I vow to taste the truth about the Dharma's words. Good evening everyone. I just wanted to welcome Steve Stuckey who's a near neighbor of ours in San Mateo. He has the Dharma Aizen Center there and he was the first farmer at Greenwich Farm when this became a farm in the early days so he may share some of those stories as well as give us a talk tonight. Thank you Steve. Thank you Fu. Well are there any questions? Yes. What do you remember most about being on the farm? I don't know about most. I just had about 15 images just flash through my head.

[01:09]

One of them actually was my knees hitting the floor bowing in the zendo. You see the floor boards in the zendo used to be uneven about some of them were an inch higher than the next board. So particularly on cold mornings bowing and it was always that just that you know it was hard to avoid a moment of hesitation or anticipation because you didn't know if your knee was going to hit right on the edge. That's wonderful, wonderful. But the farm, I did kind of get set myself up. Aizen Center acquired

[02:18]

Green Gulch in the spring of 1972 and I was living at Page Street actually. No, I wasn't living at Page Street. I was living at 191 H Street. But we would come out on weekends and start working on the place before even before people from Aizen Center actually moved here. And I remember talking to Dan Welch and he said, how do you like the farm? I said, well it isn't a farm. He said, what do you mean? I said, well there are no farmers. So then a few months later they asked me to be a farmer. And I actually asked me to start in an organic vegetable farm which I knew nothing about.

[03:25]

I did know something about agriculture. I knew something about growing wheat. I grew up in Kansas and my family historically had been farmers for many generations. And I'd had a little vegetable garden, but I knew nothing about growing vegetables under these conditions. Where's the sun kind of climate? So I remember experimentation and the first year we just planted all kinds of seeds. First we had to tear up some grass. It was a big decision actually. It was a bit painful recognizing that we were destroying the homes of many mice and birds and insects. And

[04:31]

then we had to fence out the deer and we had to deal with gophers. And so it was actually a recognition of our interconnection with the natural world for us to support ourselves and for us to have lunch. And we actually worked through a lot of those decisions. I'm sure you're still working through those decisions again and again. We wanted to have minimal impact and at the same time we wanted to be somewhat successful, not make a total mess of things. And we even had ideas that we would produce enough that we would be an economically viable enterprise.

[05:35]

And as we've learned, that's a lot of work. And there are the vicissitudes of the weather. When has been the latest freeze lately? In the spring? Yeah. Because we had a freeze one year in the middle of May, which froze the potatoes right down to the ground. The gardener knows, right? Or the farmer knows. You're called the farmer? Okay, one of the farmers. How many farmers are there here? Are there any farmers here? Look, half a dozen at least. Yeah. So I guess it's legitimately a farm.

[06:39]

But there's also the tension over the years between the monastic schedule and monastic style practice and the demands of the irregular schedule and the always changing schedule of the seasons. And so, of course, you know, there are certain times of the year it's okay if you miss a few days of going down to the fields. And then other times of the year, if you miss a few days, you've lost the whole season. So that doesn't always translate so smoothly into following the schedule that's set up. So I remember some ongoing debates, you know, how to work that out. So anything else? Yes?

[07:45]

Is it right if you were going with horses? We tried that, yeah. And I thought, actually, I was an advocate of doing farming with horses as a way of minimizing our fossil fuel demand and having a more integrated kind of agriculture. But we did get a few great photographs. Is one of those draft horses still alive up in Kogelhof? Oh, is that right? I don't know. He said that a couple of years ago. All the horses were up at Stephen, Gloria, Dick Haverson. Snip and Jerry and Maude were the main team. But, you know, horse culture, it's difficult to learn.

[08:57]

It's good if you start learning it when you're young, when you're a child, then it's kind of like learning a language. And it was difficult for people who are 30, 25 years old or so to come down and start trying to deal with this animal. And so we had very few Zen students who'd had a background with horses. And I'd had a little bit, but I hadn't never done field work with horses. And I remembered working with the team with my grandfather when I was a little tiny kid, but that didn't help a whole lot. So we had to kind of learn everything and then, and you know how we rotate positions. So somebody would just begin to learn how to handle the horses and then they'd go off to Tassajaran and somebody else would come in. And the other thing is working with a live animal, the live animal has always got its own program going, right?

[10:09]

The horse actually thinks, you know, it's got its life to lead and what are you doing there, right? So it's a little different, you know, and you have to take that into account. And so there's an unpredictability that you don't have with a tractor. I know people may feel that the tractor is kind of like a beast and it's, you know, it'll do everything wrong at the wrong time. The most inconvenient time, something will break, right? But with horses, it's more of a continuous issue. So sometimes just getting the horses from the pasture into, you know, groomed and fed and put the harness on and getting the harness on and the horses would rather not have the harness on.

[11:13]

You know, so you need to handle these big animals. And so by the time you do that, half the day is gone. Then it's time for break or tea. But there are other issues with, we also tried chickens and ducks and we had a dairy cow for a while. And now you have no livestock here, right? No animals. Well, cats you don't even try to control. But no, it just proved to be too difficult for people to learn how to take care of the animal. And we made mistakes that were actually detrimental to the animals, I think. We could never get the chicken coop closed consistently at desk before the raccoons. I mean, sometimes we

[12:15]

did, but then the raccoons checked every night. And if the person who was supposed to, you know, we had elaborate schedules. And the person, oh, I'm closing the chickens tonight. And you go down there and it's too late. The raccoons have already been pulling them off the roost. And it's a bloody scene. So, we did learn from those things. And in a way, it's a, it's sobering to know that, you know, what your limitations are. And it's good to know what your limitations are. And also it's good to experiment from time to time and see if, you know, there may be something new that can reasonably be attempted. Yeah. I wanted to know what some of the craziest vegetables that you grew were. Craziest? Yeah, like wackiest vegetables. What? Wackiest. Wacky. Oh, yeah.

[13:24]

Wacky vegetables. You know, vegetables are all just very ordinary. You know, I always liked kohlrabi myself. Has anyone grown any kohlrabi recently? Probably not. They look kind of like some alien plant, you know. People know what kohlrabi look like? No. A few people know. Yeah, yeah. It's a, I don't know, it's kind of like a turnip above ground. It's a brassica. It's one of, it's a crucifer. It's a, but it forms a kind of a knob that's almost like an apple. You can eat, eat it above ground. Just slice it and eat it real crunchy. I know the kitchen got very sick of rutabagas. How are you doing with rutabagas these days?

[14:25]

You grow a lot of them? They were a great success. I grew lots of rutabagas. You can be successful with rutabagas. How about those enormous cabbages? Yeah, how about them? At home? Oh yeah. We had these, we had big cabbages, yeah. And then, but then people got tired of, you know, cleaning and the cabbages, peeling off all those leaves. And rutabagas, you know, they're really kind of a gnarly root. And so the gardeners, the farmers would haul in a pickup truckload of rutabagas behind the kitchen. We were so proud of ourselves. The kitchen was going, no, no, we need more help because every crack and crevice in the rutabaga has to be brushed and cleaned. And it's just, you know, it's just, yeah. So anyway,

[15:27]

I don't know if those were wacky or not. I know the, uh, you grew up. French fried rutabagas with ketchup. They're delicious. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of things you can do with rutabagas. Yeah. Rutabaga pie. Yeah. So actually I thought I would talk about the composting among other things, but, uh, and, uh, actually I also thought I might just talk about what I'm doing these days. Um, I'm kind of mingle composting in there, I think. What, uh, so one way to do that is to, uh, well, just briefly say what's my current connection with Zen Center is, uh,

[16:32]

uh, I lived here. I mentioned in 72, we started coming out and I moved here actually in the fall of 72 and we started the farm part in 73. Had a big flood right out, right off the bat. We actually had, here's another Zendo memory going in the middle of the night, opening the doors and seeing we had, we had over this irregular floor, we had little Gozo mats. We didn't have tatamis, we didn't have tongs, we just had these little grass mats, right? And I looked in the Zendo, couldn't quite see, and I got a flashlight and I shined in there. Little Gozo mats are kind of floating. Zofus, Bobby. There was water that had come down this, this, uh, the, the creek back up here had gotten blocked. Water came over the bank, streamed down and there was a big door on this side of the Zendo and it just came running right down and through the door into the Zendo

[17:35]

and it actually flooded maybe, you know, just six, eight inches deep and then it was dripping down to the floorboards below. But, um, so that was winter 73. Got off to a great start and, um, and then I was here for most of the 70s. Zatasara for a little bit, mostly in charge of the farm, did a stint as director, which was kind of doubly difficult because we didn't really have anyone who quite could take over the farm part. So, um, got married here, had a daughter Hannah here and, um, adopted a son James here. And, uh, so another, another theme that was difficult was we, we had the idea that we could have families, uh, practicing here, but it was very difficult to support family at that time. So one of the reasons I moved was, uh, was financial reasons,

[18:36]

but really after being, being here most of the 70s, I thought I'd, I had pretty much, uh, done. The Zen practice in a structured setting that I needed to do. Richard Baker, Roshi didn't think that, he thought I could do more. So we had our arguments about that, but it, but, uh, I thought it was good to actually to move out after a while and see, see what happened. And, uh, I think that was a good thing to do. So, um, then I just moved over the hill into Mill Valley and, uh, lived in Mill Valley for some years, uh, worked as a carpenter, fell off a house, broke my back, recuperated from that. And, uh, then I got this idea that I could do kind of combine horticulture and construction that I knew how to do. Thought of going back to school. I did go back to school

[19:39]

actually, but, uh, it ended up starting a landscape business. And so for the past, since 83, I've had my own business. I worked with other people for a few years and learned a lot from them. And, uh, so now I, um, I design and create gardens. And some people think I do Japanese gardens, but, uh, I don't think it's possible to do Japanese gardens in America, but, uh, but I do think it's possible to do Zen gardens. And, uh, I don't think that, uh, even though the word Zen is Japanese, its essential meaning is not, uh, you know, uh, bounded by any particular culture. So, uh, but I do gardens according to the situation, the client, the land, and, uh, the budget.

[20:44]

And, uh, most of it, most of it in Marin. Some, I did, uh, work with, uh, Michael Stesser doing the garden up at Osmosis. Some of you may have seen that in Sonoma County and, uh, some in San Francisco and some of the East Bay, but mostly Marin. And, uh, what else happened? I divorced, remarried. Lane Olson is my spouse. And, uh, some of you know she, uh, uh, advises, uh, academic advising at Dominican College, now called Dominican University in San Rafael. And she also teaches courses particularly having to do with the divine feminine, um, images of, uh, goddesses historically and their meaning and so forth. Uh, so that's kind of her, her track. And then, uh,

[21:50]

uh, I have another daughter, adopted daughter, Robin Clymer. Some of you know Robin. And, uh, her mother was a student here at Zen Center and she died of cancer. And Robin went through a rather difficult time and, uh, ended up moving into our house. And, and, uh, so, uh, she's doing quite well, I think. She was just actually went down to Tassajara last week and last two weeks. She became a cosmetologist. And, uh, so yesterday, uh, Robin called up and said, do you think it's okay for me to color part of my hair pink? Yeah, because we're planning this trip back to see my parents, my father's, to the old, to the old Mennonite enclave in Kansas, right? And, uh, my father's had some heart trouble. So I said, sure, fine.

[23:03]

Do you think people have a problem with it? I said, if they do, that's their problem. Then she talked to Lane. Lane said, no way. It's completely inappropriate for you going to Kansas with pink hair. So what do I know? I do know that hair is very important. Yeah, we do make a big deal out of it. But, uh, it's amazing, isn't it, the impact of hair. It's been going on for a long time, long time,

[24:08]

even before the musical. Yeah, where in Kansas? Newton, Newton, Kansas. Do you know Kansas? I'm from Independence, Missouri. It's not far. Newton's about 20 miles north of Wichita. Most people kind of have an idea where Wichita is. Californians don't have an idea where Ohio is. People in Ohio think it's the Midwest. People in Kansas think it's the Midwest. When I went to Ohio, people said, you're from out west, Kansas. So we do still have these regional kind of, I think, affinities, some ideas which may or may not be relevant. But we live in a world in which everything we do impacts everything in the whole

[25:15]

planet. Now it's pretty clear that as a species we have a huge impact, which is impossible for us to understand, I think. Because the more we, even though we're monitoring more and more and more of the impact we have, by the time we collect that data and organize it in some way and feed it back to ourselves, things have changed. And it's really not possible to see how it's going to turn out. So I make an effort to be conscious of that and I think that the small things that we do, do obviously add up, have an accumulated impact, whether they are positive or negative.

[26:24]

And so I've been teaching people composting for, actually from 191 Haight Street, do you remember, Maya? I was teaching people to sort out the difference between organic and inorganic stuff. It was amazing to me that it wasn't obvious. But if you don't grow up with some real connection with the land, it's not obvious. What's the difference between onion skins and styrofoam? I should emphasize that. And one of the best things I think we used to do here with the farm was

[27:25]

have groups of school kids come out. I assume that still happens from time to time, right? And it was amazing to me to see the reactions of kids who had, their only experience of a potato had been french fries, right? And maybe they had some vague idea of what the shape of a potato was before it became french fries. But to see digging in the dirt, and some kids were kind of put off by that, yeah, digging in the dirt, right? And then these potatoes emerge. Some kids still recoiled, they didn't even want to touch the potatoes, and other kids were just marveling at these treasures that were popping up out of the ground. It never occurred to them before that some potatoes come out of the ground. That's essential education. And I think taking care of the planet in our practice, we need to, every day, continue to teach that to children, and to ourselves, and to adults who missed that part.

[28:44]

And people come up to me and they ask me about composting. I've got a little compost, I've always had compost. I feel that the least I can do is to do the least I can do, right? And the least I can do in terms of compost, wherever I've been, I've always been able to at least sort out the organic and the inorganic, and put the organic someplace where it will do, where it will actually turn into soil, right? And even with an apple core, when you eat an apple, what do you do with the apple core? You know, you throw it in with the plastic bags, and it really isn't styrofoam, you know? And it's real easy, I mean, you can toss it up here on the hillside, and it'll become soil, or possibly even an apple tree. But that little bit of consciousness, you know, multiplied by six billion people on the planet,

[29:51]

makes a huge difference. So if you're aware that we're losing topsoil, if you can make a teaspoon full of topsoil in the course of a month, or a year, or a day, you're at least countering a little bit of the massive tendency we have to thoughtlessly, you know, stir up the soil and let it wash into the Mississippi River. Or down to Muir Beach. One thing I think is great about Green Gulch is that it is a contained watershed. This, you can really see the potential and the limits of this one valley, right? And you know, when the water supply is short, when the spring starts to dry up,

[30:52]

or the reservoirs get low, and so you're much more conscious of it here than most people are. So I think that's very healthy. A lot of people, you've read Cadillac Desert? People have read Cadillac Desert? No? Yes. If you have a chance, read Cadillac Desert. It's really a great, well, very powerfully written history of water in the west of the United States, and how we've used and misused, and how much it's become a political issue. And it will continue to be a big political issue. So actually, what you can observe right here in Green Gulch Valley, when you go out into the rest of the world, you really can have a very clear understanding of the importance of water, and the limits in what we may call a carrying capacity. The land can carry so much. So composting, in a literal sense, I think is really important.

[32:00]

It is an expression of our taking care of the earth itself. Now one day, I was walking right over there, down from around the shop, and Perry Roberts was sitting here in his yellow Ford pickup truck, and people know about Harry? Some people, yeah. Harry called to me and motioned for me to come over. I came over, and he said, why are you walking around like that? He said, like what? He said, like you're angry at your mother. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, you're just kind of stomping on the ground. You're not really walking with any care, you know. And

[33:08]

it kind of took me aback, you know, and I started paying more attention just to how I walk. Harry was one of my teachers. He was trained in the Yurok shaman tradition and had taught a notion of what he called walking in beauty. Walking in beauty is actually paying close attention as you move down the path, whatever the path is. It's taking care of the path actually as you walk it. And if you're in a natural environment, it's quite tangible, that feeling of just how you place your foot, and you're aware of, you know, what's underfoot, and you know that each step has a little impact. And so you're actually participating

[34:12]

with the path as you walk it. When you're driving down a highway, it's not as easy to have that actual experience. But still, I think it can be translated, you know, driving in beauty. So I used to teach a workshop called Just Driving, and one of the practices was to say, I take good care of myself. It's actually based on a Kayo Indian prayer. I take good care of myself. And that may mean you just straighten up a little bit. How are you sitting? In the driver's seat. And I take good care of the car, which is, you know, this vehicle.

[35:14]

Sometimes it's a car. Sometimes it's the dharma. I take good care of it. The car is the dharma for that driving experience. I take good care of the road. So that's like paying attention to how you put your feet on the path, is paying attention to how the rover meets the road. And actually, having awareness of your place on the road, it's a big help, actually, in driving safely. You may be more sensitive to the changing conditions. It's not always a freeway. It's not always dry pavement. And then I take care of all drivers. If you say to yourself, I take care of all drivers as you're driving,

[36:19]

you may actually feel some connection with other people that before were in your way. And, you know, the people that cut in front of you or don't let you in. But you can take care of them too. And you actually realize that this is a community. There's a lot of trust involved in how we share the path. And then I also say, I take care of all beings along the way, which is, of course, our bodhisattva practice. So when Harry pointed out to me how I was walking there, he was actually also noticing that I was angry, which I wasn't noticing. I wasn't noticing that I was angry. And it's partly that I was raised in a family in which the only person who got to be angry was my

[37:26]

little brother. He got to be angry. I was a little jealous, you know, but I was the elder brother and I couldn't be angry. But my little brother, he could blow a stack and throw a brick at you. Which, of course, we incited him to do. But it took me a while to realize that, you know, how we have basic greed, hate and delusion. It took me a while to realize that I was basically a hate type, you know, and anger, a person who carried anger. And it actually was like actually using the practice then, as in, you know, the part in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind where it says, Suzuki Roshi says, we have a saying where we pull up the weeds and nourish the plant.

[38:32]

So we pull up the weeds and nourish the plant. But then he says something like, we bury the weeds in the soil close to the plant. Sorry about that. I think I'll do this. I like leaning on this. This is actually a kotsu which my teacher Sojin Mel Weitzman made. It's an African wood, palisandra. And he said, take it and go give some Dharma talks. So it's my talking stick. Anyway, mind weeds are like that. But they may be body weeds, mind and body weeds. And when you say pull them out, when you feel like you've identified something that's a weed,

[39:34]

it's important not to think that you have to throw it away. Don't throw your anger away, or your bad habit, your laziness, your confusion. If you throw it away, you're then engaged in just a battle with yourself. And it's really no use to you. But if you keep it close and study it, compost it, actually let the heat build up, then you get to know pure anger. You get to know that intense feeling. It can be scary, and it can be sometimes overwhelming. It can feel like you're suffocating. You may tend to then want to get some distance from it. But our practice of sitting

[40:41]

with something has a great power. You actually cultivate the capacity to be present with whatever it is. So for me to take Harry's suggestion about paying attention to how I walk, and then begin to see how there's something going on that I wasn't aware of, and then begin to see there's all this anger. It's actually preventing me from even breathing completely. So for me this was a kind of an internal composting process. Just as the compost heats up and turns into something that's really usable, anger heats up. And then when you actually are experiencing a lot of anger, and you realize that your tendency is to want to

[41:47]

blame this person, or that person. For me a lot of it was my father. I had a lot of anger toward my father. So when you are actually willing to be present with that, you realize that that person doesn't exist. That person isn't over there. The Heart Sutra is really true. There is nobody there. It's just something that you're carrying around. There is somebody there, but the person who's there is not who you're carrying around, who you think that person is, just as you are not who you think you are. But that energy then can just naturally, it's like, it may be too magical to say, it's like alchemy, right?

[42:54]

But it is like that. That the feeling of rage eventually changes. It changes into something, you know. If you don't keep feeding it, if you actually just let it go through the process of internal purification, you begin to see that the person that you're angry with is just somebody else doing their best. And then you realize that they're not somebody else, actually. They are you. There really isn't any difference. There really isn't any separation. And then you realize a feeling of gratitude. And then you can forgive the person who wounded you,

[44:01]

or whatever the situation is that is behind all that anger. We've all been wounded, right? It's our human condition, as the Buddha pointed out. We've all suffered and continue to do so. So, I just wanted to recommend the practice of composting, the literal practice of working with organic material in the planet, and the dharma work of composting, which is actually seeing the weed, realizing that the weediness of it is a division within yourself, right? It's a decision that you're making.

[45:04]

And that the weed, then, is not something to throw away, but the weed is something to appreciate as a weed. So, the right place for a weed is in the soil or in the compost. And allow that weed to nourish you, have a friendly attitude towards it as much as you can. So, when I came home yesterday, after many wonderful things had happened, and Elaine came home, and we were sitting there, it was about eight o'clock, we both had just finished doing dhoksaan with somebody, and she had a meeting with her new supervisor at Dominican College. And she said, I had this meeting, and actually she said, this morning I sat in meditation,

[46:11]

and it became clear to me that I needed to say something to my new boss. So, I went in to this meeting today, and I said, I want to tell you something. And what I want to tell you is this, I am not a trustworthy person. You're a good guy, and you know what you're doing, you have a vision, and you should have somebody working for you who you can trust, who will do the things that you want them to do. I, on the other hand, will do what I think needs to be done. You can't trust me to do what you think I should do, you know. I've been here 10 years, she's been at Dominican for 10 years, and I see the way certain things are going, and I just have to speak up, you know. ...something that was bigger than that. So, she was being trustworthy in a larger sense.

[47:21]

And so, I saluted her. Congratulations on being untrustworthy. So, it's an ongoing process. Sometimes we need to be conventionally trustworthy, and sometimes that is actually a weed. That convention is a weed. It's actually a limitation that needs to be pulled out, and you go through the heat of that. So, I think some flowers bloom when people are willing to do that. It takes a lot of courage.

[48:29]

Well, is it bedtime yet? Is it time for the bedtime story? One more story, which is, it just comes to me from, I haven't even opened my notes. But, that's good, actually. Those are just in case, you know, I completely blank out here. But, I was planting beans. I was a very dedicated, ...focused bean planter, right? I was down in the second, well, we called it the second field. I had this row. At that time, we were planting, we tried planting beans in a row. And, I was down on my knees, spacing these bean seeds correctly, working my way down the row.

[49:41]

And, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a couple of people coming down the road into the field. And, it annoyed me. I knew they were visitors, you know, right? I knew they were going to come up and ask some stupid questions. So, I was planting, so I'm trying to, I'm just, I am practicing, focusing on planting beans. And, the closer they got, the more annoyed I became. I said, I'm trying to do what I'm supposed to do, and these people, and

[50:46]

fortunately, by the time they arrived, I'd kind of gotten through that, you know. So, I finally said, okay, all right. So, of course, they came up, and they said, which way to the beach? But, what I realized at that time was that they actually had already been there. They'd been there since time immemorial. It was just my idea that had excluded them. It was just my idea that all I was doing was planting beans, you know. And, it was just me planting beans, and I could have this. Planting beans is kind of like being in a deva realm, right? It's just beautiful. All you're doing is planting these beautiful seeds, right?

[51:54]

Everything is perfect. But, what I realized, actually, at that time, is that there are no interruptions. It's great to have something to focus on, you know, so that you can realize no interruptions. Every interruption is a reminder, is a teaching that there are no interruptions. Everything in the universe is already here. So, don't be so surprised. And, not only is everything here, it's actually, you know, not at any distance from you. As soon as I saw them in the corner of my eye, they were right here,

[53:00]

it's just that I didn't want to accept their presence. And, that was just, it was just my problem, you know. So, I just mentioned that to, because I think that's one of the greatest things I've ever learned in Zen practice. And, I would continue to work with it. Sometimes, in fact, yesterday, I'm on the drawing board, and I'm working just into solving a problem, and Lane comes in and says, it's time to feed the dog. Right? I go, grrrr! But, when you realize there are no interruptions in, you can play with that, you know. It doesn't mean that it gives you the right to interrupt somebody.

[54:01]

It doesn't mean it gives you the right to be rude, but it does mean that this practice that we do already includes everything. And so when something comes up, do your best to simply acknowledge it and take care of it. You know, it's a part of you. If you don't do that, you get smaller. If you do do that, we call that open-hearted, open-hearted way, okay? Anything else we need to deal with right now, or, yeah?

[55:06]

You need to talk about Dharma-I. Dharma-I is a, what do you call the thing? We at some point decided to organize, well, let's see, go back a few steps. At a certain point I went back to do a Shuso training with Reb, and I did a driving practice driving into the city center. And then after that, actually a couple of people asked me to start a sitting group. One of the people who asked me was Kadagiri, he visited from Minneapolis, and one time we were going down to Tassajara for someone else's Shuso ceremony, Nonin's, we were

[56:09]

going down for Nonin's. Shuso, and he said, why don't you start a sitting group? And then Samu Sunim, a Korean Zen teacher from Ann Arbor also came through, and we talked for a while, and he said, you should start a sitting group. So, well, so I decided, again, the least I could do was to do one night a week, so we did a, so about 15 years ago I started a Monday night in my living room sitting group, and it was great, actually, I cleaned the living room every Monday night for years. Finally had an opportunity to move to a place in San Rafael where we had, there was an old collapsing carport, which we turned into the garage Zendo, there's an old fig tree

[57:11]

there, so we call it old fig Zendo. So we still have the Monday night sitting group, and then I sit in the morning at 5.15, Monday through Friday, and then we do, every once in a while, once a month we do a longer sitting, usually one day or two or three day Sesshin, and then once a year we do a six, seven day. First week of January we do a week of sitting, start off the year with it. We're a little retarded, you know, so we don't get it together for Rohatsu Sesshin in December, but by the time New Year's rolls around, we're organized enough to sit then, so actually I like, it kind of works in with my schedule, my work schedule to do it that way, so. So it's a small group of people who, with quite a range, there's some new people and

[58:16]

there's some very old sense students, there are people who started sitting with Suzuki Roshi long before I did. Some of you know Carolyn and Rick Morton, I think. Carolyn's now sewing Rahksu. And Mike Dixon comes sometimes. He doesn't live far away. Some of you know Mike Dixon, or you know who he is. He's a painter and a wonderful shakuhachi player, actually. And he did The Fly in the book, it's in my Beginner's Mind. So some old people, Tim Ford, he's been sitting a long time. And then there's some new people, so I do Zazen instruction by appointment. People call up and it gives me a nice little walk out the door and get a little fresh air

[59:32]

and then go into the zendo in the morning. It's not always so easy to get up. But it's a good way to maintain practice in the midst of life in which you're working and take care of family things. So, you can come and visit sometime. Where is it exactly? Oh, it's in San Rafael, in an old part of town called Gristle Park. And there must be some information around here. It's in the back of the windmill, I think, usually. There's some phone number that you can call if you want more information. And we're going to work on the garden outside the zendo in just a few weeks. It's basically been a construction zone for five years.

[60:34]

Kind of like Green Gulch used to be. Maybe still is. Thanks for your... I actually feel very grateful to all of you for taking care of this place, which is so dear to my heart. So, I want to salute you all and thank you for taking good care of Green Gulch. And, of course, the point here is for you to cultivate the way in yourself. So, thank you for taking good care of the Dharma. May our intention be great. May our intention be great.

[61:27]

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