I vow to teach the truth the best I trust the words. Good morning. Good morning. It always feels like coming home. Even though my major, sitting in Berkeley, was not at this endo but at the first endo in Berkeley. a fall here when Mel is atop the heart and it still feels like home. So today we had a ceremony commemorating the Buddha's parinirvana. the death of the Buddha's physical body.

[01:01]

And I think, did you read the last part of the final admonitions of the Buddha, just before he died, which come from a sutra called brief admonitions, Parinirvana Sutra. But in the great Parinirvana Sutra, there is the sort of narrative of the last year of the Buddha's life. In the year before he died, he was 79 years old. And it's quite a remarkable story. He walked from place to place about 600 miles in the last year of his life.

[02:04]

It's as if my husband Lou, who's 79 years old, took a little 600-mile jaunt around California, stopping almost daily and speaking to groups of monks and lay followers, reminding them of the sort of basic elements of what he had discovered in his life. And in the last month, he'd re-walk, and these would, I was just talking this morning with Vicky Austin, who's giving the lecture in the city, who's spent some time in India, and who's made a pilgrimage to the various sites connected with the Buddha's life and teaching. And she said, of course, these would be either very dusty roads or very muddy roads, depending on the time of year that he was walking.

[03:11]

In the last month before he died, he walked about 60 miles. And in the last week before he died, He walked maybe 15 miles each day stopping or maybe several times a day stopping and speaking to groups of his followers. And all of that last period was not just walking and not just 79 years old, but at that point also with dysentery. So this is just kind of a picture of what was going on in the Parinirvana Sutra. And you know, I didn't really kind of get it when I read it because I hadn't been there in person, so it took Vicky to kind of bring it to life for me.

[04:21]

Because what I thought was, gee, you know, so he went here and he said this, and then he went here and he said the same thing, and he went here and he said the same thing, and he went here and he said the same thing. I didn't quite, you know, there are other things happening in this narrative. He gave Ananda three opportunities to ask him not to leave yet, and Ananda didn't get it. and didn't say, please stay and continue to teach. And so after the third time, then he sort of set in motion the actions that led to his death, except in the food that was spoiled. The last, the very last teaching, which was read to you during Zazen, is of course the teaching of impermanence, which Dogen Zenshi, the founder of Soto Zen, says, the seeing into impermanence is itself arousing the mind of awakening.

[05:45]

Seeing into impermanence is itself bodhicitta. when we see that everything changes nothing is permanent whatever comes together will separate including we ourselves when we see that clearly and unmistakably this arouses the mind of awakening the mind to see into reality, to understand, to see our life, to see how to live our life. And of course the Buddha's teaching was about how to live our life. And I was, recently I have moved into the apartment

[06:50]

in which Suzuki Roshi and his wife, Mitsu Suzuki-sensei, more fondly known as Oksan, lived. He lived there for the 12 years or so that he was in the building at Page Street, and she lived there for the 22 years following his death until last October when she returned to Japan. And so Lou and I have just moved into this apartment, and of course it brings Suzuki Roshi and Oksan to mind all the time. She left many things there that she didn't feel necessary to take back to Japan, and some of them I've been cleaning out of the storage closet, for example.

[07:52]

And she saved all of the gift boxes that she ever received. And the wrapping paper, carefully smoothed out. And the ribbons, carefully kept in place. And I'm sure, you know, they're not all there because I'm sure she used many of them. Lou was not of a mind to keep them all. So I selected some of the ones that I thought were the nicest and put them aside. And then one day when I was gone, he divided that into about a fourth. I had thought I would sort of take some downstairs into the Goodwill a few at a time, because she also saved all of the really nice cans that green tea comes in. And I put about 20 of them down in the Goodwill at Page Street and they all disappeared.

[08:55]

They're great to keep pencils in or whatever. They're really nice cans. So there's that aspect of getting to know a side of Oksan that I didn't know so well. But there were a few, you know, a few, like, letters that Suzuki Roshi had written to students there And just a variety of things. Anyhow, on her teapot and teacups, so that I could invite people in for tea, which is what her kitchen was all about, she was always inviting people in for tea, to sit down and talk. When she saw anyone seeming a little downcast, she would invite them in for a cup of tea or maybe a bowl of noodles. And when there was some sort of high-level meeting going on, she would invariably invite someone after the meeting was over in to have a cup of tea to keep up with what was going on.

[09:58]

She was very much a teacher for us as Suzuki Roshi was. And she consciously, she stayed in order to help establish Suzuki Roshi's teaching. She very consciously stayed And she finally went back to Japan. She many times thought about going back to Japan. Her daughter was 22 when she left Japan. So she was with us longer than she was with her daughter growing up. She's now back living with her daughter. And her granddaughter and great-grandchildren are nearby. And she's having a wonderful time. You know, Hoitsu is visiting right now. And I asked him how his mother was. And she says, oh, she was very happy. So she stayed with a mission. She stayed with a sense of mission to sort of help complete the transmission of Suzuki Roshi's teaching to us.

[11:00]

And as I look back on my relationship with Suzuki Roshi and with Osan, I feel very strongly that she has been an important part of what we have learned about the practice of the Buddha Dharma here. Because the practice of the Buddha Dharma is about how to live your life. And so much of what a teacher teaches is just by how he or she lives his or her life. Suzuki Roshi taught by example. Noksan taught by example. And Katagiri Roshi taught by example. You had to see them every day. And the way a student trains with a teacher in Japan is to go live in a temple with him and just be with him.

[12:06]

Just Katagiri Roshi talked about living with his teacher and how hard it was. He was always trying to figure out what he should do. And his teacher would never tell him what to do. For example, he would heat his bath for him and lay out his clothes for him, but he couldn't decide should he scrub his back or not. And so he would ask him, should I wash your back? And he asked him every day, every day. Finally, one day, it just seemed like he just washed his back. And he said, ah. But he wasn't going to tell him to. He had to figure it out for himself. So it's in that kind of interacting with someone as they live their life that a lot of the teaching occurs. It's just, you know, it's like, it's in hanging out with Mel here and working in the garden with him and fixing things and that sort of stuff that you get to know more about Mel than when he leads a ceremony or sits up here and gives a lecture.

[13:11]

That's teaching too, but actually being with someone and seeing how to do the little things. Like, Oksan came into the office one day when Jeffrey, who was then Secretary of Sense Center, was opening letters, and he was ripping off the ends of them bolts and pulling letters out. And she said, oh, Jeffrey-san, that's not Suzuki Roshi's way. And she took the letter opener, and she says, open the letter this way. She says, that's Suzuki Roshi's way. Let her will be happier. You will be happier. There was a young man at city center who was Oksana's sort of assistant or helper the last year that she was here. He would drive her shopping and carry the groceries for her. Just do little errands or help her out in whatever way she needed.

[14:14]

And he's missing her terribly. And this is a young man who is, he can be quite irritable and quite sharp. He's actually extremely sweet and has a very soft side that he's quite reluctant for anyone to know about. So he's usually got a very But, you know, Oksan brought out his soft side. And he's missing her a lot. And I said to him, what would you say were the chief characteristics of Oksan? What is it that you miss? What was it about her that made her so special to you? She was invariably courteous.

[15:19]

And she was always aware of my feelings and took them into account. And she was very kind and she was very generous. But the thing that sticks to me, she was unfailingly courteous. So I think that's a very good description of her. When he says she was always kind, well, yes. But she could, with her close students, be quite sharp. Not that it was unkind, but it sort of cut through the baloney and got to the essence sometimes in ways that were not always comfortable. though I think it was in the long run kind. And I remember Suzuki Roshi like that, although I was around Suzuki Roshi for two years, and I was around Boksan for 24 years, and with her much more recently.

[16:46]

So the details of how she was in her life, I remember much more. She was always very energetic. She puts me to shame when it comes to keeping up with exercises. She did her qigong every day up on the roof, and she went marching up and down the halls at Page Street to get her exercise, swinging her arms and walking very fast up and down the halls. I said, I'd be able to give it some walking. She could do it right here in the building. It was my excuse. So when all is said and done, although there are a great many written teachings of the Buddhas, of Dogen Zenji's, even of Suzuki Roshi's and Katagiri Roshi's.

[17:51]

The most potent teaching, I think, was in just seeing how they lived their life and just seeing, for example, the story of how the Buddha spent his last year walking all around visiting groups of followers and encouraging them in their practice. I want to read a little of what Suzuki Roshi said in a chapter of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind which is called Nothing special. And he's talking about Zazen. What Suzuki Roshi, the way Suzuki Roshi taught was in the first place, people heard there was this Zen master over at Sokoji Temple and they said, you know, they started hanging around and saying, hey, teach us about Zen.

[19:09]

And he said, I said Zazen every morning. You can sit with me if you'd like. Mel sat sansen every morning down there on Dwight Way. And people just sat with him in the living room. And then more people sat with him. And then they had a bozendo upstairs and so forth. But it was just, I sit sansen every morning. You can sit with me. So Suzuki Roshi is talking about sitting sansen every morning. And there's this wonderful story. I mean, I'm about to read out of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. But the story about how Zen Mind Beginner's Mind to be, I think is quite wonderful. This summer, Hoi Suzuki Roshi, Suzuki Roshi's son, was here with about 20 people. 16 of them were the abbots of temples, which are sub-temples of Rinzō-in, his temple and Suzuki Roshi's temple.

[20:12]

Rinzō-in is over 500 years old, so temples in that area which were founded later than that are sub-temples of the older temple. So he wanted to bring the abbots of those temples over, I think before his mother left, to sort of see what was Suzuki Roshi doing over here when he left there, and left Hoitsu, his abbot, when he was 27. So he brought them over and he brought them to the city center, and to Green Gulch, and to Tassajara, and to Sonoma Mountain Center, where Suzuki Roshi's disciple, Phil Kwong, has a center. And down to Mountain View, where Suzuki Roshi's disciple, Les Kay, has a center. And to Santa Cruz, where Suzuki Roshi's disciple, Catherine Thomas, has a center. Just sort of showing them what was the result of Suzuki Roshi leaving Rinzongen and coming to America.

[21:17]

And, you know, as I'm thinking of the Buddha in his last year of life, walking 600 miles to teach, I think of Suzuki Roshi coming thousands of miles here to teach because when he came here he found people with a fresh mind, with a beginner's mind, people who wanted to study Zen to understand their life. None of them were studying Zen because they had to to inherit their father's temple. None of them were studying Zen because it was kind of the thing to do. They were studying Zen probably because they had seen impermanence and wanted to come to terms with their life. And this fresh beginner's mind was very, very appealing to him. And so he wanted to stay here and teach. So he was just sitting zazen with some people at Sokoji Temple.

[22:28]

And then there were a group of people down in Los Altos, some of them, who came up to sit zazen with him. And one of them invited him down. to sit Zazen with a small group in her living room in Los Altos. And so he went down once a week to sit with this small group of people in Los Altos. Often three or four people. And he would give them a Dharma talk. And Marion taped the Dharma talks. And at some point she transcribed them. And they were edited, and they were published, and they became Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, which is the most widely circulated book on Zen in the West. I mean, how many of you have read it? How many of your friends have read it? This book was a book of lectures which Suzuki Roshi gave to three or four middle-class housewives in Los Altos.

[23:40]

in the 1960s. This impressed me so much because when these visiting monks were here, Oksan was talking to them and telling them about Suzuki Roshi and his teaching here. She was talking in Japanese, so I couldn't follow a lot of it, but one thing I could follow, I know a few words, and I heard her say, She asked him, why does he work so hard preparing these Dharma talks? Almost nobody comes to hear him. He said, it doesn't matter if it's one person or a thousand people, it's the Dharma, and I have to do my best. I was really struck by that. It was not until after that that I found out that these talks in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind were given to three or four or five people. But I heard her with that and it struck me because nowadays I sometimes give Dharma talks.

[24:53]

And I had this picture of Suzuki Roshi sitting and studying and having his dictionary out and trying to talk about the Buddha Dharma in a foreign language, in a foreign culture, so that people could understand the essence of what the Buddha had to teach. My picture of Kadagiri Roshi is of him sitting in the abbot's cabinet at Tassajara, surrounded by books and dictionaries, studying Dogon Senchi so he could lecture to us about Dogon Senchi. And I think of myself and I think, you don't get it yet. You don't really work hard enough. You don't really understand how to put your whole life into preparing the Dharma talk.

[25:58]

I just hate studying. It's really hard for me. And I have these examples and it kind of spurs me on to try harder. How can I convey the meaning of this teaching? So I want to share with you something that Suzuki Goshi said about Zazen. in this talk called Nothing Special, which he begins by saying, I do not feel like speaking after Zazen. I feel the practice of Zazen is enough. But if I must say something, I think I would like to talk about how wonderful it is to practice Zazen. Our purpose is just to keep this practice forever.

[26:59]

This practice started from beginningless time and it will continue into an endless future. Strictly speaking, for a human being, there is no other practice than this practice. There is no other way of life than this way of life. Zen practice is the direct expression of our true nature. Of course, whatever we do is the expression of our true nature, but without this practice, it is difficult to realize. And then he says sometime later, if you continue this practice, more and more you will acquire something, nothing special, but nevertheless something. You may say universal nature or Buddha nature or enlightenment. You may call it by many names. For the person who has it, it is nothing and it is something.

[28:09]

When we express our true nature, we are human beings. When we do not, we do not know what we are. We are not an animal because we walk on two legs. We're something different from an animal, but what are we? We may be a ghost. We do not know what to call ourselves. Such a creature does not actually exist. It is a delusion. Intellectually, my talk makes no sense, but if you've experienced true practice, you will know what I mean. If something exists, it has its own true nature. It's Buddha nature. In the Parinirvana Sutra, Buddha says everything has Buddha nature.

[29:13]

But Dogen Zenji reads it this way. Everything is Buddha nature. There's a difference. If you say everything has Buddha nature, It means buddha nature is in each existence. So buddha nature and each existence are different. But when you say everything is buddha nature, it means that everything is buddha nature itself. When there's no buddha nature, there's nothing at all. Something apart from buddha nature is just a delusion. It may exist in your mind, but such things do not actually exist. So to be a human being is to be a Buddha. Buddha nature is just another name for our true human nature. Thus, even though you do not do anything, you are actually doing something. You are expressing yourself. You are expressing your true nature.

[30:15]

Your eyes will express. Your voice will express. Your demeanor will express. The most important thing is to express your true nature in the simplest, most adequate way, and to appreciate it in the smallest existence. So I would say that that teaching, for me, I don't know. I can't say what is Suzuki Roshi's most lasting teaching, or the Buddha's most lasting teaching, or Kadagiri's most lasting teaching, or Covincino's most lasting teaching. These are teachers who have affected me. But from each one of them, I have heard this teaching, that we are, from the beginning, at our very essence,

[31:24]

of the nature of awakening. And that our practice and our life, or the practice of our life, is to manifest, to make real, to express in the world, in our day-to-day activities, that essence of who we always are. that we sit zazen to become more and more in touch with familiar with and able to express this true essence that we are that this is our innermost request this is our deepest desire is to be true to our fundamental nature, is to be able to live in the smallest details of our daily life, in all of our interactions with others, from this fundamental essence of who we are.

[32:52]

And as we sit, and as we practice, and as we develop mindfulness, we see how we are pushed around by states of mind that come up, by preferences, by desires and aversions, from actually manifesting our essential nature without interference. And so we develop, you know, we cultivate a possibility of keeping our attention present with us so that we don't find ourselves being

[34:01]

washed away by various emotions that arise, various preferences that arise, various harassments after or pushing away from things that we find attractive or repulsive, that we cultivate the possibility of paying attention so that we actually can live moment to moment in a way that feels in harmony with our innermost request. We cultivate the possibility of hearing, sensing, feeling, being in touch with our innermost request. so that we can be guided by it and not swept away by our momentary preferences and desires and aversions.

[35:16]

But knowing that we can trust our inner voice, we cultivate the ear to hear it. We cultivate listening to our heart, or listening to our gut, or listening to our inner essential being. And Suzuki Roshi says, you know, when you notice that you are feeling some regret for some action that may occur when you're swept away, you just notice that you're feeling some regret and you try to be more conscientious or more aware next time so that you can catch it before you're swept away and say, oops, here I go again.

[36:23]

But you recognize that always there is that possibility of expressing the true human nature, which is present not just here, but in the smallest existence. This true nature is present in every existence. And for me, that each of the teachers whom I've met, who has moved me so greatly, have treated me as though they see this Buddha nature here. It has given me some confidence to try to see it myself. It was not just that they saw it here. I could see that they saw it.

[37:29]

And so I also try to cultivate the possibility of seeing this nature of awakening everywhere I look. There's a poem which Hiroshi wrote that I would like to share with you. It's called Peaceful Life. Being told that it is impossible, one believes in despair Is that so?

[38:42]

Being told that it is possible, one believes in excitement. That's right! But whichever is chosen, it does not fit one's heart neatly. Being asked what is unfitting, I don't know what it is. But my heart knows somehow. I feel an irresistible desire to know what the mystery of human is. As to this mystery, clarifying, knowing how to live, knowing how to walk with people, demonstrating and teaching This is the Buddha. From my human eyes, I feel it's really impossible to become a Buddha.

[39:46]

But this I, regarding what the Buddha does, vows to practice, to aspire, to be resolute, and tells myself, yes, I will, and just practice, right here, now, and achieve continuity, endlessly, forever. This is living in the vow. Herein is one's peaceful life found." This was written the year before he died. So again and again, we make the effort to live in harmony with our innermost request, to find out how to bring our innermost request to life in our daily activities, in the smallest details of our life.

[41:01]

Again and again. Yeah, that's right, we don't have a discussion period after this. We do, but we also started in Prague. Would anybody like to ask questions, make comments, add, subtract, divide, or multiply? The quote from the Parinirvana Sutra, it says something about The feeling was that we had the potential to realize our Buddha nature and Dogen's translation of that is that we are or everything is Buddha nature. Can you comment on how that later translation is more what we emphasize and not to discount what the old translation or the original? or how we might work with that.

[42:06]

It seems like it's easier for us, at least easier for me, to sort of see on an intellectual level that I have the potential, we all have the potential to realize this wonderment. And the second one is much harder to grasp. For me, we have the potential to realize it because it's already here. If it weren't here, we would have to sort of add it to us from somewhere outside, where would we find it? I mean, the possibility exists because it's already our fundamental nature. And that gets covered up and obscured often by habits of body, speech, and mind. that are karmically acquired. But the fact that we have the potential is because that's the essence of what we are from the beginning.

[43:18]

I know I've quoted here before Covencino's saying something about why we said Zazen. He said, when a person discovers that it's completely his responsibility or completely her responsibility to manifest Buddha life in the world, naturally such a person sits down for a while. It's such a big responsibility. You know, the Buddha said in the Parinirvana Sutra, he said, please keep the precepts. The precepts are, you know, because you have the precepts, it's like having me still in the world. And this quote from Komanchino was when he was talking about the precepts, he says the precepts are not about improving your personality.

[44:27]

The precepts are about manifesting Buddha-life in the world. That's what the precepts are about. So we study the precepts and we work with the precepts in order to find out how to manifest that which we already are. That it is difficult is due to getting caught up in our preferences, as we're all familiar with. those things which we really have got to have, you know, and we'll do anything for them. I used to think that, you know, I happen to be sort of a greed type, and I have friends who are sort of anger or aversion types, and somehow I always thought that there's something a little nicer about a greed type because they were, you know, they were kind of friendly and loving and all that.

[45:35]

But after all, you know, if you get in the way of a greed type getting what they want, anger is right there. It's not far away. I was wondering about, I don't know if it's exactly following that, but when you were talking about Zuka Roshi's wife, running down the hall, walking rapidly down the hall, and you said something about, oh, well, what's wrong with me? Why can't I do that? Or why can't I get it together? And the same thing about the studying. Well, I should study more, when you said that. And I was wondering about that being acquisitive, basically, not being your Buddha nature, And I was relating it to myself, looking outward for something. I don't know, I wonder if you could say a little bit more about how you accept the fact that maybe you don't go up and down the hall, or you don't study like X does, but that you're giving the same gift out on how you can become somebody else.

[46:52]

Well, you know, what I'm thinking of Actually, this business about exercise, it actually has to do with my greed, you know, and I have to... It's interesting to me to study it, because this exercise... I've had a heart attack, and exercise is the one aspect of taking care of myself that I really am not very good at. And it's a conflict of greed, you know, whether I want to be lazy or whether I want to live longer, you know. But my doctor, my acupuncturist, my friends, people who care about me are always saying, why don't you exercise more? What's the matter with you? Because they see that I really do care a lot about living longer. I take all my medicine like a good girl and I'm very careful about my diet and so forth, but there's this business of That requires effort, you know, to actually get out there and exercise.

[47:57]

When I do it, I like it, you know. I went for a hike yesterday, it was great, and I thought, boy, I could do this every day. But then, you know, Lou said to me, yeah, you'll live off that for a month. This is just one of, you know, we all have our kind of tendencies that we look at and say, how to be able to do better than that. These are my two wannas. And they both seem to me to be based on laziness. Although, you know, there are ways in which I seem to be quite engaged with life all the time, and maybe I shouldn't be so down on myself. It's not that I'm down on myself so much, it's just, you know, I look at myself and say, really, you know, these are two areas where you need to do some work. So you wouldn't say your Buddha nature is the part that doesn't want to do the work, is what you're saying. No, I'm saying these are old habits of mine. These are habits, I think, that go all the way back to being the baby in the family.

[49:04]

I could slide by on being cute and being clever, and didn't have to make a lot of effort, and I think I carry some habits for 67 years now, from getting by. This is not always true, but there are situations, and the situation that I like the best, that puts me in a situation where I can really set aside a period of time every day and study, and set aside a period of time every day and exercise, is Tassajara practice period. That's why I love to do it. There are no distractions. You're just down there and you're doing it all together. And it's really nice. You know, I mean, the dawn has picked up the strife. He's really stuck. Is there anyone else that has something? Anyhow, I don't beat myself about it, but I do look at it and I say, these are areas where I need to make effort.

[50:07]

You know, this is, these are areas that... Suzuki Roshi used to say, Zen is about making your best effort on each moment forever. And this is a couple of areas where I don't think I'm making my best effort. That's not true, because I think we're always making our best effort. We are always making our best effort on each moment. I guess I'm just a little disappointed Thanks.

[50:50]

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