Well, good morning everyone, and welcome to KWMR, Point Reyes Station, 90.5 FM. My name is Joy Mollitz, and I am very pleased to be with you on this beautiful winter morning, winter such as it is here in the Bay Area. And I'm very happy to have with me here in the studio this morning Ed Brown, who is a Zen teacher and a cookbook author. Most recently he is the editor of a new book of lectures by Suzuki Roshi, Not Always So, Practicing the True Spirit of Zen. He also is, as you know, the author of several cookbooks, including the recent Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings. He has been teaching some workshops on mindful touch and on, what is it through handwriting? Liberation. Liberation through handwriting, which should be very interesting to hear about. And what else? He's a man of many talents. I just found out yesterday he's been producing some beautiful cards with photographs on them, which are available at the Zen Center in San Francisco on Page Street.

[01:02]

And Inverness Park. Oh, and at Inverness Park Place. And I am very happy to welcome Ed to the show. Ed, good morning. Good morning. Happy holidays. Why don't you move your mic so I can actually see your face. That would be the most lovely. Does that help? That would be great. So tell us a little bit about this book, Not Always So, that is your most recent foray into literature. It's a book of lectures by Suzuki Roshi. Yes. Suzuki Roshi actually died, of course, in 1971. So it only took us 30 years to get around to doing another book of his lectures. His first book was called Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, and it's actually one of the world's best-selling books on Buddhism. So people, well, I was invited to do this book. Somebody thought I would be a good person to do it, that I had, as a writer and a Zen

[02:06]

teacher, I had the capacity to do such a book, and it happened. Turns out here it is. So there's 35 lectures. They're from the last three years of Suzuki Roshi's life, 1969, 1970, and 1971. Are they organized in any particular manner? So I edited all these lectures, and then after I had nine of them, I tried to figure out how to organize them, and I couldn't figure it out. So then I decided to use the Tarot method, which is to write the titles of the lectures on a piece of paper and turn it upside down and sort through them. And I came up with, that was my original organization. But in this case, I actually, my book agent, Michael Katz, helped me and he said, why don't you just write down with one sentence what each lecture is about, and then the order came to me. So I divided it into five sections. Well, I have to say that just reading the titles of the, I feel like I want to write

[03:09]

out the titles of each section on a piece of paper, because they're so beautiful. Find out for yourself, be kind with yourself, respect for things, pure silk, sharp iron, not always so. They're very evocative, so I really, I think you did a great job putting the short titles to them. The title of the book, by the way, Not Always So, is from a lecture that I titled Not Always So, and it's a, whether, it was David Chadwick mentioned it in the biography of Suzuki Rishi too, that he at one point asked Suzuki Rishi, he said, I really don't understand Buddhism and I'm not very smart or, you know, and I can't follow all these abstract philosophical things about, could you just summarize Buddhism for me in a couple words? And Suzuki Rishi said, it's not always so. Is that one of the ones that you thought you might want to read to us? Or would you like to read another one to give us the feel for what it's like?

[04:11]

I could read part of that one. I just, I did notice as we were sitting here that Not Always So is, it's quite an interesting lecture, but I like also, we did as we did with Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, we took out quotes from the lecture, from the beginning of the lecture, and the quote for that lecture is, real freedom is to not feel limited when wearing this Zen robe, this troublesome formal robe. Similarly, in our busy life, we should wear this civilization without being bothered by it, without ignoring it, without being caught by it. So there you have it, there's a challenge for all of us. How do we wear this civilization without being bothered by it, without ignoring it, without being caught by it? Is that idea of not being bothered by and not ignoring sort of a central precept of Zen in general? I think that's pretty good, without being bothered, without ignoring.

[05:14]

When you ignore things, often they reappear with complaints. I know if I'm cooking and I ignore something, it usually is burned at some point, and so when it comes back to you, it usually is complaining. And similarly, if you ignore your spouse or your children, they will usually have a problem at some point. And sometimes, because they believe that you're ignoring them and you're not interested, you don't hear about it until it's kind of too late. What about civilization? I mean, that's a big challenge. Well, somebody told me the other day that George Bernard Shaw said that America went through the building of the empire and straight into decline without the period of civilization as is usual for empires. Yeah, that sounds about right. Anyway, so we're not sure about civilization. But Suzuki said not to ignore and not to be troubled by. Well, he starts out by saying, you know, he says your idea of freedom and my idea of freedom

[06:19]

is different. And you think that freedom is doing what you want, whatever you want, when you want. And my idea of freedom is just to sit and follow the form. Well, let me give a little context here. These are lectures that were given in the late 60s, in 1970, 71. So this was a time where people were really experimenting with freedom. Well, experimenting with freedom, and also, of course, it was the time of the Vietnam War. So, in some ways, it seems it's interesting he doesn't, you know, mention particularly the Vietnam War in here, but it was during the time of the Vietnam War. And so that was a difficult and painful time for many of us, obviously. I was curious about that, about that aspect of this book of lectures, that there is not a lot of overtly political discussion in this book, anywhere, or even discussion about social action.

[07:20]

And I know Buddhism as it is practiced today, in this country at least, there's the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and the Zen Center runs a hospice, and there are projects working in the prisons. I wonder if those are sort of offshoots of what Suzuki brought and founded here, or whether those sort of calls to action can be found in his teachings directly. I think if you extend Suzuki Rishi's teachings as he does, for instance, there's one lecture that says, he says, express yourself fully, and don't wait. Anyway, I think that what Suzuki Rishi said was that he knew Zen, traditional Zen forms, and that's what he knew to teach us, and that if we practice those forms, then we would do something with it, you know, that came out of our own lives. And so that's what you see happening. There's one lecture that interested me in particular in light of what you're talking

[08:24]

about, where he talks about how there's so much individuality expressed even through sitting, that he describes walking through the meditation hall as people are sitting quietly, silently, and observing the differences that are revealed by the silence and by the form. Yes. I thought that was very interesting, because we think now, and certainly in the 60s, I imagine people thought that individuality was the highest value, and that it could only be expressed without rules, and yet Zen is so full of rules. Yeah. Yeah, that's in that lecture, express yourself fully, and he says, you may say that when you are practicing Zazen, that's Zen meditation, no one can know your practice, but for me, that is the best time to understand you. When you sit facing the wall, and I see you from behind, it is especially easy to understand what kind of practice you have.

[09:25]

Sometimes I walk around the meditation hall so that I can see you. This is very interesting. If you are dancing or talking or making a big noise, it's rather difficult to understand you. But when we are sitting together, you each sit in our own way, your own way. It is a big mistake to think that the best way to express yourself is to do whatever you want, acting however you please. This is not expressing yourself. When you have many possible ways of expressing yourself, you are not sure what to do, so you will behave superficially. If you know what to do exactly, and you do it, you can express yourself fully. So he says that's why we follow forms. And later in this lecture, he says, usually our society works in a superficial, frivolous way. The controlling power is money or some big noise. Our eyes and ears are not open or subtle enough to see and hear things. Most people who visit Zen Center find it a strange place. They do not talk so much. They do not even laugh. What are they doing?

[10:27]

Those who are accustomed to big noises may not notice, but we can communicate without talking so much. We may not always be smiling, but we feel what others are feeling. Our mind is always open and we are expressing ourselves fully. We can extend this practice to city life and be good friends with one another. This is not difficult when you decide to be honest with yourself and express yourself fully without expecting anything. Just being yourself and being ready to understand others is how to extend your practice into everyday life. I don't know. You know, it's easy for me to relate this to the world situation and that we're not always so ready to understand others. And we don't acknowledge ourselves really. We're busy hiding ourselves rather than being ourselves.

[11:30]

And this lecture talks about revealing ourselves through quiet and through following forms, which is so interesting. I'm wondering what are you... I'm sorry, I interrupted the question, but forms you can understand either in this narrow sense of meditation or you can understand form in a broader sense of to have a family as a form. It's the form of family and marriage is a form and there are many, many, many forms actually and to study, we're all, we're busy always studying our life through form. And that doesn't mean that we can always keep the form or stick, you know, Suzuki actually suggests that you not try to stick to the form, but that practicing within the form you notice helps you awaken, it helps you realize yourself because you know what you're

[12:32]

doing if there's a form. When you tell yourself that there's no form, then you don't always know what you're doing. You don't acknowledge what you're doing. And the point isn't to keep the form, but that you wake up. Well, you say that he said you don't have to stick to the form, that that's not the point. But in fact, you couldn't just get up and scratch yourself in the middle of a meditation, right? I mean, you are expected to follow certain... Yeah, there's certain expectations. At the same time, he says, you know, a good Zen, as a Zen teacher, you know, you probably should encourage your students to be mischievous. And if you always follow the rules, sometimes you should break them and you'll, you know, we'll get to know you better if you actually are willing to be yourself rather than just to be someone who follows all the forms perfectly. And the point is that we get to know each other, not that you are perfect at following forms. There's an interesting incident you described in the introduction that has to do with your

[13:37]

own choice at some point not to follow the rules, but to allow your body to move during meditation because you had found that it wanted to move. That was involuntary. But you had a talk with Suzuki. I talked with Suzuki Rishi now and again about that. I couldn't sit still in meditation. And I decided to go on practicing meditation anyway. And it was very difficult for me for a couple of years because I would, whenever I went to meditation, pretty much I'd have involuntary, spontaneous kinds of movements and shaking and, um, have you seen that in other students? Yeah. Other people have that. Um, now I've come to understand that that's, um, on the whole, somebody who's rather tightly wound up and, um, has a very particular kind of, uh, idealism and, uh, the idealism is expressed through tightness in the body. And so when you practice meditation, you know, you're starting to breathe.

[14:43]

And when you breathe and be with your breath, and when you start to breathe and be with your breath, then you can't stick to your tightnesses and to your, you can't stick to your stucknesses. But if you're determined to stick to your stucknesses and breathe, then, you know, something has to give. So there's involuntary movement. Um, so most people, it seems, are able to sit, um, and, um, breathe and, uh, over time let go of, um, what they've been sticking to. What is the idealism that you, that you see being expressed through that kind of tightness in the body? Because that's so interesting that you are able to find a compassionate way to observe the tightness and the involuntary movement by seeing it as stemming from an idealistic personality. Yeah, it took a while. Um, well, I, I, you know, various people have various tendencies. Um, and, uh, I suppose another, another way to say that as far as idealism is, you know,

[15:46]

you try to be perfect. Um, and, um, I think for many years I aimed to be perfect enough so that nobody ever could have any complaint about me. And actually when you behave in that way so that nobody ever could possibly have a problem with you, you're tight. You have to tighten yourself. And this is something that I now teach people in Mindfulness Touch how to notice. Because I ask people if, if we're practicing touching another person just to receive that person, then I ask the person who's being touched, don't let them feel anything that might disturb or upset them. The person who's receiving the touch. The person who's receiving the touch. So is there some way that the person touching you will not notice anything about you that might disturb them or upset them? That way you have to armor yourself so that nothing about you can be conveyed to the person touching you. So this is an exercise? Yeah, as an exercise. So, uh, anyway, is that possible to achieve? Well, you can armor yourself in fact.

[16:48]

And so then the person touching you, uh, you, you know, will notice in fact, if they're at all skilled, they'll notice you're busy hiding, aren't you? What's actually going on with you? Do you tell the, do you tell the people doing the touch that this is what? Oh yeah. Everybody in the room knows. Um, so, but that's what I was, that would be another way of saying what I was doing was that I was armoring myself in such a way that, because if you think that who you are already is something painful and bad, um, that other, you don't want other people to experience that painful, difficult part of you, then the way to do that is to armor yourself. And then, and you don't reveal what is painful or difficult. And so I spent, um, many years of my life armoring myself and defending and not letting people see, but I was, uh, uh, never very good at this, you know, and successful people um, because for me, I couldn't do it with a kind of calm demeanor.

[17:51]

I did it with a kind of, everybody knew you're busy hiding stuff and you're very intense and very emotional and you, and you're not very good at hiding it. Even as hard as you try. Even as hard as you try and as rigid as you make yourself in your effort to do that. Did you find that you, you got to know your fellow meditators, um, in these early days of the Zen Center where you were very tight with each other? Did you get to know each other very well through, through this process? Um, you know, I have, I have many people that I consider very close friends, um, from those days, even if I don't see them, I feel very close to them. Um, and, uh, when I do see them, um, I saw, for instance, um, a year or so ago, I saw a friend of mine from 25 years ago. I hadn't seen him in 25 years and we were, um, we spent an hour and a half or two hours talking and it, it felt like we, we, we just, like there'd been no gap

[18:55]

and we're going through very similar things and it was very touching to me with him. Yeah, I wonder if you could say a little more about what it was like to be practicing at the Zen Center in those early days. I mean, now, 30 years later, Zen is such a, is such a part of the Bay Area landscape and it's sort of widely understood or at least people have some superficial understanding of it. And I would imagine when, in the 60s, when Suzuki was first teaching in San Francisco, it was very new to people and, and very exciting. I wonder what it was like for you. God bless you. Salute. Excuse me. Yeah. Um, yeah, uh, it, it was quite a different time. Um, for one thing, you know, uh, Zen was, um, in some ways the, the only school of Buddhism that was in America at the time, or too much with very much presence.

[19:59]

The Vipassana community hadn't really gotten going yet. And also Tibetan Buddhism wasn't really here. So Zen was the main form of Buddhism being practiced. Um, and there was still the kind of feeling about Zen associated with Alan Watts and D.T. Suzuki who'd, um, when their, with their books popularized Zen and Buddhism. Um, so it was, um, it was quite unusual. I think Zen is, practicing Zen is still fairly unusual because most of the people who practice Zen are still following, um, traditional forms. Um, so for the, uh, Vipassana Buddhism, for instance, um, Vipassana, the people practicing and teaching Vipassana decided to present it more as a Western, with Western forms and not having so much of the traditional, um, forms, uh, which has been really great. Um, and, uh, I've studied Vipassana a fair amount over the last 15 or 20 years in addition

[21:06]

to Zen. So, um, but yeah, it was, it was quite unusual. And, uh, at the same time, it was, um, uh, I don't know, for me, it didn't seem that strange, um, but this is California after all. How did you first hear about it and, and come to, uh, sit with Suzuki? Um, well, I was going to college. I went to Antioch for a year and, uh, I found it very, um, uh, painful in some ways that, uh, intellectual study, um, scholastic study didn't seem to have much to do with my life. I wrote a paper about alienation and anxiety and got an A and was as alienated and anxious as I'd ever been. So it, it didn't seem that study had much to do with who you actually were in your life. It was just having information and material and regurgitating it for tests and papers, um, something that somebody else had said or taught. And, uh, coincidentally, my brother was going to the Zen center and, um, my brother has

[22:09]

since become an Episcopal priest and a Catholic, uh, subsequent to being Episcopal priest became a Catholic. So, um, you're not related to Jerry Brown, are you? No. There's another Catholic, there's another Catholic, Catholic, Buddhist, Buddhist, Catholic. Um, anyway, my brother sent me a, one of the stories my brother sent me was about a young man who writes home to his mother and says he's doing well in school and helping the other kids study and getting good grades. And his mom writes back and says, son, I didn't raise you to be a walking dictionary. Why don't you go to the mountains and attain true realization? And I thought that's for me. I haven't heard of a lot of moms like that. So I dropped out of school and, um, at the end of the school year, it said reasons for leaving. And I said to go to the mountains and attain true realization. And that was 1964. And in 1966, I was at Tassara. It was the year before Zen center bought Tassara, but I was already a Zen student. And, um, I'd started sitting and I went to work at this resort, which then Zen center

[23:12]

ended up buying. Was Zen center already interested in it? How did you? Yeah, that's why I went to work there was because Zen center was interested in buying a place in the country. Tell us a little bit about Tassara. Let me, let me say for the people just joining us that my name is Joy Mollitz and my guest today is Ed Brown, who is a Zen teacher and a cookbook author and wears many other hats, which we will talk about. His most recent book he edited is a book of lectures by Suzuki Roshi, who founded the San Francisco Zen center in Tassara and Green Gulch. And I suppose Green's restaurant is an offshoot of that as well. Yes. I visited Tassara a couple of times. It's a beautiful place. And I wondered if you could tell our listeners a little bit about it. Well, Tassara is pretty unique. It's at the end of a 14 mile dirt road going up 3000 feet and down 3000 feet. And if you're driving a Zen center vehicle, you are encouraged to take at least an hour

[24:12]

for the drive. If you're driving your own car, you can possibly drive in 45, 50 minutes. So it's, it's really rather sweet to drive from San Francisco. You'd go on the freeway, you go on the six lane freeway, the four lane freeway, the two lane highway, the two lane road, the two lane road without the dividing line, the, the one and a half lane road, and then the dirt road. So all the way, just a point. Yeah. All the way to Tassara, you're slowing down, driving more and more slowly and smaller and smaller roads. And there's a kind of point driving, you know, and especially when you drive down the 3000 feet, it's in winding downhill. And it seems like you're never going to arrive. And then you get there and it's this amazingly sweet, isolated spot. And Zen Center brought Tassara in December of 1966. And we've continued to operate in the summer, a hot springs resort, or invite guests in

[25:14]

the summer from May 1st through Labor Day. I would say it's not an ordinary resort in the sense that many of the workshops offered. We do offer workshops to give people a taste of Zen practice. And I took a writing and Zen class there, which was wonderful and a yoga and Zen class. And, and people are encouraged to practice with the community there, which is a wonderful way to get a, an introduction to what Zen practice is like. And there's, you know, there's no radios, no television. There's very little electricity. There are no dances, or there's not much in the way of entertainment, unless you call sitting and facing the wall entertaining, or, you know, being down at the hotbeds entertaining. Or hiking down to the narrows where you can swim, which is quite delightful. So, so it's very quiet, even in the summer, for the most part. Sometimes we have very rowdy guests, and we need to encourage them to quiet down. Yeah. But in the wintertime, from mid-September through mid-April, we have two 90-day retreat

[26:20]

periods, which are open to students who qualify and apply and are accepted. And it's a fairly rigorous schedule of meditation and study, lectures, some work in the afternoons. So I spent, I don't know, seven or eight years at Tassajara altogether over all these years. But it's, it's an unusual place. There's not much electricity. It must be very cold in the winter. Pretty cold in the winter. If you're over 50, we allow you to have heat in your room. But most of the rooms are lit with kerosene lanterns. And we have wood-burning stoves for people over 50. It's one of the rare times that people actually want to be older, wish they were older. We finally, about, I don't know, four or five years ago, put some pipes underneath the floorboards in the meditation hall with warm water from the hot baths. So the zendo is now more closer to 50 rather than 40 or 55.

[27:26]

So it takes sort of the worst to chill up. So it's a very rigorous lifestyle for the people who live there. The other spot there that I really enjoyed visiting was the spot where Suzuki Roshi's ashes are buried. Oh, yes. Up the hill. That's a beautiful spot. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I am talking with Ed Brown, who is a local Zen teacher and editor and cookbook author. And we are going to take a short music break. And we'll be right back with you. Stay with us. You're listening to KWMR in Point Reyes Station at 90.5 FM and now at 89.3 in Belenus. Good morning.

[33:25]

This is Joy Mollitz. And you are listening to Waves of Joy on KWMR FM in Point Reyes Station in Belenus. And today I'm here with Ed Brown, who is a meditation teacher here in West Marin and edited recently a book of Suzuki Roshi's lectures entitled Not Always So. Actually, I'm hardly ever a meditation teacher here in West Marin. Okay. But once in a while, I used to be a meditation teacher here in West Marin. But actually, I'm going to be the substitute meditation teacher here in West Marin on two Wednesdays in January, seven o'clock in the morning. For at which location? At the dance palace at the old church. Oh, really? Who normally teaches that? Stuart and Kerry Kitchens are normally there each Wednesday morning, seven to eight or eight fifteen or so. And I believe it's the, what is it? It's the third and fourth Wednesdays of the 15th and 22nd of January, I'll be at the dance palace, substitute meditation teacher.

[34:26]

That sounds good. But you know, my style of being a meditation teacher is not to teach you anything. Well, that's something that Suzuki Roshi talks about in his book. You know, I'm following. You know, it turns out I edited these lectures and not always so. And it turns out that I'm my teacher's disciple. And he says, if I tell you what to do, you might actually try to do it. And you might stick to it. And you say, this is what I'm supposed to do. And then you would limit your own capacity to find your way in your life. And this is very interesting. You see, how do you ever develop your own capacity? You know, can you trust yourself? And can you develop your own capacity to find your way in your life? Or do you think that there's some expert out there who can tell you how to live your life? Well, what is the role of the teacher? Whether it's a Zen teacher or not? Well, the Zen teacher has, somebody has to give you encouragement to be able to figure out your own life, to find your own way. Because if nobody does that, if the, if you, you know, because most teachers are going to tell you to do what they tell you rather than to find your own way.

[35:26]

So you actually need a teacher. You need some permission, some kind of authority to let you know that it's actually okay to live your life. I mean, this comes up in cooking too, you know. I'm glad we got to cooking. It's one of my classic stories. You know, when we wrote Debra Madison, I helped Debra Madison write The Greens Cookbook. And it was really well edited. We worked and worked on that book. And still. I love that eggplant noodle salad. Thank you. There were all these little, when it came back from the editor, there were these little pink labels sticking out the side of the book that said, you know, when we said, cook the onions until they're translucent, the note said, how long? Depends on the onion, I guess. And so we've, and. Well, I mean, if you think that's true of The Greens Cookbook, I mean, I have your book, Tassajara Cooking. We did the opposite with that, Tassajara Cooking. This is like, take some greens. Yeah. And add some salt. Yeah. And cook for a while. Yeah. And, and you see, mostly people would rather not pay any attention to anything.

[36:33]

I'm convinced that America, you know, basically. We have a culture, you know, that encourages us to believe that happiness is never having to relate to anything. Not having to pay attention. Not having to pay attention to anything. And that there should be some way to behave if everybody did what was right, then we wouldn't have to actually relate to anybody about anything. And nothing, nothing would bother us. Nothing would touch us. Nothing would disturb us because everybody would be behaving the way they should so that we're not bugged or disturbed. Yeah. But anyway, finally in the recipe it said, cook the vegetables until they're as tender as you like. There you go. That pleases me. And the, and no, but the note said, how long? How do we know? How do we know what we like, you see? And so there's somebody who's really in this other school of there is a right way to do it. You could get it right. You're the teacher and you're supposed to tell me how, how many minutes, how many minutes so that how many, how to do something so that I get it right. And it comes out the way it should. And you know, very little of our life is like that.

[37:36]

Well, it's, it's very fearful. I think it's that sort of beginner's mind when you don't know it's actually, it's, it's liberating, but it can be very scary. It's scary. It actually takes a kind of courage to decide I'm going to find out. And that's actually key in Buddhism. Most people nowadays have heard that Buddhism, the first number truth is life is suffering or there's some difficulty or pain in life that seems unavoidable. And no matter how perfectly we behave, something is unsatisfactory. And it's understood in some traditions that one becomes a Buddhist when one realizes the truth of this. And when decides I will find out how to live my life in accord, you know, given the facts, given the way that life is, I'm going to find out what to do. Which is different than I'm going to look for somebody to tell me what to do. That's right. So that I measure up or succeed in some way.

[38:40]

So this is to, for any of us to actually realize our own life and our own capacity, or, you know, to be able to express our own gifts or dreams, aspirations. How do we express what is truly ours? And in a certain sense, what is truly ours, you can understand in one sense or another comes from the divine or in some traditions, you know, from the muse. But we each have our own gifts. And then how do we manifest or express our gift in our life? Yeah. So I've understood, you know, Suzuki Roshi's way of saying it was, let the world, let your experience come home to your heart and let your heart respond. And letting your heart respond to things is different than telling yourself what you need to do in order to be right or to be good. You're letting yourself respond. And so you're responding from the goodness of your heart or the wholeness of your heart

[39:42]

or the kindness of your heart, just letting yourself respond from your heart, which is different than defending or protecting your heart. And it's different than trying to get things right or to be good. And so to be free, to free yourself from the good, bad, right, wrong, this is an immense challenge. Suzuki Roshi at one point calls it renunciation. You renounce good and bad, right and wrong in order to do this. It seems to me when you talk about responding from the heart that it's something that you may learn in sitting because you get around to it finally. You quiet yourself to the point where you can hear your heart. It's so difficult and such a challenge to go on sitting, sometimes even for one period, but let alone for months or years. And you kind of run through all of your other strategies. You do everything else first and finally you have no choice but to just let your heart be there and to let your heart respond to things. And to be yourself that way.

[40:43]

And it's not as though that has some power to control the world or to control things. But anyway, you have a kind of freedom or liberation from good, bad, right, wrong. And just responding from the goodness of your own heart. And Buddhism has that kind of idea, of course, that fundamentally the heart, which is the heart mind, is that we're fundamentally good-hearted and that when we are angry or hateful or aggressive, you know, we're captivated. We've been captured or captivated. Our good heart, our good heartedness has been captivated by an afflictive emotions or afflictive concepts, thinking. We were talking a little earlier off the air about war and peace, and I was mentioning an interview I heard this morning on the radio on some other unnamed station,

[41:47]

where they were interviewing a military man who said that, you know, the way to peace sometimes is through war. And I'm wondering, you're talking about the fundamental nature of humans to be kind. And I'm wondering how we can use that and exploit that, if you will, in this time when war is imminent. You have any thoughts on that? You know, I don't have any big answers. I was hoping you'd have the answers, Ed. It astounds me that, and it's a disappointment to me that, you know, we've come to this situation as a country. And a government. When there's so many skillful things, we were also mentioning, you know, I've studied from time to time nonviolent communication, the communication skills taught by Marshall Rosenberg, which, you know, emphasizes so many things, you know,

[42:50]

observation rather than evaluation and real carefully listening with empathy rather than disregarding what people say. And really trying to understand one another, and really aiming for communication that acknowledges one's own need and the needs of the people you're confronting. This is not so different than the Zen teacher Dogen who said, if you're getting in an argument with somebody, don't try to defeat the other person. And not trying to defeat the other person doesn't mean to abandon your own point of view. So this has been a challenge, you know, for centuries. How do you express yourself fully and not abandon your own point of view? And is there some way to talk so you don't try to defeat somebody? And certainly in relationship, as soon as you tell somebody they're an idiot, or they're this or they're that, and you put a label on them, you're trying to defeat the other person. So it's very easy to get into conversations or negotiations that are loaded.

[43:56]

And that, you know, we're not careful enough in that way. We're not respectful enough. And I wish we could do better at it. I do too. Well, I'm aware that we don't have a whole lot of time left. And I want to be sure to talk about this mindful touch that you've been teaching. And I'd like to kind of get at it in a roundabout way. Because I'm also curious about something you talked about in the introduction to your book, which is the old practice of being struck with a stick sometimes during meditation. And you told me that in a roundabout way, that sort of brought you to teaching mindful touch. I wanted to ask you, you talk about an incident in the introduction to your book, to the book you edited of Suzuki's lectures, Not Always So, about being struck by him during a meditation session. And I just wondered if you could talk about that a little bit and what it meant to you. And because so many people have such a strange reaction to the idea of being hit with a stick.

[45:03]

Well, it's obviously something we're not particularly used to in our culture. And it was a challenge, I think, for all of us to have some sense about it. But in the context of sitting in meditation, in the context of a tradition from Japan, and with our Japanese teachers, it turned out that being hit with the stick, it's on the broad muscle of the shoulders, it's at the trapezius between the neck and the shoulder blades. That being struck a strong blow there, kind of your world drops away. So you're thinking or whatever you were obsessing about or thinking about or your story, everything just drops away. And there's a few moments of rather clear open space. So it really was quite striking and stunning. Those are two good words for it. And then, you know, in a few moments, you put your world back together and reality back together.

[46:09]

But because it's dropped away, for a moment, you realize how much your story and your reality is something you make up. And then you can make it up again, and you can get it all back. But you realize that reality is not just reality, that it's not always so. And so that was very, well, in a certain sense, enlightening. When we started hitting each other, it became much more complicated, and it felt much more like punishment and payback and all kinds of different things. When you say hitting each other, you mean the American students? Yeah, the American students hitting other American students. And then, well, we also used to just take turns as students hitting each other, senior students. After you were a student for a year or two, you could also have a chance to do that. So then it was less clear what was going on in it. And it was harder for it to just be a very, just to be a teaching.

[47:12]

But because, so many years ago now, it's been more than 20 years we abandoned the use, pretty much abandoned the use of this traditional teaching, or the use of this stick that we used to use. So I had had some experience of being touched by Suzuki Roshi and other people in a way that for me was quite powerful. And it was a kind of touch that at first, when somebody touched me in meditation like this, I was having a lot of difficulty and a great deal of pain. And the woman sitting next to me touched me. And it's something that you just don't do. But she was the president of Zen Center at the time, very unusual woman. And when she touched me, she wasn't telling me to calm down, or she wasn't saying there, there, there wasn't any sympathy to it was just touch. Was there a message of like, I'm here with you?

[48:18]

Yeah, it was, it was, it was just presence. And but not even not even saying I'm here, but just presence. And it wasn't telling me to do anything. It wasn't telling me to calm down or relax or, you know, what's wrong with you? Most touch is has a message or a directive. And just that presence allowed me to calm down and breathe in quite a relaxed fashion. And my whole reality shifted because someone was present with me. So I started studying this several years ago. And I started when I do meditations, I often come around to people sitting and touch them for a few minutes. Now, when you say you began to study it, how did you go about studying such a thing? Well, different people teach a kind of, it's called therapeutic touch or healing touch. I studied with a group in Katate that's called Touchstone.

[49:20]

And they teach something that they call integrated awareness. Because I never graduated from integrated awareness, I can't do integrated awareness. Technically, so I just made up my own name for it. So I called it Mindfulness Touch. So do they teach massage classes? Is that is it akin to any kind of massage? Well, the closest thing that's akin to is Feldenkrais. So it's very gentle. Very gentle. Yeah, there's almost no manipulation. But I just found it very powerful aid for myself. And then also for others. It's the, because it's so difficult to have the kind of mind or consciousness that just accepts experience and is able to be with experience, whatever it is. So this is the kind of touch that when you touch somebody this way, you're agreeing not just to touch stuff, shoulders, knees, back,

[50:22]

but you're going to touch consciousness. You're agreeing to touch consciousness, to touch the person. And that, and that you're agreeing to be with that, whatever you touch. And mostly, of course, we're not agreeing, necessarily agreeing to be with what, what is in our reality. So the fact that somebody is agreeing to be with us means that we have the potential to be with it. So in some ways, it's not, I consider it sort of analogous in some ways to therapy, which is in therapy. If you can tell your therapist something, you tell yourself. So if somebody is touching you and they can feel something, you can feel it too. So suddenly you can just feel and be with whatever's going on for you and acknowledge it. And that's, that's a tremendous power for real change in your life to be with what's happening in that kind of accepting, powerfully accepting way. Is it something you teach in terms of that,

[51:24]

that might be used in, in relationship with a loved one or? Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. There's many contexts for using it. And when I've done this retreat, sometimes people have been couples for a long time to say, well, geez, we just hardly ever touch each other. I, you know, we hardly ever have touched ourselves each other this way. One man was saying, gee, I don't remember when we've touched each other like this. It's the way I touched, you know, our dog, just being present with the dog and we commune. And the wife got sort of upset with him, like, oh, you mean you don't touch me the way you touch our dog? Yeah, I can totally understand that. But it's so easy for us to, to forget how, you know, this is again, the simple power of a heart, our own heart, mind, consciousness to connect with our mind, consciousness of another in a way that is powerfully accepting and connecting. As opposed to telling them how they need to be, so that you will accept them or what they should or shouldn't do.

[52:28]

Yeah, dogs don't generally do that. So that you'll approve. Right. And in my mind, you know, my reality, this has something to do also then with, you know, the difference between love and approval. And we could actually live in love and acknowledge the love that's always present rather than aiming for approval or telling others how they need to behave to, you know, gain our approval. Anyway, that's a whole other talk, isn't it? If people are interested in this mindful touch and your teaching of it, can you tell us a little bit about how they might find you? I do. You know, Patricia, my partner and I have a website. It's yogazin.com. She's a yoga teacher. She's a yoga teacher. And I don't think our schedule for the coming year is up just yet, but within the next week or two, we'll have our schedule for next year up. And I'm doing a mindfulness touch class at Green Gulch.

[53:29]

And also, if you get the Green Gulch catalog, you can find out about it. I'm doing a class in mindfulness touch either the end of April or the end of May. I forget which, in the upcoming year. And what about enlightenment through handwriting? Or what is it? Yeah, liberation. Liberation. I keep forgetting. Well, I had a great time. I've been studying handwriting changes, and I'm convinced that it works. You know, if you change your... And you could, instead of practicing meditation, you practice changing your handwriting. It's a lot easier. Yeah. Well, you change your handwriting, and then that changes literally, you know, your brainwaves. So are you teaching classes in that as well? And where do those classes? I'm doing those at Green Gulch too. Okay. So we'll keep an eye out for that. Yeah. So if you call up Green Gulch and get their catalog for the upcoming, you know, the next six months or so, I'm going to be doing a course on mindfulness touch, and also a day on liberation through handwriting. And just one other side of this fabulous man, Ed Brown, who I'm talking to,

[54:34]

is that I discovered that he is a wonderful photographer and creator of... What would you call them? Cards? What kind of cards? Yeah. Well, I do photos and glue them on the cards. They're Strathmore blank greeting cards. And do you write? And then I title them, yes. And you're in the new handwriting? Yeah, in the new handwriting. New handwriting. Underneath, little beautiful captions for the photographs, and they are quite stunning. And I know they're available at City Center, the Zen Center in San Francisco. And Spirit Rock. And out here, did you say, how in Inverness Park would someone go? Well, Inverness Park, there's a store, Inverness Park Place, where Norma Ashby sells flowers and household items, plates and dishes and various things. So she has some of my cards there. All right. Do you have time for a little quote from Suzuki Roshi? Give us one to close out the hour. You might think you could practice Zazen much better if you had no problem. But actually, some problem is necessary. It doesn't have to be a big one. Through the difficulty you have, you can practice Zazen.

[55:36]

This is an especially meaningful point, which is why Dogen Zenji says, practice and enlightenment are one. Practice is something you do consciously, something you do with effort. There, right there, is enlightenment. Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there, in the imperfection, is perfect reality. It is true intellectually and also true in the realm of practice. It is true on paper and true with your body. There's no other place for you to establish your practice. Oh, thank you very much. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure and happy holidays and many blessings to one and all. Peace in the world. Thank you. You've been listening to Ed Brown reading from the book he recently edited, Not Always So, a collection of lectures by Suzuki Roshi, the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center. And he has graced us this hour with his presence here on Waves of Joy. I'm with you every two weeks. My name is Joy Mollitz, and you are listening to KWMR in Point Reyes Station, 90.5 FM, and now in Bellinus at 89.3 FM.

[56:40]

Stay tuned for New Dimensions Radio. We'll be right back with you.

[56:45]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ