And so to make a long story short, we got Green Gulch. And then that was, Green Gulch was a big project for Richard and everybody else. So there were the Green Gulch, Totsahara, City Center, the corner grocery, the cafe, the bakery, the print shop, what else? Not greens yet, but eventually greens. So the richest empire was getting bigger and bigger. And the students were working, the idea of the students working in the businesses was not a bad idea basically.

[01:04]

But the problem is they were supposed to be working and their work would be their support and so they could practice and everything would be working harmoniously for everyone but it didn't work out that way. And people were beginning to feel exploited and they weren't really being able to sit or practice and they were working long hours in the bakery or the bakery and so forth. And Richard was traveling around to Russia and all kinds of places, and he knew all the people in the world that were the first in their line of work, the best in the world. And a lot of them were. Anyway, so Richard was getting more and more had more and more plans in the pipeline. But everything was getting kind of top heavy in Zen Center.

[02:09]

And there were lots of students and people had faith in him, but there was some doubt a little bit. And, well, where is this going? And people were feeling exploited. And so there were some tensions. And then Richard had an affair with one of his colleague's wife and that was the straw that broke the camel's back and then the whole thing came tumbling down. This is the short version. The whole thing came tumbling down and everyone was disillusioned and Richard was forced to leave and Zen Center went into mourning for about five years. everybody, you cannot believe the kind of misery that everybody was in because they'd all staked their lives on this thing and just, you know, they felt betrayed, most people.

[03:16]

Some people followed Richard, you know, the people who were Only what dedicated to Richard were the most, people that were the most vulnerable and destroyed by that. But some people were more devoted to Zen Center and they could manage it easier. But anyway, Green Gulch was in kind of a chaotic period. Tassajara survived because of the schedule. The schedule just kept going. Everybody felt what they felt, but they all went to Zazen. Well, mostly they did, but there was a lot of anarchy in Zen Center because those people who felt that they were following the rules, the schedule, because that was what you're supposed to do, but still had some doubts, they became anarchists. Why do I have to do this? I don't have to go to Zazen, blah, blah, blah, you know? So people were just kind of living here, living at Page Street, living at Gringotts.

[04:18]

The practice was very iffy and Zen, basically it was like a Zen hotel. The Zendo was, people were not sitting in the Zendo, they were sitting in the hallway. So Katagiri became avid for one year as a kind of interim measure to hold things together. And then Rev became avid. after that. And then the board felt that Reb needed some support in the form of a cohabit because they felt that Zen Zen was too much for this one person to deal with. So they asked me to be a cohabit. But before I go on with that, I want to talk about Dharma Transmission. You know, all of Suzuki Roshi's priests, of course, wanted dharma transmission from Suzuki Roshi, but he was too sick to be able to do that for the people he ordained.

[05:33]

So, the only person he gave dharma transmission to was Richard, and then when he died, well, he had started giving dharma transmission to Bill but he died before he got very far into that. And so, you know, Bill, of course, expected, Jung Cho, expected that Richard would complete that for him. And then other people felt that he would complete Suzuki Hiroshi's transmission for Suzuki Hiroshi's disciples, but he didn't do that. So he held that Dharmic transmission is a kind of a little power trip for a long time. So Suzuki Roshi gave Dharmic transmission to Dick and then he died. And Dick became the abbot and finally Dick gave Dharmic transmission to Rin.

[06:37]

And then he had asked me to work with him on Dharmic transmission. So I was working with Richard on Dharma Transmission. I thought this is wonderful because we don't like each other particularly and so for him to do that felt good to me because it wasn't, well everything that Richard did was manipulative but it still felt good to me. It felt like there was something real happening. But then that's when he, we were in it and then he fell. And so everybody was so really pissed off at him, you know, they were just railing against him. And I was actually defending him. I was, because I had reconciled myself to him. I reconciled myself to who he was, and what he was about. And at the same time, I accepted

[07:45]

my role as working with him. So, but at some point, he felt that I wasn't defending him enough. And he said, I'm not sure we should go through with this. And so that was my out. I said, fine. But later, he says, I didn't really mean that. But then, so Bill Kwong, well, during all this time, when Richard was Abbott, Bill Kwang and I used to visit Maezumi Roshi in Los Angeles. Maezumi Roshi was very kind to Bill and I because he saw the problem and he was always very sympathetic to us. So one time we were there in Los Angeles and Maezumi said, you know, Huizu should complete Suzuki Roshi's Dharma transmission with Bill. So right then and there he called up Hoitsu in Japan and he explained the situation.

[08:53]

He said, why don't you give complete Suzuki Roshi's dharma transmission with Bill? And she said, okay. So Bill went to Japan and got dharma transmission from Hoitsu, Suzuki Roshi's son, which is Suzuki Roshi's lineage. What year was that? Before or after 83? Oh, much before. Oh yeah, this is during that time, during Richard's reign. It was in the 70s, sometime in the 70s. And then when I quit, my relationship with Richard and he left and fell, then Hoitsu agreed to complete the transmission with me.

[09:56]

That was in 84. So I went to Japan in 84 and did Dharma transmission with Hoitsu. So then I came back in 1984, that same year. Yeah, I guess so. I became abbot at Berkeley. So although I had been in Berkeley, developing the zendo, since 67, it wasn't until 84 that I became abbot. And then I became, I was, I felt okay about saying that I was a teacher. And then we opened it up more, the Zen Dome. So then in 88, that's when I became Abbott at Zen Center.

[11:03]

Go Abbott, go Rib at Zen Center. So from 88 to 97, I was Abbott. Abbott's terms are four years with a three-year extension. But after the seven years, because we were making transitions, Reb stopped being Abbott two years before that. Blanche became Abbott when Reb stepped down. Well, Blanche was there but before Norman. They were co-ed like you. Huh? She might have overlapped.

[12:05]

Well, we did overlap. We did overlap because there were three of us. There were three of us that were Abbott at the same time, Blanche, Norman, and myself. So they wanted me to extend it for another two years, extend my stay for another two years in order to overlap Blanche and Norman. But that was not a good idea. It's like when you elect a president of the United States, you don't have the old president hanging around for two years, right? And it would have been a good idea. But it didn't work in this case very well. So I took a sabbatical in the last year. So I was abbot for, you know, nine years at Sin Center. And so I would I would do a practice period at Page Street.

[13:08]

I would do a practice period at Tonsahara. I'd do a practice period at Green Gulch and in Berkeley, and I'd go home once in a while to sleep. When I think about those nine years, I was like a circuit writer or something, just making the rounds. One time I had three practice periods going at the same time. Three shusos. And they were getting pissed off at me because I wasn't around so much. But I'll never do that again. Reb and I got along well in Sabbath. He says he didn't, we didn't, but we did. We really did. We had to agree on everything. we made this pact that we would not do something that we didn't both agree on. And we'd always tell each other what we were going to do, or ask each other, or work it out, whatever.

[14:11]

And when one of us didn't do it, the other one would come down on the other one. So that worked well. It really worked well. I really appreciated that. Because Reb and I have this kind of Zen-centered destiny together. which we realized that way back there in the 60s somewhere that I remember us talking about it, you know, how we were so different from each other and yet we had this destiny with each other and we said that we really needed to, you know, pay attention to that even though we both had different ideas, not so much ideas, it's just a different way of doing things. Actually, we both had similar ideas about but it's our way of, our temperaments and our way of doing things are very different. So, I was going to say something.

[15:25]

Maybe, well let's see. Maybe you can ask some questions. Your art. I don't know. I don't compete it. But that's not true. It's just not true. I want to take it back because It was Reb and Lou who kind of turned Dick in. Did Reb go and get the Dormitory Transition from Riku anyway? No. I don't know what happened between those two. People say that Reb went over and got the Dormitory Transition from Riku. But he got it from Dick. They were down here. But some of Yoshi helped him. When did Riku get the Transition?

[16:28]

When did Hoitsu get on? Well, Hoitsu, when he was very young, Suzuki Roshi, actually Suzuki Roshi, when he, after he was here in the 60s, he went back to Rensselaer and told him that he was resigning because he was going to stay here and Hoitsu became the abbot and he gave him dharma transmission. And Hoitsu did not like that at all. Getting all this responsibility as a young man, it felt like his father was kind of dumping all this on him. And so he was very resentful of Zen Center and his father and the whole thing. When I went to Japan, I had to work things out with him about Zen Center and His father, it was wonderful, but it was very, it was a lot of tension.

[17:32]

So our relationship has grown over a long period of time. And it's been quite a wonderful development, relationship. Could you talk about what happened with your art? Well, you know, my art, when I was, as a painter, when you get inspiration, you paint. And then when you don't have inspiration, you don't do anything. And so there's long periods that are kind of fallow, you know, when you're kind of wandering around and miserable. So when I got to Zen Center, I hadn't been painting for a while. And I had all these paintings stored in my house. And when I left the house, these new people came, and I left them the paintings. I left them all my paintings. They said, OK, that's great. They're just so happy to have all these paintings.

[18:36]

And that was it. I just left them all behind, and I never painted again. Some people think that's not so nice, but I think it's OK. How did you feel getting dharma transmission from somebody who wasn't your teacher? Well, it's not uncommon. You know, Suzuki Roshi said, I will not have time to give Dharma transmission. Our teacher doesn't always have time to give Dharma transmission to all of his students, but then his students, students, or his students will give Dharma transmission to their Dharma brothers. So they're not their teacher either, but they have a relationship. And so, you know, there's three steps.

[19:43]

One is ordination, And all three can be the same person, the same teacher, or they can all be three different teachers, or two different teachers, and it's very common for them to be all three, I mean all three different teachers. So you may have a root relationship with the teacher, and then have Dharma, like I had three different teachers. And then Tatsugami was my shuso teacher and Hoichu was my dharma transmission teacher. So it's true that we didn't have much of a relationship, but we were related through Suzuki Roshi. And in the time that we spent doing the dharma transmission, which was about a month, I realized we had to get to the bottom of who we

[20:44]

And that's what we did. And then everything went very well. So it's not so much a matter of time necessarily, but it's a matter of intimacy. Will? What was the most difficult part of your Zen practice for you? What was the most difficult part of my Zen practice? pain in my legs. You know, when I was sitting with Suzuki Roshi, the idea was, you don't move. So when I say that I went through a lot of stuff, a lot of difficulty is because we didn't move. It's not like today, excuse me. A lot of people feel that it's just okay. It's just, you know, they don't get this idea that you're not supposed to move even though it's okay to move it's okay to move but you're not but you don't want to move so that puts you in a position where you have to you have to find out how to let go you're forced to let go

[22:15]

You're forced to die on the cushion. Otherwise, it's just, you know, spending time on the cushion, changing your position. So that was the hardest part for me. Also getting up in the morning. I've always been a night person. And then I changed to a morning person. And I never left it. Do you ever miss painting? No. I really don't miss painting. Sometimes, yeah, I do, you know. Like, I'll see something and I'll think, oh, that would be a great image for a painting, you know. But I don't, you know, just go on to something else. But that occurs to me, but I don't miss it. I like my life.

[23:19]

I like my life as a Zen student. What is Zuisei? You went to Japan for Zuisei? Oh, Zuisei. Zuisei, in Japan, when someone gets Dharma transmission, they go to the head temples, Soji-ji and Rehe-ji. Those are the two head temples. And they do a ceremony called Zuisei, which basically is leading the morning service and visiting the founders. So they treat you very nicely, and they give you this nice kaiseki meal, or meals. And like a sub-jiji, you wear these red slippers and have a red okesa, and they take your picture. But it's nice. I wanted to do that because I wanted to go to the Founder's Temple and do this ceremony, you know.

[24:22]

But I can't tell you how difficult that was to get there. Because Japanese tradition, well, it started in, well, it's always been, I don't know in the 16th century 17th century and he wanted to change the um dharma transmission um the way dharma transmission was done in the temples there was a temple system and a teacher system and they were getting all mixed up so he wanted to set it straight in order to do that the government had to okay this and if you change something If you make this effort to change something in Japanese law, you get executed. If it doesn't turn out right.

[25:25]

Really. So that doesn't happen anymore. But that feeling is still there. The tradition is still there. That you don't change things. So in order for us to do something in Japan, they'd have to change the rules. This is what we've been working on for years. They can never change any of the rules. And so we can never fit in. And when we never fit in, we'll never do anything with them. It's significant. But I managed, what we had to do was fake the, you know, they say you have to have a picture of your head shaving. So we had to fake our head shaving photograph with Hawitza. And then we had to fake, you know, like the fact that we had done a practice period in Japan at Tommaso Inn. But they know that. They know that you're faking all this. Oh yeah, go ahead. You know, just... That's the only way you can get anything done in Japan.

[26:31]

Because they will not change the rules. They won't bend the rules for anybody. So it's very, very difficult. Could you talk a little bit about Late practice? I think in the past you talked about your interest in developing late practice. Late practice, well in Berkeley, the model for our practice in Berkeley is Suzuki Roshi's model at Sokoji. So our practice kind of bypassed Page Street and used the Sokoji model. of everybody living at home except for, you know, we do have residents, 10 residents or so, 8 or 10 residents depending on the time. But mostly it's lay people who come to Sazen every morning, you know, 20, 25, 30 people in the afternoon. Two different sagas, morning saga and afternoon saga.

[27:34]

And so the practice is geared for a lay practice. And that's, I feel, a very vital kind of practice. But it's also a priest practice. We also have priests who do the same practice. So we call it lay practice, but it's just people practicing. And a lot of vitality in the practice and people devoted for years and years to practice. I like both priest practice and lay practice. I like them both. And I like monastic practice and temple practice. I like those both. So when I go back and forth, both of them are fine.

[28:37]

I don't have this kind of discrepancy between lay practice and priest practice and temple practice and monastic practice. It's all good, all of it. And so when I was abbot at Page Street, well, the way it worked out, when Rob and I became co-abbots, We said, well, we wouldn't have any particular place. Each one of us would practice equally in both places. But as it turned out, Ram grabbed Green Gulch, and I grabbed the city. Or I was left with the city. Which was fine with me. I tried to cultivate lay practice there. But it was so hard because the way Richard's way of practice was really hard to modify. Richard's way of practice was not Suzuki Roshi's way of practicing.

[29:42]

And so that's why I had this kind of difficulty because I really wanted to maintain Suzuki Roshi's practice rather than Richard's practice. So that's what I've been doing, I feel I've been doing. Looking back now, any regrets about or unfulfilled things about your relationship with Susan Gershwin? Yes, I wish that I could have, you know, he said to me, tell Mel that he should be visiting me, see me more. And so she said, she said you should be seeing more. But I feel the way a lot of people feel, I felt, he's so busy, I don't want to bother him. But the fact is that the teacher's there to be bothered. You have to bother the teacher. You should never feel, oh, he's so busy, he sees so many people, you know, I don't want to bother him.

[30:48]

You shouldn't think that way. Do you think Richard was ignoring his karma? Yes, I think. One of his students, who was also one of my students, said to me one time, you know, he just doesn't believe in karma. He's beyond karma. He's above karma. And I believe it, because how can anybody be like that without amnesia, you know, like what about karma? It's kind of a mystery, actually. Benji? Yeah, I'm just curious, your root teacher died 34 years ago, so how does one maintain upright you know, to stay on the path and not to fall either side without.

[31:54]

When I went to Berkeley, when I set up the Zona of Berkeley, I already knew what my path was. And nothing was going to move me. I already made up my mind. Bad. And so there was nothing, no kind of ambivalence or doubt or anything like that. And Suzuki Roshi was my teacher. So I was always in contact with him. Even when he was in San Francisco and I was in Berkeley, I felt like we were totally connected. And I always felt that someday he's going to die, and I'm going to be by myself. So I was just preparing for that. I was always preparing for that. In terms of testing your, to make sure you have right understanding of it, go to a teacher and have that for 34 years. I always tested my understanding against his understanding.

[32:57]

So I thought sometimes, well isn't there another teacher you know when you take, no there's no other teacher that I felt that would give me something else, give me something that Bill and the Suzuki Rashi was giving me. So I just always felt that I was Even when he died, I was always in contact with his teaching and always faithful to his teaching. So that's what I've always maintained or tried to maintain, just being faithful to his teaching. And let it mature. It's like, you know, you receive something, but it may be years later that it actually unfolds in you or matures in you. I'm just wondering how Judaism still figures in your life. Well, I'll tell you. How does Judaism figure in my life?

[33:58]

When I became a, you know, I felt that when I, I tried out Judaism, you know, when I was in my early twenties, right? And just to, but I realized that I could not return to that because I'd been out too long. I'd been out of the world and for me to kind of become, to go back and be Jewish or go forward or whatever was, I found that was too exclusive. I found that my religious outlook was more universal rather than tribal. And I felt that I never felt that I wasn't Jewish. I felt that what I was doing was my own way of being Jewish or practicing Judaism, which wouldn't fit in with anybody else's idea.

[35:01]

But I felt completely justified in that. I was following what I felt was real Judaism and not just Jewishness. I think that a lot of people take Jewishness for Judaism. Jewishness means, you know, like all of the feeling holidays and all this, you know, which I never had any of that, right? And so why do I have to put that, stick that on me? Not that I don't appreciate it, But I felt that if I was being honest and clear with myself, and that Buddhism was not in conflict with Judaism at its root. So if I was doing my Buddhism as my practice, it was also my Judaism.

[36:07]

I've always allowed the kind of Hasidic background to inform my Buddhism. That is there. It is there. Can you say more about how it's been to be a father? Oh yeah. Well, you know, I always liked kids. Some kids. When my first wife, she never wanted to have a, she was not interested in children at all. And had absolutely no interest in children. And that was kind of disappointing to me. Because I thought, well, you know, it'd be great to have a kid. And so, but we never tried having a kid with Liz. We just had sex for fun. And then a kid happened. you know, when I was 53.

[37:14]

Well, I think I'm pregnant. That was fine, you know, great. And so, like I said, I would carry him around during the day and I really enjoyed, actually, the first five years. But then after we moved, when he was five, it was totally different because we were away from the community. With the community, you know, he was just taken care of by everybody. But when we moved away from the community, it was just us, you know. And then he had to go to kindergarten and go to school and all that. And he hated school and he hated, didn't like doing all that stuff. And homework was just like, you know, pulling teeth And then my wife and I would have these, you know, arguments because she wanted him to do his homework, you know, and he had this total line.

[38:21]

And I just wanted him to have fun. You know, I really, truly, he's kind of a kid who like always had a project, you know, always interested in something and single-minded, like he would get a project and it would just go, and nothing else in the world mattered. You know, he couldn't even see. anything on either side except what you're doing. And he'd do this for a long time and then switch to something else, like kids do. And I thought, he's teaching himself. He's educating himself. Just leave him alone. But that's not the way education is taught. You have to open the head and pour the stuff in. And of course, some of that is good. And I even talked to, argued with a teacher, you know. I said, why do you give these kids so much homework, you know? Like, they go to school all day, and then they come home, and then they have to do their homework, and there's no time to play. When I was a kid, I was always out in this vacant lot throwing dirt clods, you know.

[39:24]

It was great, you know. You had this contact with the ground and interaction with other kids. I never did have much interest in higher education or even lower education. So anyway, but the interesting thing is that he quit school in the 10th grade. and uh he rode his bike across the country was uh um proudy much proudy they rode their bikes across the country he was about 16 something about 17 and uh that was a great experience and then when he finally went to junior college he had to make up all that those two years that he that he missed but he did it and now he's in

[40:38]

Davis studying Russian. He's smart and he gets good grades in Russian. The teacher likes him. So he's actually doing quite well. He's actually doing quite well. He went to live by himself when he was going to junior college. When he came home, he totally changed. He couldn't wait to get out and get away from us. And then he came back and he just could not get enough of us. So that was a great reward for all the years of misery. You spoke of a couple of different eras in Zen center. Eras or errors? Errors. What do you think we have now, or how are we doing? Well, that's a good question.

[41:39]

It's really a good question. Good question. I'm not sure I know how to answer that, but there's a change and we can feel this change, you know. When Suzuki Roshi was around, But we never felt that it was formal. Suzuki Goshi was not real formal with us at all. We'd bow and we'd do all the things that we do in the zendo, but it wasn't that strict and it wasn't so detailed. We didn't see him always in dokusan. If you wanted to talk to him, we'd just sit down and talk. and uh dokusan happened in sashin usually but not always um and sometimes it happened at other times but uh when i remember dick didn't like japanese formality he didn't like japanese things at all but when he became avid he became totally japanese and he and um

[43:00]

the practice became much more formal and much more strict in certain ways and so forth. Whether that was good or not, I don't know. But then when Reb and I were abbots, we kind of loosened that up a little bit. Reb has always been more detailed, formal than me. I think I'm more like following more like Suzuki Roshi's way and Reb is maybe following Dick's way or something. So every time there's a change in abbacy, the feeling changes. Whoever is abbot creates a certain field and it's different, always different. So it's different than it was when I was at it, but it's subtle.

[44:04]

It's a subtle difference. It's not some big difference. So there are subtle differences. And maybe there's some idea that it's more horizontal. The leadership is more horizontal and not so vertical. Like, maybe the abbots don't have as much authority as they used to have. Dick had absolute authority. Absolute authority. It was easy, you know, because when he said something, everybody just did it. And then Reb and I had our own authority, which is not absolute authority. Because after Dick, everything was done by committee. We spent years and years developing committee practice. And it would take forever to make a decision.

[45:10]

But I think it's probably still the same. it's easier because it's more mature, the process is more mature. But the abbots in the process seem to have given up some of their authority, so I think that they should take it back. It's good to have strong leadership, not we have, you know, authoritative people, but people that you give authority to and they take it. And then they give, and so it's a give and take. So, I think maybe that can be a little

[45:56]

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