.

[14:03]

And he said, well, you can have a little while. to see um and um so i went outside and i was sitting on the steps um out there and the main steps coming down from the straight from the gate to the what's now the student eating area and i was sitting there crying on the steps i i'd done as well as i could you know the best i could I was only 22 and to run a kitchen, you know, serving a hundred people, six meals a day, two different diets. And I didn't, but I'd done the best I could. And I was, I didn't know what to do. And Trudy came along. She asked me, you know, how are you, what's happening? And she stopped. And I was so touched that she would stop. As you heard, she had cancer, as you said. And for me, she was such a beautiful person.

[15:11]

So I said what was going on and that I didn't know what to do. I said, I believe in you. I believe in you. And I said, I don't see how you can I don't see any reason to believe in me. I don't see any reason to believe in me. And she said, I believe in you. That's like Suzuki Roshi too. And like Mel said this morning, because Suzuki Roshi believed in us, you know, and he wasn't doing anything. We created Zen Center. there's anybody else i know that i can see people there who had actually had intimate relationship with suzuki roshi and if anybody any one of you would like to say something like al i see your smiling face okay if you think of something let me know is anybody yeah

[16:28]

Yeah, that brings to mind several things. He always chose the most basic way to do things. And I remember one time when we were at Sokoji, which was on 1881 Bush Street where we started. Across the street there were some apartment buildings, some houses, and some of the students took them over. And one time Suzuki Roshi's wife wasn't there and Katagiri Roshi's wife. And we wanted to go out to breakfast, have breakfast. So we went into one of the apartments, and it was totally empty.

[18:07]

And we said, well, how are we going to have breakfast here? Suzuki Roshi got the morning paper that was out on the stoop or something, opened the paper, opened the newspaper, and spread it out like a tablecloth. And the way he spread it out was like he was sitting out the table for royalty without thinking about it that way. And bowls appeared and some little food appeared. I can't remember how that happened. But we all sat down to this kind of royal banquet of almost nothing. And it was like totally fulfilling all the way around. So he just had that kind of way of taking whatever was at hand and using it. acknowledging its existence and including it in the environment.

[19:19]

I think this may be in Crooked Cucumber, but one of the things I remember when Zen Center was still at Sokoji on Bush Street was there was a corner grocery store And the grocer the vegetables that were getting very tired and maybe even heading towards rot. and throw them out in the front of the store. And Suzuki Roshi would run down the street after the raw vegetables with that being the source of what we could then make into edible food. And I can still, in my mind's eye, see him running down the street after a really funky melon. Sayonara.

[20:27]

I'm going to Tassajara and I have to leave. Thank you. Thank you all very much. It's nice to be here. Just give it a little louder. Yeah, we had a meeting Friday morning for those who are trying to help in the groups and develop those. And each of you have done that on the bucket, on that meeting, and also in your home. There is this now, and I recognize that, you know, not to, not by laws, but by people. I think what I hear you saying, let me give you back what I think you're saying, is that there was a little conference about how you start to maintain a practice place.

[21:44]

Is that what you're saying? Right. And so you want to kind of know what's my experience or what Liz's experience is in doing that. Well, yeah, I think about that. And I was talking to somebody about that yesterday. I think, given the nature of our practice, which has... Our practice revolves around someone who is a mentor or a teacher and students. That's the configuration of the way we've... And I think that what's most important is to have someone who is called the teacher or or the Let's call it that and that person has to be dedicated to what they're doing and That person is like the model he never went anywhere and

[22:49]

He came to Zen Center, and he stayed there, and people would invite him all over, you know, come here and come there. He'd say, he did go to a few places, but he stayed at Zen Center, and people had to come to him. He didn't try to get them to come to him. He just did his practice. What really impressed me about Suzuki Roshi in this case, I remember when I came to Zen Center, I was so impressed that this little man would walk out of his office into the zendo, bow to the altar, and sit down at his zazen, and then do service, and then go back into his office. And he did that twice a day, every day, and he didn't seem to have other things to do. That was his life. I was so impressed by that because he seemed so satisfied like he didn't need anything else that was totally fulfilling for him and that kind of person is called the teacher who just what they're doing and totally satisfied i mean of course we have dissatisfactions but totally fulfilled by what they're doing and then other people uh the people who come to practice

[24:14]

learn how to do that. That holds everything together. So there has to be a linchpin that holds everything together. Then whatever kind of practice you want will work. That's my observation. And that's the way I've always seen it happen. When you try to organize something that doesn't have a center, it doesn't tend to work so well. Are you trying to do that? I guess what I'm saying is your question or a personal question?

[25:22]

It's got to be zucchini. It's either Scotchie or zucchini. So if it's a personal question, I have something to say. So is it? Okay, it is zucchini. So then what's your question? I think everything that Sojin said is true. But since I'm talking and not him, I suppose I need to say something.

[26:30]

But actually, I don't really have anything to add. I think that what she said is right, so maybe you have something to add. Yeah. Everybody has a place. Everybody has something to do that makes the temple work. That's very important, depending on the size of the temple, to give everybody a feeling that it's their place. And often people think, well, there's that place, and I come to it and go away from it. but actually to give the members a feeling that it's their place and by taking some position, unless they're holding it together, it doesn't work.

[27:43]

So I think that's the other side of having a center. Everyone else is... Whenever I go to Tassajara, I give a little talk The students, and I say something like, everyone here has a position. No matter what it is, the abbot has a position, the dishwashers have a position, general labor has a position. If you fulfill your position totally, then you're the leader of the practice period. You're actually leading by your devotion to what you're doing. That's what makes everything work. It doesn't matter what position you have. If you're doing it totally wholeheartedly with everyone else, it's just like an orchestra. So if you can think of it that way, things will work. There are other ways that things will work too. I'm not saying it's the only way. It's my experience.

[28:46]

Well, that's an interesting question. Some people think he did. I'm not sure that I do. He may have said something like, the reason I came was, you know, to just to see what's here. When Suzuki came to America, he said, I didn't study San Francisco. I didn't take out a map of San Francisco or learn too much about it. I just left my mind open and came. That's totally his attitude, his basic attitude. I just came. I didn't think about what I was going to do, although he was invited by the Japanese congregation at Sokoji Temple to be their priest. That's the reason he came. But what else he had in mind, it could have been vaguely this or more vaguely positively that or something but you know how things go on in your mind you may somewhere in your mind you think i'd like to do something and and then when you're asked you say yeah i came for that reason but nobody knows exactly you know but i think he just came he saw an opportunity and he came and i think he was prepared to come but he didn't know what he was going to do at all just open

[30:26]

This may be in David's book. You're right here, David, so you can remind me, or maybe somewhere else, but I do seem to recall that because it was only 10 or 12 years after the war ended, and the war was horrific for him as it was for everybody in the country, and I've often speculated with why wouldn't it be true that he might at least one funeral a week throughout the entire war for the young men of his town. Why wouldn't he? A million young men died in that war. And he was posted to Manchuria as a chaplain in the last days of the war, and we don't know anything about that. But again, one can imagine. So he did seem to say, and it was picked up somewhere, you have seen, speaking to us, you have seen the worst of my country.

[31:32]

I wanted to bring you the best. Well, that makes sense to me. But certainly something that may have motivated him or may have been in his mind that... you know, he's coming to the land of his country's enemy at that time. And the war was still pretty fresh in people's minds. He was not, he was insulted on the streets of San Francisco. Is Peter Schneider here? Wasn't that true, Peter, that people insulted him and called him names and so forth? So feelings were still pretty raw in the late 50s. And so I think that had to have been in his mind to some extent that to come in a sense as a peacemaker and as a healer and as an embodiment of something that

[32:39]

transcends countries and transcends wars and which we're all human beings. I think, I'm speculating, but I think that must have been some piece of it, you know, just based on what I know. Yes, in the back, way back there.

[33:52]

Hi. Amen. What I will speak directly as far as I know what you're saying is what did he give us and what did he leave behind as far as his Japanese background goes?

[35:10]

Is that what you mean? Well, he said, I don't want to bring you the stinky Japanese practice. Stinky. Stinky. S-T-I-N-K-Y. That was a little later. But he said, I'm bringing you what I know. What I come with is what I know, where I've been, right? But he didn't try to make us into Japanese. And he didn't compare and say... We're better than you or anything like that. But you get a lot from Japanese, even though they don't think you are. So... he introduced us to what he felt was the Zen practice.

[36:13]

And of course, you can't always separate Zen practice from Japanese. You know, connected. But the emphasis is on the practice, not on the culture. So... He said, there's a lot of things that I could have introduced to you that are not your things, they're not your need. So he just gave it the simplest kind of practice, and chanting the Heart Sutra in a monotone. When he first came, we were chanting the Heart Sutra in Japanese three times, and that was our service, besides bowing nine times. And all the rest was introduced later by Tatsugami Roshi. But there was a Shingon priest who came one day and he said, you know, Suzuki Roshi has given you only the simplest things so that everybody can participate.

[37:21]

You don't have to know anything to participate. All you have to do is be there. And there's nothing difficult. There's nothing complicated about it at all. You don't have to know Japanese. He never tried to teach us Japanese at all. His English was all the time because he was lecturing to us in Japanese. I mean, it's in English. So the emphasis was on how we... how to nourish our practice, not how to impose something on top of... from Japan. So... I would say... of the ritual forms and practices

[38:24]

at the San Francisco Zen Center were not introduced by Suzuki Roshi. They were not. Tatsugami Roshi came, not exactly at his invitation, but he came anyway. Introduced many of the ritual forms of the heiji he was been the you know there, and that's what he knew But I just have to say and I think Mel would confirm that the practice that we knew Uki Roshi up to that time was very simple and not very Japanese I I mean let's say this the ritual forms around Zazen and Bowing to your cushion, bowing away, you know, doing gush, you come into the room. The ritual forms that contain the group practice of zazen, he taught that.

[39:26]

Because I think as far as he was concerned, that's part of zazen. He taught us how to do kinhin. He taught us how to hold our hands, etc. You know, so he taught us what he felt we needed to know to do. But even Tassahara, as he set it up, was... quite a bit simpler than it is now. Yeah, why don't you? Yeah. Well, that may be true, but if any of the people in the room ever practiced with Coben, you know that he was not a traditionalist in any sense of the word.

[40:38]

Yeah, so he was a good resource for anything that we needed to know, he knew. And I do have to say that the one thing that Suzuki Roshi was wrong about was learning Oyoki. And we didn't much, a lot of us didn't much like that. It seemed so incredibly fussy, but he, am I right, Peter, that he really, he was really strong about our Yoki. I think he felt that Japan, that was more like Buddhist eating. Buddhist eating awareness practice and so I don't know but you know when you watched him do or Yogi himself and served him he was very relaxed and in the sense that we think of you know he dropped things or you know things wouldn't be folded quite right but the spirit you know he would talk a lot about the spirit and that the inner meaning of what it meant to eat that way and to respect the food.

[41:55]

So again, even in there, I would make a distinction between the fine details of it and the inner spirit of it. Good question. And something I hear a lot is the time, the decades go by, and a lot of this early detail about how things happened and how things came to be gets sort of lost. So this is anyway my take on it. Suzuki Roshi brought us the simplest practice. There was a Shingon teacher who came one time and he said, Suzuki Roshi brought you the simplest practice, but actually has the most elaborate chanting of any school in Japan. the most florid and biker, it's called. But he just wanted to simplify it so that everybody could participate.

[42:56]

But also, simple practice, but he needed somebody to shell it out at Tassajara. So Tatsugami was invited. Whether he invited him or somebody else invited him, he was invited. And he came, and he gave us, in 1970, I was Jusso, Peter Schneider was the director. We would sit with Tatsugami Roshi day after day, and Peter would argue with him. Everything that came up, Peter would argue with. And I always thought, Peter, why are you always arguing with Tatsugami? But now I understand. If you don't, then you just... but he introduced all the stuff that we do now that we take for granted was Suzuki Roshi's teaching, but it was Tatsugami's way of setting up the monastic practice the way we do it now.

[43:58]

So a lot of people didn't, but they thought he was trying to take over, you know, and so that's probably true. This was a long, arduous evolvement over a long period of time to get to this point. But I tell you, have you ever seen a male chauvinist pig? You cowards. But actually, we were actually quite nice.

[45:08]

The men were quite nice and the women were quite nice. So that's why we all wanted to evolve together to make it into a co-equal practice. But it took a long time. Think that you got there, but you haven't. And so, you know, just over and over, just looking at how to make this work. And it's working pretty well. It's never finished, right? Because relationships are never finished. But the process was quite, it was a long process. and how to address equal, you know, so that being very conscious of the balance when we have a committee, like, are there enough men or enough women to balance the gender, right?

[46:13]

So that's always a factor. positions like giving women like making a woman the work leader women sew and men work carpentry and stuff but mixing it all up so that there's no position that couldn't be filled by either a man or a woman so those kinds of things we really worked hard at that for a long period of time Too bad Yvonne had to leave because she'd have a lot to say about that question. What did Suzuki Roshi think about that? Is that what you were asking? Yeah. Well, I'll just keep it very brief because we're short of time, and I've talked to Yvonne about this for decades.

[47:31]

I think that it's safe to say Suzuki Roshi didn't know how to train women, didn't have any real experience of it, probably didn't do all that well himself. But he was open to learning, and he took it as given that women were practicing as equals here with men. That's just the way it was. And, you know, to just suddenly generalize broadly, I would say probably it's the biggest contribution of the West so far to the Buddhist tradition, which is that women are now equals, at least in terms of they're showing up Even in the Tibetan tradition, the young Karmapa shocked everybody by saying that the patriarchal spin of Buddhism from the very beginning was one of its biggest mistakes and it now needs to change. People just fell over in their chairs.

[48:35]

He's like God when he speaks, sort of, in that tradition. So I would say that Suzuki Roshi was a traditional Japanese man of his generation, but he was very open-minded compared to almost anyone. So that, I think, is probably the two sides of it. And I think what Mel was speaking to was how we all had to work that out because he left us pretty soon. Maybe you have more to say about that a little bit. Suzuki Roshi, when he was in Japan, the people who came to his talks and his teachings were almost all women. He had that kind of relationship with women. He was not a chauvinist. He just didn't understand. When someone who doesn't have the experience of America comes here and sees this, how open we are, it's just a shock how to deal with it.

[49:41]

But Colman Chino, when he came here, was this handsome young priest who just got overwhelmed. And I can remember him spending a whole practice period in bed, you know, with the bedclothes over his head. Yeah, he was fair game. Christine's had her hand up. Yeah, Christina. Well, I wanted to share something that I heard in this whole weekend and also heard in small plays, which we've been talking about, and that's about how the roots of something keep continuing. I came to the incentive in the 80s and said, and there I had a tiny little metro, and people came from different places to sit with me, and they'd been sitting with other teachers, Japanese teachers, or European teachers, and it became very good to me to be there, that I'm from a family of teachers.

[51:05]

I couldn't find a few this year because they're all from a family of teachers, fall into the sea, and see if this is the church that's on it. And with the brightness of our new driveway, we can be back to the past. was so different and what they experienced in this opportunity that, and they knew that I understood that I was able to deal with this kind of situation without ever having had to deal with it. And I have to say that because I've been dancing on this thing and it's almost like a slow system. It's something Thank you for that.

[52:19]

It's almost time. I just want to say that there's the word for that. in Buddhism is lineage. We're in the lineage of Suzuki Roshi, the line, the stream maybe. And it's a real thing. And I think that your description, that's the one I don't really see that you are unless you go somewhere where it's different and you see that somehow just by being here, you uphold it. And that's really what we're talking about is this is the lineage of Suzuki Roshi. Yeah, and just to elaborate on that a little bit, through his disciples, but you also meet Suzuki Roshi's teachers through him. So it's just wonderful. That's what we can trace it all the way back to Shakyamuni. Is it time? It's time. Yeah, okay. a day that we are setting aside for special recognition of an event that happened 50 years ago one day

[53:42]

that a person got on an airplane in Tokyo and landed in San Francisco. And I think we're just now reflecting on the importance of that remarkable movement of one person flying in an airplane from Tokyo to San Francisco at that time. Who knew? that Siddiqui Rossi was on the plane. I doubt that the pilot knew. The fact that he did that, that he flew from Tokyo to San Francisco at that time and then stayed, had a very significant impact. None of us would be in this room today without that, that decision on his part. I invited three people whose lives were particularly touched and changed by Pazuki Varshi.

[54:48]

We have three Dharma teachers here. And I'm very happy to be able to introduce these three teachers who have all taken up the practice and lineage of Pazuki Varshi and are continuing to offer it. Thank you, Steve. I'm supposed to go first because I'm the oldest one. Whenever we have this kind of talk, I always feel like the Civil War veterans. Yeah, turn up the volume.

[55:53]

I started practicing with Suzuki Roshi in 1984, and I just want to talk about Suzuki Roshi I practiced with him for probably seven years until he died, 71. And people think, well, Suzuki Roshi just goes Zen Center. But actually, Suzuki Roshi was just himself. He was just being himself. He just sat Zazen and interacted with whoever was practicing with him. But his students created the Zen Center. Suzuki Roshi was just like the plant that rooted itself. And all of this activity sprung out from that root and is still continuing to manifest. So I had a short talk.

[57:01]

of Suzuki Roshi that I'm going to read to you and comment a little on, which epitomizes Suzuki Roshi, I think. Of course, all of his talks epitomize his fundamental practice. But this one particularly I like. And it not only epitomizes his practice, but gives you some insight into his character and the way he thought about his students. So he says, I think most Buddhism, like something which was already given to us, we think what we should do is to preserve the Buddha's teaching, like putting food into the refrigerator. That to study Buddhism is to take the food out of the refrigerator whenever you want it. It is a Instead, Zen students should be interested in how to produce the food from the field, from the garden, should put the emphasis on the ground.

[58:10]

If you look at the empty garden, you won't see anything. But if you take care of the seed, it will come up. The joy of Buddhism is the of the ground. and our effort is to see something come out of the ground. That is why we put our emphasis on emptiness. Emptiness is the ground where you cannot see anything, but which is actually the mother of everything. All of us have Buddha nature, and the teachings which grew from Buddha nature are the same. So actually, the teachings of different schools of Buddhism do not differ so much, but the attitude towards the teaching is different. When you think that the teaching is already given to you, effort will be to apply the teaching in this common world. For instance, the Theravadan students apply the teaching of the twelve links of causation to our actual life, to how we were born and how we die.

[59:15]

But the Mahayana understanding is that the original practice of this teaching, the purpose of this teaching, when Buddha told it, was to explain the interdependency of different things, different beings. Buddha tried to save us by destroying our common sense. Usually, as we are not interested in the nothingness of the ground, our tendency is to be interested in something which is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. That if you want to have a good harvest, you must... The most important thing... soil and to cultivate it well. The Buddha's teaching is not about the food itself but about how it is grown and how to take care of it. Buddha was not interested in a specific given deity in something which is already there. He was interested in the ground from which the various for him everything was a holy thing.

[60:23]

Buddha said, if people are good then a good Buddha will appear. This is a very interesting remark. Buddha did not think of himself as some special person. He tried to be like wearing a robe, going begging with a bowl. He thought, I have many students because the students are very good, not because of me. Buddha was great because he understood, because his understanding of emptiness and his understanding of people was good. He understood people, he loved people, and he enjoyed helping them. Because he had that kind of spirit, he could be a Buddha. So Suzuki Roshi really loved Americans because we didn't know anything. He felt that we were this fertile soil. Our Buddha nature could come forth without baggage.

[61:26]

We had no baggage, or very little baggage. We have our own baggage, of course. But we didn't have 600 or 700 years of Buddha baggage. So we think that we can just take the teaching out of the refrigerator whenever we want to use it. we don't have anything to put in the refrigerator. So we just have to find the Dharma within ourself. So that was our teaching, cultivating the ground. Nothing special, nothing fancy. Don't add something. Let go and allow your light to shine forth, your original light. That was Suzuki Roshi's whole teaching. And that's an example of and his life is what drew people to him.

[62:27]

He could look at you and see what he saw when he looked at you was your true nature, your Buddha nature. That's what he saw and interacted with you. So that's why people really liked interacting with him. It was nothing special. His ground word was nothing special, just ordinary. But what is ordinary? Ordinary is something unusual, actually. So people would respond to him because he saw who they were. He knew each one of us better than we all knew ourselves. And because he responded to our understanding, it helped us to grow. So, such a humble person.

[63:32]

When I think about what is humility, my definition of humility is Thinking you're more than you are, and not thinking you're less than you are, but knowing exactly who you are. No problem. So this was Suzuki Roshi's character, and it's the character that he coached out of us. He's a very gentle person, but very strict. So all of his students, we carry Suzuki Roshi's spirit with us. We're always referring to his teaching. And as far as we're all concerned, he's still teaching us. Oh, you have the mic.

[64:39]

If you give it up. Oh, I do. I forgot. I told you my memory. It's like a stiff. Where's the cord? Okay. Is that good? Can you all hear? I want to tell some stories as a way that it's great that these stories fit in pretty well with what my predecessor has said. But some of these stories are going to be about him or about Zen Center, which is where I first practiced and met Suzuki Roshi.

[65:45]

Mel is right. Suzuki Roshi did not come here to start a big, complicated institution. He came here to practice Zazen with people. And at the time in the Unitarian Seminary, I'm very interested in things like Zen. So I saw an ad in the paper for Zen meditation, which you had placed. And so I went there. It pays to advertise. And it was Mel's house on Dwight Way in Berkeley, and we sat in his living room. And often there were three, four, five, six, seven people there. So a living room, Zendo. And I thought, oh, well. And this is Zen, and I think you were the one who taught me to sit. I sat there. And one day I was sitting facing the wall, about two seats down from the altar, so maybe as close to the altar as I am to Yvonne.

[66:55]

And I heard someone come in a little after we'd started with some robes, and a person sat down at the altar. I couldn't see who it was. And I didn't know who it was. I wasn't expecting anything. No announcement had been made. And so we sat Zazen, and I heard and felt the breathing of the person. And I can't describe exactly what the feeling was, but it was a very definite feeling. It was very steady. I could hear each out-breath just the same, very, very steady, like a heartbeat. Being unusual, I'd never really, like, first of all, I'd never really paid attention to someone else's breathing or been able to hear it. And then when the zazen was over, we all turned around, and it was Suzuki Roshi. So we listened to his talk, and that was my first...

[67:59]

Well, just a couple of points. Suzuki Roshi was someone who got up very early from San Francisco and drove over in time to sit at 5.30 in the morning with six people. That was at that time. And it didn't make any difference whether it was six or 600. If people were sitting, he would sit with them. And so he did. And so that's my first story. I think the story speaks for itself, so I'm not going to elaborate on it too much. The second story is kind of funny, but to me it's important because it represents something about my relationship to Suzuki Roshi. We were having dinner one evening at the Berkeley Zendo, or breakfast, or some meal. And again, it was like four or five people there. Mel was there, I was there. Suzuki Roshi and his wife when we called Oksan was there and maybe one or two other people.

[69:05]

And so we ate the food and I was serving some food and so I turned to Suzuki Roshi's wife and I said, do you want seconds? And she said, skosh, which in Japanese means a little bit. And what we were serving that evening was a zucchini, was squash. And so I didn't understand Japanese. I thought she was saying squash. Squash, squash, squash. So we got all confused, you know. And I said, oh, oh, you want squash. Squash, squash, squash. So there was this awkwardness. And of course, I was really nervous. I didn't, because I wanted to impress good and I wanted to impress Suzuki Roshi and and so this went on for a little while probably much shorter than I really thought and and then there was a moment of silence and then his voice very quietly said me

[70:20]

It was quiet, but it was very penetrating. Whether he was trying to teach me or not, I remembered it for 35 years. It's something about be clear. When you do something, be clear. If it's not working, be clearer. Don't think about it. Don't try to figure it out. you know so that's how I took it and that's that's the teaching of it for me now whether he meant that I don't know but you know I he could have said many other things that would have been more kinda practical but he said squash squash zucchini you know I This is a clue to how we solve lots of life's problems, you know.

[71:35]

Be very clear. See things clearly and act. And then, you know, things will go better. The third story is a pretty powerful story. Many of you in this room may have actually been there. This was a lecture given in the summer at Tassajara. Ostensibly, the lecture was about some... And it was a text about honoring ancestors or a chant that we do. And somebody, a man actually named Alan Marlow, who's no longer with us, but Alan was one of the great early students. And he was, at that time, Suzuki Roshi's assistant. And Suzuki Roshi was five feet tall in his... And Alan was about six foot four. So it was really interesting to see them walking around. Anyway, Alan said... Well, after you die, Suzuki Roshi, what will we call you? What honorific title will we call you? Because that's what we were talking about. But not always.

[72:42]

At this moment, he said, no. It's not me. It's you. The question is, what will they call you? You are the wats. He was very strong about this. You are the ones. Give me 10 more years and you will be strong. I'm greedy now. I want 10 more years. I pray to Buddha, give me 10 more years and then you will be strong. He never said stuff like, I pray to Buddha, you know, usually. I mean, he would, but you know. And of course, this was the year before he died. He may have already knew that he was ill. You were the ones. Us. All of you. He didn't have his ten years, but he did get all of us.

[73:44]

And I think the actual deepest teaching, which I saw with the equanimity with which he died, was Give me 10 more years, but even if I don't have 10 more years, even if I only have one more minute, it's still about us. He had tremendous confidence in the power of the original that he brought on the airplane to America to transform human beings. Otherwise, how could he have spent his time giving what seemed at that time incomprehensibly difficult talks about Buddhism to kids in sandals with long hair who were about 23 years old in America?

[74:53]

Why was he doing that? The Japanese congregation around him really didn't know why he was doing that. But he understood. Now that we're all considerably older than he was when he came here, it's starting to make sense to me. So those are my stories. I think that's my time, is it not? A few more minutes? Well, I'm not going to yield my time if I have a few more minutes. He never saw this place. He never saw this zendo. He never saw many of the zendos. He did see the Berkley Zen Center, and that's still there. He didn't see many of the plants that sprouted up out of his original...

[75:59]

But he knew they would be there because he understood the ground, as your talk said. He understood the fertility of the ground, the fact that the ground will always produce fruit when the circumstances are right. So it's true to found a great complicated institution. He did come here to found a monastery, and he did, Tassajara. And that's really where his heart is. And he defined the practice there. And it's still going on very much like when he was... He didn't come to transmit the sectarian practices of some particular Japanese way. He was very clear about that. He came to bring the original... undivided teaching of human beings, the potential, full potential. And he manifested that just by being here.

[77:05]

So I like to say sometimes when people ask me about Suzuki Roshi, well, you had to have been there. But that's not really true because that puts too much emphasis on him as a particular unusual. He was just being what it is to be a human being, and we can all be that. We all are that. So I think that's what he meant when he said, no, it's not about me, it's about you. So now I think my time really is up. She was just about to signal me, I know. But I was looking at my watch, so I knew. Let's go behind you. Watch the choreography. You see it on the glass? Well, I have my... I have my... Higher?

[78:11]

Okay. Up there. How's that? I can put it right here, right under my mouth. Oh, that's not a good idea. Technology is not my strong point. Listening to what you were saying, Lou, what was something that Della Gertz, who was one of Suzuki Roshi's early students, I remember her saying, whenever I was in the room with Suzuki Roshi with other people, I felt like I was the most beautiful person. And I also understood that everyone else in the room thought the same thing about themselves. The story that I would like to tell you about

[79:16]

something I experienced, spoken of before, but it's a memory that has come up for me. It's so interesting how as I age, my memory gets to be more like Swiss cheese about recent things, but things from a long time ago are quite clear. I find that quite curious, and I'm grateful for that. In the summer of 1971, Suzuki Roshi began to turn quite yellow. And there was some thought that maybe he had hepatitis. I think maybe that possibility didn't come up until after I drove him back from Tassajara to San Francisco.

[80:19]

He had a very young doctor, and he thought that Suzuki Roshi had hepatitis. So we laughingly call him the yellow Roshi because he was, of course, quite yellow, quite jaundiced. And for some while, he served his food on a plate that no one else had touched and vice versa. And so he had a kind of food quarantine and ate separately from his wife and myself. And at some point, he went to Mount Zion, the hospital at the time, still there on Divisadero Street, for various tests to check and see what was actually happening for him. And one afternoon at lunchtime, I went to see him.

[81:26]

And he was sitting on the edge of the bed, dangling his feet, and had his lunch on the hospital table next to where he was sitting. And he went into the room and he mouthed the words, I have cancer, with a huge grin on his face. And he padded the bed next to him for me to come and sit next to him. And he then put some of the food on the fork and he turned around and fed it to me. And he said, now we can eat together like we used to. To this day, remember his joy that he no longer had to be quarantined.

[82:33]

It was an incredible teaching for me. I didn't... find Suzuki Roshi until 1966. But I Buddhism when I was in college, especially 19th and 20th century Buddhism mostly in China. But I remember going to hear him talk one Wednesday night and realizing, oh, Here is the living manifestation of what I only know through my courses at the university. I don't remember at all what he talked about, but I do remember his and that I had never experienced anybody with that kind of presence.

[83:48]

So after driving the yellow Roshi back from Tassajara to San Francisco, he's going to be diagnosed, et cetera. And then those months of his getting more and more sick, because of course the cancer, which had started in the gallbladder, had metastasized. So Ms. took turns taking care of him. Sometimes I would take the night shift and she'd take the day shift, but we'd go back and forth depending on how each of us was doing. And so from... He came back up in August and he passed in early December. And over those months in that fall, he gradually... spent more and more time in bed, and became more and more quiet.

[84:58]

And first he lost his interest in eating, except for orange juice. So once a week I'd go to Orange Land in Chinatown and get a crate of oranges and orange juice which he would, I can still see him and hear him pick up the glass and drink it and kind of smack his lips with delight as he put the glass back. He did love orange juice. And then gradually he stopped talking. But as he was in bed basically all of the time, he was very grateful if Mrs. Suzuki or I would rub his back, just as an antidote to his being in bed so much.

[86:05]

But he wouldn't say anything. Out from under the covers would come an arm. And then I'd rub the arm, and then the arm would go back under the covers. And then there'd be a leg that would come out from under the covers. And then after a while, there'd be another arm. And then there'd be a leg. And then I would lift him in an upright position so I could rub his back. And I realize now how generous he was to let me take care of him in the way that he did. He didn't resist at all. He just got increasingly more and more quiet.

[87:08]

except for the time his young, inexperienced doctor gave him pain pills. I think I mentioned this yesterday. Because, of course, metastasized gallbladder cancer is supposed to bring with it great pain. And Suzuki Roshi took one of the pills, and about four hours later, he said, Yvonne, get rid of them. And I said something about, well, I could flush them down the toilet. And he agreed. So we got rid of them. Those last few months of his life, what was so remarkable to me was the degree to which he was moment by moment completely present. with absolutely no resistance to what was so.

[88:21]

It was not in any way something he was talking about, but something he was actualizing. Here, this is what showing up looks like, feels like. But he didn't say it. He didn't need to. And then I think it was the day before he died. Close my mind. It's exquisitely Japanese. He got up out of bed and took a bath. So he would have a clean body when he passed. What he must have done to rouse himself to get out of bed and take And he also, not very long before he died, met with his senior disciples and expressed his regret that he didn't have more time to train us.

[89:48]

So that struck me yesterday afternoon listening to people tell stories about their experiences with Suzuki Roshi. Is no matter what the differences are that arise among us, what we have in common is feel called Suzuki Roshi. He was such a manifestation of spaciousness. He could be quite strict, but I remember one time he said, I'm afraid to be too strict because you'll run away. was his secretary, I had a chance to watch him in a lot of different circumstances.

[91:07]

And what I observed was over those six years that I knew him before he died, what I observed was that he became increasingly more strict. He was very gentle and kind most of the time with most of us. but he was very strict with himself. He later realized it was as though he was working with a sieve that became a finer and finer mesh, and he put everything he thought, everything he did, everything he said through that sieve. And at the same time, he could have that effect that Della Goertz described of being in a room with a crowd of people and having every single person in the room be certain that she or he was seen by Suzuki Roshi as the most beautiful person in the world.

[92:22]

He never saw this place, Green Gulch, but he certainly envisioned that Zen Center would benefit, Zen Center students would benefit from a place in the country where we would be farmers. He thought that would be a very, very good way to integrate what he was teaching into our daily lives. And I remember that with the current economic downturn where more of us are growing something to eat in flower pots or the end of the street or in our front or backyard. I think Suzuki Roshi would be very pleased with the consequences of the economic downturn and the simplification of necessity of our lives.

[93:38]

I can see him smiling under these circumstances. Equally.

[93:59]

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