So I think, good morning, I'd like to take a few minutes to review some of the things that I've been talking about, that we've been bringing up, starting with the idea of being in the dark and not knowing what to do, and what you're up to, and how to get to where you think you want to go. There's a line, of course, in Rumi, where he says, don't go where you think you want to go, ask the way to the spring. It's similar to the, you miss the garden because you want a straight thing from a random tree, let yourself be silently drawn by the strong pull of what you really want. So we have various pictures,

[01:01]

we get pictures that are very appealing to us, and very attractive, and very engaging. It's sometimes hard to see that we have a picture, and we think that happiness is to make our picture come true. Whether it's that we have less stress, or we have a different kind of meal, or better food, or relationship, we have a picture of what to aim for, where to go, and then we start thinking, how do I get that? So this is the usual way of proceeding. And, you know, this is sometimes described, Suzuki Roshi described this, you know, as

[02:07]

the difference between ordinary and special. And this is what's called ordinary. Anyway, the words, you know, end up in the same style, you know, being, you know, playing with the words, but Suzuki Roshi said, what's ordinary is that people seek for something special, and then put a lot of effort into getting that special. So usually that means you have a picture of what would be special. And, you know, whether, you know, for people practicing Zen, you know, if I could get enlightened, that would be special. Enlightenment, I could have that, that would be really special. Great. And then you have a picture of the mind, that we know what that would look like. And it's true with, certainly with meals, you know, the idea of, usual ideas, have a picture of the meal that would be good, and then make it come true. And have a picture of the relationship, and make it come true.

[03:13]

And so, this is to say what's ordinary is that we are captivated by our pictures, our, you know, our mental images, pictures, and we want to chase after them. You know, these specials, something special that we've imagined. And we sincerely believe, you know, that, yes, you could attain these things. And then people who seem to be able to attain these things, well, we, you know, give them a lot of money and adulation and so forth. I chuckle because, you know, I've been rereading Shoes Outside the Door, about what happened at Zen Center. And, you know, the so-called apocalypse was in 1983, when, you know, by the end of 1983,

[04:21]

Richard Baker Roshi resigned as the abbot of the Zen Center, in the face of, you know, various problems. But in the meantime, he'd been, you know, very successful at creating pictures for everybody to chase after. And he also, well, Robert Bly just said about that, he said, you know, we all have an image or picture of perfection in our mind. What would be perfect? What would be, and this is like Suzuki Roshi saying, we have, you know, we have pictures of what would be special. Robert Bly calls it an image of perfection. We have an image of perfection. And, you know, when you're little, you have the image of perfection of mom and dad. They're perfect. I trust you not to hurt me. And if you do,

[05:22]

you meant to, and I deserve it. I'm the problem. You know, you're perfect. So this is what we do as children. And then as you grow up, of course, the image of perfection won't stay there. And you have to find some other place to put your image of perfection. And, you know, so some people put it, you know, Robert Bly said, well, nature is a good place, you know, put it on nature. And then of course, some people, you know, if you're, if you're careful, you can put it on the divine or beyond or something, nirvana, enlightenment. But Robert Bly said, well, Dick put it on himself. And then he had everyone else put it there too. So if you're perfect like that, then you just don't notice the ways that you're not perfect. And you just don't notice. So people who are good at that kind of thing, you know,

[06:29]

they can be really good at it. Very skillful. And then we think, wow, that's great. He's so great. And then I'm not. But I have something to aim for, because I can see that he does this, and maybe someday I'd be able to do that too. And he said, you know, and he would say things like that. So, excuse me, this is a little bit of a sidetrack. He would say, you know, if maybe someday Zen Center will want to treat you like this too. So if you'd like to be masterful, just do what I tell you. And eventually, you know, maybe it'll work out. But, you know, this can't work out for everybody, because everybody can't be the, I mean, in the same way, you know. Everybody can't be the head of the assembly like that. Anyway,

[07:31]

coming back to, so what's ordinary is to get captivated by a picture of what would be, what is special, or what is, you know, unique, what is perfect, to be captivated by that. And then to see if you can make it come true. And then we try to make it come true literally. As opposed to, if you have the image of perfection in the right place, then it's, you don't, you know, mind itself, you know, again, mind itself is not, doesn't, is not born, does not die, is not tainted, is not pure, does not increase, does not decrease. Mind, mind is not a thing. So things appear and disappear. Some are good, some are bad, some are painful, some are pleasant. Things, phenomena appear and disappear,

[08:32]

and they're problematic, and you're not going to be able to make them perfect. But we chase after things. So that's what's ordinary. And what's special, as Suzuki Roshi said, is, what's truly special is when you, when someone settles down in the ordinary, and actually lives there, and lets go of the pictures of special. Or somehow, you know, finds what is special in the ordinary, in what is appearing moment after moment, as opposed to having an image of it being always, you know, somewhere else. So, you know, we've talked in various ways, and I want to add one more, but, you know,

[09:37]

mindfulness being, for instance, Buddhist, in many ways, Buddhist concept about love, of being aware without judging good and bad, without giving out directives, advice, fixing, changing, here, let me help you with that, let me fix this, I'll make it better for you. Nothing wrong with this, you know, in its place, but as the singular mode of going about life, it becomes problematic, because you can never fix it, change it, improve it enough. So, it's great, it's like, you know, Western medicine, what Western medicine is good at, you know, and this is probably a much longer discussion than I'm willing to undertake today, but, you know, Western medicine is really good at fixing.

[10:38]

Grace, who lives here, is back at Greenbelt after a year, you know, was in a head-on accident on the Golden Gate Bridge, and she's still alive today, because of Western medicine. Acupuncture wouldn't have helped her. You know, Western medicine knows how to stop the bleeding, put things back together, repair the wounds, you know, put the bones back together, get the abdominal organs back out of the chest cavity and back into the abdomen, and, you know, all that needed to be done. And so she was saved, because, so this is to diagnose the situation, see what the problem is, and fix it. So there's a place for that, and it works. But can you do this with your psyche? Can you say, I'm sad about what needs to be fixed here? So you want to have, you know, various modes of going about what needs to be done,

[11:48]

or sort of be in the dark a bit, study what needs to get done. What needs to happen here? What's really going to help? And so that suggestion there is, rather than trying to diagnose, identify the problem, fix it, change it, get it to go in the direction of what's special, or it's more in a simple way how to just be with things, allowing for them to be the way they are, and not continually trying to make them better. So this is mindfulness, and then you might decide, after you've been, you know, carefully mindful, that, okay, here's what I'd like to suggest we do, and so forth. But another example of this, for instance, is Suzuki Roshi and other Buddhist teachers, Thich Nhat Hanh,

[12:51]

Suzuki Roshi at one point suggested, in various ways, be kind with your breath. So this is not just following your breath, but have a soft, warm feeling for your breath, or just have a kind feeling, a welcome feeling for your breath as you follow your breath. And this is much more the feeling of, you know, when you're a parent, of seeing your baby sleeping, your young child sleeping, and they're so angelic. And then they wake up and they start doing things, and you start saying, no, [...] no. So this have a kind, warm feeling, you know, at some point it becomes clear that

[14:04]

rather than seeking and chasing after this special, what is special, and it's actually chasing after a picture you have, of what would bring you ease, or what would bring you happiness, what would bring you satisfaction, what would bring you approval, attention, respect, you start practicing that. What's special is to settle down in the ordinary and, you know, find and have it reveal itself to you and to become intimate with what is ordinary. And that intimate is like being kind with your breath, tender feeling, soft feeling, rather than, you know, you don't have, in order to get something done, make something happen, it doesn't come from usually the same place of kind, soft, tender, gentle.

[15:11]

It comes from the feeling of, do this, now we do that, now we take care of this, handle that. And you have to be on top of it. And we don't ask our policemen to be, we ask them primarily to, you know, take charge. We don't ask them to be tender, kind, soft, but the other, you know, and get shot. So they lose it sometimes. It's a very challenging, some of the positions that we ask people to be in. So there's no, so this has to do with, you know, that there's various possible mental, you know,

[16:13]

constructs or states or ways of going about things. And, you know, there's certainly a time for, you know, we ask, for instance, policemen, we ask them to be, you know, kind, soft, but the other, you know, and get shot. And we ask them to be professional. Professional means you take care of the situation. You do not, you know, you do not go, you know, get like scared and run away. You know, you confront danger. You're not going to get, you're not going to go to fear or worry or doubt, not, you know, consciously to where you are immobilized. You're going to handle the situation and not, and just be professional. So there's certainly places in their life which it's, you know, we're called upon to be professional. If you go into the courtroom and you're in front of a judge and a jury or what have you,

[17:21]

you know, you're going to be professional. And you, if you become impassioned, you know, you want to be a little careful that your impassioned is in keeping with people's sensibilities or people are going to dismiss you as being, you know, too emotional. Or something, you know. So you, we study how to do this, how to appear in different situations and what's called for in various situations. And what we forget is that there's actually various modes of being. And that we could usefully cultivate and there's not just one mode of being that's for every situation. And I would guess, you know, and for some people it's probably comfortable, you know, apparently, you know, policemen when they get home don't become soft and tender and kind.

[18:24]

You know, they're going to be professional in that situation too. Because this sensibility that there are different modes of being and that you could manifest yourself in the mode of being that's appropriate for the circumstance, you know, is undervalued in our culture and not recognized. And it's not, we're not encouraged to study that. So there's a picture of how, you know, we expect ourselves and others to be in our culture, which is, you know, you fight cancer. You overcome it. You, you know, you weather the storms. And you don't get emotional. You don't get moody. You don't cry. You don't get scared. You don't whine. You don't complain. You know, if you feel needy, no one's going to like somebody who's needy.

[19:24]

So we have all these pictures of how a person's supposed to be and then you try to make this picture come true. And it's actually useful in certain situations. You know, that's, yeah, it helps. It works. It makes sense. But if that's what you're doing your whole life, then it's less, you know, it makes less sense. And, and then it, it, you know, at least for me, it's turned out that what's important is that I begin to know, that I start to know other, develop other ways of being. Being in the dark, feeling my way along, not knowing what to do, not quite knowing how I need to be in this situation, studying like what would make sense here, what would make sense there, what's the context. And as you said, you know, as you develop, then you know how to be without thinking about it. Thank you.

[20:49]

Somehow I'm reminded now of when we eat in the Zen Dojo, you know, we have, we serve each other. So one group of people is coming around the meditation hall and serving food. And we have our bowls and we bow and then you hold your bowl out for it to be served. And, you know, when we served, anybody who serves Suzuki Roshi, we were, you could see, so careful. And other people, you know, you can, I know for myself and you can see it in other people too, get impatient. Can't you get your bowl out here? Why are you being so picky? Do you want more? There's not enough for more and you can't say any of it. But there's all this stuff going on. And with Suzuki Roshi, it was just like, you could, the bowl was right there. He wasn't in a hurry, but the bowl was ready for you to put the food in.

[22:01]

And it's, and it feels so simple. And there's a, and there's, something's in the air. And at one of these Shosan ceremonies, a woman that I've been working in the kitchen with asked him, Suzuki Roshi, what do you feel when I serve you food? What do you feel? And he said, I feel you offering me your most perfect love. And we'd all been doing that. You know, we were moved to do that. He touched us. And the way that he touched us was not by being masterful.

[23:03]

But, you know, he was, and he wasn't, you know, he wasn't telling people what to do. And what not to do. He did say from time to time, didn't know that he really believed in Zen practice. But, you know, he also said, like when we started the first practice period, and we'd been at Tassara for, some people had gotten there in April, and I got there around the beginning of May, end of April, beginning of May. And then the practice period started in July, so we had the first ever Tangaria where you sit all day for three days. Now it's five days. And so the night before the first Tangaria, a third of the people went up the road. Yeah.

[24:14]

And then later he said, you know, I'd like to be more strict with you, but if I am, vroom, vroom, vroom. I don't want you all going up the road. I don't want you all going up the road. But this is interesting, you know, sometimes something does touch us, and then, you know, we're, we start to have a relationship, and we study, you know, how to be in those circumstances. And I know for myself, you know, at some point I thought, well why, is there something special about Suzuki Roshi that's really different than other people, so he deserves to be treated differently than other people deserve to be treated. And I couldn't find it.

[25:19]

And I thought, you know what, I might just as well treat everybody as though they're Suzuki Roshi. Serve them the food carefully. Not be in a hurry. My brother was at the first practice period at Tesshara. And it's only, you know, that was in 1967, the summer of 1967, July and August. My brother was there for the month of July. Brother David was there for the month of July. Benedictine monk, who still comes back

[26:25]

to some occasions, often in the summers to do a workshop the last several years with Paul Haller. And... I didn't know until just the last few years. My brother finally told me, he said, you know, I left Tesshara because David Chadwick was bugging me about not going to Zazen as much as I should. And this is so ironic because David is not known for his discipline. But somehow that summer he was running around telling other people what the patients shouldn't be doing. And he went to see Suzuki Roshi and he said, I don't like David, you know, telling me I should be at Zazen. My brother said, sometimes instead of meditation you'd go just to sit and watch the creek. And Suzuki Roshi said to him,

[27:31]

please don't, don't worry about it, you know. Don't worry about what David says. It's alright, I want you to be here, I want you to stay at Tesshara. It's very important to me. And he said Suzuki Roshi hugged him, said, I want you to stay here. And my brother still didn't feel like staying. He was so upset about being criticized for his bad, you know, behavior. So now he's a Catholic. But Suzuki Roshi's way was, you know, subtle.

[28:58]

Largely... I'll tell you two stories about this. One of the stories is that someone I just heard recently, I don't know, maybe it was in May, we had a Suzuki Roshi weekend, it was the 50th anniversary of his coming to America in 1959. And Ed Satterson told this story how he was a guest student, I guess, you know, about 69 or 70, and was at Tesshara. And there was another young man there from Esalen, and they got to talking and decided that they wanted to smoke some marijuana. And they thought, well, we can't do that here, it's against the rules, we need to walk off away, you know, walk somewhere away from Tesshara so we can get high. So they hiked upstream a ways. And they thought, well, we want to get back in time.

[30:07]

It was a day off, but we need to get back, if we can, for a bath and then service, 5.50. So they started back, and it turned out they were a little late, and they started hearing the bell for service. And they didn't really have time to take a bath, and so they just went right to the zendo. And this is the old zendo, which is where the student dining room is now. And in that old zendo there was rows of people standing about this far apart, you know, in the aisle there, facing each other, and Suzuki Roshi would walk down the row of people. Now, in the new zendo, the priest just comes in, doesn't walk past anybody, just comes right up to the altar. So this is, he would walk down this whole row of people and then up to the altar at the far end of the room. And so Ed said that he, had said this and said that he and this other guest student were standing there at the end of the row, they'd gotten in, and they were so pleased with themselves

[31:09]

for having gotten there on time. And I don't know exactly what Suzuki Roshi noticed, I think it's a little bit like kids smoking and how does mom and dad know, you know? It's like, well you may not smell it on your breath, but other people can. But he said that he was standing there and Suzuki Roshi, you know, he's five foot tall. But nobody, nobody thought he was small. And he got to about here, and this intense, and there was this almost imperceptible pause, and this intense wave of anger. And then here it was gone. And... And... And he said, well, I'm not doing that again.

[32:10]

But one of my favorite stories about Suzuki Roshi is actually regarding David Chadwick, you see. Because David was notorious in spite of the fact that he criticized my brother for his poor sousage, and David was notorious for it. He was extremely gregarious, and then he would, he was serving food in the dining room, and then he'd sit down with the guests and drink wine with them. And as the evening went on, he might do a few dishes with the rest of the crew, but then at some point he'd go back to their cabins and be drinking brandy and scotch and various things on into the night. And, you know, get to bed rather late. And then he was not getting up the next day, you know, with the wake-up bell. So he would miss meditation, you know, service, breakfast, and if there was a steady period, and at some point there was a meeting

[33:18]

of the heads of the Tassar, the work leaders, you know, with Suzuki Roshi after breakfast. It's called Chosan. So the leaders of the temple meet with Suzuki Roshi after breakfast, so he'd be up for that. And sometimes, probably, you could smell alcohol in his breath, even at that point. And so he was at the meeting one morning, and Suzuki Roshi would, there's tea, and it's all very formal, and then a little cookie or something oftentimes. And so you, after it's all served, you bow, and then you sip your tea, and then you have a little bite of cookie, and then you let the teacher talk first. Suzuki Roshi might say, well, you know, we're expecting so-and-so to visit today or something. And then at some point he'd say, and anything you want to talk about. And the director of the monastery said, Suzuki Roshi, what do we do with somebody who's always breaking the rules, you know, and staying up late and drinking,

[34:19]

and getting, you know, not coming to morning zazen? What do we do? And David's sitting there next to him. And Suzuki Roshi, you know, paused a little bit and said, well, everybody's making their best effort. But Suzuki Roshi, we need to do something, you know. Don't we need to do something to correct this bad behavior, this, you know, and, you know, and he's doing it openly, openly, right in front of everybody. And Suzuki Roshi said, well, it's certainly better that he does it openly than hiding it from us. But shouldn't we do something, you know? We can't just allow this behavior to continue. And Suzuki Roshi said, well, sometimes someone's following the spirit of the rule,

[35:21]

even though they're not following the letter of the rule. I think you could put my brother in that category. And the director said, well, wouldn't it be better if he followed the letter of the rule too? And Suzuki Roshi said, yep, that would be best. So this is so interesting, you know, to me. But that's an example of how, you know, he wasn't, you know, fixated on getting you to behave one way rather than another way, but encouraging you to study, you know, to feel your way along in the dark and to study what is, what's the important point here. Certain, you know, our lives are,

[36:25]

you know, some of our issues take years and years. You know, David ended up in rehab. You know, David ended up with triple bypass heart surgery and rehab and, you know, it's not a simple matter. Yeah. Huh? And still gregarious, yeah. And, and coincidentally now is in Europe, I'm visiting Baker Roshi at Yoniceft. And it turned out that, you know, of all of Suzuki Roshi's disciples and students, David decided to preserve his legacy and to, you know, that insisted, you know, people at the Zen Center were bugged with him for years. We have to have a Suzuki Roshi archive.

[37:27]

We have to preserve these tapes. We have to take care of these lectures. We have to get them. In that time, it was on reel-to-reel tapes. Now they've all been put onto digital recordings. We have to do this. We need to preserve his heritage, his legacy. And I'm like, David, what is your problem? That would cost money. That might mean work. And so David has just decided to do all this himself. Because he loves Suzuki Roshi. And he takes donations, yeah. Yeah, I give him some money every now and again and he gives me, you know, now it's like, now I've got all the Suzuki Roshi lectures on one little CD or something. You know, I don't know. And, anyway. Is he persistent? I don't know. You know, you should go to Kuk.com.

[38:30]

K-U-K-E, you know, David's website, and see what is available from him. Because if it's available, it's available from him and not from Zen Center. You could, you know. I'm not sure what's available from Zen Center, officially, you know. There are things available through Zen Center, but I don't think it's what... I don't know that it's necessarily what... Okay. Thank you. Let's chant to end the lecture and then continue from there.

[39:09]

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