Good evening, I'm not sure what we're doing here tonight, but I more or less came to talk about this book that I've been working on called Not Always So, and we're all here because of this gentleman pictured on the cover. It's pretty amazing. Suzuki Roshi somehow decided to come to America. He was moved to come here and hang out with us barbarians. And here we are, we're practicing this so-called Zen. Wearing robes and cutting our hair short.

[01:04]

I worked on this book, Not Always So, and editing his lectures because Michael Wenger and Norman Fisher and Mel asked me to. Sometimes you try to be quiet. You've been working on too many H's, I know. Yeah, is it not always so or is it always so? Anyway, so I wasn't too interested in doing this project, but then they kept after me, so I finally agreed. And now here's a book, so it's pretty nice. And I've done a number of book readings now, and last night I was at Kepler's bookstore in Menlo Park.

[02:11]

There's a huge scene down there, unbelievable, on the El Camino Real. I walked out of the bookstore about 10 to 10, and there's 150 people having coffee out on the sidewalk in little tables and chairs. And they tell me that coffee shop is going all the time. I mean, I don't know at 3 in the morning, but it's a busy spot. And then there's a fountain there and somebody had put like a quart of Dr. Bronner's in it, so the soap suds were 8 foot tall. And people were picking up soap suds and running around with them. One little boy was in and out of the soap suds and making tunnels in there. But more than 100 people came last night. When I did a book reading for my last book, you know, 25 people come. Suzuki Rishi's been dead for 30 years. They had several calls of people asking, was he going to be there?

[03:21]

Was he? He was going to be there, but at the last minute he couldn't make it. They sent me instead. So, working on this book was interesting. It's pretty hard. I don't know if you've tried reading his lectures from the transcripts, but he often starts a sentence two or three times before he figures out how to say it. And then if you figure out what that sentence is, then you try to figure out what other sentences are. But I figured, I made sentences first before I tried to figure out what he was saying. And then I started editing. And aside from making it English, because, you know, there was a period of time where most of us spoke Suzuki Rishi English.

[04:32]

The Tassara Bread Book was originally written in Suzuki Rishi English. It said, put bread on board and knead with hands. Things like this, where we didn't use articles or pronouns in our speech. Because Suzuki Rishi didn't. So when I revised the book, Tassara Bread Book in 1985, I put, put the bread on a board and knead with your hands. I thought it would be good to have the book in English as long as he was going to be around. For, you know, some period of time. But then some people said, oh, that's really good. That was really powerful. Put bread on board and knead with hands. Very direct, very powerful. So, you know, we don't know whether what we're doing is a mistake or it's, you know, or what. But I turned it all into English. And then, you know, various people helped me. So we took out a lot of Japanese systems.

[05:37]

And the biggest change finally was, you know, that I took out about 85% of the shoulds. So if you read this book, it'll say, be kind. It won't say, you should be kind. It's a Japanese construction that can be just an imperative or it can be you should. So Suzuki Rishi used should. And I just decided, you know, by now he would know better. And be willing just to say, be kind, wake up. You know, respect things rather than you should. Because, but there's still a lot. There's still something over 150 shoulds. More than one a page. You know, rather than four or five a page. Do some of you feel you should be practicing Zen?

[06:39]

You wonder what you should be doing? Anyway, on the way over here, I decided to read you one of these lectures. Because I think one of the tempting things about practicing Zen is to think that, you know, your life would work better. If you practice Zen. This lecture is called Resuming Big Mind. The purpose, oh, and then we have these little quotes. We pulled out little quotes to, for the, you know, beginning. When we practice Zen, it is not that big mind is actually controlling small mind. But simply that, when small mind becomes calm, big mind starts its true activity. The purpose of Sesshin is to be completely one with our practice. We use two Chinese characters for Sesshin.

[07:41]

Setsu, which shortens to SES, in conjunction with Shin, means to treat something the way you treat a guest. Or the way a teacher treats his student. That's pretty respectful, huh? Another meaning of Setsu is to control or arrange things in order. Shin means heart or mind. So Sesshin means to have proper functioning of mind. It is our five senses and our will, or small monkey mind, which should be controlled. When we control our monkey mind, we resume our true big mind. When monkey mind is always taking over the activity of big mind, we naturally become a monkey. Some monkey mind, which must have its boss, which is big mind. However, when we practice Zazen, it is not that big mind is actually controlling small mind.

[08:42]

But simply that, when small mind becomes calm, big mind starts its true activity. Most of the time in our everyday life, we are involved in the activity of small mind. That's why we should practice Zazen and be completely involved in resuming big mind. A good example of our practice is a turtle, which has four legs, a head and a tail. Six parts of the body, which are sometimes outside the shell and sometimes inside. When you want to eat or go somewhere, your legs are out. But if they are always out, you will be caught by something. In case of danger, you draw in your legs, head and tail. The six parts refer to the five senses and the mind. This is Zazen. For one week, our head, tail and legs are inside the shell. In the scriptures, it says that even demons cannot destroy us if the six parts of our body are inside the shell. In Zazen, we do not try to stop our thinking or to cut off hearing and seeing.

[09:51]

If something appears in your mind, leave it. If you hear something, hear it and just accept it. Oh, that's all. No second activity should appear in your Zazen. If you hear something, hear it and just accept it. Oh, that's all. No second activity should appear in your Zazen. Sound is one activity. And the second activity is, what is that sound? Is it a motor car or a garbage truck or something? If you hear a sound, that's all. You hear it. Don't make any judgment. Don't try to figure out what it is. Just open your ears and hear something. Just open your eyes and see something. When you are sitting for a pretty long time watching the same place on the wall, you may see various images. It looks like a river or it looks like a dragon.

[10:58]

Then you may think you should not be thinking, but still you see various things. Dwelling on the images may be a good way to kill time, but it's not Zazen. To be concentrated on something may be important, but just to have a well-concentrated mind is not Zazen. It is one of the elements of practice, but calmness of mind is also necessary. So, don't intensify the activity of the five sense organs. Just leave them as they are. That is how to free your true mind. When you can do so in everyday life, you will have a soft mind. You won't have many preconceived ideas, and the bad habits in your way of thinking will not be overpowering. You will have a generous mind and a big mind, and what you say will help others. For example, in the Shoboken Zozui Monkey,

[12:01]

Dogen Senshi tells a story which was told to him about an influential person, Ichijo Motoie. One day, Motoie discovered that his sword was missing. And since no one else could have broken into his house, one of his own men must have stolen it. The sword was found and brought back to him, but Motoie said, This is not my sword, so give it back to the one who owns it. People knew that the man who had the sword was the one who had stolen it, but because Motoie didn't accuse him of it, no one could say anything, so nothing happened. This is calmness of mind we should have, according to Dogen. If we have generous big mind and we have a strong spirit of practice, then there's no need to worry. Dogen emphasized a sparse simple life.

[13:04]

Without expecting anything, we just practice our way. Many students asked how it would be possible to support the temple or group without any plan. And he said, if it becomes difficult to support our temple, we'll think about it. But until then, it's not necessary to think about it. So before something happens, it's not our way to think about it too much. In that way, we have complete calmness of mind. Because you have something, you worry about losing it, but if you don't have anything, there's no need to worry. One night Dogen said, if you think a teaching is complete and right, when someone tells you a better way, you should change your understanding. In this way, we improve our understanding of the teaching forever. Because you think it's right at the time, you follow the theory or the rules, but you also have some space in your mind to change your idea. That is soft mind.

[14:06]

It's possible to change your ideas because you know what kind of monkey your thinking is. Sometimes you follow monkey's suggestion. Oh, that's right, if we go in that direction, we may get some food. Okay, let's go. But when you see a better way to go, you may say, oh monkey, it's better to go this way. If you stick to your greed or anger or some other emotion, if you stick to your thinking mind, your monkey mind, you cannot change. Your mind is not soft. So, in our practice, we rely on something great and sit in that great space. As long as you do not lose the feeling that you're in the realm. Oh, the pain you have in your legs or some other difficulty is happening in that great space. As long as you do not lose the feeling that you're in the realm of Buddha nature, you can sit, even though you have some difficulty. If you want to escape from your difficulty or when you try to improve your practice,

[15:11]

you create another problem for yourself. But if you just exist there, then you have a chance to appreciate your surroundings and you can accept yourself completely without changing anything. That is our practice. To exist in big mind is an act of faith, which is different from the usual faith of believing in a particular idea or being. It is to believe that something is supporting us and supporting all our activities, including thinking mind and emotional feelings. All these things are supported by something big that has no form and no color. It is impossible to know what it is, but something exists there, something that's neither spiritual nor material. Something like that always exists and we exist in that space. That is the feeling of pure being.

[16:12]

If you are brave enough to throw yourself into zazen for seven days, a little bit of understanding will help your rigidity and your stubbornness. Almost all the problems you create because of your stubborn mind will vanish. If you have even the smallest understanding of your reality, your way of thinking will change completely. And the problems you create will not be problems anymore. But it is also true that as long as we live, we will have problems. So we don't practice zazen to attain some big enlightenment that will change our whole being or solve all our problems. That is not the right understanding. That may be what people call zen, but true zen is not like that. In zazen, we concentrate on having the experience of true practice, forgetting all about any idea of gaining anything. We just sit here.

[17:16]

If this room is too cold, we will make it warm. And if your legs become painful, you can stretch them. And if it is too difficult, you can rest. But let's continue our practice for these seven days. Thank you very much. You see how sweet he was, huh? I think one of... You know, over the years, people have said various things about Suzuki Rishi. I think many people had the experience of feeling seen by him. Seen and not judged at all, which is very unusual. Because most of the time, when you meet somebody and they look at you,

[18:17]

and they see you, but you don't necessarily feel seen. That's very unusual. That somebody takes you in completely, and it doesn't matter at all. You know, one way or another. Mostly, you know, when somebody sees you, you have some sense of liking or disliking, or approval, or distance, or, you know, there's some thing that they're doing. You know, and this is also the way we mostly are with one another, and with, you know, our experience. Because mostly, you know, we take in our experience, and then we think, what shall I do with this? Should I grasp it? Should I push it away? You know, what should I do? How do I fix it? How do I improve it? How can I fix or improve myself? How can I get rid of my difficulty?

[19:19]

How do I straighten them out? Get them to behave the way they should. And somehow, Suzuki Roshi didn't do that. It was extremely unusual. Do you remember the story in Crooked Cucumber? It's one of my favorites. About David Chadwick. You know, David was from Texas, and he's always been an extrovert, and at Tassajara he was head of the dining room, you know, and he used to recruit people to work in the dining room, because we were always understaffed in those days. Now Tassajara is big staff. But, you know, when I was the tenso, and David was head of the dining room, I was the tenso, the head cook, the head baker, the head of the diner, the sendo crew. I mean, we didn't have as many guests then, but we also didn't have as much help. And David used to just be wandering around Tassajara in the afternoon,

[20:21]

and he'd get to talking to people, and he'd say, Oh, you know, it's time for me to go to the dining room to set up. Why don't you come? We can continue talking. So he recruited his crew every day, and then he'd serve them dinner, and then he'd sit down and have dessert with them, and drink wine with them, and then go back to their cabins with them, and drink brandy, and he'd miss us in the next day. And then, you know, sometimes he would, and then he used to go to the chosan, you know, the meeting with Suzuki Rishi after breakfast, sometimes after missing the whole morning schedule. So one morning at chosan, you know, one of the other students who was the director said, Suzuki Rishi, what do we do with someone who's always breaking the rules? You know, shouldn't we straighten them out? This is an interesting problem. You know, what's going to straighten you out, or any of us, you know? And, you know, even after all these years, you know, is David straightened out? But, you know, David, more than anybody, you know, made this book possible,

[21:28]

and, you know, single-handedly basically made sure that the Suzuki Rishi archive project happened. Single-handedly is devoted himself to studying Suzuki Rishi's life and accumulating archival materials and interviewing people and talking to people. David's the kind of person who ought to just be supported for being David. You know? David Chadwick Foundation. But what should we do with someone who's always breaking the rules? And Suzuki Rishi's apparently paused, and, well, everybody's making their best effort. Yes, but all the time, breaking the rules, flagrantly. Well, it's better that he do it in public than to hide it from us. But don't we need to straighten him out? I mean, don't we need to do something about this?

[22:30]

And Suzuki Rishi said, well, you know, sometimes people are following the spirit of the rules even though they're not following the letter of the rules. And the person said, but wouldn't it be best if he followed the letter of the rules as well, the spirit of the rules, the letter of the rules as well as the spirit of the rules? And Suzuki Rishi said, yeah, that would be best. So this is interesting. You know, it's like this story. You know, it's hard to know what finally, you know, allows us to shift in our life. Or, you know, if our strategies for getting somewhere in our life were going to work, don't you suppose it would have worked by now? You know, if our judgments and our plans and our strategies and, you know, we get mad at ourselves about this and we're disappointed with ourselves about that and we judge ourselves and we judge others.

[23:31]

And has it helped? You know, it's amazing. And it's so hard, you know, to recognize that and then just to let go of it. And sit in the great space of Sazen. Whatever comes, not worry about it too much. And be kind with one another. Not hold grudges, you know. And not worry about how everybody's behaving. Who's the best student? Who's the worst? You know, who's good? Who's bad? Who understands? Who doesn't? It's amazing. And I think one of the other things about Suzuki Rishi that was pretty unusual was that he, you know, he talked about Buddhism in a very simple language.

[24:37]

Made an effort to do that and, you know, it's partly because he didn't know English so well maybe, but it's also something about who he was and how he wanted and his interest in connecting with his audience and the people who came. You know, so in here, you know, there's not a whole lot of intellectual stuff about, for instance, emptiness. Which some of us study from time to time in various scriptures and sutras and books and we try to understand emptiness and he says, emptiness is like eating brown rice. You chew it well and you swallow it. And it becomes you. It's not brown rice anymore. That's emptiness. When everything is working and you don't know what's what. And your life is happening. And he says, emptiness is like taking care of the soil. And he says, emptiness is like, well, don't you think you should go to the restroom and empty your mind? You know, the way, after you eat, you know, to go to the bathroom.

[25:38]

But, you know, you don't always know to go and sit sasan. But you're all filling up your mind, so you ought to go. Why don't you go sit sasan? Empty out a little bit. The interesting thing is, you know, your mind is like a movie screen. A white movie screen. So it's not complicated. And we try to, you know, understand things way more intellectually. And, you know, sometimes people have been critical of Shakyamuni because they say, oh, country bumpkin, you know, Zen priest. Never made it in the big time, you know, AHE, you know, whatever. But, you know, he had a capacity to connect with people. And to be with people. And to really meet people. So that's unusual. I was, when I started at Zen Center, I was 20 years old.

[26:51]

I couldn't sit still for many years. And now, you know, I think I have a pretty good understanding about why I couldn't sit still. It's a lot of, you know, should. Because if you know what to do, you know, if you know what's right and what's wrong, and then you try to impose that on yourself, you have to be very stiff. You have to hold yourself. You hold yourself to the rules that you've made. The judgments that you have. So when you hold yourself that tightly to something, you know, it's hard to be very flexible or even to tolerate sitting still. You hold still. Instead of just being still. And, so anyway, I was very tightly structured. Physically, and I couldn't sit still after a year or two. And first of all, you know, at one point when I was falling asleep,

[27:56]

many people fall asleep in meditation. Suzuki Roshi said to me, you're falling asleep in meditation. You should sit up right in front of me so I can get up and hit you when you fall asleep. I've been sitting way in the back. Because, you know, when you're that worried about being right, being accepted, being liked, and you're going to do something right in order to get acknowledgement that you've got it right. Well, also, you're worried about somebody might think you're wrong. So, how close do you want to be to the teacher? So, my strategy was to keep a good deal away. But I was very pleased to know that he had actually noticed me.

[28:57]

And then I was a little worried that I would be disturbing his meditation if he had to get up and hit me. But sure enough, after about 30 minutes I'd fall asleep and then he'd hop up and hit me. Interesting. We don't do that so much anymore. Somebody the other day said, oh, it's American litigation and men and women practicing together. And, you know, men hitting women and women hitting men. It's a guy thing, you know, a stick business. But it was very helpful for me. But especially, you know, when one of the Japanese teachers, because everything drops away, whatever's on your mind. And, you know, for an instant or two or for a little while, you're sitting in that great space. Now that you have nothing on your mind,

[30:03]

and then you kind of look around, what was I thinking, where is it all? Where is my body? Where is my mind? Where are my thoughts? Where are my feelings? Can I find them? Where's my story? And pretty soon you have it all back in place. Oh, good. I'm me again. But later, you know, in Suzuka she said, you know, he said, I don't know what to do with you. I think that's amazing, you know, when a teacher will admit that. And he didn't blame me for that either. You know, sometimes when people don't know what to do, they say, I don't know what to do with you. Like it's your problem for being so difficult

[31:03]

and impossible. But anyway, sometimes Suzuka used to come and, well, one time he told me when I was, you know, after about two years of not sitting still, these things take a long time to figure out, you know. I had been trying not to move. So the harder you try not to move, the more you move, right? Because the harder you try not to move, that means you're making yourself all the stiffer. In order not to move. Right? And then, and then when you go to move, she's like, you try to clamp down even harder. And then when you clamp down even harder, then you move even more because what do you suppose a human being is? You know, you're going to make yourself into a rock. Anyway, so after about two years, I finally decided one day I thought, well, instead of trying to stop these movements, why don't I see what happens if I just allow them?

[32:06]

Sort of like, at some point, sort of like a no brainer. I was like, why didn't I think of this sooner? But of course, if you do this in the Zen Do, then it's kind of attracts attention. Later, I did this, you know, like in my room. But, when I was doing the three month course at Barry, I went to the Vipassana Center in Barry, one year, to do the three month course. So then I decided to spend some time in my room. And then I did spontaneous yoga poses. It was, I did poses I have never done before since. It was, it was wild. And then after about two days, I got tired of that, went back and sat still in the meditation hall. But initially, you know, I started doing that, and I was sitting there and, you know, and then pretty soon, you know, instead of this, you know, all these things,

[33:11]

I just sit in there going like this, you know, and it's these big spirals. And, and then Suzuki Rishi came up to me and said, do kin-hin. And I said, what? Because, I mean, everybody knows that when you sit zazen, you sit zazen, you don't do kin-hin. I mean, I knew that. Haven't you heard that? When you sit zazen, sit zazen. So, he said, do kin-hin. So I got up and did kin-hin. I was really mad. Because I thought, you know, and I, and partly I was upset too, because I thought, oh, I'm doing the wrong thing. So then, and it was a little funny doing kin-hin while other people are sitting there. And then,

[34:13]

so then later I went to talk to him. I said, well, you know, I've been trying not to have these movements, and I've been trying to stop them. And this morning I decided to just see what happens if I didn't stop them, and to see what, what would happen if I just allowed the movements. So, was I doing the right thing by, you know, allowing the movements? And he said, oh, I didn't know. Oh, that's a very good idea to see what you can find out about the movements. He was very supportive, you know, of finding out for yourself, studying and knowing for yourself. And he said, oh, that's very important, you know, to find out. And then the other thing he used to do, you know, would be to come and he'd put my hands, his hands on my shoulders. And, and I felt very calm. And so now I do that sometimes, you know,

[35:18]

in meditation. But then again, you know, that's if I'm in charge, because other people have other ideas about, you know, what's appropriate to do in meditation or not. But so, if it's my sitting, I can walk around the meditation hall and put my hands on people's shoulders. And I asked him, what are you doing when you do that? He said, I'm just meditating with you. I'm not doing anything. And, but this is very similar, you see, to when you meet somebody and you're not judging them, you're not fixing them, you're not trying to change them. You meet yourself, you're not fixing yourself, you're not trying to change yourself because most touch is go over there, come over here, sit up straight, calm down,

[36:19]

relax, loosen up, straighten up, get it together. That's the directive. You know, what I want you to do. And then, okay, whatever, you know. And then a lot of the time, you know, if you're in certain schools of yoga, for instance, but also Zen, you see, bam, straighten up, wake up. And you can, so some of the, you know, what you're getting is abusive. It's a kind of abuse. And you don't know what it's about. You know, Phillip Wilson and other people, you know, when they were at AHE and didn't know Japanese, they were getting hit all the time. And they didn't, they'd never know why. Because they, you know, there's these huge lists of rules that are all in Japanese kanji.

[37:20]

If you can't read them, how do you know? You're wearing your robe wrong or, you know, you have the, you're standing slightly wrong. And the correction is just to whack you. And like figure it out. So it's a little different. But I find that that kind of, that's, so I started calling that now mindfulness touch. Because mindfulness, you're just receiving and you're not, you're not saying you need to this or you shouldn't that. So if I touch people like that, then, you know, if you're angry, okay, I'll touch anger. If you're scared, okay, I'll touch scared. You know, if you're discouraged, okay, I'll touch discouraged. If you're awake, okay, I'll touch awake. Whatever you are, I'll just touch it. And then you can be with it too. And then, you know, because we acknowledge it, mindfulness, it disappears. But it's all these things that happen which are unacknowledged because we're busy.

[38:20]

Basically, you know, we're busy trying to produce the acceptable state of mind and body, right? The one that you could finally love and respect and like. Even if you're busy trying to produce that. And then, so then you have to keep rejecting the one you have in order to get to the one you want. And you see it doesn't work very well. So you know, some of, one of the things I'm thinking of right now, you know, I used to be, from time to time, a little annoyed with Suzuki Roshi because he wouldn't tell us anything.

[39:22]

You know, if you ever asked him, well, what can I do? What can I do to, you know, to practice better or more? And he'd say, nothing. Just do your practice. And we wanted to, and he wouldn't give us anything. And then, and then he says in one of these lectures, you know, I'll tell you what to do. You'll actually try to do it. And then you'll limit your own capacity to find your way. I would, I don't want you to limit your capacity to find your way, so I try not to tell you anything. I just as soon not tell you anything. I'd like to just be here and move some rocks and have a hot bath and eat with you and sit with you and, but you know, I have to give lectures sometimes. So, so then I tell you things and he says, but it's like a recipe. You can't eat a recipe. So,

[40:26]

but so we all, you know, we, we get to do these things together. Isn't it sweet? Sit together and work together and hang out together. I may have to move back to Zinssen, you know, it's very stressful out there in the world. And I miss people. I got home from the East Coast this time and, and my next door neighbors are away. My dear friends who live next door, but they told me before they left, well, you know, come by and pick. So anyway, there's tomatoes and zucchinis and squashes and stuff in their place. But I think it's nice to be able to practice with other people and have confidence in your life and see what happens. Is there something,

[41:28]

someone would like to talk about more or different or questions or comments or I have a question. Right at the beginning, at the beginning of the lecture, you mentioned two meanings of Setsu. And I think, now I don't remember exactly, but I think the one that I'm familiar with is the one that's something like discipline. But the first one that you said, the way you would treat A guest. Or the way a student treats a teacher. Yeah, so thinking of Sachine is treating your mind in that way. Honoring, yes. Yeah. Pretty nice, huh? Yeah. Yeah, well this has to do with the notion of control and how do you control something. And you know, mostly we think we'll control something by judging good and bad, right and wrong. And that'll fix them. And they're sure to want to get,

[42:30]

be judged differently so they're going to respond differently to my judgments and they will respond to my judgments for sure. But you know, I've been very slow at this. I don't know if you all are really slow, but you know, judgments are, again it's related to the muscles and certain tightness. And you make yourself, whenever you judge, you make yourself tight and then it's harder to sit. If you're touching somebody and, I'm going to do a little course, I'm going to, I'm going down to Tassajara tomorrow probably for, Patricia and I are doing Zen and Yoga starting Sunday, and then I'm going to stay at Tassajara for a week and do mindfulness touch with the students. You know how they have this summer program, body workers. So I'm going to go to Tassajara

[43:31]

and I'm going to give people little sessions and then I'm going to do little workshops in the afternoon. But one of the things you can do, if you're touching somebody and this is the emphasis then on it is receiving the person rather than, you know, I really like you and you're really okay. You're not trying to tell them something like I don't mind touching you or I really like you, you're such a nice person. You're not trying to tell them anything, you're trying to just let them be who they are, right? So that's because that's mindfulness and it's amazing how much of a help it can be when somebody does that with you, you see, rather than you're just doing it. So, but then if I have a judgment, you know, like if I think to myself what's wrong with you anyway? Then right away the energy goes everybody freezes. You can have, you know,

[44:35]

three people, four people touching one another, only one person makes a judgment and the energy just goes it's like, you know, you're caught in the headlights all of a sudden. You're being, you know when there's judgment. So then when you freeze, that's judgment. So, it's a little different quality, the quality of the way you treat a guest and please have a seat and would you like some tea or the way you take care of your teacher and you could do that with your mind or with somebody else and then, then you're gracious with them. The other things, you know, there are many things that cause, you know, freeze. So, if you have judgment, if you want to help them, I'm going to help you now. People right away are like,

[45:38]

eww. You know, you don't have to say anything, you just sort of like think it, you know, and if anybody wants to control you, you know, when they're holding you, you can tell right away, eww. You notice. So then, you know, after you do this back, you know, a little bit, then you talk about it, what was going on. So then you can refine your capacity, you know, just to be mindful and touch with mindfulness rather than and I had a good time and then on the way home, Patricia said to me, I'm not sure if they liked me and she said, I wasn't asking you to judge yourself, I was asking you if you enjoyed yourself. But see, all she had to do was ask me if I was enjoying myself and I went right to judgment. Was I good or bad? Did they like it,

[46:39]

did they not like it? And then how would you know what was good or bad, but why don't I go ahead and judge anyway? And you know, it's important to judge yourself before others do. Yeah, I know that one, okay? It's all right if I judge, but you don't do it. It's fine. Yeah. I wanted to ask, how do you stay out of judgment when you really, really care about something? I don't know that there's any way to stay out of judgment when you really care about something or you know, you don't exactly have to really care about something. You can go there anyway if that's your habit. And so,

[47:41]

the useful thing seems to be to acknowledge that it's judgment and that it's your thinking and that it's not about reality and that reality can't be captured in your judgment. But you know, lots of things happen, so sometimes we judge and we do something. So, right now, you know, I got an email. There's an email going around now that you could send a letter to the president. Send a postcard, you know, tomorrow. Tomorrow's the day to send a postcard to President Bush telling him to stay out of Iraq. Don't go to war. And people who are sending around emails this way are hoping to get blizzards of postcards. White House. So, that has something to do with judgment,

[48:43]

but then there's, but then, you know, if you were to, I don't know if it helps, particularly to judge President Bush as being, you know, whatever. And because you make that judgment, then what? You hate him? And then, you know, it's only painful for you. He doesn't know any better. I mean, he's not going to notice that you're not liking him and like, ooh, there's somebody at Green Gulch who doesn't like me. What am I going to do about that? And it may be that just as useful, you know, probably to send him loving kindness and, you know, whatever your judgment is, you know, it's probably just as useful to practice Tonglen and, you know, take in and breathe in the pain and suffering and breathe out compassion and to send loving kindness, to practice loving kindness. You know, may you live in safety

[49:45]

rather than, you know, setting up a world where everything is scary for you. Why don't you figure out some other way to do this? So, we can, you know, so, it's useful to notice judgments as being judgments and then to, I mean, you know, there's a whole, I don't know what you've heard about Byron Katie, but, you know, there's this woman Byron Katie who teaches something she calls The Work, which is, she doesn't say stop your judgments, she says write them down and she says, do not be kind or compassionate, be petty and judgmental. It's what you do best, so go ahead and do it. So, what you do best is to actually own your judgments in her school, you know. You own your judgments by writing them down and then when they're defenseless there in the paper, then you have a chance to look at them. Before that, you say,

[50:48]

oh, I shouldn't be thinking this, oh, I don't really think this and then, you know, oh, it's not kind to think that and then, so you never quite get a chance to write it down and then you can ask, she has you ask four questions and turn it around, so it's kind of fun. I enjoy doing those things, you know. I mean, after years of Zen practice, like, oh no, I'm not going to judge, I'm not going to judge, I'm not going to judge, then you just practice judging, you know, on purpose and it's like such a relief. You just go ahead and do it, but you know it's judging and you have your judgments and then you get to see how silly they are rather than trying not to have them and pretending that you don't have them but actually you have them and you just don't own them. Somebody else is doing that, I don't, I'm not judgmental, I don't care. And after you ask the four questions

[51:59]

then you do the turnaround, so if you say, President Bush is such an idiot, I'm such an idiot, I'm such an idiot for whatever, calling him such an idiot, I don't know, but you do the turnaround at the end so that's a lot of fun too and she's convinced, this is the woman who studied this, she's convinced that the turnaround is always as true or more true than the original judgment that you made. So that's fun. I like these things, you know, we do that when we study touch, we do that too. Oh, let's go ahead and judge now and see what that's like. So we do all these things on purpose rather than trying not to do them and then after you do them then you know what to look for and what it feels like and you start being able to, when they come up, then you start to know some judgment and it's very interesting too, one of the things that you do and I noticed this like

[53:01]

last week I was doing a workshop at Kripalu, Patricia and I were doing Zen and Yoga, Kripalu is this huge yoga center, yoga university in Lenox, Massachusetts, vast building, three, four stories, wings going out, they can have like, well they just had a fire this year but normally they can have like 300 people there and a staff of 150 and not just have yoga but they also have like dance kinetics and you know, turn the 70s music up loud and people in these Zen and Yoga workshops don't really get full Kripalu experience which I guess means, but anyway, but one of the things, one of the women there was, for a little bit, she was upset with me because she said, you're talking and then you'll say something fairly serious and then you laugh and it's like a private joke you have

[54:05]

and I don't always get it, I don't know what you're laughing about. So what can I do about this, you know? And so at some point I said, well, sometimes I'm feeling like I'm getting a little nervous and so it's kind of a nervous laugh and she said, but you're so good at this, you know, I don't think you have any reason to be nervous and I said, well especially though at the beginning of the workshop everybody in the room is nervous and I just feel their nervousness and then I laugh. Like who's to say, whose nervousness is it? Because it's just kind of in the air, you know, so I may as well be feeling it too. We don't know actually who's, and then we're going around like, well wait a minute, you started it. No, wait, no, you started it. You're angry with me. No, I'm only angry because you're angry.

[55:05]

So we're trying to figure out like who do we, you know, where did it start and who's to blame and how did this happen but it's just stuff in the air, you know, and it's just going around and we all catch it. So there you go. Anyway, so it's fascinating. You can, oh, so when you touch somebody and you start to feel like, I don't know what I'm doing. Gosh, you know, I don't know how to do this. You right away just assume, in that case you just assume that's what they're thinking. You're doing fine. You just picked up on their lack of confidence in themselves. You don't have to take it personally. It's theirs. Anyway,

[56:13]

there are different strategies for these things. Was there someone else who had a question? Yes. Yeah, you're talking about kind of going with your judgments or whatever. But I remember a story that was maybe in, maybe you told in the Vedas, Vedas teachings about having a lot of anger and kind of Giri Rishi saying to you to go over chanting your mind. Oh yeah, right. So I was wondering if you could talk about what that experience was like. Because that's kind of like saying in that case don't go with your judgments. That's one way to look at it anyway. Giri Rishi apparently gave that advice to practice chanting to a number of people. Yvonne had that advice from him and she's heard a number of people. At some point when people were quite involved

[57:14]

or intensely caught by something in their life, whether it was depression or anger or thinking or whatever, he often, he sometimes suggested that people practice chanting. So, you know, a lot of different things can be fairly skillful as far as that goes. Because the way our minds go is right down the track. So once the track is triggered, it goes right down the whatever you call that, the neural pathway. So it doesn't take much and you're into the anger. So then at that point, so there are different kinds of strategies or ideas, but at that point it's sort of useful to just put your mind on another track if you can. And so, so chanting can be one of those things. And because it's oftentimes difficult

[58:15]

to bring your mind back to your breath or that would work or, you know, your feet or walking and some of the things you do. But he had told me, I was angry a lot and so he called me up to Dotsan and he said, you're angry a lot and he said, well this is a monastery and you need to get along with people and live in peace and harmony. So finally, what he said was, Ed, I'm giving you a piece of advice. And he didn't even finish the statement, you know, so you may as well take it. He said,

[59:32]

so what should I chant? He said, how about the Heart Sutra? He said, I can't remember the Heart Sutra, so he said, just do the Mantra at the end, you know, the Mantra at the end. God take, God take care of it. God say, just do that. You can just do that over and over. And by golly, I started doing that and, you know, in less than two days something in me snapped. And I wasn't in a group of anger anymore. And what I went to say, so, you know, that's one of the uses of the name that is often intended for, you know, rather than being sad, helpless, vulnerable, fragile, afraid, you go to anger. And it's something we learn, you know, as we learn, as a kind of material. And you, you aim it towards what you perceive to be the object that might otherwise be seen as sadness,

[60:33]

or, you know, the experience of what might, might, sort of do that. So, anyway, I, since then still, I've had over the years tremendous, so to speak, tremendous difficulty with not being angry. Mostly around sense center, I'm fairly certain. But, you know, I just did a cooking workshop and one woman said, my little outburst this year was, you know, I decided on the scale of zero to ten, you know, I thought maybe it was a four. Most people there agreed with me, but one woman said, oh no, that was seven or eight. But, you know, I didn't use any profanity, I didn't attack anybody personally, or their ancestry, or, you know, I didn't throw anything, I didn't hit anybody. I raised my voice,

[61:34]

and I expressed it intensely, but, you know, I thought all in all, it's pretty low on the scale. But this one woman said, you know, you should have a warning and toss her a brochure. Because I came here, yeah, I came here to have a really nice, quiet peaceful vacation, and now you've spoiled it. So, it turned out that she had a different vacation than the one, you know, she set out to have, which, at least for a while, she was attributing to me. Later on she sent me an email, she said, well, she was there with a lot of friends, so I decided to let her in, and figure it out. I called her later, and she said, you know, I realized it just brought up some issues for me, you know, it's just, it's stuff from your life, you know, if you have those issues in your life. Two years ago, I had a really big one

[62:35]

during the Zen and cooking. Cooking is very stressful, extremely stressful, especially when you're a Zen teacher, and then you're supposed to behave. I've two years now done this benefit for the Monterey Bay Zen Center. I go to Earthbound Farms, and before we go there, and then at 10 o'clock or so we meet, and then there's 50, 80 people, and we walk through the fields with five gallon buckets, and you can pick whatever you want. You know, you pay $50, and you can pick five gallons worth of produce, and it's fabulous, and you walk through all these fields, and you get... So, the stressful part is like, in the morning, I stay in a friend's house, and then I'm speaking to the Monterey Bay Zen Center, and they're like, oh, thank you, and I'm trying to introduce them.

[63:37]

It's the first day they came over, and again, I'm trying to introduce them, and they're like, you know, I have such work to do here, and I don't exactly have the, you know, the space to respond to that. Would it be all right? And somehow, when I said that, you know, it was kind of serious, and I felt like I could explain to them to ask that we not be talking about other things, and so this year, I started out, and I explained to them, I have a lot on my mind. These are fairly complex recipes. These are not simple, brainer recipes, because this is a chef's walk and a chef's demo, and I'm supposed to be here and demonstrate something, and this is not just a lettuce salad. You know, I was doing the arugula salad. You know, you have, this is California.

[64:39]

But, you know, this is a platter of arugula dressed, and then we've sliced some bocconcini, which is the little rounds for the bocconcinis, and we've cut the bocconcinis in little rounds, you know, and then we marinate those in some really nice olive oil and salt and pepper. It's fairly simple, but we want them to be sitting there, you know, and kind of swimming and luxuriating in the olive oil for a while before we put them onto our salad. We don't want them just sitting around and drying out, and, you know, and luxuriate. You know, it's sort of like, you know, if you're going to eat meat, you don't want it to get stiff before, you know, you kill it, you know. You know, the whole thing about the lobsters, you don't drop the lobsters into the hot pot. You heat up slowly so they relax. And the next thing you know,

[65:43]

we have the fire-roasted walnuts. You know, we roast the walnuts and then a little bit of sugar and salt, and then the sugar melts and caramelizes and coats the walnuts very lightly and delicately. And then, you know, we have the raspberries, the giant organic raspberries. And then if we want, you know, we put a little maple syrup and balsamic vinegar, and sliced green onions, you know, that are on the diagonal, you know. So we put out the arugula and then, you know, we put out our dots of mozzarella. And then I would teach people, you know, how to strew. Because, you know, this is about art. I mean, that kind of could be like, you don't want to take the walnuts and go like, ooh, this one goes there and, you know, you've got to have a kind of, it's in your feeling, you know,

[66:53]

that you do this with. And then, you know, so you have the arugula, the bocconcini, the walnuts, the raspberries, the green onions on top. And so this is complicated, you know. So I can't, I don't want to think about, like, what's Tassajara like in the wintertime. I like it so much. And what was Suzuki Roshi like anyway? So this year I explained, okay, we're not going to do that. But I didn't, there was something I didn't explain to them, which is, and these are all people like, they're volunteering. It's seven o'clock in the morning, you know. So I'm thinking, ooh, I better be nice to these people. So the first thing that happens, the person who takes it upon herself to wash the potatoes, she takes the potatoes

[67:54]

and she's got the sink full and there's the water in the potatoes and she takes the potatoes. She's going to turn, I've got five gallons, I mean, you know, five pounds of potatoes to wash. These are little things. There's six or eight or ten of these to a pound and she's going to turn each one of them into a gem. It took her 45 minutes to wash my potatoes. And I'm like, please! You know, and then, and I don't know, can I talk to this woman? Is it okay if I talk to her about what she's doing? Or is she going to freak out because, you know, I don't know. then I asked somebody to cut the stems off the fennel. Do you know fennel balls? You know, and there's these stems, right? She takes, she's got sharp knives anyway. She takes them and she cuts off one stem. Then she cuts off another stem. She cuts off the third stem.

[68:57]

So in that case I said, excuse me, but, you know, you could just take your knife and just whack, whack. Okay? This shouldn't take you very long, okay? You could just whack, whack. And I can have this done by the time it just takes me to explain this to you. Anyway, it is frustrating, I can tell you. And so next year I'm going to explain, not only do we not talk about Suzuki Roshi Tasa or anything besides what we're doing here, but I'm going to talk to you about how you do what you're doing so that we can get this thing done so I don't just freak out all morning and stress about whether this is going to happen or not. And, you know, apparently meditation practice does not help much. But didn't you say this was a Zen cooking workshop?

[70:01]

That we're doing everything completely mindfully? No, no, no, no, not completely mindfully. No, in the Zen workshop we do when you cut the carrots, cut the carrots. That's our tradition. It's not when you cut the carrots be mindful. No, you're not supposed to do something else besides cutting the carrots like mindful. This is, you know, Gil Fronsdale has, you know, he's studied this. So he said in Japan they say when you rake, just rake. And in Southeast Asia they say when you rake, watch your mind. And then in Southeast Asia they're standing there. Because they're busy watching their mind. So I told that to Mel. I told Mel one time about, you know, Gil's story and Mel said, oh, they still think their minds

[71:02]

are up here, don't they? Whoa. Whoa. What did you think that was? Anyway. So yeah, I've had a lot of difficulty with anger over the years and it's been, you know, so it's all interesting. At some point, you know, it's only like about five years ago I decided, I realized, you know, my mother died when I was three. So I've been spending all these years like, oh, I'm so sad. Oh, I'm so lost. Oh, I'm so confused. Oh, I'm so upset. You know, poor me. And then it dawned on me like, those aren't my feelings at all. Those are her feelings before she died. And then I just went right on feeling them because when you're three years old you just feel what's in the room. It's not, you don't even know me, you, what was my mom feeling?

[72:04]

She was feeling sad. She was feeling very ashamed. She was feeling scared. You know, she was feeling upset. She was feeling hurt. So she had all these feelings and then I just went on feeling them. So I said, I'm never going to forget you. The way I don't forget her is to go on feeling her feelings for her. And I did that for 50 years and it's like, whoa, that's nice. And then I think, well, I've done this long enough. But what about my dad's? My dad was really angry about that. He felt betrayed by the universe. You know, he fell in love with this woman and then, you know, and he was devoted to her and the universe just screwed him over by taking her away. And he never got over that. I mean, even though he got remarried, but I don't think he ever got over that. And then where did he get that? Well, you know, he says that his father

[73:06]

and mother, his mother, fell in love with the border and left his father. And guess who was angry about that? And so then my dad is feeling the feelings from, you know, his dad and then he marries somebody and then she leaves under somewhat different circumstances. And so we get to repeat these things. So then I got married and I got divorced. We did that too. There's whole lineages to these things. And it's not even, none of this stuff isn't even ours. And then we own it like, oh, I feel so angry. Who knows whose it is? I, me, mine. Really? So it turned out to be actually easier to let go of the feelings once I realized, well, they're not even mine. They're not mine. Is it time to stop?

[74:07]

We've gone on long enough. Well, thank you for being here tonight and thank you for your effort to look into the bottom of things. Get to the bottom of things. Look into your hearts and know that it's time. Thank you for being here. Blessings.

[74:31]

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