Do you know anything about it, Sarah Jane? I don't. There's a statue out there. Okay. All right. Well, this is our last dance. Thank you. There may be trouble ahead. So while there's music and moonlight and love and romance Let's face the music and dance Before the fiddlers have fled Before they ask us to pay the bill And while there's still a chance

[01:18]

Let's face the music and dance Soon we'll be without the moon Humming a different tune And then There may be teardrops to shed So while there's music and moonlight And love and romance Let's face the music and dance So here's a lead for you. If you're ready, are you ready? So a monk came up to Feng Shui and said, speech and silence are concerned with separation and vagueness.

[02:36]

How can we pass through without transgressing? As Frey Fong said, I always think of Hunan in March. The hundred flowers fragrance and the partridges chirping. I don't know if I really want to take that literally. But I did notice today, as I was reading the Prajnaparamita Sutras in a discussion about bodhisattva's dreaming, that somebody says,

[03:45]

Where did that thought come from? And at that moment, a thought came to me, and it was a thought of a place called Dinkytown. a street called Fourth Street, who some of you heard from Bob Dylan. Is it called positively Fourth Street? So the main street of Dinkytown is Fourth Street. So it's a little student shopping area near the University of Minnesota. It's called Dinkytown. And so when I was reading the Prajnaparamita Sutra, this memory of Dinkytown came to my mind. in the 60s, in the early 60s when I was going to school there.

[04:52]

And I often, I don't always think of Dinkytown, but I often think of Dinkytown and usually I think of Dinkytown in my dreams. Actually, the Dinkytown, the main streets are the crossing of 4th Street and 14th Street, or 4th Street and 14th Avenue. That's the main intersection. It also intersects, 14th Avenue also intersects with University Avenue. But that corner is just like a place where you cross the street from Dinkytown into the university. People don't hang out there. One block over is where, on 4th and 14th, is where there's more student activity. That's where the little cafe called The Scholar, where Bob Dylan used to play his guitar and recite poetry. I used to walk by there and see him, but I wasn't interested.

[05:59]

I didn't get in. Bob Dylan? Huh? He wasn't like Bob Dylan? No, he wasn't Bob Dylan. He was just a kind of a weird-looking, funny-sounding guy in that coffee house. Like, mm, walk by, go to my house. Then a week, then a year later, I saw his picture on this album in the record store. I said, oh, wow. I missed that guy. But in the 40-some years, almost 50 years since that time, many times I dream of Dinkytown. there's an opportunity to practice in your dreams of Dinkytown, if you happen to be having dreams of Dinkytown. And I've thought of, I almost never dream of other parts of the university for some reason where I dream of Dinkytown.

[07:04]

And I sort of go back up and down, particularly 14th Street. And the next street over from 14th Street is probably 15th Street. No, 14th Avenue. Probably the next street is 15th Avenue. I'm not sure. Do you know? If you go like... If you go away from downtown towards St. Paul, it's in 15th and 16th. So on 15th is where there was a McDonald's. They built a McDonald's shortly before I left the university. Kind of a submerged McDonald's. It was below street level. And that's where I saw my advisor eating a hamburger. My brilliant renaissance... man, advisor, very brilliant, wonderful guy. But when I saw him eating that hamburger, I decided that I didn't want to be his disciple. He's a wonderful guy, but the way he was eating that hamburger, I thought, no, I don't think so.

[08:12]

So I always think of Dinkytown. And when I think of it, it's not sunny, and it's not nighttime, it's daytime, and it's kind of overcast. Now, I was wondering, does Shui Fung think of Hunan in March because he had a realization of intimacy with the fragrant flowers and the partridge singing? Was there something special that happened for him in his life that he keeps thinking of that place? So this is my lead. This is my lead.

[09:19]

How will you follow? Oh, very nice. I see. That was good. And here's another lead. Very good. You followed that well, too. You're very good dancers. Are we dancing well? Do you think we remember transitions more in our dreams than daily? This transition of the gambler and the professor, this kind of transition in your life? Well, you could say, do you remember your transitions better in your dreams, or do you remember your transitions in your dreams? Is it your transitions that you remember in your dreams?

[10:23]

So it may be that you remember them better because that's what dreams help you realize, is your transitions. which also reminds me of a term which I kind of like, which is called... What's it called? It's called... Is it called... I think it's called... Tell me if you remember. I think it's called memory teeth. Memory teeth. Memory teeth or memory tooth. The plural of memory tooth is memory teeth. I think that's what it's called. And it refers to, Susan, welcome. We've been dancing. You missed a few. Here's another one. So when up north of here, particularly where they have lots of redwood trees, the redwood trees fall.

[11:33]

And sometimes they fall into a river. Oh, it's not called memory teeth. It's called river teeth. But river teeth, you will see, relates to memory teeth. Does somebody know about river teeth? Huh? Do you know about river teeth? Yeah. So the redwood trees fall down all over the place, but sometimes they fall into the river. And they lie in the river. And the river rolls over them. I don't remember the years now. I'll research it and let you know. But after 50 years, a lot of the tree has been washed away. And after about 100 or 400 years, almost all of the tree is washed away. Does that make sense? It gets wet and soggy and the river just keeps working on it and it washes almost the entire tree away.

[12:38]

And then all that debris enriches the rivers and makes them nice places for fish to live and so on. Organic, decomposed redwood trees in the rivers. So after 400 years or something like that, I could be wrong, but I kind of remember about 400 years, all that's left of the redwood trees are the little knots in the burl, which are kind of, they're like hardwood. The burls, you know the burl in redwood trees? It's like harder than the rest of the tree. And then in the burl, there's the knots in the burl, And they last maybe 500 or 1,000 years in the river on the floor. So 99.9% of the redwood tree decomposes and gets washed away, except for these river, and these are called river teeth.

[13:48]

These little, what's left of the redwood tree after a long, long time are called river teeth. And so I heard about this story about the river teeth and then the person who told the story said, and our minds like that too. All of our, all the trees, little trees and big trees, but even especially the big ones, the little ones just get washed away probably just, which is fine, right? But little ones don't make river teeth. But big ones, like for example, going to graduate school, going to study in the university for eight years, that's a pretty big tree. You know, a young mind studying for eight years various things, it's a pretty big tree. And it falls into the river and then the river washes away and all that's left is this little tooth

[14:56]

of eight years of study, like Dinkytown. All that's left is a few river teeth from innumerable experiences in eight years of study. You have a few left. And there's something precious about those. They're like jewels for you to connect with your life. So we have these river teeth in our mind And we think about them when we're awake, and we think about them when we're asleep. Now here's something which might turn into a river tooth. It's a candidate for a river tooth, but now it's part of some kind of a tree. And it relates to something that one of the people here brought up, which is something like this. We say that our practice is daily life, but it doesn't seem like we emphasize daily life enough.

[16:07]

It seems like we emphasize formal practice more. Would that be an accurate way of phrasing what you said? Would you like to say it over? Yeah. So we do say that in Soto Zen we do say our practice is about daily life. And so it was brought up that maybe we should put more emphasis on daily life. Rather than just say so, we should do that. And But how are we going to put emphasis on daily life? How are we going to like, besides saying it's important, how are we going to actually pay attention to it? Because part of daily life is that it just gets washed away. So I actually

[17:11]

around the dinky time phase in my life, I was thinking, when I decided I didn't want to be the disciple of my advisor, I thought I wanted to try something different. And some friends of mine and I were contemplating buying an island off British Columbia. We were in Minnesota. We were thinking of buying because at that time we heard that you could buy a small island for not very much. Even then you couldn't buy an acre in San Francisco. Buying property in California was already expensive. in this somewhat cold area, not too many, it wasn't so popular then, and we actually did some research and found that you could get a little bit, an island, you could have a group of people could get together and start a community, thinking of starting a community. But I thought, I thought, I don't really, I think I need to be trained more before I would be part of a group of people starting a community.

[18:22]

I would like to train myself more so that I could be more able to like practice daily life. So I thought, well, that's part of the reason why I came to Zen Center was to train myself to be a good person in a community someplace, and I was going to stay at Zen Center. I was 23, so I was going to stay at Zen Center maybe until I was about 30, and then I was going to go do something with that training. But as you see, I haven't left yet. Any minute, I may go and lead some daily life someplace. So part of what I'm raising here is, yes, daily life, but how do you get trained to live daily life the way we all want to? The form of practice is an opportunity to get trained at those forms, but the point is so that training would transfer to daily life.

[19:33]

We don't want to always just be doing those forms. We want to be able to leave the forms and then go have that same concentration in all realms, and we want all beings to do that. So that's another lead. Now you've got some more leads. Please. Is that enough leads? Nick? Here he comes. Great. Would you like to sit on this thing? Would that help? No, thanks. So there's options. There's options. I have either a two-part question

[20:35]

And the two parts are only loosely related? Or a poem that I wrote today? We had to choose between those two? We have limited time, right? I'll go for the poem. The poem, okay. Which I just happen to have in my pocket. Is that right? You got the poem in your pocket? I do. Great. This is already stressful. So I was hanging out at the beach today and wrote this after seeing something. And it's called Faith and Understanding. Cool. In or and? And. And. Chapter 4 of the Lotus Sutra, right?

[21:37]

Did you know that? No. Kensho, the cleric, was my academic reference. Yeah. Faith and Understanding is the name of Chapter 4 of the Lotus Sutra. Okay. Okay. Birds of prey usually circle This hawk was by the beach Above the rocky shore and rolling hills It saw something It denied the current It held still Fighting the wind Maintaining its point in the sky Wings tattered in the wind Waves crashing Waiting still The hawk dropped down. Closer. Dropped again. Extended talons in anticipation. Waiting. Waves crashing.

[22:41]

Other birds circling. Its gaze averted, then returned. Growing impatient. My neck back hurts from watching, looking up. Closer. It drops again. Into the scrub and sage. A free fall. Boom. Nothing. No hawk. No prey. Rising up. Empty talons. It soars slowly to the next peak, resting, waits again. That was the conclusion.

[23:49]

There's no more. That's the end of the dance? Or is it the song, maybe? Yeah, what's the song? I don't know, maybe a Dylan tune? Do you know one? I know a couple. Can you recite it? I could. Would it help if I invited you? It would. I invite you to recite the case. The case. The Dylan case. The Dylan case. The Dylan case. No Dylan song came to mind with that lead.

[24:53]

It's a good song. Good Dylan song. Anyone shout out a random Dylan song? I like that one. I have to pretend I'm playing my guitar. You must leave now. Take what you think you need will last. But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast. Yonder stands your orphan with his gun, crying like a fire in the sun. Look out, the saints are coming through. It's all over now, baby blue. The highway is for gamblers. Better use your sense. Take what you have gathered from coincidence.

[26:00]

The empty-handed painter from your streets is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets. The sky, too, is folding over you. And it's all over now, baby blue. All your empty-handed armies, they're all going home. All your seasick sailors, they're all rowing home. The lover who just walked out your door has taken all his blankets from the floor. The carpet, too, is moving under you. And it's all over now, baby blue. Leave your stepping stones behind. There's something that calls for you. Forget the dead you've left behind. They will not follow you. The vagabond who's rapping at your door is standing in the clothes that you once wore.

[27:09]

Strike another match. Go start anew. It's all over now, baby blue. And that's the end of the song too. I'm very glad I invited you to come and dance. It was a nice dance though. Is that enough of a lead for you, Amy? I was actually really struck by that. I really disliked Bob Dylan. No, I heard him.

[28:15]

I just like hearing him for the first time in Nick's voice and without the tune. That song felt like a very powerful message. It could touch you? Absolutely, yes, so I'm very glad that that just happened. And I have to say I appreciated that arduin coming through Nick. Thank you. I'm glad I invited you to dance. Not really dancing. She said, it's not really dancing, Reb. I still wish that we would, you know, do some tango in the zendo. Were you there when somebody invited me to tango in the zendo?

[29:18]

No, I've just heard tell. It's kind of one of your legends. You never invited me to do tango in the zendo. Are you sitting in the next session? I don't know. If I get to tango. well you can invite me if you want to I don't know what will happen but I'd really do welcome you to invite me and am I invited am I welcome to invite you sir no yes you are It doesn't have to be in the Zen door. However, whenever I invite you to dance, you're also welcome to say, no, thank you, senor. Well, I never say no to a dance. Okay, then. If someone's looking at you across a crowded room,

[30:26]

and you feel like he's kind of looking to see if you'll dance with him, do you ever look away? Is this an actual dance floor, or are you talking metaphorically? Because if you're speaking metaphorically, yes, I look away all the time. But if it's an actual dance floor, no. Really? Wow. Usually the opposite happens. I'll be like... But metaphorically, yes, I do. But literally on a dance floor, you almost never look away. Is that what you're saying? Yes. Well, you're the kind, You're the kind that makes it easy. Thank you. No, it's like you look around and a lot of them are looking away like waiting for somebody better to dance with. But Amy's like, I'm here. You don't have to be good. I'll dance with you. That's great.

[31:29]

Thank you. I thought he was, too, but then Nick came up. Did you start moving before I said Nick's name, right? I don't remember. Yeah. Anyway, he did start coming, but the Nick's name came out. Stephen, would you like to dance? Sure. Back to your teeth, your tree teeth. My teeth? The tree teeth, the redwood teeth. Yeah, the river teeth. The river teeth. And I'm thinking of what stays and what flows away. And we were talking about forms and about ordinary life. And what came to me really strongly was what flows away is ordinary life and what's left is the forms.

[32:32]

Yeah. Your ordinary life is what happens every moment, and that flows on and on. The only thing that's left is the forms you lived in. So that's what I was going to say, and I now said it. Yeah, you did. Are the forms becoming... River Teeth and the flow for you? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, when you first come, you don't... For many people, I think, when they first come to this end, they don't like the forms and they want to just sit. And then the forms are what keeps them here. Probably what kept you here instead of bringing up the British Columbia. Maybe not, but... Well, also what kept me here is that Susie Qureshi asked me not to leave when he was dying.

[33:36]

He said, please stay at Zen Center. I'm glad you did. I'm glad to be of service to my teacher. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, more dancers, great. I was just so moved by what Stephen said because it came to me that when this ordinary life flows And the forms stay as river teeth. And as you said, it's what flows away, it's what's like nourishing the fish and the ground and everything around. So that was just like, that was a wonderful metaphor.

[34:42]

Phil, did you enjoy it? Great. Another dancer coming. So as long as we're talking about Suzuki-boshi, I have a question for you. Okay. As many of you know, I'm a regular here on Sunday and so I do the Do-an-ryo with Don D'Angelo. And, you know, it's been really great getting to know him because he's also a long time Zen Center practitioner and was practicing along with you from the very beginning.

[35:50]

And one of the things that he said to me on one of our hikes is that he said, you know, Suzuki Roshi really always wanted us to be in the world, actually. He said that he didn't necessarily, and this is my understanding of it, so I'm looking for clarification here. that he didn't necessarily want it to be a traditional Japanese monastery, monastic type of environment here, and that his idea was that the Zen Center residents would be also actively engaged in the world, which is how I understand it, how one of the conditions that caused Zen Center to have various businesses and organizations activities and things from the outside, and that his restaurant, I guess, was loosely affiliated with this somehow. And so, anyways... Oh, Donnie's. Donnie's restaurant, yeah. So I just would like some clarification on that, because we seem to be talking a lot about what I'm hearing as monastic forms.

[36:55]

And I don't know if you care to comment on any of this. Are you inviting me to? I'd love it if you would. Okay. Well, I think that you're right, that I think the point of the practice is, he would say all the time, the point of practice is to extend our Zazen practice out of the temple into our daily life. That's the point. The daily life being outside of the monastery, correct? Well, in the monastery, outside the zendo, but also beyond the monastery. So there's the point. That's right. The forms are to help people. And there's two ways that the forms help people. One way they help people is that some people come to the temple and practice the forms, and the forms help the people when they're in the temple. And then the forms help the people who come into the temple to go out of the temple and help others who do or do not come to the temple.

[38:00]

Some people will never come into the temple. Or some people will come near the temple, like some people will come to the garden, or they'll go to Tassajara as a guest, or they'll come and buy vegetables, or they'll buy bread, or they'll go to greens. But the point is that the practice will reach everybody. That's the point. And so I would understand that he wanted some form. It doesn't have to be the form that we had when he was alive, but there would be some form for training that Zen Center would offer. But that training would be so that the people who touch it and are touched by it would then be able to take the spirit of it out into the society. That would be the point.

[39:04]

But if you have a form like a Zen center like you have, and then it gets extended into society, that's great. But then if you took away the monastery, the extension would probably be lost. after a generation, it probably wouldn't be transmitted unless somebody put it in some form, which they could train the next generation at, and then that could be transmitted. So, for example, I've told this story before, but one time the Buddha was talking to, I think, Shariputra and some other monks, And he was telling him, you know, family stories, Buddha stories, stories about his ancestors, the Buddhas before him.

[40:13]

And he said, you know, and then there was great, [...] great granddad, Bibaji Butsu. Remember him? And then there's Shikibutsu. So he's telling about these Buddhas before him, and then he sort of mentioned, and so-and-so, and he described how they practiced. So they'd meet people, and then they'd kind of like figure out where the person was at, and then they would do the appropriate thing, and the person would learn about the truth. So they were good at that, these old Buddhas before Shakyamuni. And he was good, too. of helping people in such a way that they would understand the truth and be free. And then he said, and I guess three of them, their tradition went on for a short time after they died, and the other three, their tradition went on a really long time after they died.

[41:20]

And Sanchayat Buddha says, well, how come some lasted a long time and others didn't last very long? He said, well, because some of them had precepts, in other words, forms and ceremonies, and the other ones didn't. He says, like if you take some poles and you lean them on each other, like like a teepee. You can actually kind of like balance them on each other. Then after a while, if you don't tie them together, they'll fall apart. But if you tie a rope around them, they can stand up for a long time, even in the wind. So when you have precepts or forms, the tradition can last for quite a long time. Even with the forms, it doesn't last forever. And then, you know, the teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha are not going to last forever. things are going to fall apart and, you know, and there'll have to be another Buddha come into the world later after we lose it.

[42:29]

I don't know when we're going to lose it, but the Buddhists say the teaching doesn't go on forever. The world changes and then you have to have another Buddha come to give a new, refreshed version of it. Hmm? Well, the precepts are the river teeth. So like these Buddhas walking around on the earth, they'd meet people and they would teach them and they'd meet somebody else and they would teach them and that would be their career. But the forms are the things that last beyond. The techniques they use for each person are a little different. But if there's not some commonality among all the different things, then it's hard to transmit it to the next generation. So similarly, what are the river teeth of Zen Center?

[43:33]

And so if you transmit the Dharma out into the society, some people will be helped by the Dharma, and they won't even know about the river teeth. But they'll be helped by, like you said, like Osa said, some of the nutrition of the tradition will benefit beings. But to last, you've got to find kind of like the diamonds in the thing. Otherwise, the next generation won't be there. And so part of what he wanted to do was have Zen Center have a strong monastery. And After Suzuki Roshi died, one time I went to visit Trungpa, who was kind of a student of Suzuki Roshi. And I was talking to him and he said, please develop the monastery of Zen Center.

[44:37]

So Suzuki Roshi wanted to have a monastery, he wanted to have forms, and the purpose for that The reason why he had the monastic, why he wanted to have a nice, clear, strong monastic practices, he wanted that, he told me, for lay people. The people who live in the monastery, they don't really need the monastery because they live in it. they're living in the monastery for the people who can't live in the monastery so that they can come there and touch the monastery and be encouraged and go back to their life. He told me that our seven-day sashins, he said, they're not for you. You live here. You don't need a seven-day sashin. Every day you go to zazen and you're living here with me and the other people, you don't need a zazen.

[45:42]

The people who need zazen are the people who can only get away from their work for seven days a year. They can come and come into that zazen form and they can get a taste. We're into like tastes, you know. They can get a taste of Zen in a week. But they can't live in Zen Center, but in a week they can get a taste. So the funny thing is that that's what he wanted to monastery. He wanted it for the lay people. And he wanted somebody to live there so that there's something there for the lay people to come and the non-resident people to come and be supported to really get to know themselves for a week. And then hopefully that will last them for six months or three months or maybe even a year. But for most people, they need to come back once a year approximately or twice a year to reconnect. Once they connect, once they have a taste for it, they realize that they lose it after a while.

[46:45]

If you live in it, you don't necessarily need these intense things, but you provide these intense things for the people who need them. An intense, like, you know, like a, what is it, like a, I remember some people would come and they'd say, well, it's like coming to a session is like a tune-up in my practice. They have daily practice, but it's like a tune-up. So really the point of the monastery is to help everybody who's not in the monastery. The people in the monastery are there for the people who aren't in the monastery. They're there for others. They're not there for themselves. And the way they're there for others is to keep this place so that all the others who are not in the monastery can come and receive the benefits so that they can go out and help others. But they won't be able to help others by setting up a monastery necessarily. But still they help each other.

[47:47]

But then if there wasn't a monastery, if the monastery got taken away, they would help people. But then the next generation, where would be the thing that people come together to help others with and where others come to be helped? So I think he wanted, he didn't want Zen Center to stay the same necessarily, but he wanted an intense formal practice, I think, to be continued for people who couldn't live in that environment. Well, thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for the question. And thank you for providing strong, clear, monastic practice for everyone. And he also, he said, you know, one of my friends, like a high school friend, was at Zen Center before me. And I owe to him a great deal because he told me about Zen Center. And so I came to Zen Center, but then sometimes he had trouble actually doing the practice.

[49:02]

He loved Zen Center, he loved Suzuki Roshi, Suzuki Roshi loved him, but there was somehow he, after a while, he was like, his formal practice kind of like, he couldn't be disciplined about it. But he wanted to be connected to Zen Center. And he and other people, Suzuki Roshi, really wanted to help them, even though they didn't want to do the formal practice. And that was one of the reasons he thought, maybe we ought to farm people who want to be connected to Zen Center. could be either associated with the farm, work at the farm, or live at the farm, and then they wouldn't necessarily have to do the formal practice. So part of the reason for getting Green Gulch was to follow through on his idea to have another kind of practice place for the students who feel, who really wanted to be closely associated with Zen Center, but didn't want to do this standard monastic exercise program.

[50:12]

So there'll be three phases. One is, well not three phases, but different, see the different, one is people who actually it works for them to do the monastic practice long term, Another one, people who work for them to do the monastic practice short term with refuelings. Another one is people who short term or long term want to be in a practice place but don't want to do the monastic thing. And the other one is for people who just come to do the monastic thing short term. And then the other one is, which is the majority of people, is people who never do the monastic practice, but who feel the effects of the practice when we go pick up our Xeroxing. or deliver our vegetables or something like that, or bring our cars in to have them maintenanced or whatever.

[51:17]

So all these different things, but the point of all of them is to help others. And there's all these different patterns. Does that make sense? It does. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. I have a neighbor who asked me to give a message. Her name is Marta. She's elderly. She has Parkinson's disease and she is pretty deaf. She sometimes wears her hearing aid. She lives below me in the apartment.

[52:20]

And I bring her her mail each day. told her, oh, she's Argentinian. She used to be a tango dancer. So I told her about this class when I first started to come. And each Monday, she asks me if I'm going to my dance class. And today I said it was my last formal dance class here. And she said, would you tell all those Buddhists that I've enjoyed the class?" And then said, made me choke up, she has a very bad tremor, and stood up and she said, I especially liked that tangle of confusion. Say again? That tangle of confusion. Oh, yeah, right. That's what had come through for her in the stories that I had told her.

[53:26]

And then said, will you come down next Monday and tell me about the last class? And so the class has had its answers outside of the room. Yeah. So do you know Paul Disko? Yes. You do? Yes. Yeah. So she told Paul Disko and Anne Hatch about the class. I did. Yeah. So she told my Dharma brother about this class. Your Dharma brother who loves you very much. Yeah. So it like, Susakirashi ordained me and Paul Disko. And then Sean comes to the class and goes and tells Paul what I'm doing. And then Paul comes to dinner last night and tells me about the class that's coming around to him.

[54:28]

He said, is he actually dancing? And I said, well, not yet, but he's singing. And so this is my Dharma brother who built this building and he built the guest house and built the Tatsara Zendo and Tatsara Kitchen, he and everybody else. So he hears about this class, not from me, but from Sean, and then he comes and tells me how the class is helping him think about Dharma. Yeah, this is the point, right? To get the thing working, circulating among all beings, to keep it flowing so that my... You know, it's better for you to tell him than for me. Because I don't want to be giving him, you know, a lecture.

[55:34]

But you can tell him that it's not a lecture. For you it's like... I don't know, what is it? It's a dance. It's a dance. It was great to see him get all excited. Yeah. He's a big sort of burly tree of a guy. Yeah. And he was very excited to hear that there was dancing going on. Thanks for telling him. So this is exactly what I'm talking about, how to get it circulating. It's not for what we're doing here. We're doing what we're doing here for all the people who do not do this form. We're doing this form for all those who do not do it. But we're also doing it for each other who are doing it, because part of the form is that we do it together.

[56:40]

so that we can train each other at it. Because just doing it by ourselves isn't it. We have to do it and get feedback on it. And if we do it here, we can get feedback because the form is fairly clear. I mean, it's fairly clear to each of us. Each of us has our own idea of what it is. Like we think, you know, this is the way you ring the bell. And then somebody goes, we go, ooh, maybe somebody has a different idea from me. And then we interact around that. Any other dancers? Yes. What would you like to do? Okay. I loved your metaphor about the river teeth and the forms of any river teeth.

[57:45]

I was just curious, when you say the forms, what you mean for you? The forms are... That's good. I think that they're the way we bow and the way we sit and the way we come into the zendo and the way we bow to each other on the street and our chants and the teachings that we pass on to each other, the precepts and the Any other forms anyone care to mention? You don't have to come up and just say them.

[58:46]

Any other forms anybody wants to bring up? Mopping the floor. Mopping the floor how? Any other forms? Huh? The schedule. Oryoki. Hospital corners. Hospital corners. Putting the broom upside down. Putting the broom upside down, yeah. At Tassahara, in the early days, we had the forms. We had oryoki, we had zazen posture, we had schedule. We had, you know, various forms. And some of the enthusiastic young students said to Suzuki Roshi, we want you to be stricter with us. Can you give us some more, some way to be stricter? And he said, yeah, put the brooms with the head up. So now at Zen Center, generally, the brooms are with the head up. So it's like we're practicing this form he taught us.

[59:48]

If you put the brooms with the head down, you know what, they get kind of bent to the side, right? And then they still work sort of, but they don't work as well as if they would flare both ways, right? Which, if you put them upside, with the head up, or with the bristles up. So that was a form which he transmitted. Any other forms? Huh? Service. Mm-hmm. Cut the ends of the chard off. Yes, that's a form. Yes. Leaving the zendo and not bowing. Leaving the zendo and not bowing. So the zendo continues. Yeah. Yeah. What? I didn't know that. We don't follow that. Pardon? We didn't follow that. Some of us didn't follow that. Well, when you leave the zendo, you don't bow, right? No, we bow. Yeah, but when you go out the door, you don't bow.

[60:51]

Yeah, when you walk out there, you don't bow. But he noticed, he extended it to have a certain meaning beyond that. Any other forms? Meetings, yeah. And what form of the meeting? Yeah, in the meeting, what forms? Well, There are some different forms for different meetings. Yeah, we have different forms for different meetings. In this meeting, we usually chant, Unsurpassed Penetrating Perfect Dharma, and then everybody says their name and everybody recognizes them. That's a form we use in this one. Other classes, they do something different. In the Zendo, instead of saying, in the Zendo, we sometimes do the, we vow with all beings from this life on throughout countless lives to hear the true Dharma. We do that chant instead. That's a form we do. A form I wanted to mention, which I've been, keep forgetting to mention, is there's a form of, when you come into Cloud Hall, you take your shoes off

[62:08]

And you take your shoes off, and this is a form which maybe hasn't been made clear, but I would like to suggest a form now. The form is you take your shoes off on the tile, not on the wood, and you walk, and then you leave your shoes on the tile and step from your shoes out of your shoes, you leap through the air and land on the wood without your shoes on. Then you reach down and pick your shoes up and you put them on the shoe rack. And then when you leave, you take the shoes off the shoe rack and you put them down on the tile. and then you leap from the wood into the shoes and then you go someplace else.

[63:17]

And when you go to the bathroom, when you go to the toilet, you leap from the wood into slippers or your shoes and go into the toilet. And when we come out, you again, you depart, you exit from your slippers or your shoes onto the wood floor and you leave the shoes or slippers on the tile. And you leave the slippers right at the edge of the tile, right where the tile meets the wood, you leave the heel of the slipper touching the wood. And so that the slipper's entirely on the tile, but not way far away from the wood, near the wood. The back of the heel is touching the grout, right? between the tile. What is the most important thing about this story?

[64:20]

The most important thing is helping others. That's the most important thing. I always thought it was the dirt on the wood. I thought it was the grit on the wood. No, the point is to help others. That's the point of it. I think that whole little description, including the question and response, could be transcribed and posted by the guest room manager. All new residents and guests of Green Gulch thoroughly understand. And the slippers... with the back of the heel, the slippers are parallel to each other, are approximately parallel. They're not like in one direction and the other in the other direction. That's not the form. The form is they're both pointing, both of the slippers are pointing away from the wood out into the land of tile.

[65:28]

And so this is a form which I propose. Yes? So what if there's only one pair of slippers that fits people and all the other ones are too small? Or your shoes. Your shoes are, you know, in one of the various shoe racks that are far away from the bathroom and you really have to go. Oh, and you really have to go? What's the form then? If you really have to go, then you violate the form. If you can't follow the form, then you don't do the form. But you're clear about the form is, and you realize, I had to go so, I had to get there. The form, there's another form. That brings up another form. The other form is, go into the toilet when you do certain things. That's another form. So sometimes you might feel like that form is more important than getting my slippers on.

[66:32]

So I'm going to go barefoot into the toilet area because I think this other form trumps the shoe thing. We do need larger slippers. Do we have to leave with two? Or can we do one foot and then the other? You can do the one foot and then the other one, yeah. You don't have to leap both feet simultaneously. You can do one, leap one foot first, put the left foot out, and then get it in there and then put the right one in. Or you can put the right one in and the left one in. The main thing is that the shoes are, when you're done, that you put them in that position. of being near the edge there, lined up for the next people to use. But sometimes, as many of you know, you actually find the shoes sitting on the wood.

[67:35]

Or you find them so far from the wood that a person has to walk through mud and grime to get to them. Or the person should leap wolf feet at once to get to them. Or reach out and pull them back. But I'm requesting, I'm suggesting this form and I'm requesting that you practice it. And now you can start tomorrow or tonight even. And then during Sashin, barbarians are going to come. who have not been indoctrinated, and they're going to knock the shoes all over the place. So it gives you an opportunity to be kind to them until they learn this form and start practicing it. Now, Japanese Zen is really big on shoes being put in certain places. And we're kind of like really like very relaxed compared to the way it is in Japan. If you want me to amaze you sometime about what one goes through around shoes and slippers in Japan, I could tell you some amazing, for some people, horror stories.

[68:48]

But anyway, this is an example of a form, and then it's an example for training. You can train yourself. You can notice that you are sometimes for various reasons too much in a hurry to put the shoes back, or not even put them back, but you find them messed up and then put them back in the formal position when you're done. And maybe also it's okay to tidy up the situation that when other people have left it in a mess, it's okay for you to tidy it up. I myself do tidy it up quite a bit. And I, you know, I'm happy to say I'm not disappointed or irritated by the chaos. I feel like, you know, once again, job security. You know, the bodhisattva who arranges the shoes may never be out of work.

[69:49]

And I'm telling you about this, I'm sorry, but usually I do it when nobody's watching. And I really appreciate that a couple days ago the tiles were cleaned. It's so lovely. Who cleaned those tiles? Michael. You're welcome. Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, Steve suggested the form. Yeah. He discovered it. They have a beautiful color. They're a beautiful color, yeah. Yeah, I was impressed. Yeah, they're lovely. And I would hope that we could do that again someday. I thought you did it twice. Anyway. I did it twice a week, yeah. That's great. And then I request that you practice this form, and I request that if anybody doesn't do this form, that you be kind to them and, you know, be gentle with them and don't try to control them. But still, I'm not trying to control you.

[70:54]

I'm just saying, I suggest this form, and I beg you to do it. And if you don't do it, I don't love you more or less for you doing it or not doing it. I just think this is an example of a form. Another one is, out of the mouth of Dogen Zenji, return things to the place you got them from. And I must say, Compared to the Wild West time at Green Gulch, things are pretty, you know, it's almost like martial law here now. Things are much tidier and people are much more careful than they used to be. But still, I do find Marley Mugs and sometimes quite a few Marley Mugs sitting in various locations far away from the home of Marley Mugs. And now they're not, like in the old days, they're not full of cigarette butts. They used to be filled with cigarette butts, and I don't know what else.

[71:58]

But anyway, now it's like it's not nearly as raunchy as it used to be. But I do find them there, and that's another form, is to return the kitchen equipment to the kitchen. And if you find something that somebody else didn't return, when nobody's looking... Well, actually, you can return it when somebody's looking because they might not know that you're putting up with somebody else. They might think that it's your stuff. And so they might actually look at you. When you come in with lots of Marley mugs to the kitchen, they might think, boy, you're a terrible student to have all those mugs. You know, you should have brought them back sooner. And they may or may not punish you for that. So maybe it would be good to do it when nobody's looking. So that's another form. that you can practice, but still we do need to be trained. And we need these forms, most of us need these forms to be trained because most of us are not completely fully realized Buddhas yet.

[73:03]

So we still need training. And then when you learn these forms, how to work with them, you can transfer it to forms other places, like in the law office, in the medical field, in schools, driving a car, working in a grocery store, all these different realms. You find out what the forms are, and then you practice them the way you learn how to practice these forms, and then you help people in those realms. find the middle way to practice forms where we, again, give up alienation and separation and the vagueness of sameness, to find that middle way in daily life. Yes? It seems to be maybe a relationship between the idea of a form and the idea that now I'm practicing Zen.

[74:08]

Yeah. So, I guess this may be a kind of interesting discussion, I think, as far as how we take what we conceive of as our monastic practice into our daily lives. Yeah. And so it's kind of an open-ended question, like, what is a form, what isn't a form, how useful is the concept of form in structuring our daily lives so that we remember to stay present. And, yeah, there's a comment on that. Yeah, and so, I know this man in Texas, and he received the Bodhisattva precepts, and his wife has not received them. However, she helps him all the time by asking him, when he does various things, how that relates to the Bodhisattva precepts. Like he does something and she says, how does that relate to the Bodhisattva precepts?

[75:15]

Like he drinks too much? And she asks him. Or he starts swearing at himself for making a mistake and she asks him. So she uses the precepts to help him reflect on himself even though she herself did not receive them. So he doesn't check with her when she does stuff. I practice orgyoki and most people are not, I mean, I don't get much feedback from people like, why do you, how come you do that, that way? But if I eat outside the zendo, in certain ways, sometimes people ask me why I'm eating that way because they don't see how the care, some of them don't see how the care of ordeoki is translated into the way I'm eating at an informal situation. But they expect me to, in an informal situation where it's not, there aren't set forms, there sort of are some forms, some basic forms of decency, right?

[76:23]

So if I don't follow those forms, knowing that I practiced orioke, people would say, well, how can you do the orioke and then eat like a whatever, you know? Now, that's a negative example, but the positive example would be like Linda Ruth, right? the way she eats in an informal situation, it seems like you can really feel the orioke in the way she eats in the dining room or wherever, you know? So you can see that she's transmitting the ordeoki practice, the values of attention and care to the details of eating. You can see it translated into the dining room. Or if you were out eating with her somewhere else or in her own house, that's the positive side, that you can feel that same care being transmitted into daily life.

[77:26]

So if she goes to somebody's house or she's eating in a restaurant, they feel that love coming through the way she eats. And somebody else who does the practice and doesn't follow it, then people go like, how could you eat like that? And they wouldn't feel that way about a person who wasn't committed to the forms. But if you're committed to the forms, then people say, I have a question. How does what you're doing there accord with the first pure precept of following the forms? Why don't you eat as carefully in a restaurant or in your own kitchen as you do in a zendo? No problem with the way you are in a zendo, but how come you can't, without the support, how come you can't do it? How come you can't give as much love and attention to the way you eat? Even if you go to a drive-in restaurant and order something through the window, can you do that with care and respect?

[78:30]

It's pretty advanced, right? We would like to be able to do that sometime, to actually go into those situations and convey the same attention and care when you go to McDonald's or something and order at the drive-thru. But maybe you wouldn't. Maybe you say, I just can't practice that. I have to park the car and go in. I just can't see how to do it drive-thru. It's just too advanced. So you park the car and you go in and you walk up to the people, you know, and you transmit that love in the way you order the thing and the way you take your money out, you know, you transmit it because it's really sunk into you. And hopefully, if you don't do it, the people at McDonald's will say, what are you doing here acting like that? Why do you order like that? Yes? Yes. Exactly.

[79:34]

Exactly. Exactly. So then they go, they travel thousands of miles and find Suzuki Roshi and they say, okay, now that guy, and it wasn't I saw him doing the forms, you know. It wasn't that I watched him bow or I watched him sit, you know, or I saw him give him a Dharma talk. That wasn't what converted me. What converted me was just the way he walked. We all walk, right? But if you're trained, the way you walk encourages people to learn to walk that way, to walk in a way that encourages people. And I saw his feet. I think maybe his feet were the first thing I saw. I saw his feet and I said, I can become a disciple of these feet. And then I saw his face.

[80:36]

And at the end of Zazen, I saw his face and I interacted with him and I said, I think, yeah, I think this is going to work. So we all walk. We walk in the temple and outside the temple. Can we train ourselves at walking so that when we walk around the world, people feel like they kind of go, oh, I should pay attention to the way I walk. And Suzuki Roshi was really pretty, you know, very nice, very gentle most of the time, really sweet and kind and light and joyful and all kinds of easy to take stuff. But still, when he came into the dining room, people who were slumping would sit up straight. It wasn't like, oh, Suzuki Roshi, he's going to beat us.

[81:37]

That's the way it is with some Zen masters, you know. They come into the room and everybody goes, it's going to hit us. There are situations like that, and they're great too. But Suzuki Roshi wasn't that terrifying. But still, when he came in the room, people would go, they would sit up straight. They would stop, you know, leaning over their food and drooling. Or if it was a study hall, you know, and they're sleeping on their sutures, they're kind of like, okay. Most of them would anyway. Most of them. You know, I love Mike Dixon. You know Mike Dixon? Anyway, he's one of Suzuki Roshi's students. His wife is Trudy Dixon, who was the editor of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. So when I came to Zen Center, she had cancer and she was almost dead when I first came.

[82:38]

She used to come to the Zen Do over in Japan Town and she would lie down for Zazen. Anyway, her husband is Mike Dixon, who's done a lot of the paintings around Green Gulch. The painting of the Green Gulch Road in the... in a library. That's one of his paintings. He also did the clouds at Green's Restaurant. Anyway, he's a wonderful painter and also a good saxophone player. So I went with Suzuki Roshi to visit him. but basically to visit his wife, who was on the verge of death. And I also heard Suzuki Reishi call her. Before he went over, he called her and he said, he said, this is Reverend Suzuki. Could I come and visit you? And I guess she said, yeah. So we went over to her house. And he, Mike Dixon, answered the door. It was, we had gone to, we had gone to Sinzazen in Mel Valley.

[83:42]

and they lived in Mill Valley. So after Mourning's Oz, then we went over to visit her. So it was kind of early in the morning, and Mike Dixon came to the door in his bathrobe with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. You know? Oh, it hangs out of your mouth like this. He... It wasn't like he came to the door like this. Oh, hi, Suzuki Roshi. Good morning. So here's like what some people think is one of the most important Zen masters, you know, in American history, right? Here he comes to the door. Here's Mike Dixon. She's in there. He's kind of sleepy, you know. So then this young man behind Suzuki Roshi, named me, was watching and saying, this is really something, you know.

[84:44]

But Mike Dixon loved Suzuki Roshi too. And there were other times when the cigarette was not hanging out of his mouth. He told me one time he went with Suzuki Roshi someplace. I don't know why they're going there. But he went with him into some place where there's a bunch of dock workers in San Francisco. And he really noticed, he saw what happened when Suzuki Roshi met those guys. He really noticed that. But in this case, it's kind of like, you know. And so there's something about, there's something there, you know. What is that? something about it that makes us kind of like, oh, I think I pay attention to where I put my foot and how I open the door and how I'm sitting. So to bring consciousness into the world in order to help people, that's what bodhisattva dancing's for, right? So please, I beg you to work on your shoe placement and I look forward to see what will happen next in this wonderful drama of Zen in America.

[86:05]

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