Okay, so if you have some interest, I'm interested in responding, and otherwise I'll start talking about something and we'll go from there. I don't know, you know, I know so little, you know. I have such a small slice of the history of Tuscarora. There was so much going on that, you know, because I was mostly such a, you know, devoted Zen student that I didn't know what everybody was actually doing. I was just following the schedule, and working, and, you know, working in the kitchen and

[01:09]

going to the bathroom. So I don't know what, you know, really, you know, it was the 60s, and so, I mean, people must be doing all kinds of stuff, you know. The first, you know, I've been telling, I've told some of you, you know, I have a friend at Greencoats named Daigon, and Daigon was reminding me the other day of saying that, you know, some people used to have here at Tuscarora in the summer, this is like the heat, you know, it's not, these are just beautiful sunny days, and, you know, as the summer goes on it's going to be over like, a lot of days will be over 100 degrees, and, you know, 106,

[02:12]

108, and sometimes it gets, you know, 115, 118, not so often, but usually it's like 108, and so a couple of weeks ago Daigon was reminding me of this saying, the heat, the flies, the madness, and the lies. So I actually want to make up a t-shirt now, because I'm having a week for my students, I can only have like seven people, but we're meeting in the second week of August, and then I want to have a shirt for the occasion, you know, the heat, the flies, the madness, the lies, Tuscarora survivor, August 2009. But the first practice period was in the summer of 67, and we had the dedication of the center,

[03:28]

and it was actually, I think, July the 4th, and the Zendo was where the student eating area is, we had turned the bar into the student, into the Zendo, and there were a lot of flies. Somehow now there's the screen doors, actually, there's the screen doors and these other doors, and then somehow people can keep the doors shut, but in those days somehow the Zendo would just be full of flies, so we'd sit, and the flies would be crawling in your face, in your ear, and up your nose, and then sometimes during breaks we'd have, we would do what were called herding the flies, and four or five people would start at the far end of the Venetian Island, we'd have the white towels, the bath towels, and you'd raise the towel,

[04:29]

and then you'd go whap, whap, and then the flies would retreat, and then this line of people with towels would whap their way down the Venetian Island, and then when they got down to the end, there'd be one or two people who would open the screen doors, and then you could see if you were standing in there, you could see all these flies, and then he'd close the screen doors, and they'd start again, and then the Zendo, whap, whap, whap, oh gosh. One time, this is sort of an aside, but one time I said to Categorici, Categorici, this is, it's really hard to give lectures, I don't know what to talk about, and Categorici looked it means is, at least you know the language.

[05:29]

I have never complained. We soon forgot about how much, you know, I mean, bless their hearts, you know, our teachers went ahead and talked in English. I mean, the Dalai Lama probably knows English better than any of my Japanese teachers and he still gives talks in Tibetan and has somebody translate it. Yeah, his English is perfectly adequate, really. So, I started telling you the other morning about, you know, how Suzuko's advice was when

[06:55]

you wash the rice, wash the rice, when you cut the carrots, cut the carrots, when you stir the soup, stir the soup, so, I started studying this and this is actually related to what I was talking about this morning, you know, that your energy becomes more precise. So, just having energy, your energy is connecting with your body, where your body is in space, what your body is doing, what you're, the thing you're doing it with, and you're actually meeting that and it might talk about, and it was such a great example this afternoon, going to walk-in, there's some peppers, I mean, what, and then, well, what can we do with these? And then, almost everything we do, we can do something with them. We can have them on the pizzas, we can have them in the breads, we can have them in the salad, it's not a problem. Once you start seeing what's there, and then, well, what do we do with this, you know, here

[08:02]

we are, that's what's happening. So, and then, I was telling you, I never quite finished the story, by the way, about the Gil Fonsdale, has a, you know, I told you, you know, in Japan they say, when you rake, just rake, and in Southeast Asia, when you rake, watch your mind, and how in Japan they can be stirring up clouds of dust and being very energetic in Southeast Asia sometimes. And my teacher, Mel Weitzman, who was a Ziggurish's student as well, said, oh, I guess they still think their minds are up here, because, of course, the other way of doing this is that everything is mind, and we're relating to mind, and the most, one of the most famous sayings in Soto Zen is, mind itself is Buddha.

[09:05]

And it's, I think it's through Jun Zen Master Baso, or Matsu, and then people have, you know, taken this as a kind of mark. And then, of course, for Zen teachers, once you say mind itself is Buddha, then, you know, and then the student repeats it back to the teacher at some point, and he says, not mind, not Buddha. No mind, no Buddha. But, it's kind of a sweet expression, you know, to, it's related to, for instance, here at Tassara, we have a schedule, and then we have assigned seats in the meditational, especially

[10:08]

during the practice period. If you're not there, we will come looking for you. So people who aren't used to this sometimes feel like it's like, well, the Zen police are going to be after you if you don't show up. And at the pastna retreats that I've been to, nobody comes looking for you. So on one hand, it's kind of, you know, I can do what I feel like, nobody's going to come looking for me. But on the other hand, does anybody even know I exist? Do they care? That they don't notice? Suppose I was really sick, suppose I needed food, suppose I needed medical attention, and nobody comes. So in Zen, we go looking. And Zen centers are very different. This is one of the things, you know, in some Zen centers, I've been to a Zen center, and I've been to a Zen center, not yours, but where there was one of the, you know, officials

[11:16]

there who had, you know, always got his, always got that person to the Zen door. Anyway, that's what he was known for, whether it was a success or not. And I was teaching a course, and a couple of women, I met a couple of women, dear women, one of them was an afternoon soap opera star in Guiding Light. So at 2 p.m. in the afternoon, I never saw it, but she said, I'm in this show, Guiding Light. And her friend was a movie producer. And at one point they said, you know, I forget her name now, but she's giving a sort of throat, do you suppose we can skip Zazen? And her career, you know, her livelihood depends on her having her voice and not getting a sore throat. She used to go to bed and say, it's fine with me, you might want to check with the authorities.

[12:21]

And they came back to me and said, the authorities told us that if we don't go to Zazen, we're history. So, we're history. We found a bed and breakfast down the road, and maybe you'd like to come and visit us in New York City after this is over. So, one year I ended up staying in, and again, I forget her name, in an apartment on West 94th Street. And the other woman, the movie producer, Lisa, I was in contact with her for years. But, it's an example of, you know, you meet and connect with people because, because you're not, because you're, there's actually a Zen poem about this misfits and bandits in the Dharma. Somehow we meet like misfits and bandits in the Dharma. You know, that's how we actually meet. We don't meet as like, I'm Buddha and you're Buddha too.

[13:24]

Hey, let's get together. So, we went through this here at Tassajara because there's some temptation when you go to find somebody like, why aren't you in Zazen? You've made a commitment to be there and you're not there. And now I've had to come looking for you. And you should be there. And we're counting on you. And so, you know, how are you talking to the other? And over the years we've been studying how to, you know, be more like you're visiting the Buddha. Venerable, how are you? How is your health today? What is happening with you? How are you doing? Are you feeling well?

[14:25]

Are you indisposed? And you ask for an accounting rather than making a kind of assumptions and assessments and, you know, you're such a slacker and you should be there and you're just, you're just goofing off and, you know, the rest of us are trying hard and you're not. But it's actually possible to do this, you know, respectfully. Like, mind itself is Buddha, and you yourself are Buddha, and I will talk to you as though you're Buddha. And I won't talk down to you as though you're some kind of slackered misfit. So even if it is a slackered misfit, you know, you have some aim to treat them respectfully. So, I started studying, you know, to see virtue, and then it wasn't so long after

[15:26]

that that actually there was a kind of, if you've read Tomato Blessings, you know, there was a kitchen rebellion. After I'd been the cook here for about a year or something like that, the director came to me and said, you know, the people who are working with you are unhappy with you and the way you do things, and we'd like to have a meeting. Are you willing to come to a meeting? I said, oh, okay. And then at the meeting, you know, people were asked to tell me what was going on. And so I remember one woman said, you treat us just like you do the bread. And then she said, no, wait a minute, the bread, you treat the bread so lovingly. You handle it so carefully, and obviously with such kind regard, that's not the way you treat us. You treat us worse than we were, you know, not even as well as you treat the bread.

[16:31]

And then I remember another woman was saying, you know, you treat everybody in the kitchen here like we're just more tools in your hand, like you're the only one who knows anything. And we're human beings, we're sentient people, and we have taste, and we have smell, and we have eyes, and we know we can decide what to do, but you don't let us. You decide everything. I mean, I was 22. What do you want? And I mean, I've never been a manager or in charge of anything. And when you're first a manager in charge of something, you don't know what you're doing. Even people who are 35 and first become managers don't have a clue. You know, until you're a manager and you start trying to manage something and organize something and direct something, you don't know how to do it. So, anyway, at the end of this meeting, the director said to me,

[17:37]

So Ed, it sounds like people are unhappy with you and they'd like you to give them more responsibilities. Is this something you're willing to do or not? Because you can also have a different job here if you'd rather. And I said, well, you know, I'm happy to do things differently. I can do things differently, but I don't know how. He said, well, are you willing to give it a try? So I said, okay, I'll give it a try. But I was pretty devastated, you know. I had done my best to, 22 years old, to run a kitchen cooking for 100 people, six meals a day. And I was working, you know, 12 or 14 hours a day and six days a week.

[18:38]

And so, at the same time, I, you know, tried to listen to what people were saying. And he said, well, yeah, I understand. But I was pretty upset. And I walked out from that meeting and I sat at the bottom of the steps at the end of the road. You come down the cement steps and then the brick steps. And I sat down in the brick steps. And a woman named Trudy Dixon came along. Trudy in those days was married to Mike. And we were talking at dinner, some of us, but it's Mike and Trudy's son, Ezra, who took acid in high school and has, you know, and had a schizophrenic break and has never come back. Mike is now 43. And as Patty was saying, it's not the acid that causes that, it's that, you know, that's something that you're, you know,

[19:48]

it's congenital or, you know, something's going to trigger it. But Trudy was married to Mike and Trudy had cancer. And Trudy was one of Suzuki Roshi's most senior students and she was the woman who actually did most of the editing of Zen-Line Beginner's Mind, which became, you know, the world's best-selling book on Buddhism. Some of us were talking about this, I forget who, it was Tommy, he really likes Nara Riso, and I edited it differently than Trudy did. But basically, I took out all the shoulds. This is a Japanese translation of the Japanese, which can be also translated as an interrogative, so you can either say, you should wake up, or you can just say, wake up. So I just take out all the you shoulds and just have him talk directly to you, wake up.

[20:49]

You know, study carefully. Instead of you shoulds, just study carefully. See what you can notice. Keep finding out. So I took out all the shoulds. But Trudy edited it, and I just saw Mike the other day. Mike's an artist. Mike came over to my house, Mike's a painter, and he came over to my house to take photos of me, and he's now starting to do portraits. And coincidentally, he was telling me about taking photos of Carl Dern, the man who just died, and he has paintings of Carl. And one of them, he was looking over at something, and his light was coming up, so his face is in light. Coming up. Anyway, Trudy was one of Susan Groce's senior students, and she stopped

[21:53]

to talk to me, and I told her what was happening, and she said, Ed, I believe in you. And I said, I don't see how you can. You know, I don't know. I don't know how to do this. I can't do anything. I tried really hard, and people don't like it. And she just repeated it. I have faith in you. I believe in you. So I thought, okay, I'll give it a try. And so then I started studying something else, you know. I had been studying when you wash the rice, wash the rice. And then I was studying to see Virgil. And then I started studying. When I looked at it, I realized, yes, I am trying to prove to others and to people eating what a good

[22:56]

cook I am. And I need to be teaching others how to cook. That's where this all started. Yeah, you're here. And I need to be teaching people how to cook, not just follow recipes and, you know, how to actually take responsibility and make a meal happen. And then, you know, pretty quickly I realized I need to find my successor. I need to train everybody as though they could possibly... I need to train everybody that they might possibly be my successor and teach them everything they're willing to learn. And maybe one of them will be my successor. And instead of making myself indispensable, I need to make myself dispensable. It's very interesting that shift from being indispensable to being dispensable. If you're dispensable, then somebody else can take over. You don't have... you're not a slave to what you're doing. You feel... when you're a slave to what you're doing, you feel important. Because they need

[24:00]

me, I'm indispensable. But that also means you're a slave to what you're doing. It's so interesting. So I... then I started studying. I didn't know how to do this. And... And I've been studying it ever since. You know, how do you... you know, what simple... you know, recipes seem useful. Gives you a kind of structure, a kind of basics, a kind of place to start. And that you can't depend on them. And why don't you look at what you have first instead of looking at the recipe and then not knowing what to do with the leftovers. And this is... to this day, you know, I don't... I mean, my first job here was using the leftovers. And for centuries this is what people have done.

[25:00]

You eat leftovers. And in Zen, the instruction is to eat the leftovers that day. Because you don't know if you're going to be here tomorrow. In my house I've changed this. So I eat the leftovers for breakfast because I have breakfast soup. And it's a little different each day, but it's often a lot of the leftovers. And my first job when I was... when it was still a resort, I was the breakfast-lunch cook and breakfast we had, you know, bacon and eggs and ham and eggs and French toast and biscuits and muffins and pancakes and what have you. And I was the breakfast lunch cook. And...

[26:03]

And... And then lunch, we would take the leftovers from Tuesday's dinner, it became Thursday's lunch. Wednesday's dinner became Friday's lunch. And you had to be here for a while before you realized what was happening. It took usually about two weeks. And you're like, huh. Yeah, that's right. So, like, if you roast a turkey and you have a turkey and stuffing and rice and potatoes and green beans and then Tuesday and then Thursday there's turkey soup and there's Welch's rare bit or whatever. I don't know, you know, all these things. But you make a casserole or a stew or something. And then we always had Jell-O salads. The Vex wanted Jell-O salads every lunch. So we had Jell-O salads. We weren't using leftovers there but basically I would make a soup

[27:06]

and a main dish out of leftovers from the night before last. And that's what people did. And I don't get it. Like... I can't... Nowadays it's sensitive. Everything is new. And then once a week you serve the leftovers or something. And I'm putting, like, the leftover bread. Can't you at least start the bread with the leftover cereal? You know, instead of water you take the oatmeal and you dissolve the yeast in the water and you put it in the oatmeal. And then you start stirring in the flour. And then you beat it up. And then you start folding the flour in. And you have oil and salt in there. And cereal just replaces water. It's basically the same quantity of cereal replaces that amount of water. I don't know why they don't do this.

[28:09]

That's intuitive to me, that cereal will replace water. But if you have cereal, like, what do I do with this? And you start asking yourself, well, how about I try putting it in bread? So I just try it. You know, you try it out. And then it becomes a no-brainer. It's not a big issue. So you're willing to try things and see. But we made... And then, you know, when I was a cook we did all kinds of... I mean, we had for a while, you know, these recipes are in the bread books still. Leftover cereal bread. And actually, leftover cereal makes a kind of sourdough bread. And the bread will rise even if you don't put yeast in because this leftover cereal has sour stuff in it. So you mix in flour. And you don't even need yeast. And you let it sit overnight and then you knead it some more. And it actually rises, not like real bread, but about one and a half. And it's fairly thick and it's kind of like sourdough bread. And we used to make

[29:13]

gruel bread because we'd take all the leftovers and cook them up for just this kind of what we call gruel. You know, it's the grains. So that's not like your intelligence like let's make it into minestrone. And let's add tomato to give it some color and some body. Or let's make this into... One of my favorites is Greek lemon soup. You can disappear things into Greek lemon soup. Anyway. So I studied what to disappear and where. And cereal, again, you can put cereal in your bean soup. It's thicker. And nobody knows there's wheat. But nowadays does this have wheat in it? And then pretty soon it's like, oh god, I can't do it. So part of the reason why people don't do these things is like, you have to be sure what's in what. Anyway. So I studied about how to use leftovers. And then I was

[30:21]

studying, anyway, how to teach people to cook. And I still don't know, except that then I started noticing, I started giving people responsibility. And it turns out this is not a simple thing. And so I was learning from the ground up. You know, you can get books about this stuff. And it turns out if you want to give somebody responsibility, you say I'm wondering if you would take responsibility for making breakfast. Or for cleaning the walk-in. Or for, you know, day-off bag lunches. And then when it doesn't happen you say I thought you took responsibility for that. And they say, oh no, that wasn't part of my responsibility. No, that's their responsibility. And then it's like, but, you know, because people are so

[31:21]

different. I'm the kind of person, you know, I notice what needs to get done and I will take care of it. Or I will ask somebody to take care of it. Since I've been here at Tessahara, I've picked up two Kleenexes and one napkin off the ground, paper. Other people walk past it. I pick it up. That's responsibility. And, you know, you can overdo it. At some point you feel like, my God, well I can't pick up all the things that have been dropped in the universe. But it's interesting how some people, you say, would you take responsibility? No. Thank you. No. I just want to do my job. And then I started studying the difference between responsibility and accountability. Because you don't want to

[32:21]

take the responsibility back. If you give somebody and they accept the responsibility to take care of lunch, you don't want to tell them what to do with lunch or when it needs to get done. You don't want to say, you need to do this now. Because if you're saying you need to do this now, you have the responsibility. You haven't given it to them. You've taken it back. And you're bossing them around. You have the responsibility. So you need to ask them to be accountable. How is it going? Will it be ready at noon? What still needs to be done? And you kind of lead them through the process to discovering what they still need to do. How are the potatoes? Is it getting baked? Because you don't want to take the responsibility back and just tell them what to do. Because they just told you they're responsible as you are. And they know what they're doing. But actually you can see that they're not taking care of it

[33:21]

so then what do you do? So this is holding somebody accountable and not taking back the responsibility. And then I started taking more days off and then I started turning the kitchen over to people and then they start to understand. This is stressful. This soup doesn't taste very good. What do you do? And pretty soon people have a little more empathy for what you were going through as the head cook. So things worked out a bit better. But anyway, that's what got me started still. Studying all of this. And then it became not just how do I teach cooking, but how do I teach

[34:23]

what is the thing that I actually want to teach? And it turns out it's like the Zen master said see with your eyes, smell with your nose, taste with your tongue. Nothing in the universe is hidden. What else would you have me say? And usually the other thing you want the Zen teacher or whoever it is to say is how do I get this to come out the way it's supposed to? How do I get these things to come out the way I want them to? Tell me. How do I do that? So one of the things that's not hidden is that's not really possible to anywhere near the degree you think it might be. You're going to have to kind of meet what's going on and see what you can do with it.

[35:28]

That's what happens when you see and smell and taste and touch and you think your thoughts. This is a little bit like the one time here in the 60s. We used to sometimes have a community tea with Suzuki. So one time we were having tea and Suzuki said, so does anybody have something they want to bring up? And there was a student who said who raised her hand and she said, Suzuki, why haven't you enlightened me yet? And I don't think of that as a very respectful kind of question. It has the implication of you know

[36:35]

I don't know how to do that, but you are withholding it from me for some reason. You could do that, but you're not or you're not really a Zen teacher because if you were, you would have enlightened me by now. And this is kind of one of those questions like it's really hard to answer when did you stop beating your wife? It's a little bit one of those funny questions, you know. And Suzuki paused for a little bit and he said I'm making my best effort. And I think he said some other things, but that's what I remember at the beginning of his answer.

[37:35]

And that's one of those things that stayed with me. And it stayed with me because you know it's really easy to be critical and judgmental and then especially for me towards my own experience. Towards my own body and mind. Can't you give me a better experience than this one?

[38:03]

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