talk, which I have given many times in the past ten years, but clearly one never stops seeking the way. So here's yet another chapter in my way-seeking mind life, and I intend to speak largely about my three months at Tassajara. September or actually October through December. Most of you know something about me and something about Tassajara. And you may wonder, since I've been practicing since, let's see, 1970, why I hadn't gone sooner? And the answer is mostly I didn't want to. I knew about Tassajara of course right within a few weeks or months certainly of beginning to practice in a serious way.

[01:08]

It's the Zen training monastery, the first certainly on the West Coast and as I understand it may be the first in North America established by Suzuki Roshi and the Sangha at San Francisco Zen Center including our own much cherished abbot, who was a young student at the time, 32 years ago. When I went in September of 1999, it was the 64th Pasahara training period, three-month intensive. Actually, they refer to it as a 90-day intensive. So it's a storied place. And I did go to visit as a guest worker many years ago in the early 70s, and so got a look at the place and had some feeling for what it was.

[02:09]

And then again, I did go rather more recently, maybe four summers, four springs ago, as part of the Berkeley contingent of work in April. Then the question is, you know, again, why didn't I go sooner? Because I didn't want to, because I'm a city person, and I'm not crazy about being in the country. It's OK on a weekend, or maybe even for a week. But longer than that, I did not, as many people do, you know, really just look forward so much to being in the depths of the country with the silence and the clean air, et cetera, et cetera. I just didn't. I'm not... I like concrete. I like right angles where the corner goes and you turn left and what have you. So that's certainly an important part.

[03:11]

But another part is I was just very busy with my work and it was only when I retired from work just a year ago in September, in September of 1998, And a few other things seemed to fall into a certain place, and I thought, gee, I could go. And another important reason to have decided to go was the fact that I understood that Norman Fisher would be leaving his last practice period at Tassajara, and I wanted to spend that time with him. I'm very fond of Norman. having been a student at the same time he was way back in Dwight Way days in the early 70s with Sojin Roshi. So these reasons came together and I repressed, as it were, my feeling about going to the country for a long period of time. And I went down with Nancy Venhouse and Paul Ridgeway, the three of us,

[04:16]

And we felt like, I think, you know, three musketeers heading off there with our Berkeley banner to do this practice period. And for each of us, it was the first time. Already down there, having been there for the summer, the spring, and then the summer preceding the fall practice period was Peter Carpentieri. So there were four of us from Berkeley. And that was a good thing altogether. probably it's fairly not a secret that I had a kind of difficult time at Tassajara. And what I hope to tell you this morning is, looking for my watch, is something about that, you know, it's very selective. There's no way I can give a sort of comprehensive retelling of what it meant to me, and what I learned, and what I was fearful of, and et cetera, et cetera.

[05:24]

So it's very selective what I'm going to say in the next few minutes, and I'll leave as much time as I can manage for questions. So if you want to inquire about certain things that I may raise. And I'm going to try to be honest, although, you know, a person is always kind of favoring their own image in any situation. So we were heading down there, the three of us, that morning. We were also two days delayed because there were big forest fires in the Los Padres National Forest all around Tasajara throughout that September. Once there was this huge lightning storm off the coast and on the coast. There were fires started in several places and it was burning all around Tassajara and we were told, we who were not there and waiting to discover whether we could go down at the appointed time to begin our practice period. Meanwhile, people were evacuated from Tassajara because the fire was approaching and the fire service wanted as few people as possible there.

[06:29]

while they tried to protect the structures and, of course, the people who remained. So we were, in fact, only delayed by two days to begin the practice period. I forget the exact date, but it was sometime around the 25th of September or the 27th of September. So we went, set off, and all my forebodings rose up in my throat as we were coming down the Tassajara Road because the road was burning. Not the road, the side of the road was smoking and there was this stink, the acrid stink in the air of burning leaf mold and trees and whoever. animal or critter couldn't get out of the way. It was like, I don't know, it was entering hell, coming down that road. And I don't know, Nancy told you her story, she didn't even mention that. So clearly people have very different takes on the same scene.

[07:32]

We all know that very well. So again, I was not a happy camper heading down into camp. But the sides of the road were not all the way burning, but there were several longish sections where indeed they were smoking and smoldering and stinking up the air. So we got down there, and Paul had received permission to keep his truck there, his pickup truck, which we had come in, which was really wonderful, because it sort of gave one a psychological sense that, you know, that transportation was there if you needed to get out in a hurry. And in fact, that was sort of true, but not really true, because as I discovered during the first, within the first two or three weeks, I couldn't leave. I didn't want to be there, but I couldn't go. I couldn't go because people were in my apartment. I didn't have any place to go to.

[08:33]

That was an important thing. Secondly, I didn't have my own transportation. And to leave the place requires an hour and a quarter, an hour and a half, grinding your way up and down this mountainside to get to a paved road up at the top. And then you're still an hour from Carmel Valley and another two or three hours to get. So you couldn't just leave. You couldn't just leave. It was a big deal. And the third and the most important reason I couldn't go is because of my face. I couldn't say, I can't do this. The truth of the matter was I felt inside myself, I can't do this. But I couldn't say that to anybody and hardly admit it to myself. What was it I couldn't do? I couldn't do The terrain is very rugged and rustic. There's no pavement, there's no asphalt. There's just a stony, very stony, uneven, dusty paths.

[09:37]

There's a road wide enough for a car, but otherwise there are paths with gravel or dust, more likely. And there are stone steps here and there. Also, you know, again, very attractive in a primitive kind of way. You know, uneven and uneven widths of step as you go up. Those things were very hard. Never mind that I have a certain aversion to that kind of thing. They were just very challenging. You always had to keep your eye on where you were putting your feet. That was a large part of it that I found that I couldn't handle in the quick and persistent way that was necessary to go around and meet the schedule. The schedule itself was very demanding, but by itself, it was doable.

[10:40]

I mean, again, I'll repeat a little of what Nancy told you, the wake-up bell rang at 3.50. Well, that sounds just absolutely barbaric, but in fact, if you've gone to sleep at 9 p.m., it's not so bad. And if you haven't really, you know, there are no distractions or stimulations, you can go to sleep pretty quickly and when the bell rings it's not so bad to really respond to it and get up and get up to the zendo by 4.20 and begin the day with about an hour and a half of zazen and then a long service, longer than our morning service, and then the orioke meal. then there was a very short break and a study hall for an hour, and another short break, sometimes Soji, sometimes not Soji, and then we'd go back to the Zendo for the last two hours of the morning, often to hear a Dharma talk, and then to sit before the Oreoke lunch. After lunch, there was another break, and we would have a work meeting, and then about three hours, no, less than that, about two and a half hours of work.

[11:49]

The last thing on the afternoon agenda was an hour and a quarter for students to go to the baths and clean themselves or have exercise or whatever they chose to do and also a certain amount of socializing as possible because you can speak to one another after lunch, after work. We did this three days, and then the fourth day was a little different. We'd rise up an hour later, and it would be a work day, silent work day, mostly in the morning. The fifth day was called personal care day. And again, the wake-up bell was an hour later. And you would still start the day and end the day in the Zendo, but you would have many hours in the middle of the day that were yours to do with what you needed to do. Your laundry was something that you did. You get to go up to the laundry area where there is hot water and there's these like plunger type things that you put your clothes in a bucket and you pour in some soap and water and use the plunger and you act like a washing machine, agitating your clothes for however long you have the... and then you can run them through the wringer, you turning the wringer and

[13:08]

It wasn't too bad. And then there was places to hang it in the sun and it was okay. It was, the clothes didn't get quite as clean as they might with a whirlpool, but it was okay. And some people, Nancy, for instance, and Paul, would go for hikes on their day off. Well, this is the kind of side I wanted to give you the detail of the schedule to say that it wasn't too hard for me, but it was like not only inescapable, but it was It was a kind of a driving thing. I didn't have enough time to just stop and rest a while, it seemed to me, between events on the schedule. Getting up at 3.50 was okay, but then the continuous going from one thing to another, which is supposed to be good for your mind. You don't have to decide, what shall I do now?

[14:09]

Shall I take a nap? No, you just follow the schedule. Well, I knew that. I know that. And here at Berkeley, during sessions or during our own practice period, I can do that. But there at Tassajara, I found it much more difficult. I just was getting more and more tired. And I began to stumble here and there. And I realized that I was coming to the end of my tether. And I needed to do something about this. I couldn't leave. And this all by itself was a big psychological problem for me, that I couldn't escape this situation. I had to make it work for me. But I didn't want to escape on a stretcher in a helicopter evacuation situation. I wanted to be sensible about it and speak to the right person and find a way to save my face and also to stay here and do the schedule. Well, I did. I spoke with Vicki Austin, who was tanto there, and she was very understanding and without patronizing me, let me know that, in fact, what did I expect?

[15:18]

I was how old, though? Oh, she said 66. Oh, most of the people there, half or more, were in their 20s. And there were some people in their 30s, and there were maybe even a few in their 40s and early 50s. There was one elderly gentleman who'd been there, I guess, for... It was a kind of fixture. His name was Dell. He was 70-something. But he didn't do the schedule. He did much of it, but he did not do all of it. Everyone who had arrived as a Tongario student or, you know, a beginning student and those who were repeating were doing the whole schedule, of course. And I couldn't do the schedule. I tried to... You know, I was assigned to serving. Well, I did it once. You're supposed to go up and down these uneven stone steps in the dark before breakfast, and then at night in the dark after dinner, carrying huge pots, I mean, bigger than our pots. Fast.

[16:19]

You've got to do it fast, because the service in the temple is very quick, quicker than we even do it. Well, I did it once, and I realized I couldn't do it. I just couldn't handle those steps with that. And I couldn't see. I mean, there are lanterns lighting the way. Believe it or not, lanterns, which cast all kinds of romantic shadows, right? Well, I couldn't do that, so I had to tell someone right away, look, I'm sorry, I can't do this. I can do it if you allow me to stay in the Zendo and just serve, not go up and down the stairs with empty pots and the full pots. Well, they thought about that, and I even realized that I didn't even want to do it that way. I wanted to be a full member of the team or not at all. And in the end, they decided while they had enough people, they didn't really require my services there. And then there was the whole G-Keto bit, which Nancy told me.

[17:20]

I said, I don't think you ought to do that. I was assigned G-Keto. Well, that involves cleaning the Zendo and several other things that require strength and energy and agility throughout the day. The G-Keto is a different job from the one we are familiar with here. And as I learned about what it was and saw people doing it, I realized that too, I probably shouldn't do. So that was something else. I had to swallow my pride and go to someone and say, look, I can't do this either. And then there was Nightwatch. where you go around at night with a flashlight, maybe, and see to it that people have turned off their lights. And in the early morning, before it's light, you go around and light, or the Jikido does that, light those lanterns. Well, somebody, it was inevitable, some woman ran into a wall and, you know, really bruised her shin fearfully.

[18:23]

Because doing that job, that was later in the practice period, but the point is that it's, you know, the whole thing is just, it's just for 20-year-olds. It's not for people in their mid-60s to do this. But I didn't know that until I talked to Vicki. I didn't think that I couldn't do it. Then I got there and I found I couldn't do it and I couldn't get away from it and I had to stay there and I had to somehow make accommodation to the place and to myself that was respectable, that was worthy. So I was in a pickle. But I talked to Vicki, who, as I say, was very understanding and, in fact, pointed out to me that elderly people, the few that do come for practice period, are offered or make adjustments to the schedule. And I didn't need a lot of adjustment. I did ask to be excused from those jobs, as I've said, and that was done.

[19:28]

And I, in talking to Vicki, we decided that I wouldn't go to study hall from 8 to 9. Rather, I could go to my room and rest and warm up again, which you need to do in the morning. And the second adjustment was that for the work period, instead of being part of the general labor pool, which you just do whatever, and that was for the Tangario students, you just do not have an assigned and regular piece of work, but after every work meeting you go and the work leader sends you hither and yon wherever it's needed. And much of the time, I would go to the kitchen. The kitchen was okay, except you stand for two hours in some, generally chopping, you know, with one repetitive motion, chop, chop, chop. Five gallons of broccoli are needed for dinner tonight, so you're chop, chop, chopping.

[20:30]

Well, it was the standing that kind of, you know, also got to me a bit. So anyway, we decided, Vicki and I, that maybe there would be a way to find a different job that would be less demanding. Once or twice I also worked in the garden for three hours, and that was also very tiring. And then you're going to go back to the Zendo for another three hours following the work period. So and then you're going to get up the next day at 3.50 and do the same thing again. So it was took me a little while to realize I couldn't do this. I needed to make these changes or some kind of changes. And with Vicky's help and encouragement, we made those adjustments. Then the next day, I spoke to the abbot, Norman Fisher, who wanted to know how I was doing. And I told him. And he said, you know, he said, you could help me a lot if you would transcribe my talks during work period. Oh, I said, you bet.

[21:31]

I liked his talks so much. They were so encouraging. just a real high point of the day for me and to be able to listen closely to every sentence and really follow his thought was just a wonderful opportunity. I'm very, very pleased that I was assigned that. And the other big advantage for me was that I could sit down during work period. And in fact, in the beginning it was in one place, but before too long the word processor on which I was working was moved to the office, which was quite warm. So, by Oh, mid-October, I guess, within two or three weeks of beginning the practice period, I was sort of settled in a different routine and had swallowed pride and bitten bullets and just decided, you know, I'm not leaving, I'm staying till the end and I'm doing the best I can, which is not the complete program,

[22:45]

But it's as complete as I can make it. So that was what I had to live with and that was okay. There's hardly any time. I'm sorry, I just got carried away with all my problems down there. I did want to leave some time for you to ask whatever questions. But there was one thing I wanted to say more specifically about my practice, my sitting practice. And it's something that one of Norman's lectures, which I did transcribe. There are about 15, which I did not get to, which I have upstairs on tape, which I hope to do later. There's one here that he delivered early on, which had a good deal of meaning for me. He was talking about the nine stages of mental activity, which is a phrase that comes up in a koan, which he was telling us about.

[23:51]

So he would ordinarily, in fact, when the koan used this phrase, the eighth stage of mental activity, Norman said to us, the assembly, that he wanted to, lest anyone spend time thinking about or wondering about this or going to look it up in the library, he was going to give us a quick review of what these nine stages of mental activity were so we could forget them. They were not something that we should dwell on. But in the course of doing that, there was something that he said that really caught my interest and I want to share it with you. The nine stages of knowledge and vision of the path are as follows, and then he enumerates them. The one I want to talk about is knowledge consisting in the desire for deliverance. And when he amplified that, he says, I think that we're all struggling with this point because it isn't entirely clear to us that we really want to do this.

[24:56]

Because we have been told in straightforward terms and also in subtle ways almost every moment of our lives that it does make sense to hold on. This is how we've been trained. It's also deeply ingrained in our whole perceptual and emotional apparatus. To be clear that this causes suffering and that this is not what I really and truly want, to come to this decision takes a long time, probably forever. I think that if you really were clear on this point, your earlobes would lengthen and a halo would pop out around your head and we would all see that this has happened. In other words, to really understand that there is no... with no ambivalence and there's clarity only about what it is we're trying to do and how we want to do that, that already is Buddhahood. So if anybody here in this room should be perhaps once in a while be set by some doubts as to whether or not you're really serious about this path and this is the right thing for you and you can do it,

[26:01]

And so on, don't worry, this is very common. This is all of us. Everybody except for Buddha had this problem, an imperfect knowledge about the desire for deliverance. Well, needless to say, I read that with feeling, and it was my feeling that you were hearing there. I had perhaps have this, you know, as a part of my character and practice from the very beginning, but it's the kind of thing you can kind of submerge, or if it does come forward, you can have the great benefit of speaking to our abbot in Dokusan and get you know, whatever you need to carry on or not, as the case may be. Some people, I'm sure, in the years gone by have said, well, no, I really don't want to give up my life here, and I don't really recognize that all this suffering, I can escape, or not escape from it, I can live with this suffering and be delivered from

[27:05]

The pain and suffering of existence, if I stay on this path, if I follow this path, I can live with this suffering and be happy with it. Down at Tassajara, I realized quite strongly that, indeed, I do have these doubts. I'm not convinced. I want to go home, is what I was saying. I don't want to be here anymore. I want to go home. I said that several times. I want to go home. And I spoke with the abbot, Norman, in Dokusan about it. And among other things, he kind of reiterated some of those points. You know, this is very common. I'm not surprised. Please don't take it as, you know, you're not worthy to be here in practice because you're here under false pretenses. Not the case. So that's something else I had to kind of be very explicit about and still persist in my practice with it. So in a way, You know, I have to say, when I was down there, I wrote a few times to various people, I can't say, I haven't yet been able to say, I'm glad I came.

[28:16]

And that was true throughout. But now that I'm back, I can say, I'm glad I went. So I better stop right there, because there's only another moment or two. Please, if you have any questions. Laurie? I wonder if there should be something in place. I think, you know, I agree with you, Laurie, and so indeed did Nancy, and I see Peggy nodding her head. And I think that's true, but I will say this. Those folks down there had been pressed to the wall by the fire, and they were handling 58 people coming down, descending on them. And the fire was still around us.

[29:21]

During Tangario, the thump-thump-thumping helicopters overhead carrying water was constant. So, although I agree with you, I also think maybe in other circumstances they might have been, or another Eno might have had a little more presence of mind and thought, well now here's some That's right. Me, too. I felt that way, too. I didn't have any trouble moving around the city and up and down stairs and doing stuff. Maybe by your being there, maybe that helped. Maybe so. Yeah. That would be nice to think about. So when are you going back? Never, never, never. No, I probably may. I may go back, but not for a practice period. I may go back for a, you know. When are you going?

[30:21]

OK. Charlie, and then Catherine. Well, I just was thinking about Spartan mothers and their admonition to their sons on the event of their going into battle. Come back with your shield or on it. Oh. And you certainly have come back with your shield, my dear. Yes. Congratulations. Thank you, Charlie. Needless to say, many of you know that I, this is funny, I reviewed this in my mind. Nancy and Paul and I, the day came when we were going to, it was time to go. Nancy was kind of reluctant, but Paul and I were eager to go, to leave and to go home. And Paul had backed his pickup truck down closer to the staging area so that we could, easier to bring our bags from the cabin and put them in the back of the pickup. And we did that. And there were people around us saying goodbye and other people getting ready to go.

[31:31]

And I got into the truck first and sat down. And Paul had to get something and he needed me to get out because he needed to pull the seat back and put something back there. Then I got in again. And a moment later he came by and said, no, that isn't settled right. You have to get out again. I got out. He did it again and I got... I did that three times. And then the fourth time we actually left. But I have to say this, which I was aware of at the time, but not maybe the extent of it. I was ill. I was... I had... I had been worn down by Tassajara mentally and physically. such that as soon as I came back to Berkeley, I was felled by the flu in a big way and was sick for the ensuing 10, 12, 14 days and then something else. And it was a month before I felt kind of normal back to, and yet not. Something is different with Dolly.

[32:32]

Something more than simply three months have gone by. I'm not sure exactly that I can articulate it, but I'll kind of leave it to the rest of you to help me figure it out. Thank you.

[32:46]

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