Good morning. Good morning. It's really good to have Shikado Lou Richmond speaking with us. It's been a while since Lou has been here. But he began his practice at Berkeley Zen Center, let's say he was a downstairs person before they moved the zendo upstairs. So that really dates back to 1967. 1971. He spent about 15 years then in almost every imaginable position and center in the San Francisco Zen Center system. He received Dharma transmission from Sochin Roshi and is the founder and teacher of the Vimala Sangha in Mill Valley. He's also one of the co-founders of the SPOT training program, which continues after his first three-year cohort has graduated.

[01:11]

It's a training program for priests, and now for priests and laypeople. So welcome, Luke. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, today I want to talk about practicing with illness, disability, discomfort. Part of my talk is going to be a little historical to put things in context, but also some of it will be personal. Alan did mention that I I'm a cancer survivor of 25 years and also a survivor of encephalitis, which nearly killed me and made me, took about three or four years to recover. So I have, as part of my resume, I guess, you know, I've been through these things.

[02:12]

And also I suppose I should mention that Alexandra and I are going to be leading a series of three classes on this topic. Dates, I think, have been publicized. So this is kind of an introduction to the topic, and I'll do my best to stay within the time limits. So, just stepping way back, we practice Zen. This is our lineage, and this is the the practice that Suzuki Roshi brought to us and transmitted to us. It's a particular style and lineage of practice that started in China, as you all know. Buddhism at that time in 600-700 AD had been around for, you know, over a thousand years and been in China for six, seven hundred years.

[03:17]

And the Zen school seems to have started inside, at the time, at that time in China the dominant school of Zen was Tendai, which basically was a comprehensive, had a comprehensive set of all sorts of practices that represented the full range of Mahayana Buddhism. And it seems, from what we can gather from the mists of the past, that a group of talented, inspired monks in the Tendai monasteries noticed that there was some discrepancy between the practice of Shakyamuni Buddha and the practices they were being taught. And they had this great idea, which was, I wonder what it would be like if we practiced Shakyamuni's practice? And so they began sitting Zazen, which is Shao community's practice, in the kitchen and in spare rooms and found places.

[04:20]

And eventually Zen, after a while, became its own thing and specialized in that. But originally, Zen was... And Dogen, who is the founder of our lineage in Japan, lived in the 13th century. was originally ordained and lived as a young monk in Tendai monasteries in Japan. And he had the same response. There was no Zen in Japan at that time. He said, you know, this Tendai stuff, there's lots of practices and lots of rituals and lots of things that we're doing, but something seems to be missing. The essence seems to be missing. I'm not satisfied. So he went to China, as some of you know, and he searched out a good Zen teacher and became the person that brought Zen to Japan. And after 37 generations, Suzuki Roshi brought it to us. So that's the brief fairy tale or story line of how Zen gets from the 7th century in China to America.

[05:28]

And you're all the inheritors and beneficiaries of that. If you read the early teachings of Dogen after he just got back, he was still a young man in his twenties, he was very keen on zazen as the only practice you really needed. And people would ask him, what about chanting? He'd say, no, it's like frogs. What about bowing? Waste of time. You know, he had this kind of fervent sense of really wanting to make a point at that time, which was many centuries ago, that this was the original practice of the Buddha, this is the that in a sense all the other practices are included in this practice. So he was a real Zazen aficionado and taught that. Now, of course, you've got to be very careful in studying someone like Dogen.

[06:30]

First of all, all we know about him is what's filtered down through the centuries, and it's probably been changed a million times. Some of it's probably propaganda, some of it he probably really said, and he also said lots of different things at different times, depending. So other times he supported various practices. Anyway, I think that when Suzuki Roshi came here, I think that he was very well schooled in all aspects of Buddhism, but I think he felt that the thing that he could, the most valuable thing he could bring to us was the practice of Satsang. And as he said somewhere, this was in the 50s, he said, you Americans had seen the worst of what Japan has to offer. I want to bring you the best. And so he brought Sansen and taught Sansen. And that was his practice for his whole life. And those of us who knew him, certainly Sojin Roshi and I knew him and other people.

[07:32]

There's a very strong sense of, well, we've taken a measure of this man, if Zazen made him what he is, then I'm going to do that. He was living proof that this was a practice that could bring you to awakening. That being said, That was back in the old days where, as I like to say, Zen was the hit girl of Buddhism in America. There wasn't that much else, but now there's a vast amount of other things. There's various schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Some of you may be familiar with those. There's centers everywhere. The Vipassana movement has spread internationally with the Theravada flavor. There's lots of different ways and lots of different practices. And by way of just connecting what I said about the Tendai school to Tibetan Buddhism, it's very similar. I mean, Tibetan Buddhism is a comprehensive encyclopedic collection of pretty much everything that Buddhists have ever done at any time.

[08:34]

And they have their own form of Zen. Some of you may be familiar with the terms Mahamudra and Dzogchen. These are essentially Zen practices in a Tibetan Buddhist container. But we now, we Zen people now live in America where there's a plethora of different kinds of practices. So that brings me to the topic of the day, which is When we all were around Suzuki Roshi, we were young. I was in my early 20s. Sojin was obviously a little older. But it was a little, sorry. Sojin was my first teacher. And when I met him in his living room at Dwight Way, He was young. We were all young. So the practice of zazen, sitting cross-legged on a cushion for hours on end, was something that more or less we could do.

[09:42]

It is a practice, as I'll say in a minute, for young, vibrant people. And so the traditional description of what that practice is and how you do it, and in the way in which monks in Japan who practice sin used... How shall I put this? Let me just step back. The key point of Buddhist practice is to awaken, is to see things as they actually are, and not as our ego distorts them. And that's what the Buddha taught. Do that and you will see through the cause of human suffering. So how do you do that? That's the question. Well, one of the ways is to work with one of the ego's deepest attachments, which is the physical body.

[10:46]

The ego really likes having a body. It can get all sorts of good things out of it. And it's so closely identified with the body that if you ask a child to point to themselves, they'll say, I'm me. This is the body. So a lot of Japanese monastic life, and I'd say Tassajara to some extent, is involved with separating our deeper nature from the habits of ego, which are involved with the body. So, one of which is the ego likes the body to be comfortable at all times, well-fed, chocolates, coffee in the morning, you know, you name it, we've thought it up. Just, you know, if you look at the entire universe of advertising in America, everything that's advertised is pretty much this stuff, you know, stuff to make the ego feel good. More beautiful, stronger, etc.

[11:49]

Monastic practice, where you get up early, you don't have enough sleep, it's hard to sit zazen five, six, seven, eight hours a day, it's hard to sit cross-legged for an hour while you eat. It's not like going to McDonald's. Ego loves McDonald's. Fast food is very successful because not only do you get to eat and satisfy that, but it's quick. You can move right on to some other desires. Doing oryoki, which Zikuroshi really, really wanted us to do, we really felt oryoki was important, you know, cuts through some of the basic habit patterns of ego around the body. You know, we want to eat quickly, we want to eat a lot, we want there to be sweets, various things, you know. You eat oryoki, the food is plain, you have to chant a lot, your legs hurt, But, you know, way back in the 60s when I came to Berkley Zen Do, we had Ryoki, what, every morning, didn't we? Yeah, we had Ryoki every morning, and that was one of our main practices.

[12:54]

So, the point I'm making, and you know, if you actually go to a Zen monastery today in Japan, in most of them, they beat you a lot. And it's all men, all young, well, men, post-adolescent boys, really. and who not only can pretty much put up with anything, but kind of like it in a way. It's male initiation. And Hoichiro Shizuki's son, who's now the head teacher at Eheiji, I believe, has made them stop that. They don't hit them nearly as much. He's trying to be more modern. But for years I thought, it's so cruel. Buddhism should be kind. And I met Thich Nhat Hanh, who's very soft and very delicate, I thought. That's how Buddhism should be. But when I reflect on my own experience of illness, particularly the last one, and how much it helped me break through some of my deeper attachments that Zen monastic practice really hadn't touched,

[14:08]

I'll explain more in a minute. I realize, well, they have a point. For young men, that kind of rigor, which isn't all that different from marine boot camp, essentially, it is boot camp, and it's very physical. You have to run to things, you can't just walk, you have to keep up. It's hard for people who are in any way weak to keep up, and they say that they hate you, the ones that can really do it are the country boys, the farm boys, they're tough anyway, you know. And, you know, if you think you're somebody, sit a session where they beat you every half an hour, ruthlessly, and you will get over your sense of being somebody, you'll be a kind of a blubbering heap of pain. So does this accomplish the goal of Buddhism? Maybe in some cases.

[15:10]

It certainly did for Suzuki Roshi. And in a lot of cases, it doesn't do a thing. None of the practices that we do, including Zazen, are guaranteed to work. Ifso facto. You do the practices, you bring everything you've got to it, and Sometimes the magic works and sometimes if you're like me You know, I'm not very athletic but I a Lot of my competency is mental I make my living as a computer designer and software designer, etc. I've written books so to have a brain infection that caused actual brain damage where I couldn't I I couldn't talk, I couldn't think, I couldn't move because my body was too weak, was shattering. And I was that way for quite a while.

[16:15]

And so, of course, as a, at that time, a 30-year practitioner of Zen, the big question for me is, there were two questions. One is, How come my practice has failed me? How come I can't get through this? How come I'm shattered? I shouldn't be shattered because I'm a Zen person and I've practiced Zazen all these years. That was one question. And the other one was, what do I do now? So, to the first question, the actual answer was, my practice is working just fine, I've finally met an obstacle I can't beat. That's all. There was no way around, you know, my ego couldn't get around that condition because all of its basic tools and competencies were damaged. Not as much as I thought at the time, I was actually very lucky, but damaged enough so I felt pretty helpless, kind of like a jellyfish.

[17:20]

So from the standpoint of practice, that was actually a very good thing for me. It really transformed me. And as Susan remembers visiting me in the hospital, I cried constantly. Part of it was the illness, but part of it was just the whole emotional side of my life opened up. I couldn't hold that back anymore, and so I was just so emotional, and everything touched me so deeply. So that's kind of how it was, that illness actually, which in a conventional sense, I tried sitting, as you might well imagine, and even though my body wasn't all that damaged, and I could with some assistance from special cushions that I'm sitting on right now, special, you know, because I had damage in various places, neurological damage, but somehow I couldn't do it. There was some kind of neurological, I just couldn't do it.

[18:27]

I would become kind of crazy. So what did I do? I bowed a lot and I prayed to Amida Buddha to help me. Amida is the Buddha who takes a vow to help people and I have a beautiful statue of Amida Buddha in my room so I actually for the first time in my life Not only did I pray, but I really needed to. It's all I could do. I just surrendered to my situation and got very humble about my practice, believe me. And very fortunately for me, gradually I healed and gradually my skills came back. But it was sufficiently shattering that I'm different as a consequence. And I know something about what's at the root of Zen practice that I didn't know before, which is the actual, the real practice that's at the root of it all doesn't depend ultimately on whether you can sit full lotus, although that's good.

[19:43]

It doesn't depend on whether you can sit up straight, although that's good. It doesn't depend on having a mind that works particularly well, although that's good. It doesn't depend on being able to concentrate, although that's good. It depends on whether you are ready to see it through all the way, no matter what happens. So, I wanted to mention some examples of this. among people that we have a high regard for. D.T. Suzuki, who was really one of the key writers who got us all started in Zen, he himself, as he got older and wasn't able to sit Zazen, practiced the Nembutsu, the Pure Land Prayer, very similar to what I did. And a lot of his writings in Japanese are Pure Land writings. He was kind of 50-50. He wrote a lot about Zen, and that's what appealed to Westerners, but in Japan he wrote a lot about Pure Land, which is the most, you know, the biggest, by far the biggest group in Asia, and really worldwide, of Buddhists don't practice meditation, they practice some kind of devotional practice or prayer to Buddha.

[21:04]

And so that's one example. Another example from the Tibetan side is there's a teacher named Yeshe Rinpoche, I forget his full name, but he had a heart attack and nearly died and was in the hospital and wrote quite poignantly about how he was unable to do his practices which he relied on his whole life and how, just like me, he was having to dig deeper beneath the orthodoxy of what he practiced, and he had to learn how to continue his practice flat on his back in a hospital, just as I did. For two months I was in a rehab hospital and couldn't walk, and for some of that time couldn't move, and for some of that time couldn't speak, which was really hard for me. not to be able to talk, and when they finally pulled out all the machinery in my throat and allowed me to talk, believe me, I talked the blue street.

[22:06]

Ask my wife. I couldn't get enough of it. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. But that month of being unable to talk, and unable to write, and unable to read, and unable to hear or see very well, what could I do? I could rest in my actual situation. I had no McDonald's, no excuses, not even the notion that I was in a wonderful monastery practicing the way. I had nothing. It had all been taken away from me. At least that's what my ego thought. But actually, nothing essential. Not only had nothing essential been taken away, but because all that artifice had been taken away, I I feel now that in a way the actual meaning of Zazen became much more real to me, even though I couldn't sit up, I couldn't move. So, just a couple more examples.

[23:14]

Fukushima Orochi, who's the abbot of Tofukuchi, a leading Rinzai monastery in Japan, has had for many years. And some people from this sangha have studied with him in Japan. And he's had Parkinson's. He's a barrel-chested, vigorous guy when he was younger. He's had Parkinson's for 20 years. He's slowly wasted away. He's slowly lost the ability to talk and to move. He's pretty much paralyzed. He's in a wheelchair or in bed. But he continues to teach, even though he can barely talk. He continues to do Doksan with his students, and he continues to his practice. And I was told that once he said to one of his American students, my illness is my last gone. And the student said, do you have an answer? And he said, yes.

[24:18]

But I think there's a better answer. So this person is the living embodiment of the mastery of all the koans. But for him to say, this illness is my final koan, and I'm still working on it, and I'll be working on it until the day I take my last breath, which may be soon. Any of you who know about Parkinson's, it's not an easy illness, although it goes in various ways. Sometimes it stabilizes and doesn't get worse for long periods of time. He's almost 80, but that's an example. Yamada Mumanroshi was the previous generation's top Rinzai teacher, and I was fortunate enough to meet him. He came to Zen Center. and developed a relationship with us. And then I went to Japan, and I was able to be there for his... He became abbot of Yoshinji, and we were honored guests there as Westerners, Western priests, and we were there in this 800-year-old Buddha hall, watching that.

[25:23]

And we got to spend time with him. I have a calligraphy on my wall that he wrote my Buddhist name. Toward the end of his life, he acquired Alzheimer's and gradually lost everything. The present abbot of his smaller monastery came recently to Zen Center with a big entourage. We knew him as Shinran-san. I'm sure they don't call him that anymore. He's a very distinguished person. Shinran-san, until Munroshi died, had the practice of taking care of him. And so again, I have to ask, what was his practice? How did he continue? He did continue. And everybody who saw him knew that he was continuing. But it wasn't in the way that a young person who's healthy with a good body continues. I was very struck, given my experience,

[26:26]

by a comment. There's a Tibetan teacher named Trangu Rinpoche. Trangu is one of the highest and most accomplished Mahamudra masters in that tradition, and he is the Mahamudra tutor to the young Karmapa, and to, I think, the Dalai Lama. He's very eminent. And in a book where it transcribes his talk, somebody asked him Because he's been talking about resting in your Buddha nature and all of that. He said, what about people who have Alzheimer's? Can they do that? What happens? And he said, well, the mental equipment, the mental faculties of seeing, hearing, thinking, all the things that We do are of course damaged in an illness like that, but Buddha nature is untouched Well as you can imagine when I read that I was very touched and very emotional The only good thing about my illness is I did get better Gradually although I didn't know for quite a while if I would and I you know I had to face the fact Well, this is going to be me for the rest of my life.

[27:48]

I don't know I don't know if I can stand that. There is a famous koan of Choshu, which Tsukiroshi talks about and is in my beginner's mind, in which he states, a clay Buddha can't get through water. A wooden Buddha can't get through fire. An iron Buddha can't get through the furnace. I think Suzuki Roshi liked this story a lot. The way I understand it is, a clay Buddha is a real Buddha. And it can take you to a certain point. So, for example, monastic practice, or sitting sessions, or sitting in full lotus, or any of those things are... There's a reason why we sit this way.

[28:51]

This is a very ancient transmitted posture that is deeply yogic and deeply energetically transformative. And if you read closely, the meditation instruction in Tibetan Zen, it's virtually identical to Dogen's description on every single point. Clearly, there's 10,000 years at least of practice and experimentation to come up with this. But I can certainly testify, and maybe some of these other people I've mentioned can testify, to the fact that if you think that's the only way, then it's kind of a clay Buddha. A clay Buddha can't get through water. A clay Buddha looks really great, and you may think that's the Buddha, but a clay Buddha, if you put it in water, it melts. So there's a condition in which it can't survive. same with an iron Buddha.

[29:53]

The only Buddha that can survive anything is the formless Buddha, the Dharmakaya, the essence of who we actually are that doesn't depend on material circumstance or health. Suzuki Roshi himself died of a wasting illness and we were all there and watched him turn green from liver failure and lose the ability to sit up and lose the ability to walk. And he was just the same as he always was. didn't seem to change him one iota. It's one of the most powerful teachings of my life. To watch that, I was 24, and I'd never seen anybody dying until then. Well, I saw my mother slowly waste away from a similar disease, so I imagine at some level my unconscious was very activated by watching Suzuki Roshin, watching what he would do.

[31:06]

He didn't do anything. He was the same. And I visited him in his bedroom when he no longer had the ability to sit up. And the essentialness of him was the same. His practice continued, even though the circumstances were very different. And I understood. We all experienced him as a very kind, gentle, wise person. go through that, that I realized that underneath he had a spine of steel. And his whole life practice was able to sustain him through that, where he lost everything, including his life. And he told us, don't worry. Everything's okay.

[32:07]

Your practice will continue. Just practice with sincerity. Don't think that you need me to do it. Well, I really thought that I needed him, and I was distraught, and I miss him every day. I'm at the point now, since I'm about the age, almost the age he was when he was like that, that I actually feel I have some questions for him. But he's not there, not in the flesh. So to those of you, incidentally, I look out and I see the age, the average age of the group. There are some young people here, but like every Buddhist Sangha in the country, it's a graying group. And that's the way Dharma is. I don't actually know in what way the new generation will come to Dharma. Well, I do know a little bit. I know that the Buddhist centers that have music, parties, dancing, alcohol and meat, have a lot of young people.

[33:16]

Young people are really flocking there by the hundreds and by the thousands. So, there you go. It's probably a... Are there other places? I'll give you a list later. They often say that Spirit Rock is a really great place to meet people. But all of us who are older, and even young people, just because you're young doesn't mean you don't have big physical obstacles. need to find a way to continue our practice regardless of our situation. So if we're unable to cross our legs, we sit a different way. If we're unable to sit on a Zafu, like me, we poke around in the universe of possible things to sit on until we find something that works.

[34:19]

And I have a special cushion that I, you know, I can't really sit without it. So I made an adjustment. The one thing in my body that seems not to have had any problems yet, knock on wood, are my knees. So I'm very grateful for my knees. I like my knees. So I still can sit this way. But if I can't, like Suzuki Roshi, or like Fukushima Roshi, or like Mumon Roshi, then I will continue in some other way. And so in this series of three classes that Alexandra and I are going to do, to which you're all invited, we're going to talk together. It's not just going to be me talking or Alexandra talking. We're going to talk together about how do we continue our practice and continue the lifelong work of awakening in whatever situation we have without feeling that somehow we're second class citizens or the gold standard is the full lotus or something.

[35:25]

In a certain sense it is, but I haven't been able to sit in full lotus since those days on Dwight Way. I did. I sat in full lotus period after period and it was very painful. I still believe that as a part of our cutting through of ego attachment, it's not a bad thing to experience and deal with a certain amount of physical pain at least once. You don't have to do it constantly, but if that scares you, if anything scares you, our fundamental vow, our Bodhisattva vow, is If you see something that scares you, turn to face it. Don't turn away. That's our vow. It's not what the ego decides. The ego understands viscerally, scary, I'm gone. Not going to be scary. That's what's scared, is ego is scared.

[36:28]

It might lose something it considers vital. But as Buddhists, as practitioners, we force ourselves over and over again to turn toward what scares us. and realize, actually, there's nothing that is fundamentally scary. What are you scared of? So, illness, disability, all those things are wonderful opportunities to, particularly, I have to say, if it's a condition that you can't resolve, it's just going to be there, or at least you think it's going to be there forever. That's pretty good. I mean, Suzuki Roshi, apparently, when he was posted to Manchuria in the latter days of war in some remote area, he learned that there were tigers there. He thought that was really good. There were tigers. Good place to practice Zen, where there are tigers.

[37:31]

Now, tigers can be anything. Tiger is whatever scares you. So the tiger could be your physical condition. It could be a psychological condition. Most of my deficits in my illness were not really physical. My body survived reasonably well. It was mostly mental and emotional deficits that were so unfamiliar to me and so terrifying and so scary. So, in winding up, When you're young and healthy, you practice as a young and healthy person. When you're older and lots of things have happened to you in your life, which could include grief, it could include losing your job, losing your home, you know, the one thing about being older is a lot of stuff has happened and inevitably

[38:51]

age and things go wrong. And we regret the loss of our youth in that way. We regret that we can't run anymore, that we can't play tennis, that we can't sit zazen in a conventional way, that we're no longer attractive to people the way we once were physically. Essentially we have a much longer history of losses, but dukkha, which is usually translated as suffering, I think could easily be translated as loss. So the gift of being older is that whether or not we really understood dukkha when we were younger, we understand it now. So that's the gift of being older, and in spite of the fact that in the 60s a lot of youth were drawn to Buddhism, I think that when you're older and more mature, it's a more natural time.

[40:04]

So I think we're all going to have to figure out ways to accomplish our practice in whatever physical, mental, and emotional condition we have, whatever equipment we have. So that's our challenge, that's what we'll be talking about in these classes, and I hope giving you some sense or taste of where we'll be going with it. So, it's 11.05. Do we have time for discussion or questions at all? Ten minutes? A little bit? Okay. Hi. You mentioned that Zazen was his main practice, and that's what he did all his life. I just wanted to add that I've often, when I read for him in December, I found that he had some really difficult things that he went through. The thing about the war, being hungry during the war, and having to pick green weeds to eat for him and his community.

[41:14]

I may be remembering the book moment, but I kind of remember that there was a period when he was just kind of like playing go all the time. I mean, I think he went through some kind of crucible period between his wife being murdered and the war that, I mean, has something to do with what you, you know, going to the bottom in some ways. You know, try having all the young men in your town get killed and having to do all their funerals. I know he had to do that. I know he had to do that. He never talked about it. But how could it be otherwise? Japan lost a million or two million. They lost their entire generation of youth. And his town, Yaizu, was in this larger area of Shizuoka. His temple was fairly prominent. I picture him having to do that. That was what was, I'm sure, really cut through. And I actually deeply believe that what actually made Suzuki Roshi a great teacher and a transformative teacher and a universal teacher outside of his culture was those difficulties.

[42:24]

Before that he was just one priest among many, but it was two things. One is those difficulties came to him as enormous obstacles. And number two, he was able to face them and transform himself. He didn't turn away. There were lots of Japanese priests in Japan during the war. Most of them, at least outwardly, supported the war. Many of the people like D.T. Suzuki, like Yasutani Roshi, even Mumon Roshi. The war is great. This is a true manifestation of the spirit of Zen. D.T. Suzuki's on record now, this comes from the book, Zenit War, which was very hard to read, said, you know, when the sword of the Japanese warrior cuts through his enemy, it's the sword of emptiness cutting through and showing the great wisdom, or some nonsense. Suzuki Roshi never said those things. Now, I don't know, he probably supported his country and supported certainly the people

[43:27]

that were suffering and having to do that. But he was different. He was different. I think our naive notions that he was some big anti-war person are our fantasy. I don't think you could be that and survive at that time. But certainly he took in all of that and turned it into his practice. starving for the benefit of his parishioners was just a piece of it. But certainly, I like the point, and I do agree with you, that that's what we're really feeling in the power of his lineage, is the ability to face anything. So Buddha said something like, you need four things to practice. Food, clothing, medicine, and shelter, I guess, is probably what the fourth one is. So how does that fit in with what you're saying? It seems like what you're saying is you don't need anything to practice. Or after everything is taken away.

[44:31]

I think that's a good point. Of course you need the basics. You need to be alive. And you need the things you mentioned to be alive. But there's a long distance between being alive and satisfying all the universe's desires. So I think maybe it would be more accurate to say we shouldn't attach to or rely on a particular thing as a clay Buddha, as something we've got to have or else we can't practice. It's not that you can only really practice when you've lost everything. I didn't lose everything. Suzuki Roshi didn't lose everything. I just lost a lot of things that I really liked. I had a lot. My doctor said, my gosh, you're a miracle. You're 1 in 100,000. We've never seen it. It took me a long time to agree with that. who are unknown and unheralded, dealing with the same things, often with just tremendous grace.

[46:02]

Courage. Courage. You name it. It's wonderful to see. I wanted to honor them, but also to raise the point, since a lot of those people didn't have Buddhist practices, what that gave me is this sense of when we practice with this kind of stuff, it ties us to every human being. Every human being is dealing with Dukkha, with this stuff. And that's a gift, I think, to feel that connection. Well, yeah, I appreciate your saying that. You know, Suzuki Roshi, one of the things that really struck me at Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, it took me 30 years to really see the power of it. As he starts one of the chapters with the sentence, I have come to believe that it's absolutely necessary to rely on nothing.

[47:04]

What he means by that, as he goes on, is not even Buddhism. Not even Buddhism. That if you think that Buddhism is something special that we have, that I have, that's going to give me an edge. That's a clay Buddha too. So he, I think, in the end understood that's what made him head and shoulders above most Buddhist priests. He was able to, through his own suffering and the suffering of his country and the suffering of his family, to see through that over and over again. Even Buddhism if you think you know what it is, is not enough. And the way I say that now is, I have a different list than you, what you need to practice. You need an aspiration, you need a teacher, and you need teachings, but then there's life itself.

[48:09]

which is what you're referring to. Life itself, in my view, is the deepest and toughest teacher. And it's the one teacher that you can't fool. At least not forever. So a lot of those people that are sick, who are dying, who are able to face it and turn toward it through their natural, you might say their natural gifts and their natural affinity for wisdom. They are leaping straight to the last teacher, life itself. And life itself, if nothing else has gotten to you, like with me, it's confession time here, you know, if nothing else has gotten through to you, life will, eventually. Yes, we have time for maybe two more. Maybe yourself, and then, well, who? Oh, I could have seen you. I just wanted to say that one time, Suzuki Roshi said, how would you practice if you don't have any legs? Seriously.

[49:11]

doesn't have any legs, doesn't have any arms either, or a mouth. Yes? So you spoke about these people who had these physical maladies with you. You said that when you were kind of stripped of everything, or what seemed to be everything, that's when you kind of got the essence of Zazen. Do you feel like it's necessary to meet the last teacher? before someone can understand the essence? No. It just happened to be my path. And I'd have to go into a lot more of my own obstacles to fully explain how there was a piece off to the side that I hadn't touched. One of which is my teacher died when I was very young and it was hard to And many things happened, but I think that the way I like to put it sometimes is the whole point of Buddhist practice is to learn the lessons that come to us when we're dying early enough that we still have a chance to do something about it.

[50:38]

I think that, as I said, it's kind of a mystery how it works. Sometimes it happens early, and then that's an obstacle. Sometimes it happens late, and that's an obstacle. Sometimes it seems like it's never going to happen, and that's an obstacle. It's obstacles all the way down. Yes? You were talking about prayer. For me, it's very important, but very difficult to think about and talk about as Buddhists. Because there's that question of what are you praying to? You said you were praying to Amida Buddha. Could you say more about that? How you understand and experience Amida Buddha? Well, just a brief foray into technical stuff. There's a doctrine in Mahayana Buddhism. There's two powers, two approaches to practice.

[51:43]

Self power and other power. And Zen is often upheld as a preeminent example of self-power. But actually, it's more other power than you might think. So, Zazen itself, in that sense, is a kind of prayer. When I talk to Christians, and they ask me how I pray, because that's very important for a Christian, how you pray, I tell them, I sit in silence to enter the Divine, enter the Divine, or to touch the Divine. And that makes complete sense to them. And there is actually, in esoteric Christianity, a practice called the Prayer of Silence. And the Quakers are another example. Silence itself is their prayer. But specifically, when I was praying to Amida, what was really going on was, I give up, I give up, I give up, I don't know what to do. there's nothing working for me.

[52:47]

And I just give up. And that was really what Amida... Amida is that feeling. You know, when you actually do give up, something holds you. What is that? Who is that? Well, you give it a name. Amida Buddha. All the Buddhas in the ten directions are in your heart, so really you're giving up, you're letting go of who you think you are, and you're giving up to something bigger, that's all. So that was my actual experience. I think that taught me, growing up in a household of pious atheists, that taught me what prayer was really about, and it changed me. But it's the feeling of it, as a practice, I give up, I don't know what to do. And I was crying a lot. I don't know what to do. Help me. I mean, that was a lot of it for me.

[53:49]

Lou, the old Lou, couldn't handle anything, right? Lou was strong. Lou was tough. For me to say, help me. I can't. Help me. That was very big, very big for me. So that's the feeling. That's the feeling. Help me. Then help comes. When you do that, help comes. I can't explain it. That's other power. Maybe we have time for one more quick one. I know you have your time constraints. Linda, I know you had your hand up. It was really great to listen to you. You said something about the clarity and unhesitating way that you talk that gives me good feelings. OK, that was just praising Lou. So she's making me feel good. She's going to hit me with something. Yeah. No, not. No, I was just thinking about when you talked about there's something natural about older people, you know, and less natural for younger people.

[55:01]

And I didn't want to leave it that way. You yourself belie that in that you started practicing like crazy when you were in your early 20s, and I don't think you'd look back and say that was unnatural, or, I mean, you know what I mean, so, and I was thinking myself, I came, I was older than you, but I was still in my early 30s, and that practice, when I was so crazy out of control, messed up, would sit in a session, you know, and I would feel really, like, crazy, you know, That was really good practice in a way because I just didn't know what the hell I was doing there. So there's really virtues to youthful practice as well as older practice. I just wanted to add that to the things that you said. Well, I think that we all come to practice for so many different reasons and we're in so many different circumstances that you're right, you can't generalize. All I was trying to say is

[56:02]

When you're 62, 63 next month, stop lying, Lou. When you're 63, you have 63 years under your belt. When you're 20, you have 20 years under your belt. There just is a difference. But, you know, I also think that if you can come to practice when you are young and you have all the gifts and powers and strengths of a young person, But it happens the way it happens. Thank you all very much. I'll look forward to seeing some of you in these classes that we're going to do. And I'll be happy to chat with you outside after the talk. Thank you, Sojin Roshi, for inviting me and others. And always great to come home. Always great to come home.

[56:59]

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