I first sat in this seat in 1984 for the winter practice period. I was the head teacher for that practice period, there were 22 students. It was during the, or subsequent to, around the time of the fall of the empire. Some of you will know about this from various sources. And so I used to come in and bow like this and come over here and sit. Twenty-two people is probably one of our smallest practice periods. And it was a good group of people though.

[01:02]

Steve Weintraub and Andrews Guts might have been here, and Robert Lido and Brenda Gross. And Claus, Dieter Wagner, who died from drinking too much alcohol later. And Connie, was it Connie Everett? No, she's the, no, it was an Everett who was the cousin of the other Everett. I forget her name. Anyway, we kept the practice going here at Tassara. I tried, one day I thought, you know, it might be nice if we actually practiced talking to each other. I said, why don't we have lunch every other day off together, or, you know, once a week or something. And the staff here said, no, Ed, we come here to Tassara to practice Zazen, not to talk

[02:15]

to each other. I'm like, oh, okay. Because I spent a lot of years practicing not talking to people, and I thought it might be nice to practice talking to people. So, there are some uses to it. And we had an unusual event also that practice period. I think it was that practice period. It might have been just after the practice period at the beginning of the summer. There was a student here named James. James was about 22, 20, pretty young, very sincere, very sweet young boy, young man. And one day some of the staff came to me and they said, James has been smoking dope and

[03:20]

sharing drugs with other students. We have to kick him out. It's against the rules. So I asked James to come and talk to me. And James said, well, you know, it was my birthday, and my mom sent me a care package. Most moms send care packages with cookies. James's mother sent him a care package with, you know, brownies. And with drugs. And James said, I couldn't take all those drugs myself. I thought I better share them with some of the other students. So, I thought that was what you do with care packages.

[04:26]

And I said to the staff, you know, I think James is a really good student, a really sincere person. I think we should keep him here. And the staff said, no, we have to follow the rules. And James has to leave. You can't allow him to stay. So I'm not very good at taking authority. So I agreed with the staff. There were, you know, I mean, James had been a friend of Esan Dorsey's, who many of you will know about.

[05:35]

But, you know, Esan had been a female impersonator for 20 years and done all kinds of drugs and everything. And 20 years of, you know, living, of performing and then being stoned and drugged. And, you know, one day he was walking down Haight Street, looked in the bookstore window, and there was a picture of Ramana Maharshi. And Esan thought, it's time for me to start meditating. And he came to the Zen Center that day or the next day. And then there he was every day in the front hall of the Zen Center sweeping the floor, mopping it, waxing it and polishing it. You'd see him with the waxer, the electric waxer buffing the floor of the Zen Center day after day.

[06:40]

And coming to morning meditation. And Esan always had, you know, his clothes were kind of worn out, but very carefully mended with patches. He once told me, you know, in 20 years, there was only one time that I was so out of it when I got home that I didn't hang up my clothes and fold them and put them away. Once. So Esan in many ways already had a practice. Even before Zen, he hung his clothes up. And he mended things. And the patches always were very obvious. And Esan used to say, I never stopped liking to do those other things.

[07:50]

I just wanted to do Sazen more. So I had to get home early enough at night and be clear enough that I could go to Sazen the next day. Philip Wilson was another of Suzuki Ueshi's students like this. Philip used to like to party. And this is years ago, you know. Philip had been a football player on the Stanford offensive line. And one year he decided nothing would get in his way. Nothing would stop him. And by the third quarter of the game, he was watching it from above the field. And afterwards, they would take him to the hospital for a day or two while he came down and back.

[08:59]

Philip, you know, studied Zen in Japan. And Suzuki Ueshi sent him to Eheji. He didn't know any Japanese. And he was, I think, the second Shuso here. He lived in, I think, cabin 14. And sometimes he wouldn't. If Suzuki Ueshi was here, Philip was here. When Suzuki Ueshi went to San Francisco, Philip didn't stop following the schedule. And then sometimes we'd hear him playing. He had a battery-powered 45 RPM record player. And we could hear it all over Tassajara from cabin 14. And, you know, Suzuki Ueshi came back one time, and he'd been playing his record player.

[10:06]

And we heard Philip in Suzuki Ueshi's cabin, and we heard Suzuki Ueshi hitting him. Whack! Whack! Whack! And later, Philip said, we all thought that he'd been, you know, Suzuki Ueshi was hitting him for playing a 45 record player and not following the schedule. But anyway, what Suzuki Ueshi had told Philip was, don't fight with Dick Baker. And Philip said, I don't fight with Dick Baker. And Suzuki Ueshi said, did you hear me? I said, don't fight with Dick Baker. And then he started hitting him. And after a while, the stick that he was hitting Philip with broke. So Suzuki Ueshi got another stick. And Philip took it away from him. And he said, Suzuki Ueshi, these sticks are really precious. You don't want to break another one on me. But Philip said, while Suzuki Ueshi was hitting him, his energy was just getting bigger and bigger.

[11:12]

He said, I don't know if that's what was supposed to happen, but my energy was just getting larger and larger and bigger than the room and really huge. Anyway, Philip loved Suzuki Ueshi. And you see pictures of him, you know, helping Suzuki Ueshi move rocks. And Philip, you know, because he loved to party so much, he knew that if he went home after the party, he would never get to Zazen the next day. So he would drive his car. This was when Zen Center was on Laguna.

[12:16]

He would drive his car over to Laguna Street, park his car and go to sleep. And then he could get up in the morning and go into Zazen. And he said the same thing, you know, similar to Ihsan, but, you know, I didn't want to miss Zazen. But, you know, with Philip, he also said, and I didn't want to miss the party. So James had been a friend of Ihsan's and Ihsan had introduced James. James had been a street person in San Francisco. And Ihsan brought him to the Zen Center and introduced him to sit in and James was here practicing at Tassajara. And the staff said he has to go. And I didn't know to say no.

[13:16]

You know, because two or three months later, James was dead. He was back on the street and taking drugs. I think this is, you know, an amazing practice that we do in life that we live together. And it's hard sometimes to see the benefits, but I'm like James and others, you know. I mean, practicing Zen saved, I think, saved my life. You know, it was many years later I read, you know, David Chadwick's book, Crooked Cucumber. And in Crooked Cucumber, David tells a story about when he was working here, he was the head of the dining room and I was the head of the kitchen.

[14:30]

And, you know, we were very short staffed. So we worked a lot of hours and sometimes we didn't have days off. And David's approach, because he's, you know, probably the most gregarious person I know. Sometimes I've sat with him somewhere here at Tassajara and everybody who walks by talks to him. And I don't talk to anybody. Or I'm just starting to now after all these years. But David, everybody who walks by says, Hi, David. And David says, Hi. And then they know what to talk about what's happening. And it seems so easy, but I don't know what to talk about. And David talked to everybody. And back when he was head of the dining room, then he would go out and start talking to guests.

[15:37]

And then say, you know, I need to go set up the dining room. Why don't you come and we can keep talking. You can work with me. I think that's how he did it. And then he would, by the end of the meal, he would be sitting down with the guests and drinking wine. Then he'd get up and finish clearing the tables. And then he would go back to their cabins and drink scotch or brandy and on into the night. He would not be at morning zazen. He would not be at morning service. He would not be at breakfast. He would not be at study. And then he would go to the chosan. The chosan, the tea with Suzuki Yoshi after, first thing in the morning after breakfast. Because he was one of the staff, one of the senior staff. And one day after there's the tea, the Anja's making the tea.

[16:39]

And everybody gets their cup and a little cookie maybe and bow and have a sip of tea. And Suzuki Yoshi would say a few words, maybe somebody's coming to visit or not. And then he would say, so would you like anything you want to talk about? And the director said, Suzuki Yoshi, what do we do about somebody who's always breaking the rules? David's sitting there, you can smell the alcohol in his breath. Who doesn't follow the schedule and misses meditation and drinks alcohol here at Tassajara. What should we do? And Suzuki Yoshi said, everybody is always making their best effort.

[17:41]

But don't we need to do something? Shouldn't we be doing something? Don't we need to teach him, make him follow the rules? And Suzuki Yoshi said, sometimes someone is following the spirit of the rules, even though they're not following the letter of the rules. And Suzuki Yoshi said, and the director said, well wouldn't it be better if he followed the letter of the rules too? And Suzuki Yoshi said, yes, that would be best. I guess that ended the discussion. And isn't it so remarkable that Suzuki Yoshi kept David here, and then David, for all of his wayward ways,

[18:45]

you know, is the one person who said, we need to archive Suzuki Yoshi's lectures. They're in all these little, some of them are in these little tiny, [...] tiny tape recorders. Some of them are on tape recorders. Shouldn't we, we need to archive these. We need to have these on reel-to-reel tapes. Now they're being put on, you know, digital. And David made it his life work to preserve Suzuki Yoshi's teaching. I didn't know this story when I agreed with the staff that James had to leave. We don't know what James would have done if he'd been able to continue practicing here. So, you know, Suzuki Yoshi saw, you know, people's hearts.

[20:04]

He saw my heart. He saw David's heart. He knows so many people. He saw their hearts, and he knew their heart. He knew our hearts. And, you know, we were all, especially in those days, like misfits. You know, like in Liu Jing's poem, somehow we meet, like misfits or bandits of the Dharma. Each of us in our way is something of a misfit and something of a bandit. None of us are, you know, perfect beings. So, you know, I was sitting here one morning in the practice period, 1984, and I bowed at the altar, did the Jindo.

[21:18]

Bowed to my seat, bowed away from my seat. I sat down, facing out, and I thought, well, what shall I do today? What sort of project should I have for myself? Should I follow my breath? Count my breath? Focus on concentration? Focus on mindfulness? Focus on generosity? What should I work on today? You know, it's often good to have a little kind of project for yourself, then you can kind of keep track of how well you're doing, and you can find something wrong with what you're doing, and you're not doing it well enough, and you know what you need to work on, and you have a little focus for yourself, and it's pretty helpful. And I had a lot of projects over the years. I'd been practicing at that point for 19 years. I'd arrived, I was the head teacher. And so I was thinking about, wondering, well, what do I work on this morning?

[22:30]

Maybe I should work on my posture. Concentrate on sitting up straight. That's what the Japanese teachers talk about. Take care of your posture, take care of your mudra. Take care. And then I had this thought. Why don't I just touch what's inside with some warmth and kindness? And, you know, before I knew it, without even just hearing that thought, the tears started pouring down my face. And a little voice inside said, it's about time. You've been busy with a lot of other projects, you know. And it's about time you finally agreed to sit with me,

[23:35]

to have me sit with you. And so I started doing this practice of touching what's inside rather than trying to be mindful, trying to concentrate. Trying to sit up straight. And Katagiri Roshi was the abbot of Zen Center right then. So about a month later he came down to visit. I went to see him and Doug said, Katagiri Roshi, I started doing a new practice, you know, I started just touching what's inside with some warmth and kindness. Is that okay? Is that Zen? And Katagiri Roshi, if you know him, you know how he'd sit so carefully, so exactly, so precisely.

[24:37]

And then he had a kind of deadpan way of talking sometimes. Ed, for 20 years I tried to do the Zazen of Zen Master Dogen before I realized there was no such thing. And I thought, boy, right on schedule. I've been sitting for 19 years. I can stop trying to do the Zazen of Dogen and, you know, some perfect Zazen. I can start sitting with myself. And that turned out to be, you know, just the beginning.

[25:45]

So, you know, this week, many of you know, my friend Carl Dern died on Monday night about 9 p.m. Carl had been a metal sculptor, an artist. And he lived about two blocks down the street from me in Fairfax. He and his wife, Marie, who does bookbinding. And his lungs stopped because he'd been breathing, you know, fumes from metal welding. I had another friend, J.B. Blunk, whose mind turned into something solid rather than living because he was breathing the fumes from his kiln for years and years. Art, it turns out, is dangerous. But Carl said the other day, I wouldn't do it any other way.

[27:05]

And, you know, as each of us already know, Carl is an extraordinary person. And I found out, you know, while I was at the hospitals, seeing him, Marie and I were talking and I was touching Carl and while I had my hand on his shoulder or the back of his neck, the top of his chest, you could see the monitor going up, the amount of oxygen in his blood going up, you know, presence. And his heart rate going down. And then he was drifting off and I, Marie and I were talking and she told me, you know, Carl's parents were both alcoholics. And when Carl was 14, his parents were in an automobile accident. His mother was driving and his father was killed. Fourteen. And then he took care of his mother through high school.

[28:12]

And then she died. And he became an alcoholic. He was alcoholic for about, you know, until, oh, it must be, you know, until his late 30s. And I don't know exactly, but, you know, he, something happened. He decided to become sober. And he started going to AA meetings and coincidentally, there's an AA meeting like three doors from his house every morning at seven. So he would go every morning at seven, three doors down. And he became, you know, eventually a sponsor for others. I wanted to tell you both a couple of stories about these, some of these people. And it's about time for me to stop, so I'll try to keep it brief.

[29:15]

I promised. But one of the people that had been one of Carl's sponsors in AA, I forget his name, Old Tim or something, but his sponsors, this older man's wife had died. And he was terribly distraught, terribly upset, terribly sad. And he said to himself, screw it. I'm going to get shit-faced drunk. I'm going to go to the, I'm going to go up to Novato and go to some of those bars I used to go to. So he went to the Greyhound Bus Depot in San Rafael and got on the bus to go to Novato. The bus was kind of dirty. Didn't smell very good. The windows were kind of dirty. And he felt right at home.

[30:19]

And the bus stopped somewhere along Highway 101, around Ignacio maybe. And a young woman got on the bus, 22, 23 years old, pretty well dressed. And she looked up and down the bus and she saw him sitting there. And she walked down the bus to him and she said, You're Old Tim, you were the speaker at my first AA meeting and it changed my life. And I wanted to tell you. So the next stop he got off and took a taxi home. Sometimes, you know, small miracles happen. And something appears, you know, in our lives that saves us. And when I was at the hospital,

[31:24]

there was another man there with white hair, probably in his 50s. He'd been a friend of Carl's for years, a man named Brennan. And they had to stop and just have family come to the hospital because he had so many friends from AA coming to see him. So Brennan was sitting there and he told us about when he first went to AA. People's lives are so... His daughter, you know, about a week later committed suicide after I just talked to him. She was about 40 and she'd always had various problems and she committed suicide. And we sit here, you know, with all of this. And with our own struggles and difficulties. And with our own, you know, hearts. But Brennan said that when he first started in AA,

[32:32]

there was somebody said, Brennan, you know, there's a man in the mission group, in the mission AA. His name is Brennan too. You should go meet him. So the younger Brennan went to meet the older Brennan. And Brennan's first name is Brennan. And then the other man's name was something like Frank Aloysius Daniel Herman Brennan. It's a really long name. Anyway, they became friends. And the older Brennan was a big support to the younger Brennan. And then the older Brennan was very sick and in the hospital. And seemed to be rather near death. And the young Brennan, he said, I was sitting on one side of the bed. And I was saying to him, Brennan, you've done so well. Thank you. You can let go now. You can let go.

[33:33]

Turn your life over to a higher power. You know, you can let go. And on the other side of the bed, there was an old military policeman. He was saying, Brennan, you need to fight. Fight. Don't let go. Fight. So the two of them on each side of the bed, you can let go. It's okay. And the other one, fight. You've got to fight it. Fight it. Struggle through. And then the next day, he'd had a remarkable kind of recovery. He's sitting up in bed and good color in his face. And young Brennan is visiting him and said, you know, you look just so great today. This is amazing. You look so well. You know, I am so sorry I told you to let go. I was just so wrong. And the older Brennan said, I did let go. Sometimes letting go is just the right thing, you know.

[34:43]

To not struggle and to let life flow through you. I'm sorry I didn't know enough and to keep James here. It's so important for us to have a practice like this in a community and friends and support. For, you know, because it's really challenging to be a human being. So thank you for doing this, being here and practicing blessings. Thank you.

[35:26]

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