Thank you. I was going to say, that in case you didn't know, Today is my birthday. So sometimes I tell people that I'm 90, and they say, oh, you don't look a day over 85. So I don't tell them that anymore. I'm 76. That's not bad. Thank you.

[01:05]

So, it's true, I think, that you're as old as you feel. So, I've never felt old. Some people say, I think you're getting old. That's okay. I'm getting old. It's true. I am old, but I don't feel old. So, when I was a kid, I thought, I think I'll live to be 120. That's what I felt. So, who knows? I'll probably drop dead tomorrow. Anyway. So I wanted to talk a bit about my, a little bit about, a short bit about my long life. About my, when I started practicing.

[02:13]

And I started practicing when I was 35. So when I was 70, I realized I'd been practicing half my life. 70 seems like, I can't remember what it was like to be 70. And I started practicing in 1964 with Suzuki Roshi. And we set up the Berkeley Zendo 1967 on Dwight Way. He asked me if I would find a place. He used to come over to Berkeley on Monday mornings. to various people's houses, and that shifted around quite a bit. He would come over on Monday morning, and we'd sit zazen, and then he'd give a talk, and we'd have breakfast.

[03:15]

It was very intimate, very sweet, very nice. And so he finally asked me if I'd find a place in Berkeley. I was living in Berkeley at the time. And so I found the place on Dwight Way, this big house. And we built a zendo in the attic. And little by little, we created the Berkeley Zendo, Zen Center. And he asked me to take care of the place. And I set up a morning zazen. And I had a little dog. black dog named India. And we sat down in the front room in the beginning. It was a big house. And the dog was black and she used to come and sit on the cushion. And one day somebody came in and sat down on her. We also had a big palm tree out in front.

[04:21]

Tall palm tree. And One day, a branch fell off the palm tree at five o'clock in the morning and smashed through the window, right where somebody would have been sitting. But they weren't sitting there. Anyway, I had some ideas about how I wanted the Zen Do to be. I was following the pattern of Zen Center. and Suzuki Roshi's way and his teaching. And I wanted to continue that. And at that time, Zen Center had almost no priests, American priests. And it was a lay practice. And I really felt good about lay practice. And Suzuki Roshi, in the course of four or five years, ordained

[05:23]

actually not that long, three or four years, ordained about a dozen people as his ordained disciples. And I was maybe number five. But at this time I was not ordained. And I was like the caretaker of the zendo. But I just did everything. I did the cooking, and I did the service, and I opened the door, and I instructed people, and I did the service by myself. And little by little, I taught people how to do these things. And then I went to Tosahara to be shuso. And when I came back from Tassajara, actually, when I was at Tassajara, well, in 67, before I went, I was at Tassajara's first sashin.

[06:27]

And after that sashin, Suzuki Roshi asked me if I would be ordained. He said, I'd like you to join our order. And I said, okay. It never occurred to me that he would ask me to do that. When he asked me, it all seemed, everything seemed to fall into place. One day before that, I used to wear a sweater every day. And I wore the same sweater every day. And I used to always get my clothes at the Goodwill. And I'd just wear them until I wore out, then I'd get something else. So I wore that same sweater every day. And one day he touched, he pulled down the collar and he said, this is your robe. So I was interested in lay practice, and after I was shuso in 69, before I was shuso, I'm sorry, in 69 he ordained me.

[07:28]

And he ordained me because, for various reasons, one was because he thought I should be a priest, but because I was leading the practice at the zendo, He wanted to have a priest as the leader of the practice of the Zendo. So he didn't quite know if I should be ordained in Tassajara or in Berkeley. If I was ordained in Tassajara, it would mean that I was more like a Zen center priest. But being ordained in Berkeley would give people the feeling that I was here. So, and there was a purpose in doing that here. So, he ordained me in the zendo at Dwight Way, 1969. And then I went to Tassajara and became shuso. That's the order of things.

[08:29]

1970. So, my feeling was always that this was a lay person's zendo. And when I was, before I was practicing, I was an artist and I was in San Francisco and North Beach and I was in the drug scene and the music scene and all that, the jazz scene. And I had seen so many people that wanted something and it was unavailable to them, looking for some way, some way-seeking mind, some way to find some way of life that was meaningful. And there was very little you know, that was available to people.

[09:32]

When Zen Center came along, it was a unique thing. We didn't have all the practices that we have today. If you went into a bookstore, there'd be one shelf of Buddhist books, small shelf of Buddhist books, D.T. Suzuki, and a few other, D. Martino, and a few other books. Not much. Today, you know, we have this avalanche of literature falling over our heads. And availability of practice places and the Tibetans and the Vipassanas and all that, all we had was 1881 Bush Street. with a little old priest and a few students. So practice was not unavailable to people. So I felt that I wanted to help to make available the practice to lay people and to have what I felt was a neighborhood zendo.

[10:42]

that people could come to. It was kind of like Bush Street. Bush Street was a neighborhood zendo in a sense, even though people came from various places in the Bay Area to practice there. It was a local place. And so I kind of felt that the practice that we had on Bush Street before the big opening of the practice at Page Street in San Francisco was the model. So I just continued that model. And today we have a very kind of nicely flourishing lay practice. And I attribute that to your practice. And so I really honor your practice and your enthusiasm and the way that you have created this practice.

[11:55]

I've helped you do that, but it's really you that have created the practice. And I kind of took that from Suzuki Roshi's way. People say, well, Suzuki Roshi created Zen Center. Suzuki Roshi did not create Zen Center. Suzuki Roshi just did his practice. And he let everyone else create Zen Center with his guidance, of course. But I remember we'd have meetings, and he would just sit back and let everybody have the meeting, not say anything, or until he was asked, or if he felt that something needed to be said. But he wanted to see how we would do things. He didn't want to impose a certain way on us. But he had his way of doing things, which came out of his tradition, out of his country, out of his form of Buddhist practice.

[13:06]

And so he gave us what he knew. And the structure of practice was very important to him. And one of the things that he stressed was that eventually our practice would become more Americanized, but that we should be careful not to suddenly Americanize it. to throw out all of the tradition that had been the result of centuries of people's sincere practice, and that we could benefit from following what came before us. So, although I was always a radical iconoclast, that's not the right word, anarchist, I became a conservative anarchist.

[14:28]

So, I've always tried to follow a traditional way in a transitional way. So, I felt that Suzuki Roshi came from Japan and I met him from here. and his teaching is transferred. So my way is to set up the same practice, and then in time, the practice in future generations will become transformed little by little. And Americans will have their own style of practice. But it's easy to lose the essence.

[15:42]

We can say that, well, so-and-so is pretty good. They're nice people, nice person, and they help me in my practice and so forth. But the essential point is easily lost. the essential point of the practice of non-duality is easily lost. Even though we may do nice things and helpful things and so forth, the essence has to be preserved, has to be handed down. That's the most difficult point. So, because the practice is so formless, When you leave the zendo, you say, well, where's the practice? It's all formless. So when you enter the zendo, you say, oh, this is the form of practice. That's right. The practice in the zendo makes us aware of how we practice.

[16:48]

So the forms have that important function of helping to orient us to practice. And then when we leave the zendo, if we really have internalized practice, then all the forms that we meet become the forms of practice, if we know how to make them into practice. That's the two sides of practice. One is to enter the atmosphere of practice in the zendo, And then when you leave, you turn all the forms that you meet into forms of practice, so you never really leave the zendo. So it's just like turning the bag inside out. So not only, well, For a long time, I was the only priest.

[17:54]

And then when I had Dharman transmission, 1984, and became abbot here, officially, we had a big mountain seat ceremony, 1980. seven, five, five, something like that. Then I had the capability of ordaining people, and so little by little I ordained some priests. And I remember when I ordained some of the first priests, it was like people were very upset. Because anytime you change something, even a little bit, from the status quo, people get upset. What's happening? Should we all become priests? It's difficult, difficult.

[19:00]

And some of the people that I felt were such good examples of lay practice wanted to be priests. And I didn't like that so much. Because if the people who are the best examples, such strong examples of lay practice want to become priests, then what does that mean for everybody else? But I ordained them anyway. So it's always been, there's always a little conflict there. You know, what is a priest, what is a layperson? Which I don't want to go into today. But I feel, I myself feel like I'm a priest for priests and I'm a priest for laypeople and I'm a layperson and I'm a priest. And it's a new paradise, a new way of practicing as a priest.

[20:04]

And American style is different than anywhere else. So adjusting to that and making that work is my work. So when I'm in the Zendo, and we do all this stuff, then I put on my robes. And when I leave, I put on ordinary clothes in the world. So I think it's good for a priest to wear ordinary clothes at times in the world and just blend in with people. And so your practice is just blending in with people. I think that's very good. I've always thought that an ordained person should spend time on the street Before I was ordained, before I started practicing, I was a taxi driver for a long time, six years.

[21:09]

I was also a boat painter before that, and I was also studying Judaism. and Hasidism. One of the ideals of the Hasidic movement was to be the hidden Sadiq, the person that nobody recognizes. And you may look like an old bum or whatever, but your practice is very pure. So I wanted to practice that way. And when I was a taxi driver, that's what I felt I was doing. I was kind of doing therapy with people in a taxi. You park and somebody starts talking to you and then you go on and on and on. You're sitting there for an hour or two. You meet everyone in the world.

[22:12]

The first person I ever picked up when I was a taxi driver was an Italian princess. I don't remember anything about her. Pick up this lady, she's an Italian princess. But I met everyone. So many people, you know, needed somebody just to talk to. And the taxi driver is the perfect person because you never see them again. You never see the taxi driver again. So you can say, you know, you can spill your stuff and it's kind of anonymous and kind of like confessional in a way. So I had my stint at working on the street. I think it's good for everyone, for a priest to do that. So, sometimes people say, well, the priest practice is kind of like an ordinary person. You know, they may have a family or a wife, a husband.

[23:15]

And so what's the difference? Well, the difference, there's a sameness and some difference. The priest practices the same way as a layperson being a priest. and practices as a priest, being a priest. And sometimes a layperson practices in the same way that a priest does. So there's a lot of crossover and it's hard to pull it apart. Just like it's hard to pull apart Japanese Zen and Japanese culture. You start pulling it apart, it falls apart in your hands. But at the same time, what is the essence? So I want to read a few little passages from Suzuki Roshi's talks.

[24:25]

that I have felt as being relevant and inspiring to my practice. This particular short talk we titled, Caring for the Soil, he says, mostly we study Buddhism as though it were something that was already given to us. we think that what we should do is preserve the Buddha's teaching, like putting food in the refrigerator. Then, to study Buddhism, we take the food out of the refrigerator. Whenever you want it, it is already there. Instead, Zen students should be interested in how to produce food from the field, from the garden. We put the emphasis on the ground. So, putting, you know, We have the sutras, and we have the shastras, and we have all the Buddhist understanding that's preserved.

[25:43]

And so we think, well, if we want to understand Buddhism, we just pull all that out, and we can memorize passages, and we can rely on the sutras. But he says, really, we have to rely on the ground. We can't just pull it out whenever we want it and say, this is Buddhism. Buddhism is inherent within you. And you are the ground of Buddhism from which Buddhism grows. So we have to find ourself and be authentic. Authentic means, I thought about the word, what is an author? An author is someone who authorizes. Someone who has authority. And authority doesn't come from outside. Authority comes from inside. So we have to find our own authority. That's what our practice is about. Although what comes from outside is also helpful.

[26:52]

So it's not that we don't study or check our practice with the sutras. We should always check our practice with the sutras to see if we're doing something correctly. So that gives us our checks and balances. But actually our practices comes from our own authority and we have to find that authority. So we put the emphasis on the ground. All of us have Buddha nature, and the teachings that grow from Buddha nature are similar to one another. The teachings of different schools of Buddhism do not differ so much, but the attitude toward the teachings is different. When you think that the teaching is already given to you, then naturally your effort will be to apply the teaching in this common world. For instance, Theravada students apply the teaching of the Twelve Links of Causation. Ignorance, will, mind, name and form, six senses, contact, acceptance, love, attachment, being, birth and death, the Twelve Links of Causation.

[27:59]

apply this to our actual life, to how we were born and how we die. Mahayana understanding is that the original purpose of the teaching, when Buddha told it, was to explain the interdependency of different things. Buddha said, Buddha tried to save us by destroying our common sense. Usually we are not interested in the barrenness of the ground. our tendency is to be interested in something that is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. So, you know, the bare soil is like our true nature. And the stuff that grows out of that is what we become interested in, materiality and so forth. But if you want to have a good harvest, the most important thing is to make the soil rich and to cultivate it well.

[29:05]

So this is practice. This is zazen. Just being interested in the bare ground is zazen. And then everything will grow from emptiness. The Buddhist teaching is not about the food itself, but about how it is grown and how to take care of it. The food itself may be enlightenment, but that's not what we're interested in. We're interested in how to just take care of the practice. If we just know how to take care of the practice and devote ourselves to taking care of the practice, enlightenment comes forth. But if you try to get enlightenment, it doesn't work. So he says the Buddha's teaching is not about the food itself, but about how it is grown and how to take care of it. Buddha was not interested in a special deity or in something that was already there. He was interested in the ground from which various gardens will appear.

[30:10]

And for him, everything was holy. Buddha did not think of himself as a special person. He tried to be like the most common person, wearing a robe, begging with a bowl. He thought, I have many students because the students are very good, not because of me. Buddha was great because his understanding of people was good. Because he understood people, he loved them, and he enjoyed helping them. Because he had that kind of spirit, he could be a Buddha. So I think Suzuki Roshi is also talking about himself. some humility about himself. Not that he felt that he was so good, but because of his students, because his students were so sincere, it helped him to be what he was.

[31:15]

There's also another little passage here about brown rice. Zuki Roshi, you know, in Japan, they never ate brown rice. Sometimes now, actually, I think with American influence, the monasteries, the small monasteries, and maybe even Ehechi, are starting to eat brown rice. But brown rice is really peasant food. And when he came here, everybody wanted to eat brown rice. That was the macrobiotic age. And we think that maybe that's what killed him. Not really. But he said, chewing brown rice, he gave a couple of good talks on brown rice. Chewing brown rice is like practice. You chew, and you chew, and then the flavor starts to come out.

[32:24]

And the more you chew, the more the flavor comes out. So that's practice. The more you chew, the more the flavor comes out. I'm not going to read this whole thing, although it's short too. She says, how do you like zazen? I think it may be better to ask, how do you like brown rice? Zazen is too big a topic. Brown rice is just right. Actually, there's not much difference. When you eat brown rice, you have to chew it, and unless you chew it, it is difficult to swallow. When you chew it very well, your mouth becomes part of the kitchen, and actually the brown rice becomes more and more tasty. There's a saying, a monk's mouth is like an oven. Then he goes on to say, the most important point is to establish yourself in a true sense without establishing yourself in delusion.

[33:28]

And yet we cannot live or practice without delusion. Delusion is necessary, but delusion is not something in which you can establish yourself. It's like a stepladder. We live in the midst of delusion, and we can't not live in the midst of delusion. You know, there's a saying that fish cannot live in pure water. There has to be something in the water. There has to be some, when stuff drops in the water, then we call that defilement. But actually, the water is never defiled. We just call it defilement. The water is always pure, no matter what falls into it. But we have to establish our life where we find it, with the circumstances we are in, and in our lack of understanding.

[34:32]

So delusion is necessary, but delusion is not something on which you can establish yourself. So we should know the difference between just living within delusion and establishing ourself on delusion. If we establish our life on reality, then we can course through the world of delusion without being caught by it. So without it, you cannot climb up, but you don't stay on the stepladder. With this confidence, you can continue to study our way. That is why I say, don't run away, stick with me. I don't mean stick to me. I mean stick with yourself, not with delusion. Sometimes I may be a delusion. You may overestimate me. Oh, he is a good teacher. That is already a kind of delusion. I am your friend. I am just practicing with you as your friend who has many stepladders.

[35:38]

We shouldn't be disappointed with a bad teacher or with a bad student. You know, if a bad student and a bad teacher strive for the truth, something real will be reestablished. That is our zazen. We must continue to practice zazen and continue to chew brown rice. Eventually, we will accomplish something. So to, you know, the word bad doesn't always mean bad. The word good doesn't always mean good. We have to understand, you know, Suzuki Roshi was quite willing to call himself a bad teacher, no problem. we should always be willing and ready to see that side of ourselves. Because, as he always said, we are half good and half bad. Everyone, half good and half bad, as far as the percentages go.

[36:45]

You have to figure that out. But sometimes it's okay for him to say, a bad student, a bad teacher. You may think, oh, you're not a bad teacher. It's okay. Bad. In jazz lingo, bad doesn't always mean bad. Bad can mean good. That kind of expression is non-dualistic because you can use a term to mean what you want it to mean. You're not stuck with words, with some literal meaning of words. And in Zen, almost always, you should not be stuck with the literal meaning of words. Words convey a certain feeling or meaning. And we can use any word we want to mean anything we want it to mean.

[37:48]

And we should be able to read the meaning beyond the words. If we get stuck or hung up on the words, then we say, well, you said da, da, da. you understood the word, but you didn't understand the meaning behind the word. This happens a lot, so we should be careful. And all through Zen literature, this is the norm. Oh, he was a terrible guy, blah, blah, blah, meaning he was so wonderful. He was so bad, you know. But at the same time, You should recognize, yes, I'm bad. If someone says you're bad, yes, I'm bad. Just accept that right away because you are. We all are. We're all bad. And we're all good. Good and bad.

[38:51]

So this way we can understand ourselves and we can understand others. If we understand ourselves, it makes it much easier to understand others. So main thing really is to understand ourselves. So our practice is to understand ourselves. That's called development. Development is to understand ourselves. To study the Buddha way is to understand ourselves. and to understand ourselves is to drop ourselves, to drop our resistances and our ego, and really look and see what's there. So I have my, the, feeling and understanding that Suzuki Roshi presents here has always been my feeling as well.

[40:03]

And this is what I always try to communicate. Do you have any questions? Can you say something about how you met Suzuki Roshi and how you came to realize that he was your teacher? Oh, yeah. Well, a friend of mine took me to Bush Street one morning. So I was at 545, and my friend, Dan Moore, who was, he had a, he was the head of a poetry theater event thing called the Floating Lotus Theater. And they would do all kinds of, you know, drama on the street and in fairs and so on.

[41:14]

But I knew him before he did that and he was a poet. Anyway, we were up late at night smoking grass. And he said, you know, I go to, he told me, I go to the Zen temple. I'd heard about it before. And there's a Zen priest there, you know, really good. Really, I like him a lot. So we said, okay, let's go. So we walked up Fillmore Street at five o'clock in the morning. went to the zendo and I sat down, face the wall. And then I didn't know what I was doing, but I just sat down like everybody else. There were a few people there. And he came up. And so somebody came up behind me and adjusted my posture. Showed me what to do. And that was Suzuki Roshi. So the first time I met him was face to back.

[42:16]

So that's how I met him. Cool. Have you been much tempted in all these years to go back to your art from this ground of existence? No, my intention has always been to, the past is the past and just look where you're going and go straight. My whole life as a Zen student has been to just devote myself wholeheartedly to the practice. Although I do play some music, but I didn't start doing that after I, that was something I was doing long before.

[43:22]

So I kind of eked that out a little bit. I kept it going over the years, you know, playing just enough to keep it going, but not as a focus. And then the last couple of years, I think when I was 70 or so, I said, hey, I can play some more. So I would play more as a kind of gift to my old age. John? I wanted to know what your favorite birthday cake is. My favorite birthday cake? Well, my favorite birthday cake, is that what you said, is the same as my wedding cake, which is poppy seed cake. poppy seed cake with some kind of not-too-sweet cream topping. You know, some kind of... Yeah, kind of like that, yeah.

[44:28]

practicing an art, whether it's painting or music or writing or whatever, is also a form of practice. Well, if practicing your art is the same as chewing brown rice, okay, just chew thoroughly. That's called emptiness. If you look for an emptiness, the sky is not empty. Sorry, this guy's just full of stuff. Emptiness is when you're chewing brown rice thoroughly and there's no difference between you and the rice.

[45:23]

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