This morning I want to talk about the two wheels of the Dharma. Suzuki Roshi used to talk about the two wheels of the Dharma, the so-called spiritual wheel and the material wheel, which keep... I think you can hear me, right? Can you now? Can you now? Okay. Anyway, the spiritual wheel and the material wheel, we say spiritual, but usually we don't use the term spiritual in our practice, because spiritual and material are not two separate things for us.

[01:01]

we find our spiritual life in our material life, and we find our material life in our spiritual life. But in order to talk about these, about something, we separate them. So spiritual and material, spiritual life is like, spiritual wheel is what we call our practice, and material wheel is our support, our material support. things like money and a number, things like that. So both are necessary and we have a great faith in the fact that if our so-called spiritual practice is sincere and accords with the Dharma, that the material wheel will be turning also.

[02:11]

The spiritual wheel induces the material, it draws the material wheel into its vortex. So, I want to tell you that I'm going to talk about fundraising for a special project at the Berkley Zen Center before I talk, because I don't want you to lose faith in what I'm talking about by feeling that I'm going to give you a story and at the end ask you for something and you thought that it was just going to be a story. But I think that it all goes together, because when we first started the Berkeley Zendo, I'm gonna talk about the development of this Zendo, the history of the development of this Zendo.

[03:14]

Back in the 60s, late 60s, when I was living in Berkeley, there was a small group of people that were Suzuki Roshi's students, I've probably told you this before, and we'd sit at different people's places. One person had a little hut in the back of his mother's antique shop up on College Avenue. Suzuki Roshi would come over every Monday and sit zazen with us and give a talk and have breakfast. And this has evolved into our Monday morning talks, practice committee. 1966 or seven, I guess six or seven. He asked me to find a place that could serve as a zendo, a house that could serve as a zendo.

[04:26]

So I discovered the place on Dwight Way. I can't imagine that we could do something like that today. It was 67, February of 67. It's huge. big barn of a house for $130 a month, downstairs, upstairs in an attic. And so we established our practice there, and being a liberal anarchist, I didn't want to formalize our practice too much. But we did collect five dollars a month dues from people who were willing to pay that. And this was our first bank. Balkan Sobrani tobacco camp.

[05:29]

Everybody, we all smoked in those days. Suzuki Roshi didn't, but everybody else, almost everyone did. And so when people would give me the dues, I'd put them into the can. And then if we needed to spend anything, I would just take it out of the can and spend it. And people trusted me that I wouldn't spend too much. Or they didn't even care about it, actually. So I kind of dipped into the can, you know, when I needed money. So I supported myself on teaching recorder playing, which I couldn't play very well at the time, but I did that. I more or less supported myself. So then, after I was ordained in 1969 as a priest, I said, well, now that I'm a priest, I'll let the Sangha support me.

[06:35]

I've always been supported by the Sangha, even though we never had any money, but didn't need any money in those days. In those days, you really didn't need money, not very much. Nowadays, you need money just in order to pay your rent, pay your mortgage, things like that, $130 a month in rent. Anyway, so with the help of the Sangha, was the kind of inspiration of practice. We created a wonderful zendo at Dwight Way and I spent a lot of my time developing a big vegetable garden and people would come by and I'd turn them into the garden and we'd talk and it was a kind of wonderful feeling. And a good number of the people who actually later became the mainstays of the San Francisco Zen Center, started with me in Berkeley, started with us in Berkeley and then went to San Francisco when Suzuki Roshi, after he died.

[07:52]

So, 1971. So we were there for 12 years. And so from a little acorn grew this Zendo, Dwight Way, a big tree. And I didn't want to ask people for money. The hardest thing for me to do, one of the hardest things, is to ask people for money. But the Sangha itself took responsibility for supporting me in the zendo. And I never asked for anything. So they said, well, I think you need this. But after some point, we decided, well, maybe we should have a bank account. So I said, OK.

[08:57]

And then at some point, I said, I always thought that a zendo should not be incorporated. I mean, that's business. Zen Center is not business, why should we be a corporation? But I realized that, I was kind of naive, but it was not a bad idea. But at some point I said, we should be incorporated. So Ron and I went up to, well we, that's not quite accurate. We did file incorporation papers and became incorporated under the Berkeley Zendo. And later when Sansanib came to Berkeley, I saw these signs posted that said, Berkeley Zendo, or Berkeley Zen Center. And I thought, what's going on here?

[09:58]

We're the Berkeley Zen Center. So I went to Sacramento with Ram. And we changed the name to the Berkeley Zen Center. Then I went to Sansa and even talked to him about it and he said, oh, that's fine. So they changed the name to Empty Gate. Anyway, so we really loved that zendo. And after 12 years, or just before that, we wanted to buy the place so that we could have a place of our own. And the owner, at that time, we offered the owner $45,000. this huge big house, which was the going price for houses of that type at that time. But he could see that inflation was rising. So he kept stringing us along, stringing us along. And finally I said, well, we really need to find a place.

[11:00]

So I took my bicycle and I ride up and down the streets of Berkeley. I knew every house in Berkeley in a certain area. And I couldn't really find anything. But the effort to do that stimulated people. So we decided that we wanted to buy this place, but we didn't have a nickel. We had no money. I was invited to an EST training as a priest and I decided that I would do it and see what happened. What is EST? It was fine, okay. What is that?

[12:01]

I'm not going to explain it. It's too much, too much. It's a diversion. But the thing about it was that in order to do this training, it cost $200, which in that time was like, whoa, that's a real commitment to doing something. And so I thought, well, I could ask everybody for $200 for fundraising. So I did, I said, you know, let's everybody contribute $200 to our fundraising campaign to buy this house, to buy a house, buy a place. And so that stimulated our activity. And we did collect, not everybody would contribute $200, some people more, some people less, but you know, sliding scale-ish sort of thing. So that really set off our campaign

[13:02]

to buy a property and we would go to San Francisco, at that time San Francisco Zen Center had a bakery in Cole Street and we would go over there at night and bake brownies and sell them at park fairs. And every week everybody was selling these brownies to Parker, but it stimulated money, you know, it stimulated people to contribute. And people would lend us money, and some people would lend us money without interest, and I mean somebody would lend us, you know, $80,000 with no backup, you know, very risky. The owner, well, oh yeah, so finally one woman who was a nurse, I can't remember her name, but she came in just in time to practice and she said, well, I know this guy that has these four houses on two lots and he wants to sell them, but he would like to sell them to you because he kind of likes what you're doing.

[14:19]

So we bought the place from, this place from him. were $220,000, which was a lot of money then. So, but we didn't have any, but it just, all these things came together to stimulate people's contribution. So, little by little, we created this place. One of the things I didn't want to do, but I was going to say that I didn't, is that I never wanted to nickel and dime people for, you know, like churches are always saying, contribute this, give me this and give us that, and I didn't want to do that. But whenever we needed some money for something that was important, people would contribute, always.

[15:23]

So, our first zendo was in the community, what is now the community room. And we had tatami mats and the frames and everything, and the aisles were about that wide. And we did sashins in there, and everything we did in that little room. It was very cozy. I remember when my wife was having our baby, we were living in that house where Ellen and Lori lived, and they were having one day sitting in that room, and she was in the apartment across the way, and going through these, you know, all day and all night labor, and people were sitting there and listening to all this going on.

[16:33]

Anyway, so we took this building, this is the building that we wanted to have as a zendo, and originally it had a wall going down the middle, it was two apartments. called a railroad apartment or something, like two railroad cars. And so we had an architect, a really nice architect, who came over and we worked on how to do this for a long time, with a little committee. And finally, we came up with a plan. At that time, we had a lot of, a good number of carpenters. It's interesting, you know, when you need work, carpenters appear. And the same thing happened at Tassajara. When we started Tassajara, there was all these people who could do carpentry, including Paul Disko, who just built Larry Ellison's big place.

[17:38]

He learned a lot at Tassajara. So, our carpenters said, well, we'll build this zendo for, you know, really subsistence wages, subsistence wages. And we had a, hired one carpenter who was really very highly skilled, but skittish. We said, we'd like you to make some doors for the Zendo. He made these doors. He made not only the doors, he made all the hardware and designed the sliding lock, which was a big surprise, but we accepted it. So he made everything, he made the hinges. But it took him a long time to get started because he was afraid to make a mistake. Anyway, so it took a while to build this, but everybody pitched in, you know, like we stripped the place and everybody was hauling dirt and cement.

[18:53]

If you look at the floor and ceiling, you see it's cedar, yellow cedar, and one of the carpenters and I went down to South San Francisco and bought this material. But it was like almost two by eight. See, the way it, you can see wide boards. But it was third grade material, which was fine, full of knots and everything. So we went to a lumber, to a mill down there, saw sandwiches going, had it sliced, each board was sliced, and it came out less than three quarters of an inch, a little less, so it, you know, not quite as strong as it was three quarters. Anyway, so, and then we had it planed and made into tongue and groove, so it's all fit together, and we put the boards

[19:59]

in the middle here, the ones that had the least knots and the ones that have the most knots are under the tan. So, and then the ceiling and fitting all that together was a big job. I remember some of these boards, you'd think, well, you just put them in there, you know, they'll all fit. But to make this kind of compound To make those boards fit together looks easy, but I can remember working on one board for all day trying to make it fit. Anyway, so essentially we built the whole thing ourselves. In the end we hired a couple of people and the carpenters needed more money, but people were willing to, you know, they were working on it so long. They couldn't exist on substandard wages. So, anyway. So, then, in order to build this zendo, we had to take two living spaces off of the Berkeley

[21:18]

residency roles, which you can't do. You can't take away the living space to build something else, except in certain circumstances. So, the way I got around that, we got around that, was to lift the building next door up and put those two spaces underneath in exchange for having this as one space. So our carpenters did that too. Well, the movers came in and lifted up the building. Poor Bill Milligan and Connie went in there with their children. And so that building was raised up for two years. And there was a ladder going up to the porch. And they carried their groceries up to it. And if you put a marble on the floor, it would roll down and kind of teeter. And that was a big job.

[22:26]

And we all got in there. We had to dig with picks and shovels to dig a deep foundation all the way around. And then finally the house, the frame was built and the house was lowered down. And then the big part of it, that was the easy part. The long part was finishing, getting everything in there to make it work. But everybody was contributing, not only their money, but their labor and their time and effort. So that's kind of the history of how we developed this place. I think a lot of people don't know that. You know, you come here and you say, well, here's this place, you know, da, da, da. But there's a lot of work and effort. And it's all membership. It's all contributions from the members. We never did. You know, when we think about, well, let's get a foundation to contribute, blah, blah, blah.

[23:29]

Foundations don't do that here. It doesn't work. And it didn't work in Zen Center either. So you have to know somebody on a foundation. It'll work sometime. Yes? I'd like to mention here that everybody was paid back who lent money to buy this property and improve it. So now, Zen centers get free. That's right. That's another amazing thing, is that we managed to pay everybody back, including the finance company, because in order to finance this place, we couldn't get somebody to finance it, so the owner financed it. But we were paying his finance company, which was illegal. But when they find out about it, 10 years later, they said, OK, well, we're not going to foreclose on you or anything like that.

[24:31]

They just raised the mortgage rate a little bit. But with the help of the Sangha, we did manage to pay everything off, including the Sangha members. And how many years ago? Three or four years ago, we were debt free, and we burned an effigy of the contract of the mortgage company. So I think that's a pretty successful story. So now comes the pitch. As you know, When you become a landowner or a property owner, all your property needs maintenance.

[25:38]

And when you own four houses, they need four times as much maintenance. So, we managed to maintain. Actually, we have a very good balance of the red and the black. But our property is going to need some major renovations down the line. But the one renovation that I'm thinking about is this. This building, Zendo, needs a new roof. And this new roof will cost between $20,000 and $25,000, $24,000, something like that. It's a lot, but it includes copper gutters. You know, we have a copper railing outside on the porch. And copper gutters will last so much longer.

[26:43]

We put redwood gutters in this building and they all kind of rotted out. And so, when we thought about fundraising, I thought, well, you know, it brought me back to our original fundraising. I thought, if we ask everybody for $200, which nowadays is a lot, but not as much as it was then, and people contribute, some people contribute more, some less, I will contribute more, then we could easily buy the roof, quite easily. So I've written a letter, a fundraising letter for the roof, which I'm going to send out, we're going to send out, asking people for this contribution to put a roof over our heads. And if you've ever been here in the wintertime and you walk up on the porch and you feel that big drip from when it's raining that falls on your head as you walk up the porch.

[27:58]

So that's my pitch. I want to encourage us to do that if possible. So I'm going to write, we're going to write this letter. I actually composed a letter and we're going to send it to everyone. So I just wanted to let you know about that and kind of how that came about and so forth before I do that, before we do that. Something crossed my mind as I was talking Do you have any questions? Yeah, Ross? you talked about the mortgage and the legality of that.

[29:22]

So, while the karmic effect of that plays out, I'm wondering how one can practice maybe a so-called higher good, knowing that something is, it's not just about me, it's about something that's bigger than myself. And whether that's, not to say whether that's okay or not, But how do we, at the Brookings Center of Congress, practice with that little bit of history? Well, you know, a month before we bought the place, it was legal. It's simply, you know, it's manipulation by the finance companies. So that doesn't bother me particularly. or remanipulating me, yeah. But not really, you know, because in all honesty, we're paying our debt. That's the main thing.

[30:27]

And whether it was a technical, really technical illegality, just a little shift. And so I repent. Yes, that's a good point, I'll accept that. Yes, it was, that's right. Well, I haven't sent out the letter. And what happened was, at that meeting we had in the community room when I announced this, that I wanted to do something. That's right, that's right. When we announced that we wanted to do this, some people said, I'll contribute, and so they did, right off the bat, you know, as a stimulus.

[31:35]

But I don't know how much it was. Yeah, I don't know. That was the initial, yeah. 2700, John says. Oh, really? Already? We haven't even sent out the letter. Great. Good. Thanks for your talk. I was struck. You know, studying Toson's, the, Can You Hear the Non-Sentient Preach the Dharma, I usually thought of that in terms of, you know, mountains and flowers and rivers. And as you were talking, I was thinking, oh, you heard the roof preach the Dharma. And this really is a form of that, don't you think? Yes, everything, without exception.

[32:37]

Yeah. Yes. Thank you for your talk. I really appreciate what Bob said and it seems to me that you allow us to let money preach the Dharma in our own lives. Dona giving and generosity and being a part of the Sangha. Well, that's right, because the Dharma gives you a chance to be generous. Also, it gives us a chance to do that. But, you know, I remember Suzuki Roshi talking about money. He gave a great talk about money and he said money is not, money is necessary and money is not good or bad. It needs to circulate, just like the blood in your body.

[33:43]

If it's not circulating, the society gets sick. Another thing is your topic on trust and faith. I think somehow contributing is an expression of trust and faith. Yeah, it's a response too. It's very interesting because one of the carpenters, Reid, his father came And he said, you know, one of the things that you should remember is that you should keep your projects going, because as soon as the projects are not going, everything stops.

[34:52]

Yeah, there shouldn't be any end point. But we don't have to worry about that. I have a question. It seems like when you started, as I said, everybody was sort of in their twenties. Not everybody, no. I wasn't. But I guess I have the sense of both the community around us aging, that Berkeley is aging, and then also the sangha is, it's not so much that the individuals are aging, it's that older Like Ron was saying, when I was here, when I started here, I was in my 20s and most of the people were in my 20s, and now I'm in whatever he's in, the 60s, and everybody's my age. It's a totally different set of people, but they're all still my age. So I was kind of, I've just been kind of wondering what is... Well, it was a younger and more enthusiastic, not more enthusiastic, but a younger, a young enthusiastic group, but not everybody was that young.

[35:59]

When we started, I was almost 40. Of course, I was just a kid. If somebody was here for the first time on this Saturday, do you think they would get a fair taste of our practice from this discussion about fundraising? Well, ask them. Okay. Anybody? I actually was thinking of you during this talk, wondering what would it be like to be listening to this particular talk? Thank you.

[37:07]

Naomi? I have to say that I was at Casa Hara recently and something that totally disgusted me was the tourist shop there. I just really wasn't comfortable there. The what? Tourist shop. The dress shop. There is a tourist shop at Casa Hara. Pictures you can buy of Suzuki Roshi and little Buddhas and little bells and books. And I just thought it was not... Somebody asked me, how did Siddhi Roshi feel about Prasangana now? And I hadn't gone into the tourist shop yet. The next day I went into the foot shop and I thought, no way. I don't believe Siddhi Roshi would like this. This room is not what I like. And I don't believe it for him. Well, we like to keep things simple. I didn't like it, and I think that we do need to be aware of that aspect of materialism and opportunism that pervades, you know, if you go to Europe and you go to the old dining tables there, they all have horse chalk, and they sell pictures and everything, and there's something crass materialistic about it, and I would like not to see that happen.

[38:35]

Well, in both, in every country I've ever been in, when there's a large church or a monastery or some kind of building or layout like that, when you go up the road, there are always people selling their little stuff on the side of the road, which in a way is kind of quaint. And for us, you know, If you're on that side, it all looks kind of like, who would want this stuff? But for somebody that's just coming and they haven't seen this, they kind of like souvenirs or something, something that reminds them of the place. But anyway, I respect your opinion, but I think it's an opinion. Yeah. We also, you know, you may notice if you see

[40:18]

I agree, and I also, I would not miss if there was nothing there in the office at Tassajara, I wouldn't miss it at all. something is established and it grows, no matter what it is. So you have a place where there's some books and pretty soon there's some trinkets and pretty soon there's this and that and the other thing. At some point, there has to be a limit. So maybe it's kind of gone past the limit. There was somebody in the back that had their hand, yeah. shown a real commitment to keeping things going and doing what's necessary.

[42:02]

And I think one of the things that makes it very special is the combination of the contributions through labor and the contributions through money and the balance of the two. It's not like there's, you know, emperor blue you know, some people give money because that's what they can do, and a lot of people give a lot of labor because they're in a position to be able to do it and have a lot of talents, and the balance of the two makes it a very special center, and I hope we always have that balance and value of Yeah.

[43:10]

Judy? Yeah. Thank you for that history, which I didn't know in detail. I wanted to say, without mentioning the other institutions, I've mentioned to some of you this, but I'll say it reluctantly, that I moved from a different institution to this one. And one of the things that kind of annoyed me about the other institution was they were constantly asking for money. It just never ended, and really putting a fight on you and telling you to go to lunch once a week. I'm not kidding. And I... Not a bad idea. That is the reason that I left there and came here. it very refreshing to come here and have nobody ask me for anything. And the irony is that I gave more here to here than I did to the other place.

[44:13]

I don't know why, but I think part of it had to do with that nobody asked me for anything. There was a suggestion of what you might give, but nobody said, well, you're in this category, and so therefore you should do this. But I appreciate your then letting us know that there is a need, because since we always have these wonderful finance statements that say, hey, everything's paid for, then you kind of don't understand that, you know, so it's really helpful to hear that this is. Yeah, thank you. So one more question, that's it. Bob. Very practical question relating to the issue of labor versus money, and Laurie's question about project. Is there any plan, is the plan to basically pay someone to do this, or are we going to be... We're not going to put the shingles on this at all. No. Well, what you're talking about, the roof, the roofer's going to do that. We have to pay, we're not going to put the roof on ourselves.

[45:17]

And is there any, I think Ellen was working on some solar stuff, is there any kind of solar involvement with this? No, this is just the roof. Solar is something that's in the ideational stage. It's not a concrete thing, it's just mulling over, you know, like, would solar be a good idea? How much would that cost? You know. That's a different discussion. It's a different discussion. It's a big expense, too. What's that? It's a big expense. It's a big expense. But they make solar sheets all the time. Yes, that's also true. But I have to say, this building, all we have is lights. All we have is a few lights. It's not necessary. Well, the hot water is, yeah, that's the hot water heater.

[46:20]

It's gas. Not electricity. Just another comment on the gift shop at Tassajara. I don't know how this relates to the larger discussion, but I know I have always enjoyed that place, in large part because of a lot, I don't know how much, but quite a lot of what's in there is stuff that's created by Sangha members. Photographs and cards and the books that are written, so to me there was always a flavor of almost like we're supporting ourselves. Some of my people I practiced with, they would just go out on their day off and take a bunch of photographs and spend their day off cutting them up and making cards and then bring them into the office to be sold. So there was a nice, to me it was a nice feeling to see the people's names and realize who the people were that created the thing. So that's the other side. Thank you very much.

[47:17]

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