I enjoy practicing with you very much, but I worry a little bit sometimes about distracting you or getting you too involved in Buddhism or presenting Buddhism in some attractive way or even if I present it unattractively, maybe that's some kind of way of being attractive. You know, Tsukiyoshi used to say that not to use intoxicants, especially sell intoxicants, meant actually don't sell Buddhism as an intoxicant and I don't think you're intoxicated right now, but ... All I can talk to you about is an ongoing practice of which not I can't talk to you

[01:31]

about a finished practice. I can talk to you about practice as I'm continuing it with Suzuki Roshi and practice goes on and on, there's no end, and when I say that, you see, that means you're supposed to stay and practice on and on without end, and I don't mean that, but I don't know how to ... I want ... your practice is, I don't know, it's with yourself completely, but when it's with yourself it includes others. Our practice actually, the real purpose of it maybe, is how to disturb our culture and

[02:45]

what ... it doesn't make much sense, but I'll try to make clear what I mean. Suzuki Roshi started his practice, of course, since his father was a Roshi, his practice began when he was, you know, very young, but his so-called formal practice began when he went to his teacher, Gyakujin, and so on, and when he was young, he was quite a young boy, his teacher wouldn't tell him anything, he didn't even teach him how to read, and he was quite embarrassed because he didn't know how to read, and other kids knew how

[03:52]

to read, and all Gyakujin and so on would have him do was scrub floors and carry things, and he never taught him anything, not how to chant sutras, you know, anything. He had to learn everything by himself. It's interesting, I don't know, maybe some aspects of Suzuki Roshi's background don't sound so, don't sound like the usual Japanese background, I don't know exactly what the difference is, but for example, he never, as far as I can tell, he never had a calligraphy teacher, which is pretty unusual, usually it's so important for a Zen priest to know

[04:53]

calligraphy that they study it a great deal, but he only, he taught himself by imitating his teacher and other people, but he never studied formally, and he taught me for one month calligraphy, and he made a point then again, I thought maybe he was just being modest, but he made a point again of the fact that he never had any usual schooling in calligraphy, and he refused, when he first was here, people, you know, didn't know quite whether he was a flower teacher or a Zen teacher or a tea master or calligraphy, and people were always trying to get him to teach them Zen or Japanese arts when he first came to America. People would come almost as often and ask him to teach them calligraphy as they would, or tea, as they would come and ask him to teach Zen, and of course, actually the priest

[06:00]

who was there before at Sokoji taught calligraphy more than Zen, so there was some expectation, and he always refused, but when a friend of mine was at Eheiji, the person at Eheiji who takes all of the correspondence from all the priests throughout, Soto priests throughout Japan, said Suzuki Roshi's calligraphy was the most clear and beautiful, but actually I don't know whether it was or not, you know, I'm not an expert on Japanese calligraphy, so I like his calligraphy okay, but he certainly was not famous for his calligraphy, you know, he just had his own way and he kept emphasizing that, and his teacher seems to have emphasized that more than usually in his training, and so mostly what Suzuki Roshi did, Shunryo-san

[07:10]

did was scrub floors and take care of the temple, and his teacher wouldn't ever say anything, he would, for instance, they would be having breakfast and Suzuki Roshi would have to do a lot of the preparation, and without saying anything his teacher would get up and leave, right, and Suzuki Roshi would have to carry all the luggage and he was quite little, and his teacher would be going somewhere to perform a ceremony, and his teacher would just leave and wouldn't walk slow or anything, just walk, and Suzuki Roshi would have to run along behind him carrying all this stuff, trying to figure out where he was going, and as soon as he could figure out where he was going, pretty much, he would then take a shortcut if he could, and then he would get ahead of him and wait by the road till he came and then join him again, you know, and one day he did this and he got ahead of his teacher and took a shortcut,

[08:23]

got ahead of his teacher, but he stopped and watched some fish under a bridge, and while he was watching the fish under the bridge, his teacher took a carriage, and so he came out and his teacher was way ahead of him and he could see the carriage going, so he had all this suitcase and things he was carrying, right, so he had to take more than the usual shortcut, and he cut across several rice paddies, you know, straight across the middle, and he had to ford a river, and he finally got to where his teacher was going to perform the ceremony, you know, and all the luggage was wet. And his teacher didn't criticize him, but he must have been quite angry, Suzuki Roshi

[09:28]

said, because, you know, his kesa was wet, but Suzuki Roshi said at that time, he didn't criticize me because maybe he was quite interested in me, kind to me, but still he never explained anything, he didn't criticize or praise or tell him where he was going, he just would start walking, and Suzuki Roshi had to figure everything out. Of the group of disciples that were with Gyakujin when Suzuki Roshi came, I guess there were six or so, and I think Suzuki Roshi was the youngest, and within a couple of years

[10:32]

Suzuki Roshi was the only one, all the others had run away, and Suzuki Roshi stayed with him until he was thirty-one years old, when his teacher died. But in this kind of practice, what Suzuki Roshi called a devotional attitude is needed, you don't, there's not much explanation, but you need some kind of devotional attitude, and that's one reason why the main ritual in our practice is bowing, other than zazen our practice is bowing. And when Roshi was young at that time, as soon as some system was started, as soon as

[11:35]

Suzuki Roshi and the other disciples who came later would figure out some pattern, he would try to disturb the pattern, and even as an old man Suzuki Roshi still did that. He was quite a lot, compared to most of the Buddhist priests who I've had experience with, he was quite a lot more bemused by the ceremonies, I mean not ceremonies, I mean the regulations and rules and order. He was quite strict about them actually, Suzuki Roshi had two sides, one was everything was very open and easy and he was very accepting, and the other side was completely strict. When I first, my first experience of it, I sort of felt like Suzuki Roshi was a flower

[12:40]

and then I found under the flower masses of thorns, and his teacher was very strict. And, but he still had some playing with or fooling around with the rules. I remember at Dasahara when Chick Reader's wife came, she's a very, I don't think many of you know her, but she's a very pretty girl from Mississippi, who I think now is living in India with Chick, and she had been taught at great length exactly how to do the bell, the Densho bell at Dasahara, and how as he left his cabin it was supposed to go, bong, bong, you know, and he comes to the bridge it goes bong, you know, and just as he gets to the zendo, you, so Suzuki Roshi was coming along the path, and she was watching, and

[13:47]

so he got to the zendo and she was building up, you know, and he just went right on past the zendo. And of course it was her, it was her first time, right, and she didn't know what to do, she was, her mind was racing, what do I do, you know, what did they tell me, they didn't plan for this. So she was ringing faster and faster, and he got down to almost the office, and then he turned around and gave her a big smile, and he went back. But we do organize our life rather thoroughly here.

[14:55]

And one of the reasons is, for most of us, I think, we're not present in each particle of time. So we emphasize small things, it's as if maybe at a basketball game, if you weren't very alert at a basketball game, and all you saw was the arrival of the ball in somebody's hands, you never were quite quick enough to see it being thrown. So you watched the game and you tried to figure out what was going on, and all you saw was the arrival of the ball in people's hands, next thing you saw it arrive in somebody else's hand, and then it went through the basket, you know. But you didn't see, you couldn't follow the ball from the throwing of it to the arrival

[16:00]

of it, etc., you know. And it's amazing to what extent we do, are not present with ourselves in each moment, so that we don't see the arising of each thought, and it's going away. So, we emphasize little things so that eventually you have that kind of alertness. I think maybe painters and poets and artists often have this kind of attention when they're working. It may be why so many artists have been interested in Zen in Japan and in China.

[17:03]

But actually to know how to do something, we have to have a great deal of, I mean like if you really want to learn calligraphy, you have to maybe just have a big mass of dots on the paper, no order. To learn to draw a straight line may not be to try to draw a straight line according to some rule, but to start out with everything that's not a straight line. So when Suzuki Roshi studied Buddhism with Gyakujin, he wasn't told anything, you know, in that way, just a complete kind of, there's just a lot of information. You have to make sense of it, because in the end your life is your own imagination.

[18:28]

If you can see things as they are, see the basketball game completely, you can see things as they are, then you can imagine your life, and you can be anything, you don't have to be a Zen Buddhist or a priest. At that time you can do anything and whatever you do will be for everyone. So, I feel sometimes like, you know, cancelling Doksan for one year, or this session, because you have some expectation of, I should come

[19:45]

to Doksan, or there's no question, or you know, I mean maybe there should be no, we should disorganize Zen Center a little bit, so that you have to figure out all over again why you want to practice Buddhism. I try, I try too hard, actually, to, to practice with you. I know, when I practiced with Suzuki Roshi, I had to force him to teach me anything.

[20:53]

I could go to Doksan over and over and over again and he wouldn't do anything, he'd just sit there, you know, he wouldn't say anything or help me in any way, and it wasn't just he was communicating silently to me, he was just waiting for me to go and get on and get out, you know, he didn't have anything to say. So I had to find some way to create the possibility of, and it's not, I didn't know what to do actually, for a long time I didn't know what to do. I still went to Doksan, but anyway, I didn't know what to do. I didn't worry so much that I didn't know what to do, but I didn't. And practice is, you know, we do try to, our way of disorganizing you is, I mean, our practice

[22:00]

is a little bit like waiting at a bus stop for a bus that isn't going to come, so it's pretty easy to go to a bus stop and wait until a bus comes and you're rather bored but you can think of something to do, but if someone found you waiting at a bus stop for five days, and they said, what are you doing here, there's no, this isn't a bus stop. That is rather disorganized, so you can't really answer, what are we doing at this bus stop? Maybe we should have the muni run right through the zendo, stop and we'd all get in. Very compassionate bodhisattva bus driver would drive right into the zendo, tired of

[23:12]

you people waiting so long, the bus would be glowing green, we'd all say, anyway, since that's unlikely, we have to, I don't know, there's nothing to say, what we're doing sitting there. Anyway, it's the same with our concentration, Siddhuki Goswami, here's Zen and meditation and he used to, and you're supposed to concentrate, and he would say, don't concentrate on anything, and I couldn't understand what he meant, but what he means is the kind of, you have concentration

[24:16]

but it's not on anything, maybe a little bit like a juggler, if you're juggling and you look at, if you concentrate on one ball, you drop them all, but you have a concentration for whatever is there. So anyway, our concentration is concentration itself without an object. So, while our practice looks very ordered, actually, we're trying to be, to practice in a way that no matter what kind of ball somebody throws in front of us, you know,

[25:21]

we can start juggling. So our culture, our present culture today, it's like you suddenly are reborn today and out there is this culture, or in here is this culture. And our Buddhist way of responding to that is not to have some social plan or idea about how it should be, but just to start juggling. We just start working with it and looking at it without some idea of pattern. So that's what I mean by our job as Buddhists may be to disorder, to disturb our culture, because our culture can't continue, you know, unless it's disordered.

[26:30]

Do you understand what I mean? So we're not setting out some world-beating plan to figure out a new system. We just start with what is given us, juggling, with skillful means maybe. And maybe nobody knows we're Buddhists, and it looks like we're not disturbing anything, but actually when you practice with that idea, you're disturbing things and continuing things. Our culture and your own life can't continue without that kind of disturbance. And although in the midst of just sitting here, you know, sometimes sleeping, sometimes hurting, it doesn't seem like there's any point a lot of the time, I think.

[27:40]

But the kind of practice we do, and to have actually a spiritual life, takes a great deal of strength and courage, and you don't know exactly what you're preparing for, what kind of situation actually your development will require from you, and what kind of experience actually this culture will require from us. So you should be able to absorb the pain in this sazen, and absorb the sleepiness, and absorb the boredom, so that in your life, in this culture of ours, you can absorb the many contradictions and disturbances, and actually disturb our culture in a way that

[28:44]

continues it. The only way our life continues, your life and our life all together, is if we start from nothing and find out what we are, and imagine our life from the beginning, and imagine our culture from the beginning. In this way, even though no one ... the real leaders of a culture may be people who practice in this way, they're not the obvious leaders that we're electing or not electing today, but the culture is actually organized around people who have started from the beginning and continued by them. Again, it sounds like I'm encouraging you to practice forever, and I guess I am, since

[30:15]

I believe that, sort of believe that, but I don't want your commitment. We don't, you and I, don't want some commitment or duty or something like that. Just the natural effortless effort we make, that is, that there's actually no alternative to living the short time we'll be alive. Thank you very much.

[31:07]

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