Friday night from Oklahoma, where he lives now. Actually, he was one of our first residents on Russell Street a long time ago, before he moved back to his old hometown in Norman, Oklahoma. And so he sewed his robe. It was going to actually do labor admission last year, but his grandmother died, I think. Is that right, Frank? Your mother. The first lay ordination in Zen Center was about 1962, I think.

[01:31]

Suzuki Roshi invited Bishop Yamada to do the lay ordination. You know, in Los Angeles, there's a temple for the Soto Zen Bishop. And Soto Zen Bishop It's kind of the head of the Japanese Soto Zen. But I remember in the old days, Bishop Sumi used to, was once the bishop, and he was a good friend of Suzuki Roshi's, and so he used to come and sit sashin with us sometimes at Sokochi.

[02:40]

And I remember him, you know, he used to have this long tan, which was the altar, and Suzuki Roshi sat there, and Kari Giri Roshi sat there, And when Bishop Sumi would come, he would sit there. And I can remember Suzuki Roshi giving a talk and Bishop Sumi falling asleep. And I just got so hysterical that I had to leave. But We didn't have any lay ordinations again in Sin Center until around 1970. That's when we first, just before Suzuki Roshi died, as a matter of fact, that he started doing lay ordination again.

[03:47]

He did priest ordination, and there were One day, I was doing a wedding in Marin, and this guy came up to me and said, you know, I was the first guy that Suzuki Roshi ordained. And then he talked to me a little bit about it, and then he left. And it seems like everybody, all the Japanese priests who came, and their first ordinee, their first priest they ordained, left. Maezumi Roshi had ordained somebody as a priest, and his name was Sojin. And he left, disappeared. Edo Roshi's first disciple disappeared. Suzuki Roshi's first disciple disappeared. My first person I ordained disappeared.

[04:49]

But anyway, I thought it was a good idea. I don't know whether... I remember I was at Tassajara with Tatsugane Roshi at Shuso in 1970. And there was some feeling, you know, that there were some priests, but the laypeople didn't have ordination. although they knew that there was lay ordination. And for some reason, Suzuki Roshi was hesitant to do that. And I suggested to Katagiri Roshi, who was there, that it would really be good to give people lay ordination, to include them in the Sangha that way. And about a week later, Suzuki Roshi announced that he was going to do lay ordination. I don't know whether that had anything to do with it or if it was just coincidental, but they started giving lay ordination.

[06:20]

So we've been doing that ever since. And I remember when I was, before I was a priest, There were almost no priests at Zen Center. So it wasn't the kind of thing that you thought was going to happen. And I was just practicing. And I was a devoted student, you know, to Suzuki Goshi. And in 1970, we had our first Sushin at Tassajara. And after Sushin, he called me into his room and said, ordain you. But he said, I'd like you to join our order. I said, oh, is that OK? Would you like to do that? And I said, yeah. I'd always kind of thought it was somewhere in the back of my mind that I would like to do that. But it never occurred to me how that would ever happen.

[07:28]

That was all they said. That was about 1967, because I was ordained in 1969, two years later. It was interesting, because I was kind of anxious about it. And I thought, yeah, once I got the idea, yeah, let's do it. But he was just taking his time. It's interesting. He waited until my excitement, until I forgot about it. In fact, he waited until I had gone through all this stuff that I had to go through, and then I completely forgot about it. And he said, well, I think it's time to do this. But I always admired him. You know, sometimes people say, why do you want to be a priest?

[08:42]

And also, in this day and age, there are a lot of people who never experienced a wonderful priest. It's true. There are many people, and they only experience second-class priests or second-rate priests. They've never experienced a first-rate priest. always inspired by Suzuki Roshi and wanted to continue doing what he was doing. But a lot of people who have only been exposed to second-rate priests have never had that inspiration. So it kind of So that was my experience, was because Suzuki Roshi was such an outstanding priest, I felt that I wanted to continue in his tradition.

[09:53]

So that's what I've been doing. But it's not easy to be a priest. That's why it's, and it's not, I mean, it's not hard, but there's a certain kind of consistency that's really necessary in order to do that. And Suzuki-goshi really epitomizes that kind of consistency. And I think it's the one reason why Zen Center has been able to survive all the problems because he introduced that kind of consistency. He didn't travel around. He just stayed in one place. And people would invite him to come to various places, but he always said, well, if you want to come, if you want to see me, you have to come here.

[11:03]

So he really planted a very solid It'll be interesting to see which groups survive and which don't in the long run. But anyway, so we have priest ordination and lay ordination. And basically, we take the same precepts. But lay ordination is zaikei tokudo. Tokudo means ordination. Zaikei means at home. And shukei means leaving home. So a priesthood takes shukei ordination, and a layperson takes zaikei tokudo.

[12:16]

And how to practice while still at home without leaving home, and to wear ordinary clothing, and to engage in ordinary daily life with people. So, layperson has a certain kind of role, and priest has a certain kind of role. Priest, you know, is more obvious, wears robes, and has certain function. So in a way, a layperson is kind of relieved of having to do those kinds of functions. And in the old days, when there were

[13:23]

maybe monks and lay people. I don't think there was a lay ordination. I think that lay ordination is something that was invented by the Japanese in order to include everyone. I don't know the history of lay ordination. And when a person becomes a priest, they have to live by certain rules, or they become a monk. It's very strict rules. And if they transgress the rules, there are certain rules And so it becomes a very, you know, rarefied kind of life.

[14:34]

But a layperson has the opportunity to live at home and to develop themselves at a more leisurely kind of pace in a wider kind of way. Because not everyone is ready to be a monk. But that doesn't mean that people who want to have ordination shouldn't have ordination. So, in the old days, there were less rules for lay people. Lay people only took five precepts, and monks took 250 precepts. And in Japan, the precepts developed from the Tendai school.

[15:38]

Saicho developed the Bodhisattva precepts in Japan for the Tendai school, in which he reduced the precepts to 16, which is the model that was accepted by were reduced or condensed to 16 major precepts. You know, there's a Bodhisattva... there are lots of different kinds of precepts in Buddhism. The monks' precepts, 250 precepts, the nuns' 350 or something. And then there's the Bodhisattva precepts. And Bodhisattva presets include the 10 prohibitory presets, which we take, plus 49, 48 minor presets.

[16:55]

And minor presets are presets which, major presets can be applied are kind of universally applied in all Buddhist countries. And the major precepts are accepted by all Buddhists everywhere. But the minor precepts are more like local precepts, having to do with a certain time and a certain place. So, in India, you have a certain kind of local precepts which, minor precepts, which had to do with how you eat with your hands, and, you know, manners and customs and things that you do and don't do. And Chinese have, in China, the Chinese have their own minor precepts, and the Japanese have their own minor precepts.

[17:56]

And in America, we will develop our own minor precepts. having to do with our customs and our time. But the major precepts are pretty universal. And when Shakyamuni Buddha died, they had developed major and minor precepts. And Mahakasyapa asked him, the minor precepts. Do we have to keep those as well as the major precepts?" And Buddha said, no. And then later when they came to the assembly, Mahakasyapa, Ananda said this, and Mahakasyapa said, well, which minor precepts did he say?

[19:09]

Mahakasyapa said, well, I think we should observe them all. So the monks, the way the Vinaya has developed in India is that the monks observe all the major and all the minor precepts. There was one monk who said, oh, now that the Buddha's gone, we don't have to observe the precepts anymore. But they quickly put him outside. That doesn't count. He's always held up as an example of a certain kind of person. This is Mark, whose name I don't remember. So we have 16 presets. Priests and lay people take the same precepts. But the ordination ceremony is not the same for lay people.

[20:17]

And it's a little bit, you know, basic pattern is the same, but there's more to the priest's ordination than there is to the lay ordination. Priests shave their head and put on a large robe. But the small robe is Some people say this Roktsu, which is a Japanese invention, I believe, that the Roktsu is a kind of symbolic rope. But it's not just a symbolic rope. It's just a small rope. It's a... The alcesa, you know, goes around the body of the monk or the priest. But the small robe is held on by the straps.

[21:19]

It just is in front. So that's a small version of the large robe, but it is a robe. And Katagiri Roshi used to make small, very small ropes which are the exact miniature of a Kesa and needs to wear them in a little pouch around his neck. But, you know, in the old days, In the beginning, Buddha and his disciples used to take rags and wash them and dye them and sew them together. That was the original of Kesa. And they would go to various rag dumps and get the materials and wash them, dye them, and sew them together.

[22:33]

And then later, when the monastic community was more bigger and circumstances changed, lay people started giving the monks robes as offerings. And then he said, well, the robe can be made out of any kind of material, almost silk. cotton, wool, there were six kinds of materials, as long as they weren't distinguished as silk, cotton, wool, because the various nice materials would tend to create certain emotional responses in people. So at first, he didn't want robes that were made out of silk or cotton or wool.

[23:40]

These were highly refined materials. In those days, people used to wear a lot of clothes that were made out of lots of different kinds of materials. They were mostly very crude, like the bark of trees. and grasses of certain kinds, and paper. Paper and grasses were very common as robes. And in China, too. In China, they used to wear paper clothes, paper robes, and robes made out of grasses like mugwort was very popular. These were considered, you know, cheaper kinds of clothes, and crude linens, like flax. But linen, and even cotton, cotton was considered a very refined material.

[24:47]

And cotton has become very common, you know. And now, cotton is again a kind of choice, refined material. Cottons are considered very refined material nowadays. Again, for a long time they were cheap material. They still are. It's kind of this double standard. So nowadays, you know, we take a big piece of material and cut it into pieces and then sew it together to make the rope. And you laugh, but, you know, the robe, when Buddha designed the robe, it was a kind of pattern of rice fields and pathways. So we say this robe of six, five, five large pieces and three large pieces and five narrow pieces, or something like that.

[25:58]

Five pieces. It's a five joe. One short and one long. One short and one long. But it's one short and one long together. But it's five pieces. Five joe. And with narrow. It's actually three large pieces and five narrow pieces. How many is it? Three. Five this way, three this way. And this is the rice fields and the pathways. Let me see here.

[27:04]

It says five Joe, one long, one short. Yeah. East Joe is one long and one short. And there are five. The priest's robe has seven, and the teacher's robe has nine. And then there's 21. So you have various elaborations. But anyway, this is the pattern. So nowadays, Or not just nowadays, but ever since Buddha's time, to take a piece of material and cut it up and put it together. But it's not, it's, you know, this is the way everything is made.

[28:18]

Everything is made out of one piece of material, and we cut it up, and we make things out of it. And so if you think about this. So Buddha's teaching is in the robe. And so when we wear the robe, we wear the Buddha's teaching. Which is a field far beyond form and emptiness.

[29:27]

I say this every morning in a rope chant. Chino Sensei used to say, people used to say, well, what about the people that don't wear the rope? He says, everybody wears an invisible rope. That was his response. Everyone wears an invisible rope, whether you have a visible one or not. So lay ordination is confirmation of your practice. And if you've been practicing for

[30:45]

two or three years, three years. We used to say three years, but we don't wait three years necessarily. Depends on the person's enthusiasm for practice. Seeing that you've spoken about Suzuki Roshi as your teacher and you've been speaking about the robes, is this a time you could tell the story about how Suzuki Roshi taught you to wash your robes? Well, it's not my apesa, but he did teach me how to wash my robe, which I never do.

[31:57]

That's a great way. Put the material, put your rope in the soap and water, and you go like this. Do the whole thing that way. Especially the hands, which always get very dirty. But you just rub one piece on top of the other. Is that what you meant? You meant, what happened? I can't remember. What did happen? It had to do with waiting for your robes to dry on the roof of a cabin at Casajar. It was a very hot day and it was too hot to wear any clothes actually. Then we hung him up to dry, and we, just in our underwear, we said, let's take a nap.

[33:09]

So we went into his cabin. He said, you lay down over there, and I'll lay down over here. And so I said, OK. So we laid down and started to take a nap. And all of a sudden, there was this big, pow, jolt. And we got up, and the cabin was behind us. We looked out the window, or opened the door, and work period began. And they were taking the cabin away. It seems that, you know, I don't know if you've been to Tassajara recently, in the last 10 years, but there's a building called the Kaiser next to the Abbott's cabin. And that's where the Abbott's cabin used to be. And we decided that we were going to build something there.

[34:16]

So we took the Abbott's cabin out, moved it, and moved it in between these two cabins. There was about an inch on each side. We put it on a cart, you know, and then moved it out. We were going to do that again soon, but I don't want to talk about that. They were putting the house on top of the cart, and then there was this big jolt. So it was quite a surprise. You can figure it out. I'm curious, what did Gary say about the little... I can't remember.

[35:27]

I can't remember exactly what, why... I can't remember exactly the reason for those little bookcases. But he made more than one, and he'd put them in a pouch next to his skin. Yeah. It could be that he slept with them. There's something like having them with him all the time, you know? I don't remember what it said, but in one of the old Udumbaras, you know, Kadakeri Roshi's magazine that's in the library, there's a whole thing about different robes written I was curious about these 100 extra precepts that the nuns have to take. Oh yeah, women are always worried about that.

[36:28]

They always smile at each other when they do that. What could it possibly mean? Well, a lot of them have to do with deference toward men. Toward males, priests. and probably certain hygienic things. Yeah, consistency is the key, actually.

[37:32]

Consistency in practice is the key. Although, one can be consistent and complacent. So, complacent consistency, there's some question better than no practice. But, you know, it's like someone who gets up every morning and says, but there's no vitality. So sometimes a person needs some shock treatment But it may be easy for someone to do this.

[38:34]

For most people, it's not. Most people, it's enough to just be able to get up every morning and do Zazen. That's pretty good. But I'm not so sure that I completely agree I think vitality is really important in practice, and consistency is important. There are a lot of different factors that are important, and if you take any one and say, this is okay, it's too isolating. There are many factors that make a practice, and each one of them, and they have to cooperate with each other. interest, enthusiasm, study, you know, all of these have to, faith, they all have to balance each other out and they have to

[40:00]

encourage each other. All these various qualities encourage the other qualities. So to some extent they all have to be present in mindfulness. But consistency by itself is not enough. Although it does tend to It's a minus. Is being ordained as a monk or a priest the same thing?

[41:04]

Are they two different things? They're two different aspects of the same thing. In other words, lay ordination is ordination. There's a word called ordination, or tokudo. And this side is lay ordination, this side is priest ordination. But they're both ordination, so they both belong to the same genre. So that's why I say the different aspects are the same thing. What's the difference? Well, in America, we have to have our own nomenclature.

[42:06]

A monk, strictly speaking, is someone who is celibate and joins the order and takes precepts and lives in a monastery. A priest is someone who could be a monk or should practice at some point as a monk, but has a function, like in a temple, leads a temple life or teaches, that's a function, right? So we call that person a priest. And a layperson is someone who lives at home and has their as a householder, so to speak, and practices. So, it could have a function. In a lot of ways, practitioners do have functions, and some function even the way a priest would.

[43:12]

But a priest should have a role, should have a function. The reason we don't use the term monk so much is because monk usually refers to a celibate person. So when we go to the monastery, we become monks. Whether you're a priest or a layperson, when you go to the monastery, you become a monk and practice as a monk. Even though when you have a man and a man and a woman's practice, you're always running into non-celibacy. Pretty hard to control that. But if you go to the monastery, we try to encourage people to be celibate while they're in the monastery. So monastic practice is monk's practice.

[44:17]

for us, and a person who is ordained as a priest should have a function, have a role. So it's not necessary to ordain a lot of people as priests, because it takes a certain kind of dedication that a person may feel they have at a certain time, but not at another. So, it's pretty hard to be consistently a priest, because you may think you want to do that at some point, but then later you think, hey, if you get interested in other things, it becomes kind of uninteresting for you, because then you have a problem. So, when I became a priest, I still had problems, and I still do.

[45:22]

But I never let my problems stop me from doing that. I never got turned around by my problems. I never, you know, I never looked back, so to speak, even though my problems were right there in front of me. and sometimes weigh me down, I just plow through it. This is not going to stop me from doing what I want, what I'm doing. But a lot of people get turned around. But maybe it's because I had a full life before I became a priest. But I didn't become a priest until I was 35. As a matter of fact, I started practicing when I was 35 and it was ordained when I was 40.

[46:30]

And I still had a lot of residual karma, a lot of karmic drive that was active. And it was still playing itself out. Still continued to play itself out. But I never let it turn me. I'd always sit Zazen every morning. No matter what was going on with me, I always got up in the morning and sat Zazen. And it dealt with my problem. But I never let it interfere with my practice. I think if you're a priest, you have to have that kind of attitude. Have you ever taken an extended break from Zazen? Well, I don't know what you mean by extended.

[47:36]

That you would consider extended. A week or two. It was a complete surprise. There you are doing this wedding. He comes up to you. You've never seen this cell before. He says, I beat you up, man. Well, I didn't say that. He just said I was Suzuki Roshi's first disciple. That's all he said. He was trying to compare himself. Well, how did you feel when somebody said that? You had never seen it before, and bango. I don't know what I felt. I felt, why did you quit? Why did you run away? I didn't ask him that, or at least I don't think I asked him that.

[48:39]

I was just kind of surprised to see him, you know. He didn't tell me much about himself. He was a little, you know, reticent to talk about anything. I kind of pried a little bit. You were saying about being present and that there wasn't any need for anxiety, that there wouldn't be any anxiety. And the longer you talked about it, the more anxious I became over the rice that was cooking. And then you kept saying it. And finally, I let my anxiety get so high that I left, and it was done. But there's this fine line between anxiety and awareness, and that there's some purpose in being aware of a worrier.

[49:47]

Well, yes. Anxiety is necessary, otherwise the rice gets burned. Worrying is necessary, otherwise things don't get taken care of. But there's a difference between a state of anxiety and a state of worry. Chronic anxiety, incognito, right? That's different. All of those things. Anger is necessary. Rage is necessary. But... If you pay attention to it and take care of it, maybe it doesn't become... But you control anger. You control rage. You control anxiety. Instead of anxiety taking you away, How do you control anxiety? Well, by taking care of things as they come up.

[50:50]

Well, I tend to be on the anxious side and I always have a background on anxiety because it was there and I just have to live with it. Most of the time it doesn't bother me that much. A quick question though is, what am I anxious about? Anxiety is also an aspect of fear. So then, what am I afraid of? So, to face the question, one of the problems with fear and anxiety is just allowing ourselves to be dominated by these emotions. But to actually turn around and say, OK, who are you? That's to take a positive step.

[52:00]

Who are you? What are you? And just really go into it. Face this thing. And investigate. What am I really afraid of? And then just keep peeling away the layers. You may not be able to do it by yourself, that's why it might be easier to do it with somebody else to help. But it's very important. What is this fear of what? And there are two basic levels for anxiety. or fear. One is about things, events, which are happening. And a deeper level is, how long am I going to be alive? That deep anxiety, deep fear, that's always present, but we don't always think about it.

[53:08]

But it creates some, it controls our life. is to deal with the problem of birth and death. That's what Dogen says is his practice. The main thing is to deal with this problem of birth and death because it creates the larger fear and anxiety. How do we deal with that? If we can deal with that, then we can deal with the smaller aspects of birth and death, or of fear and anxiety in our life, in the events of our life.

[54:10]

So we have to be able to turn around and say, okay, who are you? What's going on here? What's the problem? The same thing with anger. Yeah, anger, whatever. Same thing with attachments. What's really going on here? Wait a minute. Because they catch us. And we struggle with them and they hold us down. The more we struggle with them, the more they hold us down, and they get stronger. As we struggle, they get stronger. It's like those things you get in Chinatown, those little baskets that you put your fingers in, and you try to put, you know, one time when Bishop Sumi was, as I mentioned before, was sitting stachim with us in Sokoji, when Zen Center was on Bush Street,

[55:19]

and figuring out what it was that was the problem. And I figured out, well, the more I struggle with Zazen, the worse it hurts. The more you struggle, the worse it gets. The only thing you do is let go. And so I went to Chinatown during the middle of Sifin. And I got a whole bunch of these little things and I put them in everybody's seat. Because, you know, when you put your fingers in, then you pull. And when you try to pull your fingers out, the more you try to pull your fingers out, the tighter it gets. This is the perfect illustration of Zazen. The more you try to escape, the more you get caught. So I put it in everybody's seat, and Bishop Simmey said, what's this?

[56:24]

He didn't get it. I was so disappointed, you know. He didn't get it. Is this some kind of joke? But it's a great illustration. The more you try to escape, the more you try to get out of it, pull away from it, the tighter it gets. So you can't do that, you know. You can't try to escape. You have to go into it, and then it loosens up. And then you walk away, take it off. And this is what happens to us in Zazen. As soon as we get caught, we try to escape. This is the natural impulse, and we have to go against our natural impulse. And we have to walk into the fire rather than try and escape from it.

[57:35]

And same with birth and death. You can't escape from it. So how do you walk calmly into it? This goes for anything we're caught by. Emotions, feelings, thoughts. This is why practicing Zazen is such a great teacher. You can't escape from it. I mean, it's there. So we get caught by life. And we're afraid to walk into death. And the more we try to escape from it, the more we get caught by it.

[58:41]

Because our life is our death. Life and death are two sides of the same coin. And you find yourself sliding down the hill. But there's no way out except in. So we have to practice dying all the time. We practice living. But we also have to practice how to die all the time. We have to practice letting go all the time. And that's what our practice is. What's the monk's practice? The monk's practice is learning how to let go. And it's also learning how to accept. And the two problems are the problems of grasping and aversion.

[59:47]

Those are the two problems. And they're with us all the time. And grasping is characterized by greed, and aversion is characterized by hate, or anger, or ill will. And those two cause us the most problems. And of course, ignorance. We think that hanging on is smart, and we think that letting go is stupid, but it's the other way around.

[60:48]

So it's really hard to let go. because otherwise the pain will get you. It's okay to have the pain, but if you don't let go, it'll get you. So, someone may say, well, I'm not afraid to die, And that may be so, but I think everyone is afraid to die. But even though everyone is afraid to die, it's just like having pain. Everyone has pain. But don't let it catch you. We can't let ourselves be caught by, I'm afraid to die, even though I'm afraid to die.

[62:02]

You still have to walk into it. So if we can learn how to let go moment by moment, then it's just like learning to let go of anger. If you don't train yourself to let go of anger, then when you have a big problem, you can't let go of it. People say, well, how can I deal with my anger? Well, I can tell you 10 million ways you can deal with your anger, but it won't help, because you have to train yourself to deal with your anger every day. And then when something comes up, You have some basis for dealing with your anger.

[63:06]

And it's the same with dying, living and dying. You have to have some training.

[63:20]

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