So, welcome to my birthday party. This hat was given to me when I gave a talk at the Faithful Fool's Zendo in the Tenderloin in San Francisco, which I don't know if it's still going, but it was right in Mason and Eddy or something. And it was a, people could come in off the street to get taken care of and sit zazen and whatever. So it was a kind of street zendo.

[01:06]

And it was a very nice idea. And so I was, there was a member here who was one of the instigators. And I was invited and they gave me this hat. And I keep it around to remind me Suzuki Roshi used to say, we're all half good and half bad. So if you think you're really good, you should look at the other side. And if you think you're really bad, you should look at the other side. Half good, half bad, half foolish, and half serious. So this morning, these rabbit ears, or whatever they're called, Monkey, what kind of ears are those? Martian ears. Oh, Martian ears. Yeah. I don't know, Maria handed one to me and I put it on. Yeah, they were all handed out this morning, so I thought, well, this is a good opportunity for me to show off.

[02:10]

My hat. I keep it on the wall to remind me. Just, you know, to remind me to be careful. So, it's wonderful to see everybody, and I see people I don't even know. I don't think I do, anyway. But it's great. We should do this every day. So, people wonder, you know, what's it like to be 90? I used to wonder that. If anybody has a battery.

[03:29]

Oh, it's good. Yeah, so. We still kept our dial telephone for a long, long time.

[05:06]

Now we have a... Good. Yay. So I wanted to talk a little bit about, I don't know what, but I was asked this morning, what are you going to talk about? I said, I don't know. That was about six o'clock, no, seven o'clock. But that's, I often do that. I wait until I'm there to start talking.

[06:10]

And so it feels more spontaneous and it puts me in a good position because I kind of act under pressure. When I have a lot of pressure to do something, then I get it all together. So I kind of like that. I wouldn't call it an adrenaline rush, but something like that. So yesterday afternoon we were having tea out here in the courtyard, as we do on Friday, and Peter Overton was there, and he made some mention about when we opened this Zendo on Dwight Way. And he said, we didn't know what we were doing. And I took a little affront at that, but. Peter and Liz, my wife, and Peter's sister, twin sister, Ann, used to live in a house about six blocks from here.

[07:29]

And they would come every morning to Zazen. This is in the 60s. Well, yeah, 70s, 70s. We started in 67, but there were some early, very early 60s or 70s, 71 or 70 actually, 70, 70. We opened the Zen Do in 67. And they were regulars every morning, almost. And there weren't so many people, of course, we were just beginning, and we had no advertising. It was just word of mouth, which it's always been, just word of mouth. And I liked it that way. And for service, you know, we have these three positions, the Doan, the kokyo, who announces, who does the mouthing, and the fukuto, who does the drum.

[08:41]

And we have those positions are filled by three people. But in those days, one person did all three. That was very common. Nowadays, people are flustered if somebody doesn't show up. And it worked very well. But I did know what I was doing because when Suzuki Roshi asked me to come, I had not been practicing very long when he asked me to open the Zendo here in Berkeley. Because I was living in Berkeley, I'd had a girlfriend and I moved to Berkeley to be with her. Otherwise, I would have stayed in San Francisco. But we used to go to San Francisco every morning. I used to pick up the people. Suzuki Yoshi had students in Berkeley, and he'd come over every Monday morning.

[09:44]

We would sit zazen, he would give a little talk, and then we had service and breakfast. And it was very sweet, you know, there may be 10 people, And it would move from house to house because we didn't have any zindo. And he asked me if I would find a place to open it that we could have a zindo that was permanent, permanent in the sense of not moving from house to house. And so I found this wonderful old kind of Victorian, American Victorian on Dwight Way, one of the biggest houses on Dwight Way. The cops used to come every once in a while. The cops would wonder what we were doing there. And they'd come in and say, oh yeah, we used to find all this dope in the walls in this house, you know. Yeah, it was a famous house for transients.

[10:57]

But we took good care of it. That's a whole other story. And I forget where I was. Yeah, I know that. Just tell me. You knew what you were doing. Yes, you knew what you were doing. Yeah, that's right. I knew what I was doing. I don't know now. My vision was to have a zendo that a local zendo for people living in the, not exactly the neighborhood, but in town because in Berkeley, Berkeley is a neighborhood all by itself with smaller neighborhoods.

[12:02]

So for anybody who wanted to come, of course, but local people and lay people, I was not ordained, anything like that. But my job He never did tell me what to do. He just said, find the place and take care of it. And I did. I mean, you could never find a place like that today, of course. The rent was $130 a month. Ron was one of the first people to live there in the basement. Ron was great. He was always so helpful. And he had a, diverging of course, Ron wanted to be a window washer. That was his ambition of the moment. I think everything that Ron does is to do it as well as he can, as well as he could, and to put his whole being into what he's doing.

[13:11]

And at that time, early 70s, he just wanted to be a window washer and wash windows. And he just did it like, you know, as if he was taking care of the whole world. And it was wonderful. So anyway, and then it had an upper story, an attic, huge attic, wonderful attic. And we turned that into Wazendo. And we were there for 12 years. And we knew that we wanted to, first we wanted to buy that place. And Mr. Johns, who owned it, liked to see deterioration. He was from the South. You know, in the South there's kudzu.

[14:13]

And kuntsu kind of destroys everything. You know what I mean? Yeah, so he kind of liked that feeling, that southern feeling of deterioration. My son lives in Berkeley, but he doesn't like Berkeley because it has the feeling of deterioration. He likes nice modern stuff. Well, anyway. So we wanted to buy it from him and we kept, this is before Reagan. After Reagan, everything changed. That's when all the prices of housing went up. And we, I don't want to talk about that too much, but our rents were cheap. We all had cheap rent. And you could be an artist or musician or whatever, and you could live in the town without overdoing it.

[15:24]

But you didn't have to spend all your time making money in order to find a place to live like it is today. But $130 a month for that place. It was great. Anyway, so he kept streaming us along. We offered him $45,000. Can you imagine that? Because that was what houses like that were going for in the 70s. So, I rode my bike around town looking for places for Zendo. I didn't know what I was looking for. I was looking for something. And it was really hard to find something because, not that they were expensive, because it's hard to find something suitable for a zendo. And there was a woman who was a nurse, and she said that she knew a man who owned a place like this.

[16:35]

As a matter of fact, this was the place he owned. And he would like to sell it to us, and we didn't have any money. We had raised about $20,000, you know, toward buying a house or someplace. So he wanted to sell it to us. He had done some work on the property. And so in order to buy this place, we had fundraising drive, of course. And I asked everybody, the sangha, to contribute $200. $200 is a lot of money.

[17:37]

Werner Erhardt, remember Est? Some of you do. Est was a new age improvement. I don't know what you call it. Training, yes, New Age training. And he charged everybody per weekend $200. I thought, hey, if he can charge $200, I can charge, I can ask people for $200 for something really worthwhile. And people came forward and they contributed and they loaned money With little or no interest, and some people don't have a lot of money, it was a great inspirational feeling.

[18:43]

I don't want to go into the details, but we were able to actually buy the place without telling the bank. So he financed it. So we took over his mortgage. And that was okay just before we bought it. But then at the time that we did buy it, they changed the rules that you couldn't do that. So we had to be very quiet. But we paid the mortgage every time, every month for many years. And then the bank found out about it. And they didn't kick us out or repossess, they just charged us more interest.

[19:47]

11% from about five or six or something. Yeah, but and then a few years ago, the members who could afford to do this got together and paid off the mortgage. So, that was wonderful. Now, we've always had so much generosity in our Sangha. We've always depended on the Sangha rather than outside of the Sangha for support. That kind of support has always been within the Sangha. And I just have to say how grateful we all are, I am, to the generosity of all of you in the sangha. So, we've never had a serious financial problem in over 50 years.

[20:53]

Which is incredible. I think a part of it is due to my naivety and lack of understanding of finance. It's true, it's true. I mean, anybody that knew anything would never do anything like that. So fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Ta-da! So that's a little bit of history about this place. But you know, when we moved in, this was a house with the wall running down. the lengthwise, and there were two apartments.

[22:01]

That's what this was. And so, there was a very nice architect, young guy, Ned Forrest, who volunteered to design, help us design our Zendo. So we worked with him for some time, and a group of us. And this is the design we came up with. And then we had carpenters who were members, young carpenters who liked doing this kind of stuff. And they were all, at that time, joinery, Japanese joinery was very popular with carpenters. And so they just really loved the idea of doing this. And when we started this project, they were working for almost nothing. But of course, as we continued, everything costs more and takes more time in the building trades.

[23:16]

You have to know, if you ever want to build something, out of wood, you know that it's going to cost more and it's going to take longer. But you fool yourself into believing that it's not. Yeah, that's just the way it is. You fool yourself into thinking that you can do it for the price that you thought it was at the time. But anyway, it was a great project. Really, everybody, the whole sangha really participated in building this building, actually. And we just gutted it, poured the concrete. This floor and the cedar, the ceiling and the floor is all cedar. And so we, that is very low grade cedar. And so we bought it at a bargain. and saw it all through the mill.

[24:21]

We had to slice. These boards are a little less than three quarters because of the sawing. And so I saw every board go through the mill and be tongue and grooved and cut and sliced in half. And then we put it all together. And, you know, these corners, To make those corners match as they come together, that takes real skill. It looks like it just falls together. I can remember working on two boards all day long to get them to meet and match. So this is a project of love and devotion. Yeah. So the boards that didn't have knots, you put in the middle and the knots are under the tons.

[25:28]

The ones with knots are under the tons. There are a few knots there, but it's pretty good. And so the wood is kind of soft. It's not real hardwood. And so we have to be careful about it, but we've done pretty well. And then we raised that building next door. It was a two-story building with about a five-foot ceiling and a basement. So in order to use this building, which we took away the housing, we had to substitute something comparable That's how it goes in Berkeley. If you take away living space, you have to substitute living space in some other way, so that you don't take away living space for something else.

[26:32]

So we raised that building and put the floor underneath it, where my office is, where Ross lives, and that was a big job. Raised up the house, we dug all the three feet down for the foundation, put in a new foundation, and we did all that work ourself. Our members did all that work ourself. So, Jim, do you remember how impressed the Karmapa was when he came to visit? Oh, you know, he just thought that building would... Uh-huh. Yes, I'll tell you, yeah, thanks for reminding me of the Karmapa. You know, the Karmapa is the Tibetan, is just below the Dalai Lama. And the Dharmadhatu was just forming their practice in Berkeley at that time.

[27:34]

And we were working on this building. And so our zendo, while we were working on this building, our zendo was in what is the community room. We put in the tans, the tatamis, and we had the aisles were like this. And so that was Zendo while we were taking care of building this. And the Karmapa wanted to come and visit us. He wanted to visit the various places. Really nice guy. So he came. The Dharmadhatu students wore suits and ties, and they had a very high-class kind of sangha, you know, suits, and they had the Karmapa's guard, guardians, and they came in limousines, and were parking on the street,

[28:45]

All these limousines are parked on the street. And so, they escorted Karmapa out and he was in the Zendo. Liz and I lived upstairs. there at the time. And so he was upstairs and downstairs. I can't remember the exact thing, but we had, our whole sangha was there, and the guard and the Karmapa and his entourage, and they brought in his chair. They brought in his, All of his equipment in a kind of bubble, you know, invisible bubble, of course. But his chair and his table and his implements and my wife Liz had wanted to serve him tea, but they wouldn't let her because she wasn't part of the bubble.

[29:59]

She really pissed off. But it was really a neat event, you know, very nice event. And he was very gracious. So one of the things that I wanted, one of the, my vision, because I had studied with Suzuki Roshi and been to Tassajara, and Tassajara started at the same time as the Berkley Zendo. We bought it in 1967, and Berkley Zendo started in 1967. So Suzuki Roshi He used to come every Monday, but after Tassajara was going, he was too busy to come on Mondays.

[31:08]

And the other Japanese priests that we had, Katagiri, Chino-sensei, and Yoshimura, we had all those Japanese priests, which really gave us a wonderful flavor of Japanese practice. Suzuki Yoshis would come sometimes, but mostly he was taking care of Tassahara, and Katagiri would come, and Chino Sensei. So we always had, for a long time, their presence. But then, they got too busy. And so, it was kind of left to me. When I found this place and was beginning to practice, I was the caretaker, I was not the teacher. And I never presented myself as the teacher. I was the guy that swept the floor and kept the cushions in shape.

[32:12]

But at the same time, I did build it up. So it was a kind of ambiguous thing. And I learned how to be the teacher through being the caretaker. But I never presented myself as a teacher for a long, long time until actually I was ordained. So Suzuki Roshi, 1969, 1969, Suzuki Roshi had wanted to decide whether I should be ordained at Tassajara or in Berkeley, but he decided Berkeley because He wanted me to continue what I was doing here and encourage the students as well. So he decided Berkeley, 1969. So the way I thought about the practice here was that people would take positions, just like at Tassajara.

[33:29]

And everyone would have some kind of position, taking care of the Zilker Hounds, or taking cooking, and so forth. And it's always worked that way. So it's a kind of quasi-monastic temple for basically laypeople, to give laypeople an opportunity to have a fuller practice than just coming on Sunday for a sermon. So daily practice, I was very gung-ho. I sat twice a day and did everything. And then when I had Dharma transmission in 1984, that's when I allowed myself to be the teacher.

[34:32]

Suzuki Roshi was gone in 1971, yes. I'm just, my job is to provide a place for people to sit zazen. That was it. Yeah, I always said, I sit zazen. If anybody wants to come and sit zazen with me, that's fine. If they're not, that's okay. I'm just always going to be here. This is what I do. And you're welcome to come. And I also said that I'm not the teacher. But if I teach you something, that's fine. You can always ask me questions and I will do whatever I can to meet you and teach you whatever I can. But my role is not to be the teacher, it's simply to take care of this place and help everybody to do what they're doing.

[35:38]

And people come and ask me, they say, would you be my teacher? And I say, well, if I'm teaching you something and you're there and you want to continue, then as long as that's happening, that's what's happening. I don't want, I never want, you know, some teachers have very formal teacher-student relationship where they do some kind of ritual, but I never done that. If you're, and anybody's free to come, even if somebody's been practicing for 20 years and they decide they want to go someplace else, that's fine. Because my attitude is not to be attached to students or for them to be attached to me. But as long as we have our association, as long as the association is working, that's fine.

[36:41]

When it's no longer working, that's fine too. So a lot of teachers worry about their students. I mean, I'm concerned about people who, of course, I'm associated with, but I don't worry about that. Everybody's just free to come and go, and I'm just doing what I'm doing. And I just, you know, it's like there's this wonderful poem. I'm not sure who it's by. Nobody is, but they think it's maybe Tozan. The Blue Mountain is the parent of the White Cloud. The White Cloud is the child of the Blue Mountain. All day long, they depend on each other without depending on each other. Blue Mountain is always the Blue Mountain.

[37:42]

The White Cloud is always the White Cloud. That kind of epitomizes the sense of our practice. As long as we have this relationship and it's working, that's great. When it's no longer working or it needs to change or be different, fine. People come and we practice for some time and then people leave 10 years later someone comes back. And it's just like it always was. Nothing's changed here. Of course, things are changing all the time. But at the same time, things are not changing. It's always the same place. And then we just take up again where we left off, as if nothing had happened. That's very common.

[38:43]

So I guess it's time to go eat lunch or something like that.

[38:51]

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