I'm not sure if I should begin talking since there are a few people that aren't here. But maybe I will. I made a slight change on the verse. I added, this distress deserves recounting. You see it up there? I missed that part before. You don't see it? Okay. Pardon? Over there? That's a different thing. Over here is the change in the verse. Okay. that he says, you know, after saying that for 20 years he's suffered bitterly, how many times have I gone down?

[01:06]

And then there's a line there which says, this distress deserves recounting. And another translation of that, by the way, is this distress defies description. And when I wrote that and I thought I think I thought that before I wasn't sure if he was talking about his own distress the distress of his own practice Thank you. I wasn't sure if he was talking about the distress in his own practice, or if he was talking about Master Ma's distress. In Master Ma's distress, he was still doing Buddha's work.

[02:14]

But also in this teacher's, in his distress, or after finishing his long path of distress, he was a great teacher also. So going back to the to the practices that Zen bodhisattvas do in order to be intimate with birth and death in order to be intimate with all the difficulties in the realm of birth and death we came to the part about heroic effort courageous effort and there's quite a few other things that could be said at this point but someone mentioned to me that in her family she was told don't make promises that you can't keep so that's an issue here too

[03:33]

So if you aspire to something great, like great compassion and great wisdom, someone might say, don't promise to practice great compassion if you can't keep it. So that's not quite what the usual recommendation is. But there's a specific aspect of that which is similar. to don't make promises you can't keep. So the promise to live the life of a bodhisattva to observe the teachings of great compassion are not exactly the same as promising or taking on a particular task. You know, a clearly defined task. So this is a subtlety here. Almost nobody can aspire to these great bodhisattva practices and actually fulfill them from the start.

[04:52]

So then nobody could promise or nobody could vow to do it if they had to follow through on them. So as I wrote before, the essence of the training in ethics involves the first step is the teachings, the practices. The second step is aspiring to them and committing to them. The third step is what to do when you fail or how it is when you don't succeed. So not succeeding is included in the practices which you promise, which you aspire to and promise to practice. Not succeeding is understood. And then there's a practice of confessing and feeling regret and sorrow around not following through on what you promised. Okay, so it is understood that you are aspiring to and committing to a path that you will sometimes not be able to fulfill.

[05:54]

But part of the generation of energy, which is one of the practices you aspire to do, involves not taking on specific exercises that are too advanced at a particular time. So for example, if you're practicing giving, For example, I have a glass of water here, and right now I'm not on the verge, I don't think, of dying of thirst. So if some of you would come up here and ask me for this water, I probably could give it to you, and after you took it, I could probably let you have it and drink it and not take it back to you halfway through your drinking of it. In other words, under my present circumstances of not being super endangered of dying of thirst, it's not that difficult for me to give this water away. In other words, I think that I could probably follow through on the gift.

[07:03]

However, if there's other things which I thought of giving or other tasks I thought of engaging in, And for example, I talked to my teacher about it, and my teacher said, you know, halfway through this project, it'll probably get really difficult. Do you understand that? And I might say, yeah. And you might actually think, you know, this is much more difficult than I thought it was. Maybe I can't make it. And if I thought that maybe at that point I would give up, then maybe it's better not to take it on. So in training, like in meditation retreats, they sometimes get quite difficult because we're not used to being... able to do things to distract ourselves for hours and hours, days and days. So sometimes when we run into what it's like not to run away from our situation, we sometimes feel like, I really want to run away from the situation.

[08:15]

So if someone, for example, if we have sitting meditation all day long from early in the morning, maybe four in the morning till nine at night for seven days, and someone's never sat a whole day, and they said, I want to sit seven days, I might say, why don't we do one day and see how that goes? Because I might feel that in the middle, they might think, this is crazy. I made a mistake. This is too advanced. So part of being enthusiastic is being careful about, you know, specific exercises, specific programs that you take on. So the life commitment to the great way of the bodhisattva is something that no one will for their whole life never slip up on. But it's possible that even though you slip up, you don't have to change your commitment. See, I fell on my face, but I still want to keep walking.

[09:21]

I forgot to be kind, but I still want to be kind. But when it comes to, I signed up for this seven-day session, but I don't want to finish this seven-day session. I have to change my mind. I don't want to do it. I still want to learn to be a bodhisattva. I just don't want to do the rest of this retreat. And that's, so this retreat is too advanced for me, maybe. So that was a mistake. So we actually, part of having enthusiasm is to be careful of the things you take on. And it's not so much that you're absolutely sure you're going to complete it, but you think, if I run into trouble, I think I'll be able to follow through. And since I'm not sure, maybe I'll talk to the teacher and say, the teacher might say, I think you'll be okay.

[10:24]

And if you run into trouble, come and talk to me. We can talk about how to get through it. So that's a little bit different from don't vow to do something you can't follow through on and be careful of what you do commit to in specific examples. being aware that they might be difficult and kind of gauging whether you think you'd be able to continue even though it's difficult. That's part of being enthusiastic, is that you get yourself into situations where you can continue to be enthusiastic. Another aspect of it is to not keep doing things that you've already been doing a long time and no longer a challenge. So don't just keep doing the stuff you already know how to do over and over forever. Take a break from the things you already can do and take a break from things that are too advanced.

[11:24]

Don't take on things that are too advanced and let go of things where you're just kind of going by momentum. like reading a scripture. When you've read it long enough, have a sense of when you're losing your concentration and it's no longer... In some ways, to read a scripture and to be concentrated partly means that you're reading the scripture and being challenged by it. You're being challenged to be present enough to have a lively relationship. But if you keep going beyond that, is probably not good. I'll stop now to see if there are any questions about that. Yes.

[12:33]

having to do with the other side of the board. Can you hear her? Hello, is it on? Yeah, I just don't have it right. I think I put it right there. Don't talk. Okay, can people hear me? Okay, thanks. So, the idea of birth being associated with the word seeking that reverberates inside with my own experience, And the word grasping for me is sort of like another, it's like an extreme of seeking. It's like, in both cases, I'm reaching forward like that. Yeah, I can see that. And death is kind of an extreme of birth. Well, in my dualistic way of thinking that I've been struggling with ever since, it's, for me, the word grasping and death don't align.

[13:50]

I don't, you know, I've been struggling with that word and trying to, you know, it's like I contort it into having something to do with death, but the... The part of my experience that doesn't seem to fit either of those words is the part of me that would say that somebody was talking about holding back like 10%. Well, I tend to hold back 90% a lot of time where I think it's too hard. And so I, you know, that. And is that like death? Well, yes, exactly. Where it's not leaning forward, it's exactly the opposite. It's leaning as far back as I can without falling on my neck. So where does that... So I've been curious about whether... Yeah, that sounds like death to me. Holding back is like death. Okay, okay, so that, okay, that's the part of my experience that I haven't been able to associate with.

[14:51]

Well, like you said, leaning back, leaning way back, that's like death. Okay. Death is when you lean back from life. Right, and the big no inside. Birth is when you can't wait for it anymore. Exactly. Birth is when you crave and you want to get something, you want to become something. Right. And grasping, how does that relate to death? That's what I've been curious about. Holding back is grasping. Holding back. You're holding back is grasping. Another way to put it. Same feeling. You're holding on to something. You're holding it back. Okay. You're being stingy. That's stingy, grasping. So it can be either. It can either be reaching out like that or... No, reaching out is like the seeking. It's like the birth. We get to a place where we get thirsty, you know, and we want to get something.

[15:56]

But before we get it, we reach, and the reaching causes birth. Once we get it, then to hold on to it, Oh. Is death. Oh, got it. Okay. And one way to hold on to it is to hold back giving it away. Right. The funny thing is that holding back giving away life is death. Okay. Okay, so that holding back experience is part of the grasping is contained within. Okay. Thank you. If holding back is tied to holding on, grasping safety, maybe, out of fear? Could be safety, or it could be like yourself. Holding on to yourself is death. You're alive. You're alive. If you don't grasp at something, you're just alive.

[16:59]

And then you're alive again, and you're alive again. But if you're grasping and grasping and grasping, it's death, death, death, death. It's not just the sort of death where the body falls apart, but you're living a life of death by grasping all the time. Then each moment ends with a death, rather than each moment ends with another moment, which isn't a birth. Because you're not seeking the next moment and you're not holding on to this moment. By not holding on to this moment and seeking the next moment, you just have moment by moment, you have presence, presence, presence, presence. And it's not birth and death. It's nirvana. Nirvana isn't permanent. It's called, you know, the changeless, but it's changeless impermanence.

[18:04]

Impermanence is accepted in nirvana. So in nirvana, it's moment by moment, it's life, [...] but it's not birth, death, birth, death, because it's not clinging and seeking. Can't you also, like, when you're seeking, also be grasping at the same time, trying to hold on to what you're seeking? Well, you can grasp right after you seek. You can seek. And then it's death. You seek, and then when you get it, it's death. So birth, death. Okay. You could also have seeking and then receive and wait a while before you grasp. Then you have a life, as they say. When you, you know, you sought the life, and if you took the life, then before you even were alive, you took what you didn't see was given.

[19:06]

So then death is like perfectly sealed, then death is perfectly sealed to birth. Then it's birth, death, birth, death, birth, death. If you seek something and stop, then you will receive something. But if you stop seeking, you will receive life. But then it's not birth. It's just a life that's given. It's a gift. Life becomes a gift rather than something you thought. But most beings seek life and then grasp it as soon as they get it. So then that's birth-death. The momentum of birth-death goes on, though, for quite a while for some beings. And they just do the same thing over and over until the whole thing falls apart. And then they have a big death. But they've been doing birth death the whole time. How about making some spaces in there where you give a break to the seeking and grasping.

[20:09]

And you just tune in to giving and receiving. So the way to, if you'd be intimate with the process of seeking and grasping, if you get intimate with the process of seeking and grasping of birth and death, you get intimate with it, first of all, by being present and generous with it. By being generous with it, you kind of tune out of seeking and you more like tune in to giving. And you turn out of trying to grasp and tune in to receiving. Change from getting to receiving and switch from seeking to receiving and from grasping to giving. So giving is the first medicine for seeking and grasping or birth and death. It's the beginning of the medicine for birth and death. And it contains the following practices.

[21:12]

They're in there, but you sort of have to do them to understand usually how they're in there. If you were prohibited from doing the other practices, if you could only do giving, then you'd say, okay, I can't do any other practices, so I'm just going to do giving so fully that I discover the other ones in the giving. like if you're put into giving prison you couldn't practice ethics or patience or concentration or wisdom say well I'm just going to do giving so thoroughly that I've discovered the other five and you could but usually it helps to understand how the other five are in the giving by hearing about them and trying to practice them on the basis of giving and presence I also want to mention people sometimes ask me how I am and sometimes I say I don't know and sometimes I say I'm very grateful and one of the things I'm grateful for about is I get to spend a weekend talking about these teachings because when I talk about these teachings I'm talking about these teachings

[22:23]

and I'm hearing about the teachings when I'm talking about them and I'm remembering the teachings because I'm remembering to say them to you and every time I say them to you I remember them again and when you hear me your mind is transformed when you spend your time thinking about hearing these teachings that transforms your unconscious your unconscious is transformed by the karmic act of listening to these teachings now I can ask you to tell me the six practices, the six basic practices of bodhisattvas, and you can tell me, can't you? Go ahead, tell me, please. Number one. Number one. I'm going to say number one, one, two, three. Number one, one, two, three. Number two, one, two, three. Number three, one, two, three. Number four, one, two, three. I gave you too many words for that one. How about enthusiasm?

[23:26]

Number one, two, three. Number four, one, two, three. Number five, one, two, three. Number six, one, two, three. Yeah, so now you know these things. Now, you may not be able to be supported to spend the weekend talking about these things next weekend. Like if you're with your children or your parents or your spouse, they may not want you to give them a talk about these six practices. Sorry. And, you know, don't force it on them. They don't want to hear it. But you might say, would you like me to review what I learned at the workshop last weekend? And they might say, no thanks. Then you don't review it with them. You might say, do you mind if I review it in my head? They say, after you listen to me say a few things. You listen.

[24:26]

And then when you're done, you say, actually, I just practiced one of the things I learned. Do you want to know what it is? Yeah, what was it? Generosity. I let you talk before I reviewed my homework. We need to think of these teachings over and over until they become... until we're transformed into somebody who has a lot of hearing of these teachings in our system. We've got a whole bunch of other things we learned. We have to do the same thing with these things. We have to listen to them a lot so that they become readily accessible to us so that they're in our mind, in our unconscious, because our unconscious, according to this teaching, is the result of our past action. And our unconscious supports our moment by moment conscious life. So if our past action is listening to a lot of teachings then the consequence of our past actions is our unconscious and that will support us thinking of the teachings a lot.

[25:29]

And if we think of them that again has the consequence of our unconscious carrying those teachings. So So people ask me, how am I doing? I say, I'm happy that I get to review the teachings all the time with people. It's very nice for me to do that, but I also suggest that you consider ways that you can keep these teachings running through your conscious mind, because if they run through your conscious mind, the result of that will be that your unconscious mind will support further teachings running through your conscious mind. you did not get it wrong there's three bodhisattva precepts the first one is the practice of restraining distraction the second one is these six perfections these six practices the second one is practicing all kinds of wholesome activities

[26:41]

But the second one is based on the first one. Pardon? So there's three bodhisattva precepts, ethical precepts. One is, the first one is the precept of restraint, which is basically, it's the purifying one. It's the one where we learn, we train ourselves to not be distracted by any of our actions. From what? From doing them without trying to get anything, for example. We restrain trying to get something from doing wholesome actions. We restrain distractions from just being present. That's the first Bodhisattva precept. We restrain dualistic thinking, which comes naturally to us, but we kind of train ourselves to restrain that.

[27:47]

For example, the dualistic thinking of my beginning Bodhisattva practice is not the same as Buddhist practice. Buddhist practice is the fully matured Bodhisattva practice. Does that make sense? The practice of the Buddha is a fully matured bodhisattva practice but the beginning bodhisattva practice is not separate from the fully developed one. To think that they're separate is a dualistic thought which doesn't apply to either because they're not separate. So the first practice is just to be present without thinking that what I'm doing is separate from anything. I'm just present. When you're really present and devoted to what you're doing there's nothing else but what you're doing and you don't think you're separate from things when you're really present then based on the first one then you can exert yourself by practicing these six perfections but they're on the basis of this practice of being present now you practice presence with each of these different types of exercises

[29:01]

You practice being present with giving, ethics, patience. In other words, people can start practicing giving but not really feel that they're really present with that giving. Like you might think, well, I'll practice giving and also work on my iPhone at the same time. Or I'll greet somebody, be looking around the room while I'm greeting them. How do you do? Does that make sense, Anna? Like, I think of cocktail parties. When you meet somebody who introduces you to somebody and the person who you're being introduced to is looking at somebody else while they're being introduced. They're kind of saying, how do you do? But they're actually already moved on to who else might be more interesting to talk to. And part of the reason they're doing that might be because they're intoxicated. And being intoxicated, it's hard to be present with what you've got here.

[30:05]

Hello. What's next? Rather than hello until the end of the moment. So, first is being present so you can be present with all these wonderful practices. And also... You're doing these practices which you understand can mature to higher levels of development, but you're doing them at the present level of development. You're not looking away to when they're fully developed. You're doing them the way you can do them now. And you have trained yourself not to look at the way you're going to do them later. So you're doing giving practice and you're doing it the way you're doing it now and you're not thinking about how good you might get later or how bad you used to be. No, I shouldn't say bad, how immature you used to practice it. Now it may pop up in your mind, boy, I used to be so immature. But it's more like it just pops up rather than you go looking away from the present.

[31:09]

So the first practice purifies these wonderful practices. Otherwise, these practices can be kind of defiled by trying to get something out of them other than just do them because they're good. Do them because actually... as I mentioned to somebody earlier, as I mentioned to many people earlier, these six practices are ways to fully embrace being an ordinary person. Or, I said to you, these are ways to embrace being in birth and death. And ordinary people are in birth and death. To be intimate with how you are, you need to practice presence, giving, ethics, patience, and so on. In other words, we really are who we are. But if we don't practice these practices, we're distracted from it.

[32:10]

Which is the third? The third is to mature all beings. To mature all beings is the third. First? Restrain distractions. Second, do these wholesome practices. These wholesome practices develop the qualities of a Buddha. The third is the reason you're doing these practices is to mature beings. So you apply these practices of giving, ethics, patience to the maturing of beings including a person with your name. and social security number and so on. You don't exclude yourself but you're primarily concerned with maturing all beings. That's the point of the Buddha qualities. So this is an important point. Any questions about that? Is that clear to you? Yes? And yes? And yes? Yeah? What does it mean to mature all beings?

[33:22]

That sounds to me like I somehow can change other beings and that doesn't seem... You mature all beings by doing these practices with them. Like I said before, sometimes I often say bodhisattvas come into the world to teach people how to play. People don't know how to play, bodhisattvas come and play with them. And then bodhisattvas play with them some more, and they still don't know how to play. And bodhisattvas play with them more, and they start to learn how to play. And then bodhisattvas play with them more, and they learn how to play more. So the beings mature in their play by playing with bodhisattvas. Do the bodhisattvas change them? Well, the bodhisattvas are not like, they don't have people under robotic control, like I'm going to turn you into a playful person. But, in fact, people who don't know how to play sometimes can't learn how to play unless they meet somebody who knows how to play. so bodhisattvas teach but when you teach someone you don't exactly change them but they change when you teach them but you can't teach them unless they listen to you unless they open to you so you're not in control because if you send teachings to people and they close to you it doesn't work but then you do it again because you're playful and you do it again because you're playful and pretty soon they say what are you doing?

[34:42]

oh I see so you don't change them and they don't change you but in fact every time you try to help somebody you change and actually everybody's changing all the time anyway it's just that bodhisattvas when they interact with people people change in a way that's called maturing They mature towards Buddhahood. They learn to practice these perfections. Bodhisattvas teach them how. But a teacher doesn't go over to mature the students. The teacher goes and teaches and at some point the students listen and the students mature and the students become teachers. It's like that. The Buddhas cannot control everybody into being Buddhas. They just keep sending the teaching and showing the practice and sending the teaching and showing the practice and beings are matured. But it's not like they're controlling the beings. It's they're making offerings, they're giving, they're being ethical.

[35:46]

They're not taking what's not given from the people. They're patient with the people, with the beings. Is that okay? Is that clear? It's kind of like if I'm a not-ripe avocado. If I jump in a brown paper bag with an apple, I might ripen. Right. But the apple doesn't exactly mature you. It's just that you mature with the apple. Yes? Yes. How does practicing the paramitas help us find our ordinariness? Okay. Well, for example, when you try to practice giving, you notice that you're stingy. Being stingy is kind of ordinary, isn't it? When you try to practice ethics, you notice that you're not too good at it. you notice how awkward you are at certain ethical disciplines, which is quite ordinary.

[36:49]

But still you're trying to practice being gracious with your stinginess. So you actually start to notice that you're stingy, and then you learn to welcome your stinginess. Now if your stinginess goes away, that's okay too, that can happen to an ordinary person. And then you go, so you try to practice patience. You notice that you have pain and discomfort and fear and so on. And you can be present with it. If you're distracting yourself from your pain all the time, you might think, if you're very successful in distracting yourself, you might think you're superhuman. All these practices help you just be who you are. to help you be intimate with who you are. And who you are isn't just an ordinary person. So the well-trained bodhisattva is the most completely ordinary person, which is rare. It's rare to be so completely ordinary.

[37:54]

So you might even call them extraordinary, but it is extraordinary for somebody to completely accept their ordinariness. To accept that they're not better than anybody. are really worse. Everybody's just ordinary, really. Nobody's really the, you know, you say, well, certain people are really the worst. They've achieved that great status. Okay, but they look pretty ordinary to Buddha. They look pretty immature to Buddha. The people who we think are really bad are really immature, usually. Whereas bodhisattvas also look ordinary to Buddhas, but the Buddha can see this is a highly trained ordinary person. This person is totally accepting and at peace with being ordinary. So it takes a lot of practice to accept how awkward and clumsy we are.

[38:59]

Actually, there's a story like that. One of our ancestors... What did he say? Yeah. Yeah. I forgot but it's something like this this ancestor's name was Yao Shan and he was I forgot sorry you okay? everybody okay? alright yes I had another question. I think part of the difficulty with birth and death or with what we connect to the two expressions, birth and death, is that they are like so extraordinary to our lives.

[40:04]

So when you talk about the ordinariness, there's this Kisagotami story where the child dies and then the Buddha sends the mother to all the houses to collect mustard seeds from the houses where nobody died. But there is no house where nobody died. So it's kind of bringing this to ordinariness in some way but we have this this tendency that it's that we keep it outside we keep it in a very extreme place are we yeah yeah exactly so we get overwhelmed you say extreme but anyway outside we keep by keeping death and birth at a distance we're in trouble so that's what I'm saying from the beginning this is about being intimate with birth and death both in the extremes of the first part of this life and the last part to be intimate with those as much as possible but also to be intimate with everything between is all that all the stuff that happens between our birth and our death is also called birth and death all that stuff is birth and death and the same with those we keep those outside too we keep everything external

[41:25]

We construct everything as separate. We do that with everything. So intimacy with everything will also promote intimacy with the death and the birth. To not put it outside. These practices help us not put it outside. When you do these practices completely, there's no more externalizing birth and death. Here we talked a lot about seeking and grasping, and that's usually to things that we cling on to, things that we like or desire or kind of lust for. In the Buddhist teachings that I have been through, they also talk about things that we run away from and can't get rid of. And how does this relate? That's basically the same thing, though. We grasp the end of pain. We seek the end of pain. We seek the end of illness. And then pain is reborn, pretty much.

[42:28]

When we try to seek the end of illness, we feel another pang of pain coming back again and again. Exactly. Whereas these teachers, when they were sick, they just continued their usual work. The sickness didn't, they didn't switch from their usual work when they got sick, they just continued to do their same work, which was not grasping and seeking. So the pain was there and the pain kept changing as everything else. Yeah, exactly. But there was no clinging to the idea that pain should go away. Exactly. There was no pushing away. Yeah. So, and the Buddha, the first teacher in the lineage, he actually had physical problems And towards the end of his life, he was quite sick. We don't exactly know exactly what the illness was, but it looks like he had internal bleeding and, you know, and he became dehydrated and stuff like that. So he was sick. But he wasn't trying to get rid of the sickness.

[43:29]

But he did ask, you know, he asked his attendant for water. He said, could I have some water? Actually, his attendant said, well, that water is kind of dirty. He said, could I have some water? Would you give me the water, please? So he did try to drink water when he was getting dehydrated. But when he asked for the water, he was still the Buddha trying to help his student by asking for water. by telling his students something about himself. I'd like some water. And then he went and laid down with his other students and he continued to teach in his illness. But he wasn't seeking to get rid of the sickness. And the sickness was changing every minute and he was just accepting the sickness that was given to him and giving away the sickness that was going away and accepting the next sickness. Moment by moment he was getting new sicknesses and letting go of the old sicknesses and teaching all along.

[44:32]

So now there must be some distinction to be made about being complacent and not taking care. Exactly. So essentially we become intimate with that sickness and say, ah, there's sickness here and I'll take good care of it. I'm not going to try to push it away. Sickness is like a guest that has come to my home. Exactly. And then what's the appropriate response to this guest? Well, the first thing to do is be generous to the guest. So like I said, the Buddha said, could I have some water? And then he laid down. So he was doing his best and he could still teach. He wasn't in such extreme pain. He also knew yogic activities where he could go to he could go by yogic practice he could go to realms of consciousness where there was no pain. He knew how to do that. it wasn't a drug, it's just a way, it's a realm of existence where there's no negative sensation, but he didn't go to those realms all the time. He stayed in the realm where he could teach his students most of the time while he was sick at the end of his life.

[45:40]

And so, what time is it? It is, yeah, so maybe I tell the story of Suzuki Roshi. So he got sick and so I got to watch him be sick I didn't know that he was actually sick that he was somewhat aware of some sickness in 1970 I didn't know about that he didn't tell us or he didn't tell me anyway but in early 1971 in March of 1971 I believe it was March 4th or March 3rd 1971 he invited me to be his attendant on a trip to Portland, Oregon. So we went to this city called Portland and we did a one-day sitting. Maybe it was supposed to be a two-day sitting, I don't remember. Actually, there was an evening talk on the 4th, I think, 4th of March, and then there was a day sitting on the 5th.

[46:48]

And I think maybe there might have been a sitting on the morning of the 6th too, I don't remember. But anyway, on the day of the 5th, we were doing sitting meditation retreat at the Reed College in Portland. And he was sitting there and I was carrying the stick around the room. And suddenly he, while he was sitting, he leaned forward and put his head on the ground in front of him. And I went over to him and said, what's the matter Roshi? And he said, I have a terrible pain. And so he left that sitting and went back to the house where we were staying. And then I stayed and finished the day on his behalf. I finished the day with the students of sitting. And that night I went home to where we were staying, and he was sick, my teacher was sick, in a lot of pain.

[47:56]

And he was, I think, kind of spitting up some very bitter tasting stuff. And he was eating... eating just like white rice soup which seemed to be somewhat comfortable and he was familiar with eating that when you're having stomach trouble but he was still kind of spitting up his very bitter stuff and so we stayed overnight and the next day and there was a boy in that house a son of the woman who was our hostess and his name was Tiger and so anyways my teacher was sick and my teacher was in pretty much pain so we were going back to the airport and Tiger did not want to go to the airport with us he wanted to stay home but I guess his mother had no other child care so she wanted him to come in the car with us

[49:04]

to the airport because she didn't want to leave him home alone he was like five or something or four but he really did not want to go to the airport even though he would be able to ride with Suzuki Roshi he didn't think that that was that interesting he wanted to stay home and do something besides go to the airport with those Zen people but anyway finally somehow she got him into the car And he was in the car there with me and his mother and Suzuki Roshi. And I noticed that Suzuki Roshi was trying to take care of this boy, trying to entertain this boy who was really having a hard time being in the car where he didn't want to be. I was impressed that in his pain he was trying to take care of this boy. But that's what... That's what it said, you know. When the ancestors are sick, they keep doing Buddha's work.

[50:11]

They keep trying to take care of people. They keep trying to be generous and ethical and patient. He was doing that. And then we got on the airplane and flying back, I noticed that I was having trouble being in the seat next to my teacher. It was very difficult for me to be next to him in his suffering. I don't know what trouble he was having being with his suffering but I was having trouble being there with him very hard to be present it was hard for me to be present with my teacher's suffering and then we got back to San Francisco and we went back to Zen Center and then he left Zen Center and went to the hospital and turns out he had it was a gallbladder attack and he had his gallbladder removed. But he was teaching me while he was going through this gallbladder attack.

[51:16]

I don't know what he was doing, but I saw him as teaching me. He didn't tell us, he did not tell us that he was informed that the gallbladder was malignant. So, this is 40 years ago, right? More than 40 years ago. This is 40 years and about four months ago. No, no. This is 40 years. This is 1971. This is 41 years ago, March, that that happened. So that's the cancer situation. Cancer treatment was much different then. And... they just removed the gallbladder and we thought that he would be healthier and he did seem to recover from the gallbladder attack and the gallbladder surgery and then he was like functioning as our teacher again and one day during a lecture in the springtime a month or two after the gallbladder surgery

[52:30]

He was giving a talk in the Buddha Hall in San Francisco Zen Center. And I felt like he turned right towards me and looked me in the face and said, things teach best when they're dying. And I kind of thought, why is he saying that? And I don't know, maybe other people thought he turned and looked right at them and said, things teach best from their dying. I don't know how they felt. But I felt like he turned right towards me and said that. And I wondered why he said that. And I don't even know if he knew why he said that. I don't know how much he knew that he was dying. But in fact, we were only about six months away from his death at that time he said that. And then about a month after that, I knew he was planning to leave the city where we lived together to go to Tassajara Monastery for the summer.

[53:47]

And I thought, oh, I'd like to go with him. So I went and told him that I'd like to go with him. And he said, okay. But then I thought about it and I thought, well, maybe I shouldn't because probably a lot of other people want to go with him. And now that I'm talking to you, maybe on some level I knew that this was going to be his last summer. And this would be a chance to be with the teacher for the last summer. But also, it seemed kind of unfair that I would get to leave the city and give up my responsibilities to be with him. A lot of other people might want to do it, so I felt it was not very kind to do that, so I stayed. in the city and didn't go with him and did miss those last three months of his teaching his teaching under the circumstances of not of his teaching under the circumstances of us not knowing that he was sick at the end of the summer he turned yellow and came back to San Francisco we thought at first it was hepatitis

[55:00]

quite quickly we found out that it was liver cancer so I didn't get to be with him in the summer but I got to be with him for the last three months when he was in the city with his liver cancer and I watched the way he took care of the situation and he received some treatment in those days I don't know if there was chemotherapy but it was not offered to him He didn't do chemotherapy. All he did was shiatsu massage and moxibustion on those meridians. after he came back from Tassajara I don't think he gave any more general talks to the assembly he didn't teach that way anymore he did go down to the Zendo for a while but after a while he couldn't go down to the Zendo anymore and now at Zen Center there's a little seat that runs up alongside the stairs for one of the old people that was put in a few years ago

[56:28]

But at that time we didn't have a little seat that ran up and down the stairs. So we used to carry him by one of us going like this and then grabbing the other person's forearm and the other person's putting their hand on this. We made this little seat and carried him up and down the stairs. So he let us do that. And he had these treatments of shiatsu and moxibustion. He was trying to take care of it. And he thought maybe he would live for few more years so he was trying to take care of it and since he wasn't giving talks anymore I thought well maybe I'll just ask him you know if I can just watch him receive his treatments so I just went and watched my teacher receive his treatments and watching him receive his treatments watching how he received the massage and how he received those little cones burning on his back watching how he responded to that touch and how he responded to the burning and how he walked into the room and out of the room that was the teaching that he was giving me so he was trying to take care of himself his body he wasn't being indifferent that was the way he taught us who were there to see that and

[57:59]

Now I'm talking to you and I would say that teaching really did teach me well. That to watch him receive these treatments really did penetrate me. I can still see very clearly after forty years, now it's been forty years. No, now it's been almost forty-one years. Anyway, it's been forty and a half years since I was watching him receive those treatments. Those things penetrated. to watch the way he died. And he was receiving these treatments right up to a day or so before he died. And he let me watch. And he continued to do his work. Oh, and actually one time the person who was giving the massages was sick.

[59:01]

So he said to me, you've been watching, you know how, you do it. So I gave him the massages and he said, pretty good. And I put the cones on, I knew how to do it because there were marks on his back where they went. little dark marks so I knew where to put the cones and I also watched him so I knew that the cones should be on I watched with the other person and the other person would take him off right when he winced so I'd watch until he winced and take him off so I gave him treatments a few times because the other person who was administering the treatment was sick and then right at that time a couple days after the last treatment and I thought there was going to be more but there weren't because he passed away so that's a contemporary story and when he passed away there's many stories about when

[60:19]

when these teachers pass away and I'll tell you some more of some other teachers but the way he passed away was he was lying in his bed in his bedroom on the second floor of the Zen Center and down on the first floor which could also be called the basement was the meditation hall so when he died at about 4.50 a.m., 132 students started sitting a meditation retreat, a session. I don't think he arranged that, that as he was dying we started to sit, but that's the way it happened. That was the way. It wasn't exactly his teaching. More like that was the way the teaching occurred. That's the way Buddha's work occurred in this case. And then we have the history.

[61:24]

We have the next 40-some years of history of the San Francisco Zen Center. And everything that's happened from that followed from that. I wasn't looking for meditation on birth and death, but it was given to me. And I was so grateful that I got to watch him die. It was such a gift to see this person die. And I did not feel, oh, this teaching is not as good as the teaching he used to give when he appeared to be healthier. And I wouldn't necessarily say it's better either. It was just a continuation of the teachings. through birth and death, birth and death, and death. Yeah.

[62:35]

And like I say, before that time, on the airplane, I was too immature to be intimate with him. I couldn't stand to be present on the airplane. But by the end of the year, I was more able to be with him. I was more able to be there pretty much with him. and he let me, he let me come in the room and watch him he let me observe the process, he let me touch his body so yeah we can get more intimate if we train but some children don't want to be around their grandfather when he's dying they want to be outside doing something else but some children do want to be with their grandfather And their grandfather lets them. Yes, you can be here while I'm dying.

[63:40]

You can watch me die. I'm here for you to watch your grandfather die. He was a little older than my... He was old enough to be my grandfather. And I watched my father die too, my biological father. One time my biological father came to see me at Green Gulch Farm. And he came into my meditation room and saw the altar where I had Suzuki Roshi's picture. And he said, he's your real dad, isn't he? And I said, no, you're my dad. But to some extent, it's true. He was not my real dad, but he was my second dad or my grandfather. my spiritual dad because my father was also my dad my father also served me but he served me in a different way than Suzuki Roshi did he taught me in a different way he taught me that I did not want to be distracted he taught me the unfortunate consequences of being distracted he showed me the way I did not want to go which is a great gift

[65:02]

And Suzuki Roshi showed me the way I did want to go, which is a great gift. But they both helped me, both my fathers. And I got to watch both of them die. And my father was actually, I don't know what to say, he was really a good, as he got closer to death, he became a better and better teacher. And he became more and more peaceful. Too bad he couldn't have had ten more years, because he would have matured. Because he was maturing at the end. My father was only 62, and Suzuki Roshi was 67. So now I've outlived my father and my teacher. I shouldn't say outlived.

[66:34]

I should say, well, I have outlived them in a way. They died and I'm still living. I lived beyond them. And I think they had to go, but I think they're glad that I stayed and carried on for them. Well, I think maybe we could go to dinner now. If you'd like.

[67:33]

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