Okay, let's get started on the last bit of our afternoon session. We had one speaker left over. He is Robert Scharf, actually our host at Berkeley here. He is D.H. Chun Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies here at Berkeley. Received his Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies in 1990 from the University of Michigan. His research specialty is medieval Chinese Buddhism, especially Chan Buddhism, otherwise known as Zen. But he also works in Japanese Buddhism, Buddhist art, ritual studies, and methodological issues in the study of religion. Bob? Thank you. Is this on? People hear me? Great. So we're here today to celebrate the second day, to celebrate Suzuki Roshi and his legacy. And this afternoon panel was supposed to consider the future, so it seemed appropriate, at least for me, for a moment, to look at Suzuki's role in that future.

[01:08]

Suzuki's role in that future. Doing so, I think, forces us to confront some rather problematic issues in American Zen, issues connected to the role and mystique of the Zen master, the place of lineage, authority, and charisma in the evolution of the Soto American institution. These are issues, many of which have already come up this afternoon. My thesis, in short, is that if Zen groups in America fail to adequately address matters of institutional and religious authority, in a generation or two there may well be no Zen, but just another brand of New Age spirituality that will have a limited legacy or impact. The tradition that Suzuki Roshi started with a bang may end up in a whimper. The key question to me, and I think it's the elephant in the room, is this. In talking about Suzuki's teaching, his legacy, what exactly are we talking about?

[02:12]

Is it Buddhism, or is it Zen, or is it Dogen's Zen, or Soto's Zen, or something more specific to Suzuki Roshi? Are these things different, and does it matter? And more to the point, how would we know if these things are different or if it mattered? So I came to the conference yesterday with a written-out talk, but felt the need to redo it in the interim because of some of the issues that arose yesterday. And the following four comments that were made really grabbed me. First, there was a question, for those of you who weren't here yesterday, someone from the audience asked, why did there used to be debates among American zenies about Renzai versus Soto? But there don't seem to be debates anymore. Now I know, and this will become actually relevant later on, the debates weren't really between Renzai and Soto, it was between Soto and Soto, but it was between this strange kind of Soto that came from, influenced by the Harada-Yastani line, where they did koans versus those who didn't do koans.

[03:18]

But put that aside, I was struck by the comment that such debates are now, for the most part, a thing of the past. And I wondered, what happened? Is it just that everyone is more mature now in their practice, that they have more perspective, that they realize that these are all different paths that lead to the same place? Or is it a sign of complacency? The debates over what was the best or the right or the true path were once, I believe, quite animated, impassioned, heartfelt, at times strident. And yes, they were often misinformed and just plain silly. But people really cared. And this might seem naive in retrospect, but the questioning itself and the passion that enlivened the debates were, I think, crucial to the energy and drive that built Zen in America. How to keep that energy and drive alive? Now, second, there was the question from the young man working the microphones, that if I read him correctly, was a very interesting Zen moment.

[04:27]

He was engaging in mondo, and a very traditional mondo. He was saying, I think, in an open and receptive fashion, your teaching doesn't touch me, or others of his generation, if he can speak for his generation. He is saying Suzuki is dead, you guys are old, you're complacent, you're self-congratulatory, and you're enjoying your sinecures. Please give me one turning word. Itengo. Curiously, if it was left to one of the scholars, Wendy, and not any of the ordained teachers in the room to respond. Now, there are serious practical issues here. Whatever Suzuki's impact may have been on those who studied with him, what about those who come next? Now third, there was Wendy's talk. Wendy began by suggesting that so much of what was once central to the Zen tradition in China and Japan has been ignored or rejected in the West. Specifically, Americans don't invest images or rituals per se with power and authority.

[05:34]

And she suggested maybe that's why so much power and authority is now invested in teachers. Now, Les, at least it seemed to me, got Wendy's bigger point. And he suggested that, following Wendy, maybe American Zen isn't Zen at all, but something different. But then, if I read Les correctly, he shrugged off the question, as it seemed to me everyone else did. And I wondered, is this too complacency? Now finally, there's Lessa's big question, which was, what happened? In other words, how did this amazing kind of coming together in the 60s that created the San Francisco Zen Center and all its branches and everything else, how did it really take off? What was going on there? And in response, some people mentioned the role of Suzuki Roshi's audience, but I don't think enough attention was really paid to this. Suzuki's non-Asian students were, for the most part, as has been said, in their 20s and even in their teens.

[06:37]

Many of them were experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs, particularly acid. They were hippies or social drug dropouts or anti-authoritarian and so on. And they had, and this is very important, I think, a particular notion of what a Zen master is. And this they got from reading not only D.T. Suzuki, and Alan Watts, and Paul Reps, but also from the teachings of Ramana Maharshi, and Mihir Baba, and Gurdjieff, and Madame Blavatsky, and so on. A Zen master, in short, is a guru. Someone entirely without ego, at one with the cosmos, who knew your innermost thoughts, your karma, your soul, and someone to whom you could give yourself utterly and entirely. Now it's widely known, in part through the writings of David Chadwick, that Shinryu Suzuki was not a celebrated Zen master coming to transmit enlightenment to the West. Indeed, he would never have been called a Roshi back in Japan.

[07:39]

He was raised a Teranoko, or a temple son, who following in his father's footsteps became a Jushoku, an abbot of a parishioner's temple. He did, however, have an independent streak. And having learned English, he found himself more sympathetic and intrigued with the West than many of his countrymen. He then found himself in the strangest of situations. For a Japanese temple priest, particularly a country temple priest, he found himself in San Francisco in the 60s, adulated as a guru. And unlike so many other Asian teachers who found themselves in the same situation and who crashed and burned, he rose to the occasion with intelligence and grace and aplomb. And his accomplishment is all the more amazing when one realizes the degree to which he had to make it up as he was going along. Now Suzuki, I would argue, was in good company.

[08:42]

Take Dogen, for example. As we've learned in large part from the research of Karl Bielefeld, Dogen did not go to China to learn the Dharma from enlightened Chinese masters. Rather, he went along to accompany his own teacher, Miaozhen. He was forced to turn to study from Chinese teachers only after Miaozhen died in China. And even then, he was hampered by his very limited ability to communicate orally in Chinese. Some of his most celebrated teachings It has been argued may actually be traced to things he misheard or misunderstood from his Chinese teachers. What makes Dogen stunning is precisely what he managed to accomplish despite these rather modest beginnings, despite his limited skills in speaking Chinese, despite his limited exposure to Chinese Buddhism on the ground. He returned to Kyoto. where he tried to establish himself in his own network, but he found himself not taken terribly seriously by the Kyoto Buddhist establishment.

[09:48]

So he regrouped and he went on the rhetorical offensive and reinvented himself, creating something really quite original, exciting, something that might have seemed rather peculiar in China, but that spoke to his Japanese audience. Now, Dogen's Zen, his preaching and his writing was, and this is an important point that I'm really trying to emphasize today, it was predicated on his extensive and penetrating mastery of traditional Buddhist and Chinese literature. Dogen was inspired in his ability to craft a new Zen for Japan, but it was possible only because of his control over the doctrinal, ritual, institutional, and literary resources available to him from the Chinese Buddhist tradition. And Dogen was famously polemical, castigating some of the most respected Buddhist teachers in China and Japan as idiots, frauds, whatever.

[10:51]

But his highly critical, polemical, and even combative style was the means through which his audience entered into the world of Buddhist thought, Buddhist practice, Buddhist experience. Debate, analysis, and critique is, I would argue, at the very heart of the Mahayana tradition. The story of Kukai, founder of Shingon Buddhism, is remarkably similar. He, too, spent very limited time in China, and he only studied with his celebrated teacher, Huiguo, for a few months. And despite the stories one hears about his fluency in Chinese and Sanskrit, he probably had somewhat limited skills in spoken Chinese, and he probably did not understand Sanskrit at all. He too was forced to improvise on his return to Japan, to adapt what he learned to a very different situation and audience. Like Dogen, Kukai's success was related to the fact that it was based not so much on his study under enlightened masters in China, so much as on his familiarity with a vast Chinese textual Buddhist tradition.

[12:03]

He was an amazing exegete, doing strikingly original riffs on Chinese Buddhist and even non-Buddhist sources. So my point is that Dogen and Kukai's bona fides are not their possession of some enlightenment experience or their faithful transmission of an ancient unbroken tradition from China to Japan, there was no such transmission. Rather, it was their mastery of the conceptual, ritual, institutional resources of Buddhism, a mastery that allowed them to adapt and improvise while at the same time staying true to the soul of the tradition. Dogen and Kukai accomplished what they did by their ability to access and creatively deploy the intellectual, institutional, and material resources of the Buddhist tradition. They overcame their conditions, their conditions where they were from the boonies.

[13:04]

Japan was the boonies at that time. But they overcame that by a practice that included intense study of and engagement in Buddhist ritual traditions, Buddhist literature, Buddhist philosophy. Now I'd like to suggest that we stop thinking of Buddhism in essentialist terms, terms that are utterly at odds with so much Buddhist teaching. Buddhism is not simply being present, or no ego, or no mind. but rather a tradition, a language, a practice that evolved over centuries and that has allowed many to ask deep questions about how one should live one's life, about how one should die, to formulate responses to those questions, to allow people to see things, think things, feel things to which they otherwise would have no access. Most important, it has allowed the tradition to pass this collective wisdom as well as its collective confusions down to the present day.

[14:07]

It's like two and a half thousand years. It's not bad. Buddhism was not a simple answer to life's complex questions, but rather a set of complex answers that often existed in a creative and dialectical tension with each other. Now, Dogen, and Kukai, and indeed Honen, and Shinran, and so many of those who initiated new Buddhist movements in Japan had command over that language. And that's why their teachings are so unabashedly polemical. They define their own positions in contradistinction to everyone else, but at the same time continually draw on the authority of Buddhist canon for support. In the end, their charisma, if we can call it that, did not rest on their access to some essential truth passed down through an unbroken transmission. They made that stuff up. But on their mastery of the conceptual resources and literary riches of Buddhism, Suzuki Roshi didn't do what Dogen and Kukai did, namely provide the resources required to engage in this literary and philosophical and historical tradition.

[15:20]

And of course, he couldn't. as he did not have the tools to translate into an English cultural idiom. Unlike Dogen and Kukai and other founders of Japanese traditions, Suzuki Roshi was not working in his native idiom. And from everything I have seen, it seems that he often didn't fully get what was going on around him. He did appreciate the tremendous openness and the sincerity and the spiritual longing and commitment of his Western students, and he found a way to communicate with them. His message, no ego, just sit, no thinking, this worked well at the time in the midst of the emotional and spiritual and political mayhem of the Vietnam druggy hippie era. Indeed, given that his disciples had so little exposure to Buddhist culture, and given the limited resources for the study of Buddhism available in the 60s and 70s, his message, just sit, no thinking, it was brilliant.

[16:24]

But there are many different sorts of just sit. The Soto Just Sit was arguably a koan, a puzzle, intended, like all koans, as an intervention in an ongoing dialogue or a dialectic. Dogen Zen, Soto Zen, Suzuki Zen, they are all original riffs and interventions in this dialogue. And in short, I suggest that if the American Zen community doesn't figure out how to enter into this dialogue, there's not much of a future. Thank you. We have half an hour to refute this asshole. You know what, more time, shall we take more time? OK, Yvonne, you want to say something?

[17:33]

I do. I want to object to your description of Suzuki Roshi's disciples. I think that your description is accurate with the students who showed up at the beginning of Tassajara. but I don't think it's an accurate description of some of the students who arrived in the 60s shortly after he came, 59 and into the middle 60s, where you had somebody like Trudy Dixon who understood his teachings and took the taped lectures from his teachings and shaped collaboratively with him Zen Mind Beginner's Moment. He had developed students who came from the world of creativity, of arts. So I think that your description is not accurate in terms of those early students.

[18:33]

When I first started practicing with him, I was in my 30s. I had two children. I was a teacher teaching mathematics. I was not a hippie experienced in drugs, and I was not unique. in terms of the kinds of people who were drawn to Suzuki Roshi in that early time. I think your description fits with who started showing up with the beginning of Tassajara. It doesn't fit before that. I appreciate that. I'm playing with caricatures. It's been a long two days. I'm trying to liven things up a bit at the end. But I think the important point is that none of the disciples would have had the kind of minimal literacy in the Mahayana tradition that would be expected of any Japanese monk.

[19:37]

who before they even went to the monastery. So if you think of that situation, it's really quite exceptional in sort of the history of the transmission of Buddhism. say that while what Yvonne says is true, I don't think you were trying to parse some kind of, you know, numerical or factual analysis of who was there. Thousands of people were there. I think your points are very well taken. And I think that more generally that the interface that's happened in the last two days between the scholars, who after all are trained in the rigorous discipline of scholarship, and those of us who are practitioners, I think has been extremely helpful.

[20:38]

So, thanks. The model that we heard this morning that I thought was from Jeff, that was so interesting about counterculture, assimilation, and subculture. One thing that it doesn't take into account is what you're bringing up, which is the literature. That there's this huge literature that's thousands of years old with commentarial traditions in many languages that stands behind the whole of the proposition of Zen Center and the early people who were practicing Buddhism and so on. So in other words, that makes it different from the Shakers or other groups, the Brook Farm, who really had one idea, a charismatic figure.

[21:42]

There is that dimension to Zen and Zen Center. There's this whole other world, which means that even if Zen Center disappeared and the Zen movement in America disappeared, it would still be sort of latent and present in the literature, which is not going to go away and creates a kind of precondition and a background against which people's practice is constantly reflected. So it's now, I think, as I understand, kind of fashionable in religious studies to say, oh, yes, all the scriptures, but that's not what people are really doing. They're really doing this and that and the other thing. But in fact, the scriptures and the literature is a huge factor in its dynamic interplay with what people do on the ground in practice is what we're talking about. And in a way, our discussion has left all that literature part out, and you're bringing it in in a very provocative, kicking and screaming kind of way.

[22:45]

But I'm glad you did, because I think we've been missing that. I have one other thing I want to say about Victor's presentation. I found it kind of moving that you're studying us. and that you're tracking us, and you're bringing that all together. I felt, I don't know, I felt good about it. Thank you. I mean, that's the first time I've ever realized that, you know, in a scholarly world, somebody's actually making a study of all the stuff that happened, and who all the people are, and everything. I think that's, what do I want to say, kind of validating. I look forward to collaboration. Well, we'll see. Well, Robert. Thank you. When you speak about Suzuki Roshi, what I hear is the Robert Scharf fantasy about Suzuki Roshi, that you put together little pieces of this and that and shape into your

[23:51]

rejection of Zen practice in America in order to reinforce your idea. That's what I hear. So I would like to have more discussion with you because somehow I don't feel that, you know, given your idea, I mean, it doesn't correspond with the reality that all of us have been bringing to this particular conference. Let me just make sure that I'm not, we may be disagreeing, but I want to make sure that you understand what I'm saying. Suzuki Roshi came, he's bringing a practice to America. He is transmitting that practice to America. I'm in no way saying that there's, you know, that part isn't made up. What is left out of the picture is from a historian's point of view quite astounding, unprecedented. the kind of, and I'll use this provocatively, but I think it is accurate, the kind of illiteracy

[24:58]

that characterizes that early community. People who did not, had no familiarity with any of the primary documents that had for at least, just in the Chinese time, would have undergirded authority in that tradition. You could not have become, you could not have received Inca and been a master for much of Chinese and Japanese Zen history without a very thorough command over this material. Dogen was an exegete. That's what the Shōbō Genzo is. So all I'm saying is, take the polemics aside, there was absolutely the right time and place for that kind of simplification of the tradition. I'm now talking generation later. Will the tradition survive without those resources to help it continue to adapt? It's not to drop the practice, but to bring in all that other stuff. Two things I want to say. One is that that is happening.

[25:59]

Rest assured, that is happening. The other thing is that Suzuki Roshi, his teaching was so embedded in the tradition, in all the traditions you're talking about. When you read Suzuki Roshi's talks, you see, pay attention that the things that he's saying are embedded in the sutras, embedded in all the traditions, embedded in the Chinese understanding, embedded in the Indian understanding, and he's giving this to us as like baby food, so that we can digest it. But it's all there. I just want to... No, I appreciate it. I'm agreeing with you. He came out of that world. Thank you. He also sent us to the esteemed University of California to study Abhidharma with your predecessors. Lou Lancaster, Dr. Edward Kansa, these are the people he said, go study with these people. Actually, I wanted to agree with something he said, which was, which was about, hold it up.

[27:12]

Okay, so which is about... Okay, any more instructions before I say something? Okay, good. Okay, what? Outside now? Yeah, okay. I'm not going over the side. Okay, what I wanted to agree with you about is the tendency towards averting from conflict, which I'm happy to say we're not doing right now. that there's something about the belief in Buddhism as a make nice, and that when a conflict or something difficult arises, I think this is part of our culture that we're struggling with, it's very hard for people to engage in a way that they think is Buddhist. So I'm glad to see that you're getting some taste of that now, because you referred to it not being there, and it is definitely there at times. The other things I wanted to say about Suzuki Roshi And what we describe as his just being present is, as you say, effective medicine for that moment.

[28:22]

When one learns to do therapy, one learns many schools, you know, a Freudian school, a Jungian school, a Rogerian school, Karen Horney, any number of schools. And you have to forget all of it and walk in the room and deal with what's there. And I think that's what he did. And I think that's basically what you said, that it was a unique situation. And he brought all that he brought, but he dealt with the situation that was there, that what needed to be done. Victor? Am I on? Okay, I think Bob Scharf's argument goes like this. Suzuki Roshi found himself in San Francisco at a particular time in history in which he was surrounded by lots of people who projected upon him the status of guru, who projected upon him charisma. He in fact wasn't and couldn't. The reason why he wasn't and couldn't have charisma and true control of the situation is that he was Japanese working in an American environment.

[29:29]

Now this is contrasted with Kukai and Dogen who were Japanese working in a Japanese environment. They had studied the Chinese literature. They were in command of the textual tradition, but they weren't working in a foreign country. Now, in that case, they were able to deploy the full literary resources of the traditions that they were trying to import. And so they had true charisma. Sorry to use these words. Now, I think this is extremely interesting because Bob Scharf is a text scholar, and the textual tradition is important to his status as a text scholar. And so charisma is the proper manipulation of the textual tradition, of course, to someone who's got that kind of scholarly background. For someone who comes out of a different tradition, for example, practice, then what's important is not so much control of the literary tradition, but what is true practice.

[30:34]

Seems to me that one of the things that Suzuki Roshi did was even though he didn't import the textual tradition, he did import a practice, and that took hold. I say that because I come out of a practice tradition. And of course, my position on this is quite biased by the fact that I think even though it's necessary to study the text tradition, it's also essential to do the practice. Just to clarify, I'm not saying he didn't have charisma. I'm saying, and I was trying to play Suzuki Roshi and Dogen and Kukai and Honen and Shinran all in the same basket in terms that they were all responsible for transmitting Buddhism from one culture to another. But I was pointing out that it's different if you, it's the difference between Kumarajiva and one of Kumarajiva's disciples. It's, he did not, he could not, in some ways,

[31:43]

He understood the tradition, the Japanese tradition, probably better than Dogen understood the Chinese tradition. In terms of the source, he would have had much more control over it. In terms of the target audience, he would have had less control than Dogen, is what I'm arguing. But I'm in no way trying to argue that Suzuki Roshi was somehow less than. In fact, what I was trying to say is the fact that he's forced to make things up, There's a, everybody who finds themselves in this situation, Dogen had to make it up, Kukai had to make it up, they all have to somehow figure out how to manage this gap. One of the, part of your argument, I don't think it was centrally, it was a side issue, was the health and the importance of debate and polemic and all this. And I think an implied critique that we're lacking in that. So I mean, I appreciate that point, but at the same time, I also think that in the world that we're living in now, with all the diversity of religious opinion and the whole kind of way that religion is appearing now in our world cultures,

[32:56]

It's not a great time for religious polemic. I actually don't think that it's a good idea to talk the way maybe Dogen talked. This is the true way, this is the only true way, and you people ought to straighten out and get on board with my true way. I think that that, even if you felt that, it would not be skillful speech in this moment. in this moment. So I'm just distinguishing between, which I think you're calling for, you know, some knowledge of the tradition, some intellectual rigor and polemical debate and the kind of energetic, maybe very often as it is in Dogan, vituperative debate. I think it actually would be toxic at this point in our cultures for us to be waving those kind of banners. I think in fact what's called for While it may not, perhaps you would argue that it's not as intellectually rigorous, but in fact more of a kind of conversation in which we recognize the mutual validity and diversity of one another's religious perspectives.

[34:02]

I think socially right now, if we don't speak that way, we're really going to stir up a lot of, it's just going to be a bad result. It really is. Just to clarify, my image of debate is the kind of debate that goes on, theological debate, within the Catholic tradition, or within Christian denominations, or within the Jewish tradition, where you have people who are very well versed in the tradition having very serious arguments over issues that are germane. That's my image of it. And I can understand that. Well, first of all, I didn't know Suzuki Roshi, so I'll just start out by saying that. But I did index all of his lectures for a year. I was at San Francisco Zen Center for 20 years, and one of the years I was there, I indexed his lectures.

[35:02]

And one of the things that I ran across was he said in a lecture that he primed his lectures by reading the Shobo Genzo. which I thought was kind of interesting. So I had this notion that he might have been in his cabin and read a fascicle and then gone to the zendo and given a lecture. And subsequently what I found as in my own teaching and using Suzuki Roshi as a resource that some of his talks, I think, are direct commentaries on fascicles in the Shobo Genzo, but that he wasn't able to present the material that way, which is what I believe you're saying, and so he presented it in a different way that was more palatable to the students. Although Suzuki Roshi did teach the Lotus Sutra for a certain amount of time, he did teach the Blue Cliff Records, He did teach the Sando Kai. So I just think that that's, you know, just an interesting footnote. And the other thing personally for myself at San Francisco Zen Center, I think that there is a kind of study that is missing.

[36:10]

There isn't a kind of curriculum in which we can approach the the texts of Zen or Buddhism in a kind of systematic way and deeply understand them. And that includes Dogen. So I agree with you about that as well. And I think one can do that without turning it into an intellectual exercise that is counter to understanding practice. Thank you. I think Suzuki Roshi, I see it sort of like he had this amazing confidence. Like Michael Winger said once, he was like somebody who was just shooting arrows, like somewhere where he couldn't see, hoping they landed in the right place. And I think he'd be very happy that everybody was here. I think he'd be happy to hear what you had to say. He was very happy when Carl went to Japan to study.

[37:13]

I was studying Japanese and I was studying what he was talking on Sando Kai and the echoes and different things with him while he was doing it. But he wanted me to, he really was impressed with the Japanese I learned in Monterey. And he wanted me to go to Japan He wanted me to study two more years and then go to Japan and do this. I told him, no, I'm not going to do it. He was very interested in people, in seeing scholarship develop. You know, he encouraged people to study with Dr. Kanji or whatever. It's just he could only do so much. He was like, he was almost like somebody just throwing out some bird seed and hoping everybody else picked up the ball and did all the million things that need to be done to establish Buddhism. He was like, you know, they say it takes a village to raise a kid. He didn't have the village, you know? So it was just him, and he just figured something would happen in the future to make it work. And it's really up to us. It's our teaching. We can only look so much to the things he said.

[38:18]

And, you know, we've got to make Buddhism for ourselves. Anyway, you see where I'm at. That's it. I just want to agree with Robert Scharf about the importance of taking responsibility for our academic understanding of the teachings. And that to me, as someone who did not know Suzuki Roshi, but has received the responsibility of attempting to carry on his tradition, it is my responsibility to study hard and have access as much as I can of those resources so that I can integrate and give them. and also to, I hope, support others to intelligently investigate and deepen their ability to teach.

[39:22]

So thank you. Could I just quickly, just to clarify, I appreciate that. When I'm talking about literacy, I'm not talking about necessarily academics, like the stuff that scholars do. I'm talking, if you think about it in terms of the kind of training that if you are training for the religious ministry in a Jewish or a Catholic or some of the more traditional Protestant traditions, the sort of minimal requirements that you would have in terms of familiarity with scripture and commentary. And here I'm really going to make enemies. But I really think that a lot of the teachers today in your tradition and many of the Zen traditions suffer from a deep kind of insecurity because you don't have control over those resources and you know that they're there and that they would help you in the kind of work that you do. One of the reasons Sasaki Roshi doesn't have any disciples is he's, I think he's the only real Rinzai master on that list.

[40:26]

And to work through the koan system, you have to have that, that kind of training. And it's basically impossible. He's stuck because he doesn't have, he started the summer seminar on the sutras to try to as he himself said, make his students literate. And the students never took him seriously because they all knew that it's really about sitting. Bob, I'm getting the feeling that you are offering the Center for Buddhist Studies at Berkeley as a venue for the training of practitioners. And that you are thinking of setting up a summer school? Yeah, great idea. Good idea. In which practitioners could come and spend an intensive period of time studying the history and teachings of Buddhism? Is that? Yes. Maybe in conjunction with the new Robert Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford. We've got a deal going right here. This is really good. Because just to add that on a practical level, I mean, what you're saying could be entirely true.

[41:35]

But realizing, in other words, I'm sure that the average person, like myself, who is committed to this Zen tradition, would love to spend two, three years just practicing and then during the day not having a job but studying. But the thing about it is that this has not even been close to being possible. So in other words, we've done a lot of study. There's study centers and curricula and all this. But the truth of the matter is that the state of the movement at this moment is just economically, it's unfeasible. the average person who comes to practice, even people who've practiced many years, get ordained, become teachers, their whole life through don't have the luxury of that kind of study. So it is, it does become, it's not, and I think it's, I actually think it's not because people say, well, study's bullshit, we don't need to do that. I don't think that's the problem. The problem is, how can I do that with my livelihood and my family and trying to keep the practice going and going to Sishin and all this?

[42:36]

Give me the scholarship. I'll be there in a minute. I'll do that. I mean, I was lucky. I actually did have a scholarship and did study Buddhism. And that gave me this. In two years of my master's degree, I got this much learning. So I mean, if we all agree that we need this, and I think that we do need it, It's another matter, how are we going to get it? It's not for lack of wanting it, it's really where's the wherewithal going to come from? And when you guys do set up that special seminar for Zen practitioners, I'm afraid that it won't do any good to set it up without significant scholarship money, because not only are you going to have to cover the tuition of most of the people who are going to come, but you're also going to have to cover to some extent, their livelihood and give them stipends because they're not going to be able to afford to study because they have lives to support outside of it. So this is the real problem, I think. I'd like to say a few words.

[43:39]

If I may, I'd speak as a friendly outsider. And thank you all for a very fascinating day today. It's been illuminating in many unexpected ways. Bob raised a question, which is the question of this panel, which is, what is the future? What is the future of Zen Center? All this talk becomes moot if you don't have successors. I'm not talking about transmission, I'm talking about students. One of the threads of discussion today, and I hear it was also yesterday, is the issue of younger people, that is, in their 20s, who feel that what is spoken is not received by them, or what they speak is not heard by others. That is, there's no opening for them. So all of this conversation is wonderful, but if you have no successors, you have no future.

[44:41]

Your future is a memory. So therefore, I pose a question to you up here and you, And maybe the question is a koan because I don't know that you can answer it. And that is, what is your strategy for taking that which you consider so valuable that you've dedicated your lives to it? What is your strategy for speaking to the next generation? And I'm not saying if you're 60 or 70, the next generation is 40. I'm talking about those lively people who are inheriting everything we've done. in their teens, in their 20s, the early 30s, but really in the 20s. What's your strategy? I somewhat hear what you're saying, Norman, but when I first started coming to the Zen Center, I had two children and was working on a PhD. Granted, I didn't have to provide for my livelihood, but I was coming from one rigor looking for rigor.

[45:48]

And I think there is a tendency. in the last few years to try to elevate Suzuki Roshi to a status that I appreciate you put him, which I think he would have been, from what my understanding of what his essence comes through to me, he would have been somewhat embarrassed by. Rather than looking forward, there has been a tendency to look back and to be real clear about the fact that there are people who will seek rigor, both intellectually and in the practice, and to not carry forward what I think, during the founding of Zen Center, was somewhat of an anti-intellectualism. It went somewhat through the women's movement, when theology was watered down because it was a male model, and the rigor got lost, and therefore a lot of early feminist theology from its beginnings began to water down into just rituals of gathering together.

[46:54]

And I think what I hear you saying, Robert, is somewhat of a call to us who are attached to the practice but have not had access to the rigor. And that the rigor can occur without it being polemic in the sense of setting up a canon, which you then have to defend in a fundamentalist sense. But I do think there is a sense which there needs to be a sense of accepting the fact that when you take this on as a practice, that it also has to have a rigor that goes with it. Because otherwise, you're not keeping body, mind, and spirit together. And I really value the rigor I had in a rhetorical PhD. And no one has demanded that of me in my sense of my commitment and passion for what silence of the practice and its tradition brings to bear.

[47:59]

And I think that that sense of rigor in moving and putting Suzuki Roshi in a place that allows us to keep him human and gifted and skilled, but does not make his particular teachings the ultimate rigor. Thank you, Beckley. Before we go further, I would like to respond directly to the previous gentleman, if I may. You asked a very good question. How many of you were not here yesterday at Page Street? Quite a few. I want to tell you what happened toward the end. A woman, not so young, but younger than us, stood up and said, why aren't there any younger people here? Where are they? Nobody had an answer. Because there are a significant number of young people in Zen Center. Many of them are at Green Gulch at the farm working hard and they couldn't, I guess, take time off.

[49:02]

Let me answer your question as I understand it. Everybody in the Buddhist world is asking that question. Anybody who's thinking. All my colleagues in the Buddhist or whatever tradition are saying, how are we going to reach the young people? Nobody has a strategy yet. But you just suggested one and I'd like to echo it back to you. and I'd like everybody in the room to hear me echo it back to you, including some of the young people who are in the room, is we could start by listening to what they have to say. That would be a strategy, rather than telling them what we know. So that's one response that I can make. I think your question contained the seeds of an answer. I will say that up at Spirit Rock, I happen to know that their teacher training program, and maybe Gil could speak to this, includes several people in their 20s. And because the selection process there is rather singular,

[50:07]

if I may say put it that way, regardless of what people thought about that, it was done. And there are people there who are training to be Buddhist teachers who are in their 20s. I thought that was pretty gutsy. So they have a strategy. But most of the Buddhist teachers who are in their 50s and 60s, in my view, do not have a strategy. You suggested one. I think that's a good strategy. I encourage the people who have some say about the strategy for the San Francisco Zen Center to heed your words. Thank you, Jeremy, a young person at Zen Center. But he came, and he's training to be a Zen teacher. So we are totally aware of this. And actually, because of the great benefit of the Farm Apprentice Program and the summer at Tassajara,

[51:14]

We actually have many more young people involved in, let's say, Zen center and Zen practice than some of the other more graying Zen groups. And that's just great circumstances that draw people, not necessarily for Zen, but through other doorways, ecology and something fun to do for the summer or whatever. And then many of them get hooked on the practice and stay and then train to be Zen teachers, which is a long process. a five-year process. We have recently done this very long process of asking ourselves all these questions and coming up with a very business-like thing called a strategic plan. And in there are various strategies about how to find out what younger people want. And it's not only listening, it's asking. So we're in an active process of having groups of people, calling them together, finding out what it is that people want. How do they want to be spoken to? What offerings will they respond to?

[52:17]

So we have an active, active process that it's just beginning. It's a little late coming. But if there are any young people here who have something to say to me later, not in the middle of this, please come and talk to me. And I will take that into account. And I'm in a position to get that information to somewhere where something can actually happen. I know her. We know each other. We've talked. We have lots of conversations. Susan and I, she's one of the first people I had practice discussion with. It was wonderful. So I'm 27. Here's my main issue. I'm a Johns Hopkins nursing alumni. which is the number one school in the country. I don't have a job.

[53:18]

I really want to practice. I live in a tent in my mom's backyard. There are a lot of things I can do. I want a job. I want to work at Zen Center and I want to practice and sit Zazen as much as possible. Like Miyoki said at our last residence meeting, one before last, which Curtis mentioned, that comment, we have a lot of skills. And I think young people first in this world come from a point of ego, which is rooted in their delusion and our consumer world. So they want to be appealed to on that level first. Said, hey, I recognize where you're at and what you're doing and what you have to offer. And I'm going to come at you from that point of view first. But then, because it really is about the Four Noble Truths, gradually with practice, with sitting, you will see that perhaps you don't need to fit into a mental construct of yourself and what you have to offer.

[54:27]

And maybe as a nurse, what I really want is to work on the Prison Liberation Project. And I've been inspired by sitting at San Quentin. And maybe I want to do something different. And I discovered that in my sitting. So perhaps that's a good approach. Put me to use. And then the wisdom of practice will come into being, because it does. And I really appreciate being around those significantly older than myself. I do. And there are a lot of people that I would love to ask in the future, hey, will you be my teacher? But I don't know if they'll be around for my whole process. That's sad for me in a different respect. Wow, you're already 65, 70, 80. What will I do? You mean I need to find a younger teacher? Someone in their 50s? So, you know, it comes from both ends.

[55:28]

It really does. Yeah, I want to sit. And I, intellectualism, you know, I read more than I should, I think. I don't want to get caught up. I love Dogen. I don't want to get caught up in Dogen. It's best for me to just go sit on my Zafu. So, anyone else? Curtis has got a lot of great ideas, and McNeil. We were all talking about this at lunchtime when all the senior folks went and had lunch at the hotel. And being poor Zen students, none of us had any money. And we thought, like yesterday, that we might have lunch, but we didn't have any lunch. So we shared $5 and went down the street to the grocery store and had a great time talking about practice. And that's, I think, practice. Thanks. He's got the mic. I think Jeff pointed at something important this morning, this idea of wanting to have it all.

[56:38]

And we can't have it all. So I just raised the question, how about sacrifice and priorities? And what is most important? And monastic life has been the traditional container for passing on that tradition. And who's going to make the sacrifice of living monastic life? Because you can't have it all and still pass on that tradition. So it's not really a question, but that matter of sacrifice, I think it's an important thing for us to reflect on. And for youth, you cannot have it all. I think Sojin wanted to speak. Get the mic so you're on tape. You're speaking for the ages here. It's my understanding that the reason young people are not here is because they were not invited.

[57:58]

People asked me, well, where's the advertisement for this? And I said, I don't know. Let's ask them. And somebody said, well, we've asked them. You have to ask if you can come. So nobody knew that, of course. So if there's no invitation, how do we expect people to be here? I know that it's limited. I understand that. But still, it's a question. Is that the case that the audience is by invitation? So maybe it's a matter of poor advertising rather than invitation. Thirsty.

[59:03]

I think there is a conflict in terms of having people be free and available to come. I know I'm concerned myself with, I mentioned it yesterday, that many of the people at Green Gulch who I thought would be here are for busy working and we're not able to get free. And then I talked to some people yesterday at the city center and they actually worked to support the event yesterday. So these are, in many cases, yeah, they're the newer, younger people at Zen Center, and we're helping to support the event and not able to attend and come today and tonight. We have another event at CENT Center, and there are people who are working there to support that event. So I think part of it is that, the way we are structured, and I think that's something we need to take a look at. Because I'd like to see, in the future, events like this with a different demographic presentation. And I'm looking at, okay, as Abbott, how to do that. It's not so clear to me.

[60:14]

And so I'm open to support and suggestions for how we can do that. Also, I'm interested in, you know, how we publicize it in a way that does have an appeal, that it may suggest that the kind of questions that people have when they're in their 20s or even their teens, that those kind of questions and those kind of issues are what this is also about. And so I think we have some work to do there and look at how we present that. And then there is also, there was a limit. There were a number of people that were invited because we wanted to be sure that they had a chance to attend. And some of those are people who are here. And then we also had, well, we only have a room that's going to hold 100 people. And so we did, we had to limit it in that way. So those are all things that I'm interested in addressing as we go forward. But I'm feeling that

[61:16]

This is something that's really worth doing just to generate this kind of dialogue and conversation. And I'm hoping that we can do it. The Zen Center can team up again with academic institutions. I really feel that the interplay is very rich and helpful. So that's maybe enough on that at the moment. I'd just like to make a very brief point about young people. Lots of young people are at colleges and universities, like here, like where Wendy teaches. That's a clue. Where's the mic? Oh, it's right here. You're going to have to come a long way. Now I have to do it by mic.

[62:23]

I thought the person I wanted to talk to could hear me without the mic. But anyway, as the youngest of the group of presenters, Jeff Wilson, who was a contributor to Sumi London, did a couple of volumes about younger generation Buddhists, Blue Jean Buddha, and then there was a second volume, I forget, what was the title? Buddha's Apprentices. And Jeff is a contributor to one of those volumes as well as one of the presenters here. And I just was wondering, Now that I have totally put you on the spot, if you have any thoughts about the question and this discussion that's been going on just now as one of the younger generation, but it's officially so because you're in that volume. Okay, yes, thank you for putting me on the spot. Richard was co-advisor of my dissertation, so he has every right to call me out in that way. It's sort of a permanent privilege that he has, so I must respond, therefore.

[63:24]

Yeah, it's funny. I am certainly the youngest of the invited speakers, I think, by a generation. I'm someone who was born Many years after Suzuki Roshi had already passed away, I was born after the end of the Vietnam War, which I know is a very important cultural event for many people in the room, but for me is as much ancient history as the Revolutionary War. Suzuki Roshi. I must admit, it's sort of like the statue on the second floor in the great book that we've all read. He's a historical figure for me in the way that Abraham Lincoln is, someone who I respect but don't pretend to really know. And so it's actually quite valuable for me to come here and rub shoulders with people who really knew such an important figure. I wish that I had good prescriptions for what ought to be done, but really I think that a lot more discussion is frankly the main thing that's required.

[64:25]

For one thing, there's no such thing as a typical young person. One reason why I can't provide good answers, I could only speak for myself, and the answers I would give are not necessarily the same ones that even just a small number of other younger people here might give. Really we need a chorus, not a chorus, actually we need a cacophony, not people speaking with one voice but with many different voices. Because if you want to get them in, it's actually going to take many multiple different strategies to hit those different types of young people and get enough of a critical mass to move Zen on to the next generation. So there are some people, as we've learned today, who really just want to sit. I can tell you there are some people who really want to do online jukai also, because I'm not personally involved in that community, but I subscribed to that blog and I watched that ceremony as part of my research, and I know that many of the people involved in that are younger. And as I talk to the younger people who do exist, to some extent, I find that they don't actually share all that much.

[65:29]

In fact, they seem to share less than that first generation of converts did. Granted, we've also heard that not all of them were hippies, as it turns out. or stoners. But nonetheless, I think there's a broad truth to there being a real particular general demographic to the people who came in. I don't think that's true now. Zen, because it's a subculture, no longer sort of a generational counterculture, but it's diversified in some of the ways I talked about before. means that it has the potential to reach many other different people who are younger, some of whom may want to be scholars like myself, some of whom may really just want to sit, and that's what's best for their situation. And there's many other possibilities that haven't even come up here. So I would say that really what has to be done is there has to be an awful lot more discussion, and there has to be many multiple competing different approaches tried simultaneously to find out which ones are actually going to work. ultimately it mainly comes down to intentionality.

[66:32]

It's not that it's impossible to bring people in, but it's an enormously hard thing to do, and as we get older we often feel that we have legitimately struggled and maybe get to rest, and that maybe decreases our willingness to go out and bring the message out there. But the truth is that Buddhism is actually the world's very first missionary religion and has succeeded through a very forthright proselytization. I know that may be a bad word and it's in circles in the US, but that's the truth of the history is that this is a missionary religion that went out and brought people in and kept bringing them in and kept working at it. And that's why it's still here for us to discuss today. So if there is a spirit to go out and bring those people in, there will be ways to be found to do that. I'll just say one last thing, which is not quite connected, but having the mic, I have the power. So power to me, as it turns out today. I have to admit that there's something very particular to the vocabulary of this Zen community, or at least to Zen in America.

[67:37]

And that's this idea of the practice and how people were trying to pit the practice against, for instance, Bob Scharf's talk about mastery of the Buddhist canonical literature. This is not the way that this has ever been framed previously. I think that it's certainly true that for people in the Buddhist tradition historically, so let's back it up, starting more than 50 years ago, mainly in Asia, of course, And including the Zen tradition, but other traditions as well, to practice was to do Buddhist activities. And therefore, to study and master the canonical literature was to practice. And to do zazen and the many, many other types of Buddhist meditation was to practice. To follow the precepts diligently was to practice. And indeed, this is something Dogen truly stressed. He really was a hardliner on the precepts, on the value of the kesa, the robe, and these sort of things. that those things are practice too. And if we think that the practice is only sitting, I'm not trying to pretend it's not a good practice and not an important one, but if we locate that as being really the only core or the only legitimate at the end of the day Buddhist activity, we are depriving ourselves of an immense richness and potentiality that exists in the historical Buddhist tradition.

[68:56]

And there's many resources in there that could be brought forward to meet some of those many different demographics of younger people and just other people in general. So I just want to point out something that's so interesting to me, the idea that the practice is a singular practice rather than that practice is intentional Buddhist activity of all sorts. That is something that has no historical place in the Buddhist tradition. before it arrives here in America. And it's worth just reflecting on that, perhaps. OK, I'm going to shut up. Well, maybe a little bit following along, Jeff. I didn't know until this last minute, because I could relate to Sumi London a little bit, also relating to your practice. as a singular practice or practice as a way of life. So I don't know why Sumi Landa never emailed me, say, hey, won't you contribute an article to my next book?

[69:59]

I've known her many years. And she chaired the Harvard Buddhist community, I think, in 2006. one or two, and I chaired Harvard Buddhist community in 2004, and we have been connected. So ask her next time if she wants to. Along the second, maybe I should say, Zen and Buddhism, and then practice as a singular practice or as a practice in general. Coming from the Chinese tradition, and I am Chinese, But I've been in this country for eight years. I never knew until I came to America that Zen is Zen, or Chan is Chan, and Buddhism is Buddhism. You know, before I came here to America, Chan or Zen is part of Buddhism. It's not a separate school or separate religion, separate from Buddhism. Zen comes under the umbrella of Buddhism.

[71:04]

And as everybody, maybe many people know here, in China, there are traditionally eight schools of Buddhism. And Zen is only one of them. We call Chan is one of them. And yes, under this umbrella, Zen practice is Buddhist practice. And at least, I hope I can very briefly refer to the American way later on. But just a little bit, my sharing. I still think, personally, I call myself a practitioner, also a scholar in the shaping, hopefully. I'm pursuing my PhD right now. I hear people say, I just need to practice, and I don't have to read anymore. Or I hear a lot of people, I live in a Zen center also, San Francisco Zen Center for over a year. I heard similar talks, opinions, from the folks in the Zen Center as I heard from the folks in China, my root monastery, Bailing Chansi.

[72:11]

where like in 8th century, Joshu, Zhao Zhuochang lived. That is my root monastery. But basically I heard them say the same thing, basically. You know, just don't bother about intellectualization or doctrinization or I say historical investment. Just sit and practice. So I can buy that being a practitioner. But having gone through my own way, I always think reading, either before you are a good practitioner or after you think you are a practitioner, reading never bothers to be a burden. Reading to me is always a plus. Reading, either you're reading, I mean, at least like Bob is advocating, the minimum knowledge of the basic doctrines, of the basic, you know, sutras or teachings, to me has always been a enriching element. I've been sitting for 20 years, every day I sit still, but it's never a burden, it's always a pleasure.

[73:20]

And I always find something helpful. either for my practice or my precise understanding. But the next question, I mean, in connection to this is, I have to ask, I have been asking people many times in China, in America as well, can we or can people sit together some, I think it's going to take some time. What is a canon? OK, let's say I can maybe persuade one person, one monk, my fellow Buddhist brother, who is now at the abbot of the Joshua Monastery. I can persuade him. Let's do some basic Zen course in the monastery, in the Buddhist seminary, where I also was invited to teach one time to give a talk. The question is, can we possibly have a sort of equivalent of the Christian canon.

[74:22]

Or are we going to ask the Zen teachers or the practitioners to go through 100 volumes of the Taisho? And there's not a new volume, a Taisho continuum, another 100 volumes. Each volume is an equivalent of the Britannica. So containing, the Tai issue has up to 2,100 texts. So is that one? possible way to narrow down and down and down, and that's another my concern. I totally go for the balance of practice and study. Either you study for practice or study for criticism, and I believe criticism sometimes is very necessary because you have to choose between several different versions of the platform structure. I would like to read a more original one. How do I know? I have to do some research.

[75:23]

Okay, I have to stop here. I wish I could speak more, but this is my thoughts. Thank you very much. I've been warned that the institution wants us to end as close to 4.30 as possible. That's now. And I have another note from the institution. If anyone can stay for just a minute and help stack chairs, since there aren't hired employees here to do it, that would be very helpful. Part of your Zen practice.

[76:01]

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