Good morning. Well, I'm going to start off this morning by telling you that today is my 82nd birthday, which you already know. But don't sing. Is that cute? That's my favorite song. Go ahead. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Well, when I was walking in the door, I thought, Sometimes people say, gee, you don't look 81.

[01:18]

I mean, that's right, you know. Of course, I'm a pretty good kid myself. And then someone else will come up and say, you're 85, aren't you? Well, today, given given that this event, I have to talk about this event a little bit, you know, so I thought that I would give a little retrospective. I don't like talking about myself or my accomplishments particularly, but And I thought, what is my, what has been my, I wouldn't say plan, but what is, what did I want to accomplish?

[02:35]

And early on, you know, Suzuki Roshi asked me to find a place. I was already in Berkeley, but to find a more or less permanent place to create Zendo. So I found this place on Dwight Way, as most of you know. Dwight May just below McGee. that big white kind of pseudo-Victorian with the palm tree and the monkey pod tree. The monkey pod tree was dangerous because it had all these spikes. And what I really wanted to accomplish, the ideal that I had, was to sit on them. create a vegetable garden, work with the sangha, make a place for people to come and gather, and I didn't go any further than that.

[03:55]

I never wanted to have a kind of bureaucratic situation. I didn't like big organizations. As a matter of fact, I didn't really want to incorporate, and I didn't want to be a little outside of the society, which is also my ideal, not to be caught in society. I wanted to be somewhat independent, and independent in the sense of not being caught by societal ideals. So we had this huge garden. Well, it was a huge backyard. And I turned it into a vegetable garden. And I'd work there all day.

[04:56]

And little by little, people would come and they'd sit sometimes in. We had this wonderful attic zindo. I didn't want, the thing that I didn't want was to have a church, a Sunday church, where people would come, all week they'd come and gather, you know, do whatever they're doing and come to church on Sunday. I didn't want that. I wanted to have a thriving kind of daily practice. This is before Tassajara. about the same time that we actually, 1967, about the same time that we developed or got Tathagata. So Suzuki Roshi would come and give a talk once a week.

[05:58]

And we had other priests, Japanese priests, Shino Sensei would come. and Yoshimura and Katagiri. We had a lot of Japanese priests, so we had a kind of wonderful Japanese style, which we still have, but it's very simple Japanese style, not an elaborate style. And so I picked up this ambiance from our teachers, all of whom had a wonderful different way of expressing their practice. So I've always been able to get along very well, nicely, with Japanese teachers. And I kind of learned how to naturally relate. So our practice still has some of that flavor. But my ideal was to work all day.

[07:01]

in the garden. And it was a wonderful garden. I just, you know, grew everything. I grew everything from lettuce to soybeans. And as a matter of fact, what is now Whole Foods, used to be Holy Foods. I don't know if you remember that. It was on the corner of... It's actually Roxy, you know, like a testament. Yeah, that is now. Yes. The Roxy Delicatessen. Yeah, that's where the Roxy Delicatessen is now. It was a holy, and it was a hippie grocery store. How did you spell holy? W-H-O-L-Y. Yeah. So I would grow charm and stuff and put it in the grocery store and sell it. And we had morning, Zazen then was at 5 o'clock in the morning.

[08:10]

We didn't change it to 5.40 until long after we moved here. It was always at 5 o'clock. That's why we had so few people. And then we had 5 o'clock Zazen, or 5.30 in the afternoon. And I was at every single fountain for years and years. I never missed a fountain period. And so I was in instruction. I pretty much did everything in the beginning. And we had a wonderful big house that I found on the way. And Ron lived there, and numerous other people that are maybe still around in one form or another. I forgot my train of thought.

[09:13]

I would go around town and collect the grass clippings that the city gardeners would mow all these lawns. And I would go around and collect the grass clippings. compost going all the time. And my wife, Liz, I built her a greenhouse and she grew sprouts. And we sold sprouts to the co-op. What is now Andronikos used to be the co-op. Whole Foods. Now that's what's Whole Foods now. Yeah, Whole Foods now. That's what Whole Foods is now. It was Andronikos on Shattuck. And then it was... Well, there were three of them at the same time.

[10:14]

So anyway... There was another one. Anyway, I don't want to talk about co-op so much. So, I didn't want to... And then I would cook. We had a very small kitchen, that's what it was, and I did the cooking at first, and then Liz would do the cooking, and then other people would do the cooking, and little by little, you know, people would take up some of these positions, but it was not a very formal practice. And I set up a green water system from the kitchen. I had a big barrel outside the kitchen window. And all the water, instead of going into the sewer, would go into the big barrel and get filtered.

[11:17]

And I'd use that in the garden. I did all that stuff in 1968, back in the early 70s. And I had all these organic gardening magazines. I don't know if you remember the organic gardening movement. And I'm trying to remember the name of it. Rodale. Rodale, yeah. Rodale had published all these. And there was a guy who practiced there for a while, and he said, I'm going to move back to Virginia, but I want to do gardening. So I gave him this big huge box with all these gardens. organic gardening books, magazines. And later he wrote to me and said, you gave me the whole history of the organic gardening movement. So anyway, I was really into that. I got into my practice, into Zen practice, and gardening was my practice.

[12:21]

And I was just following Joseph Hiroshi's inspiration. daily practice to just work all the time in the garden and grow all these wonderful vegetables. I wasn't so interested in flowers, but I was interested in something you could eat. So, and I remember going to, around the, somewhere in the 70s, there was this guy who took care of the garbage at Page Street. And he would come, he would bring the garbage from Page Street over. And I put it in my composting bins. And then he had a violin. He played the violin. So then we played one hundred recorded duets.

[13:24]

So I was, I really hated to leave Dwight Way because there was so much going on there. It was very rich practice. When we moved here, I thought, how am I ever going to leave this place? So when we moved here, I never thought about it again. But I used to have a garden next door. The lady next door, Virginia, bless her soul, allowed me to rent that part where it says you can't enter anymore. And so I made a wonderful garden there for many years. And the kids, Amanda and Daniel, used to graze in the garden. They would pick the strawberries and eat them, and pick the bees and eat them. I thought, this is just wonderful, you know, for kids to have this wonderful vegetable garden.

[14:29]

And, you know, this bee, Then they go inside in the hot summer, and it's cool, and they pick the beans and eat them. But I can't do that anymore, because they don't have a place. But my wife does all the gardening at our house. She does a wonderful garden. But that's her thing, and it's not mine. The fruit of the garden is all of you. The real fruit. The model that I was thinking about was... I didn't think about it so much, you know, but I realized that the model that I had in mind was actually the model for practice and cultivating

[15:30]

The garden is like cultivating the students. Each one of us is a plant. If you read the Lotus Sutra, there's a chapter on plants. And some plants are short, some plants are long. Each plant is different, but each plant all has the same nature. all plants and make them thrive and to be what they are. So I just naturally fell into making both of those sides the same. Cultivating the garden is not different than cultivating the sangha. The garden is a big sangha that's

[16:30]

you take care of and nurture. Soto Zen, you know, is like the gardener or a farmer raising his crops. Rinzai Zen is like the general moving his troops. I think we tend more towards the farmer style, although it's nice to have some troop movements In the beginning, we always used the kiyosaku, the stick. Suzuki Roshi used the stick all the time to wake us up, you know, to wake us up. And he would hit, bam bam, bam bam, bam bam, and everybody just loved it. He had this wonderful touch. It was his way of touching us and waking us up.

[17:36]

Sometimes people think, well, the stick is a brutal thing. I agree. In Japan, it is. In Japan, the monks go around and hit each other with a stick during Zazen. And they're young, you know, so they got a lot of sticks, they break over somebody. But that's going way too far. That's kind of brutal. And I think what happens when you have, whatever practice you have, it becomes intense, especially during cecina or whatever. So you have to be careful what your practices are, because it will always intensify. And how you create a counterbalance It's really important so that way back up, you know, just the right amount of sting that wakes you up without hurting you.

[18:46]

So we always enjoyed the Suzuki Roshi stick, but we also carried the stick. Everybody pretty much took turns doing zazen. There was always, and when Richard Baker was at it, we had two called Junko, two Junko monitors that would carry the stick every practice, every time. That would awaken everybody. Why don't we think of that? And so I'm thinking about, like, what was my ideal of practice? And that was my ideal of practice. And it still is. And I was thinking about, well, what is my ideal or talk, or maybe my favorite talk of Suzuki Roshin's?

[20:06]

All of them. But, if I have to pick one that really, you know, I think is very fundamental and simple, and as a kind of guide, there's one that's called Caring for the Soil. So, he says most of us study Buddhism although it was something that was already given to us. There's something called Buddhism. And it has all these scriptures and philosophy and so forth. And we think, well, that's Buddhism, right? He says, we think that what we should do is preserve the Buddha's teachings. Like putting food in the refrigerator. And then to study Buddhism, we take the food out of the refrigerator.

[21:08]

Whenever you want it, it's already there. Instead, Zen students should be interested in how to produce food from the field, from the garden, and put the emphasis on the ground. The ground is totally bare, right? Instead of putting our attention on something that our mind can cling to, take everything away. All of us have the buddhanature, and the teachings that grow from buddhanature are similar to one another. The teachings of different schools of buddhism do not differ so much, but the attitude toward the teaching is different. When you think that the teachings are the it's like people say, how do I carry my practice into the world?

[22:18]

That's okay, but there's something not quite right about it. It's as if you've got something and you're taking it out into the world. For instance, he talks about this, the Theravada students apply the and so forth. And the Mahayana understanding is the original purpose of this teaching when Buddha told us, when Buddha told it, and it was to explain the interdependency of everything. Those are good teachings. Buddha tried to save us by destroying our common sense. Usually we're not interested in the nothingness or the barrenness of the ground. Our tendency is to be interested in something that is growing in a garden, not in the bare soil itself. So it is interesting. When we go to the arboretum, we look at all the beautiful flowers, and we go to the arboretum or some garden to look at the flowers.

[23:27]

But actually, the flowers are growing from the ground. The most important thing is the ground. The flowers are also important. But the ground is the most important thing. So we get fooled. It's like the fundamentals of our life are overlooked. But if you want to have a good harvest, the most important thing is to make the soil rich and to cultivate it well. The Buddha's teaching is not about the food itself, but about how it is grown and how to take care of it. How to take care of it, that's our work. I sometimes think of it as like a ship. All the sailors are on the ship. Some of them are steering the ship, a few, but others are down in the boiler room, you know, taking care of the mechanics of how the ship moves.

[24:40]

It used to be they were shoveling coal Now they use oil, but they used to shovel coal into these big bunkers. But that's the work of making things work. So the Buddha's teaching is not about the food itself, but about how it's grown and how to take care of it. Buddha was not interested in a special deity or something that was already there. He was interested in the ground from which various gardens will appear. So for him, everything was holy, which was, um, uh, uh, Pointed Dharma said, nothing holy. Which means, everything was holy. People say, nothing holy, wow. But nothing holy means, there's nothing that's not holy. Holy actually means, total. Buddha did not think of himself as a special person.

[25:49]

He tried to be like the most common person, wearing a robe and begging with a bowl. And he thought, I have many students because the students are very good, not because of me. Buddha was great because his understanding of people was good. Because he understood people, he loved them, and he enjoyed helping them. Because he had that kind of a spirit, he could be a Buddha. So, I think that is a touchstone for practice. All the rest is commentary. All of his other talks are commentary on that one. So I wonder if you have any questions.

[26:54]

I really didn't think of them very much. I thought, well, I'm going to talk about the day. But I don't know. But if you have some questions about my birthday or... I want to know if Holy Foods paid for the charity you gave them. Of course. And what was the markup? Well, I don't know. I can't remember. That's why they charge double? I just wonder. I totally don't need to know. I can't remember. I wasn't particularly interested in the money, but it was nice to be able to... that somebody wanted to give me money for it. Yeah. You know, I didn't give him that much of money. So, one very little simple question is, why don't we use the kashaku anymore? The kiyosaku. Kiyosaku. Yeah. Why don't we... I haven't seen it. Well, I've heard it for... We had big controversies about the Kiyosaku at one time.

[27:56]

It's like my father hit me and every time this Kiyosaku comes, and why are we brutal? But we decided that if we wanted to, we could use it during Sashin. So sometimes I use it during Sashin. second period after the second period in the morning. Sometimes I use it then. But, you know, we don't sleep that much. People used to sleep more. But, I tell you, when I do go around, almost everybody asks for it. But we use it sparingly. Well, I sat all over Hatsu and I said, you know, And I personally really like it. Yeah. Well, thanks for reminding me.

[29:02]

As you talked along, you mentioned one of your values initially was to be outside of society in a way. How does that value come forward into the present? Yeah. My feeling was that we should introduce the values that we believe in. I wasn't trying to introduce the values, but by practicing the values that I believed in, I wasn't being drawn off by other values. And that has an influence. If I go out and try to carry a sign that says we should live a simpler life, nobody's going to pay attention to that. But if we actually live our values, then that influences people, even in ways we don't have any idea about. Because whatever we do sends a message to the world.

[30:06]

So, if we have a money scheme, Madoff scheme, that sends a message to the world, you know. Everything influences, everything influences everything. So, I felt that my, it's not that I want to be outside of society, but to have my own integrity within society. Thanks for saying more about that. It certainly seems that the mainstream has embodied many of those values. That's right. And when I was a hippie, I wasn't a hippie, I was a pre-hippie. I was sort of an hippie between Bohemian and the next one.

[31:11]

And that was counterculture. And now it's culture, right? So all the things that we did as counterculture are now culture. I have a question about cultivating your students. I love the garden metaphor. I'm not a gardener and I watch gardeners when they seem to know kind of what it's time to do. And so I'm wondering about pruning your students versus the moment when you water them. I wonder what your thoughts are about knowing when it's time to prune someone. Well, you cut them down to size. I think, for me, I depend a lot on patience. You know, there's the quick fix and the long-term fix. And I kind of like for the long-term fix that we cultivate by association, not so much by direction.

[32:18]

There's direction within association. But directing people is OK. But association is like influence through association more. That's why the more we practice together, when something comes up, you know, Patience means to just be there and you see this person has got this problem, that person has got that problem, I have my problem, but at the right moment you can do something. So to be able to be there for when all of the elements come together to BAM, then it works. to just always be ready at all times.

[33:20]

It's like the tick that waits 20 years before something more walks by, and then boom! So when you say association, do you mean more like, I would be doing something and you would show me by your behavior? Yes, that's one way. Okay. And then bam would be when it's the right time to... To like a turning point. Yes. Right? Yes. So, you know, civility is kind of like, you throw a bunch of dirty rocks into the... couple of days, you look at them, they're all jewels. That's Sangha practice.

[34:24]

You just throw all the rocks, and then they tumble, and wear off, the rough edges wear off, and they start to shine. Sangha practice is really important. The most important thing. The Buddha gives direction. The Sangha gives expansion and understanding. But the Sangha practice is what's important. People say, well, is that OK if I just sit at home? It's OK. But it's not practice. You're missing the benefit of Sangha practice. legs of a pot. And if one of the legs is missing, then the pot is not working right.

[35:25]

So, it's got to be the Sangha, the Dharma, and the Buddha. Some people only respond to the Buddha. They just want the teacher. They're not interested in the Sangha or the Dharma so much. Some people just like the Dharma. They like to study The teaching doesn't make much difference in the Sangha. Nobody cares. And then there are some people who just like Sangha practice. They like association, but they don't care so much about the Dharma or the Buddha. So all three, to have a complete practice, you have to have the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha to hold up the container of practice. Would you tell the story about when Norman Fisher came to look for you over on Blightway? Well, I can tell that story. He shouldn't be telling it, but I'll tell it in place of Norman.

[36:30]

So, I'm outside and I'm doing something in the bushes or mowing the lawn or something like that. And Norman walked by and he says, Is this the Zen Center? And I said, yeah. And he said, well, is there a teacher here? Or who is the teacher? Or is there a teacher somewhere? And I said, well, just a priest. I think I said that. And then later he came by, and I was giving a talk or something. And he realized that it was me, right? So I didn't advertise myself. As a matter of fact, I never told anybody that I was a teacher. People would say, are you my teacher? Are you the teacher? And I would say, if I'm teaching you something, then I'm the teacher.

[37:31]

But I don't call myself a teacher. I did that for a long time, until I had dharma transmission. When I had dharma transmission, I felt that was my permission to say that I was a teacher. But still, I don't advocate that. I don't think so. Sometimes I say, I'm the teacher. But I'm not always the teacher. Sometimes somebody else is the teacher. And sometimes somebody else is my teacher. Matter of fact, whoever says, you're my teacher. Yes, I'm the teacher. But it's no big deal, you know. Just somebody has to do this. Or maybe not. Because I think it's not necessary. Mary? She's quick to become your teacher. What was your process of Darwin Transition?

[38:33]

When Suzuki Roshi was the abbot of Zen Center, he was, for a little over 10 years, actually he was the teacher at Zen Center. It was about 12 years. And during that time he had very many sincere students. And so toward the end of his life, I know he wanted to give a Dharma transmission to them, and he was He started getting sick, you know, like his cancer. That's another story.

[39:44]

So he ended up giving dharma transmission to Richard Becker and he started giving dharma transmission to Bill Kwan and he said to me, he said, even though I was ordained before Bill, you know, a very good dharma companion, after Bill. But he died before he could finish Bill's dharma transmission. So, Maezumi Roshi used to host Chokshio Bill and I in Los Angeles. And so one time we went down there and he said, you guys, Dick should be giving the dharma transmission to finish Bill's transmission and to give me transmission. And then he said, you know, that Hoitsu, who is Suzuki-roshi's son and heir, he said, he should do it.

[40:49]

So, he said, right there, he called him up on the phone. And he said, will you give complete Bill's transmission? And he said, yes. So, after that, Bill went and had transmission, and then went off on his own. And I was here in Berkeley, but I always wanted to... I felt that I was always connected to Jen Senner. So that was my... yeah. So... Jen, in 84, who would give me transmissions in Japan. And I had no idea what was going on, because it was all in Japanese. I remember saying, would you teach me how to do the wisdom letter? And he said, why?

[41:51]

Somebody did that to me after I was transformed. How come you didn't pick that up? Even in Japanese it's so hard to... Yeah, yeah. That was the story, more or less. Is there any particular reason why Mayuzumi Hiroshi didn't give all of you the dharma He was in a different lineage. He was Soto and Rinzai, both, wasn't he? Well, he had, yes, he had. But, you know, we were Suzuki students. Okay. And so our... Alright, that's the reason why. That's the reason why, yeah. Yeah. If, you know, there was some circumstance If you could go back in time to your 20-year-old self.

[43:10]

To where? Back in time to your 20-year-old self. When I was 20? Yes. What would you say to that man? To? To yourself at the age of 20. At the age of 20, I had just gotten out of the service and I wanted to be an artist. I studied with Clifford Still, who was at the Art Institute in San Francisco. It was called the California School of Fine Arts at the time, and they changed it to Art Institute. And when I went there, I didn't know what I was doing. I knew I wanted to be an artist. I always wanted to be an artist. But then I found Clifford Still there, and that became my passion. when I became a dead student.

[44:17]

She was asking, what would you say now to that 20-year-old Mel, if you could? Yes, thank you. Oh, thank you. What would I say to him? I would say, no regrets. You and Edith Piaf. You and Edith Piaf. Edith Piaf. Yeah, no regrets. Oh, and I told you this one before, I think about it, the last time I talked. You know, you're supposed to compose your death poem. And my death poem, I thought, God, I've never read all these death poems in this whole book, you know. What would I say, you know? And then it just came to me. Gratitude, gratitude, Nothing but gratitude. No regret.

[45:18]

Even though there are lots of regrets. young guy from nowhere. I studied with some of the most prominent people in the world in their field. Which doesn't mean much, but I think about it. Do you know about Terry Riley? He and I used to just play music together.

[46:22]

We started In C, which is just this kind of famous tune. I don't think it did better. And so we were just doing that. And then we had a couple of other guys, you know, come. And the purpose of it was that anybody who played in any musical field could play together. And it was, you know, it just melded everybody together instead of isolating them in their fields. I thought it was wonderful in that way. And then Clifford Still, who was my art teacher, who was, you know, the most innovative American painter in the 20th century. And then Suzuki Roshi, you know. So I just have this good fortune to have studied with all these people. And I feel very grateful.

[47:25]

And I'm very grateful that I have all these wonderful people around, you know, that I practice with, and we've been able together to make it all this work. What's there to regret? So I don't know, you know, this morning I was lying in bed and I think, oh yeah, I'm going to die. I'm not going to try to figure it out. But it does sometimes scare me a little, even though when I'm I just see it as the inevitable thing.

[48:32]

You go up, then you go down. If you go down like this, it's nice.

[48:41]

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