I don't want to run over. I want us all to have a chance to Say something to Suzuki Roshi at our annual memorial service, which is coming up And I want to just talk a little bit about about memorial services in general and Suzuki Roshi a little bit in particular, someone said to me, you know, why don't we, you know, why don't we make this big fuss and offer incense and bow and make a big deal out of somebody? You know, I mean, he was just a person like any other person and maybe we get the wrong idea. And so, because I'd been talking about some people that I'd met that really, It really kind of moved me and encouraged me and inspired me to practice to see what kind of a person happens after 50 years of this practice.

[01:05]

And I don't, for a moment, want to suggest that Suzuki Roshi was a saint. because if you imagine that some of the teachers, the really great teachers are saints and somehow not ordinary people like us and didn't have the same kind of problems we did to work with, then it's not an encouragement. You know, it's like, well, I can't do that. I'm not a saint. I mean, we all know we're not saints, right? We can testify to that. And sometimes we'd like somebody to be And we sometimes tend to Sanctify people in a way that's not so good for us and not good for them Now I've noticed that people who've really been practicing a long time You can try to sanctify them and they won't let you you know People who haven't been practicing very long have to be very careful because

[02:11]

Oh gee, it's really, it kind of feels good that people tell you you're really great, you know, and you begin to believe it, right? You really have to watch that. So... What I was talking about the other day is I'm in a stage where I really have to watch it. It's really easy for me if somebody wants to say, boy, I think you're great, to say, oh gee, thanks, that's nice of you. So I have to be careful about that. But... Somebody like one of the things that I remember in particular about Suzuki Roshi and I think it's because he Struggled through this period with some success and didn't get caught by it Was that he wouldn't let you give him? More respect than he gave you On one particular occasion I mean I had an enormous amount of respect for him because at the time I met him was a very dark time in my life and he really he really made a big difference in my life.

[03:35]

His having made this practice available to me, both just by the fact of being there and having Zazen available and teaching Zazen, but also made it available to me by the way he interacted with me, which made it clear that I was an acceptable person and it was alright for me to do this practice, you know? It wasn't just for people who were Saints And in fact I've said on many occasions because it was such a profound teaching for me He didn't sort of say it's okay for you to practice even though you're not a saint That's not what he said at all.

[04:36]

He said you're perfect just as you are And at first I thought that was everybody in the room but me because I knew I wasn't, but it was clear that he meant everybody and he was not excluding me. He wasn't excluding anybody at all. And that kind of inclusive feeling is what made practice available to me. Anyhow, So I felt enormous gratitude for him and enormous respect for him, and I went to see him, and, you know, I bowed with great veneration, and we talked, and as I was leaving, it was the first time I'd ever been in Doksan, and I didn't know exactly what the forms were or anything, and I, you know, I think I'd been told to kind of step back behind the bowing mat and bow from back there, but that was so far away.

[05:39]

I didn't want to... I wanted to bow really right to him, you know. It didn't occur to me to move the Zafu and bow on the bowing mat, so I went around and I bowed sort of right there, so that my head was almost touching his bowing mat. But it was clear that I was bowing. I mean, there was nothing between me and him. But when I went down, he was sitting there, but when I got up, his head was right next to mine on the floor. He had, I mean, he was 67 years old. He had jumped up and bowed while I was bowing before I got up so that we were head to head on the floor. Blew my mind. Blew me away. I mean, I walked out of there in a day. I couldn't figure out what happened. But I think he felt I was just being, I was putting him up too much and he wasn't going to let me do it. You know, just wasn't going to let me do it. And I've mentioned Coburn here on several occasions because I spent two weeks with him just before I came here.

[06:40]

And he's another person whom I hold in very high regard and respect a great deal. You just try to put Coburn above you. You just can't do it. Cannot do it. No way. I mean, here's somebody over here who's practiced with it a lot. He's laughing. He knows what I'm talking about. Can't do it. So those are the kinds of things that I think that happen with many years of practice. I think it takes a long time of practice to... be able to meet people as completely as that, with as much acceptance and kindness and compassion as that, and with as much humility as that.

[07:43]

So those are the kinds of qualities that I have come to appreciate a lot in Suzuki Roshi, but I know enough about his history and life to know that how he got the way I met him, which was after we'd been practicing for 50 years, was through a lot of difficulty and a lot of struggle. One of the things that happened when his son Hoitsu began coming here to sort of help us in a difficult time was that he really got on our case about deifying his father, you know, and he just started telling us something about what a tough father he'd been. And, you know, it was like he had a terrible temper. And Suzuki Roshi had mentioned a lot of times that he had a really bad temper. And this was one of the things that he practiced with all his life, was controlling his temper. And he had some real difficulties in his life.

[08:51]

You know, during the war, he was a pacifist in Japan. a popular point of view. And he was pretty isolated by it. And also just people were hungry and there was very little food and so people would come and make donations of rice to him at the temple and then people would come without any rice and he would give it away so he never knew until he opened the rice drawer whether there was going to be any rice that night, you know. He grew potatoes in the front yard, sweet potatoes, yams, in the front yard of the temple. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And... when Hoitsu was 12, I don't actually know the whole story of this, but somehow a monk

[09:52]

who I think was visiting the temple, was not a student of Suzuki Roshi, but was visiting the temple, went berserk and killed Suzuki Roshi's wife, who was his mother. And so he had... He then had his children. He had a two-year-old at the time as well. To raise and, you know, A Japanese father don't know nothing about bringing up kids. That is not his job, you know. If you think there's a division of labor in American families, in Japanese traditional families, and this was some while ago, it's completely separate. The household and the children are her responsibility. And... So I'm not sure how he got through those years until he married Oksan.

[10:59]

She tells some interesting stories. But she was hired, she was a primary school principal. And she was a widow. And... The temple of which Suzuki Roshi was abbot had a primary school associated with it. And so he interviewed her to be the new principal of the school and she was very coy about it. She actually wasn't sure she wanted to do that. And then once she got there to be principal, then the community really started working on them trying to make a match, you know, because she was a widow and she had a child and he was a widower and he really needed a wife and they wanted to have a wife and so forth. She said, we were stubborn. We wouldn't get married just because they wanted us to. So they actually didn't get married until just before he came to this country. And he was just coming to this country for a couple of years to be the resident priest for the Japanese congregation of Sokoji Temple in Japantown here in San Francisco.

[12:13]

Which was at that time a hundred-year-old synagogue because that area was the was a sort of Jewish ghetto in San Francisco in the early days. And so he was there being priest and one of the stories I will share with you is this was the 60s, you know, and there was something pretty far out about a Japanese Zen monk And there were, you know, these Americans started, American hippies, a lot of them started practicing Zazen with him. And so some of the women students used to sort of come around and knock on his door at night and he didn't know what to do. So he, you know, when all of the difficulties with his disciple began to come up,

[13:18]

Suzuki Oksan told me this story and she said sometimes he would go spend the night with a friend so that he wouldn't be there because he just didn't know what to do about these American women who would come knocking on his door. So this is another kind of difficulty that Zen monks have to deal with sometimes. Because someone else who's now practicing in Europe tells me that every time he leads a Sesshin, he's got to fight the women off with a stick. And he doesn't really want to, you know, and this conversation was, does he really have to? What do I think? I said, yeah, I think you probably have to. Your wife wouldn't like it if you didn't. Anyhow, I think one more interesting or fun story about all this is, so finally he asked Oksan to please come over here, you know, because he wanted to stay and it would be very helpful if she were here.

[14:26]

So she came over here. So soon after she was here, apparently in Sokoji Temple, they had this little apartment way upstairs, but apparently the bath was down in the basement, the ground floor of the temple. So she went down to take a bath and somehow she got herself locked in the bathroom. But she didn't worry about it because she figured he would miss her after a while and come and find her. But he didn't. She spent the whole night in the bathroom. He was quite absent. She said, I almost went back to Japan at that time. So he could be quite absent-minded. I was not yet practicing there. I'm happy to say one Sashin, when he started a period. I mean, he was a donor. He started a period and he went upstairs for something. And he started reading a book.

[15:32]

And he forgot about the people sitting south end down there. And they sat for a very long time before he remembered to come and end the period. And when we got to Tassajara, he was down at Tassajara, and I don't know how many people have been there, there's a place down the stream called the Narrows. It's between granite cliffs and it's sort of the stream has carved out a basin in the granite. And the water kind of goes over a little waterfall on the granite and down into this deep pool. And people used to like where the water ran over the rock gets a little mossy and people used to like to kind of slide down it into the pool and it's a place that's lots of fun to swim and Suzuki Roshi was down there with them and they were swimming and so he got in the water too and he began to get really interested in all kinds of interesting things down on the bottom.

[16:42]

This pool's about 10 feet deep and then he didn't come up for a while and Peter Schneier began to realize he'd been down a long time and went and kind of dragged him up. He'd forgotten he didn't know how to swim. You know, everybody was having so much fun that he got, he says, after that I really began to practice. He said, you were practicing hard before. He says, but I really started to practice hard after that. I mean, he really almost drowned on that occasion. And it was just because he got fascinated and he forgot he didn't know how to swim. So he couldn't get himself back up after that. He got fascinated. But in spite of all of these idiosyncratic bits and pieces of memories of Suzuki Roshi as a person, he was actually both kind and compassionate

[17:49]

and accepting of everyone and very strict. The more you settled down, the stricter you got. The more... As I find out from my son who went to Japan and spent 10 years studying archery and kendo, The more seriously a teacher takes you, the tougher he is on you. And if he really respects you, he is very hard on you. So I suspect that for some people who were quite close to him, as Mel was, he was much more strict than those of us who hadn't, didn't have the time to get that close to him. to whom he was a very kindly grandfatherly sort.

[18:55]

But I could see some of the strictness. And with those who were close to him, I know from their reports that he was a very strict teacher. And I know from my son that that's typical of a Japanese teacher. If he really respects you and he really wants you to learn what he's got to teach, he is tough as nails. And I think that Suzuki Roshi was like that with some of his close disciples. He was certainly like that with his son. As for memorial services in general, I'd like to read a couple of cases. I do have some time for that, yeah. from the record of Dongshan, who is, as I've mentioned, we call him, more in Japanese, just flew out the window, Tozan Ryokai, we chant in the morning.

[20:05]

He was the Chinese founder of the Soto Zen school. And he apparently was quite quite an independent young man from early on and he was a novice from quite early years and then he became a full monk in his 20s and then he started as traditionally happened in China going around on pilgrimage visiting various teachers to hear their teaching and so the first place he visited was Nanshuan, who was the disciple of Matsu. Matsu Aso, we'll call him. Matsu was one of Suzuki Roshi's favorite Zen masters.

[21:06]

Nanshuan was his disciple and Dengshan arrived as it happened on the evening before his memorial service. the memorial service for Matsu. And in a regular assembly, Nanchuan said, well, tomorrow we're going to have a memorial service for Matsu. Do you think he will come? What do you think? Will he be here? And nobody said anything, so Tungshan stepped forward, even though he was just a newcomer, and he said, he will wait for a companion. Or he will come when his companion appears. So what do you think?

[22:12]

Will Suzuki Roshi be here with us for this ceremony? we will treat him as if he's here. We want him to be here for each of us. And so each of us is invited to come forward and offer incense and speak with him. On another occasion, after Tungshan was himself a teacher, and had... He had studied with many teachers, but his primary teacher was Yun-Yen, Un-Gan-Don-Jo, in Japanese. And he was also doing a memorial service for Yun-Yen when one of his monks said,

[23:20]

So Master, when you were in Yun Yan's assembly, what particular teachings and instructions did he give you? And he said, although I was in his community, he never gave me any particular teachings or instructions. So the monk said, well, in that case, why do you make offerings to him? He said, I don't respect my late master for his great learning or practice. I appreciate him because he never revealed the secret to me, or he never revealed the truth to me. Or you might say, because he made me find out for myself.

[24:29]

In fact, you might say, because he knew that a teacher can never reveal the truth to someone else. Each one of us, each one of us, has to find out for ourself from our own direct experience. And a teacher is one who can really inspire you through their own efforts with their own difficulties in their life. through the way in which they show you the Dharma in how they live and practice.

[25:39]

Such a teacher can inspire you to find the truth for yourself. They may be able to give you hints and suggestions. Jack Kornfield talks about an interchange he had with his teacher in Thailand, A Chan Cha. He got really angry with him one time. And he said, you're not consistent. You say one thing to one person, another thing to another person. I'm not going to study with you anymore. I just can't make any sense out of you. And I just laughed. He said, OK. He said, but you know, it's like I'm watching somebody go down a road. And I see they're about to fall in the ditch on the right side. So I say, hey, go left. Go left. And then somebody else is going down the road and they're about to fall in the ditch on the left side.

[26:45]

So I say, hey, go right, go right. So a teacher who has developed skillful means may be able to see when it would be useful to suggest something to you. But it's up to you to do it and to see what you learn from it. And it's not appropriate to ever put blind faith in any teacher. And a good teacher won't let you do that anyhow, as I've pointed out. You have to, you have to trust yourself. You have to trust yourself and your own experience. And it's really good to have a friend that you can check out your experience with.

[27:47]

And be sure you're not making up stories about it. But your experience is what truly teaches you. So we will have a memorial service for Suzuki Roshi to thank him for his kind and compassionate teaching and for making this lineage available to us through his disciple and to all of the people who have come to the opportunity to practice through his teaching, and there are many. So much for my security blanket.

[28:52]

Poor Jisha has to carry it around.

[29:00]

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