But if I start speaking, people will probably stop speaking also, if I just start talking about... You can hear the room getting quieter as I speak. It's kind of working. Do you think a bell works better? The important announcement is that there's a white Volvo. This is part of the ritual of these kinds of meetings. There's a white Volvo with the license plate 270MAK that has its lights on. And when the room is quiet, now the machines seem to work. So when the room is quiet, we're going to play another piece of Suzuki Roshi's talks. So some people yesterday talked about Suzuki Roshi having a dream, and I thought that was

[01:12]

a significant quote from him about dreaming. And maybe one of the characteristics of the people who are carrying on his lineage is the dreaming, the same dream as him. Maybe not. So now we have three more people who are very close students of Suzuki Roshi, who can talk some more about their time with him. And the kind of theme that I gave them was what it was like to practice together with him. And that's kind of the jumping off point for them to talk on. And I also asked them, having been students of Suzuki Roshi and now teachers in the Soto Zen way, what is it they want to convey of Suzuki Roshi? What do they want to see of Suzuki Roshi continue as a legacy that they want to pass on? So first I invite Mel to come up. Mel Weitzman.

[02:13]

Thank you, Gil. Well, first of all, I want to say that, I just want to suggest that Suzuki Roshi was not infallible. And that he really had faults. He really had problems, just like everyone else. And I think we should be careful not to deify him. I don't think he would feel good about that.

[03:24]

But I think that he would feel good that we were not dreaming about him as something that he wasn't. And creating a big cloud floating by that we all bow to. So I don't want to say what his faults were because I think he was aware of his faults. He always used to say, each one of us is half good and half bad. Half good and half bad. And he included himself, of course. So because he included himself and because he was always working on his shortcomings, we didn't see them as shortcomings. We saw them as practice, his practice. So what we were practicing with was what he was practicing with. And that's why, I think because he could see his own faults so clearly, he was so sympathetic

[04:30]

with us. Because he could accept himself totally, he could accept each one of us totally, just the way we were. That's why everybody felt he was so wonderful because he accepted everybody the way they were. Both the good side and the bad side, so-called. And he would say, there's no good and no bad. There's just what there is. And he saw us in the light of just the way things are. He used to say, things as it is. Peter described this as a language deficiency. But that's always a question. In the tape he said, things as they are. So he used both terms. Things as they are, things as it is, and everything as it is. Anyway, that's a little aside.

[05:33]

I wanted to just describe from my point of view what happened when Suzuki Roshi died. I'll tell you about practicing with him, but this is my way of practicing with him. Mrs. Suzuki in her letter described what happened from her point of view. And the way I saw it was, Suzuki Roshi died the morning of our Rohatsu Sashin. We had just started sitting, 5 o'clock in the morning. And there was the first period of Zazen, and then there was no bell. Then there was the second period of Zazen. And I thought, this is an awful long time to be sitting. Something must have happened. So then Peter came down and got some of us together to go up to see Suzuki Roshi.

[06:41]

And he was lying there in the Dokusan room with his blanket over him and his Raksu on his chest. And then we proceeded to have people see him all day. But I felt at that point during that day that his whole body filled the temple. And everywhere we looked or everywhere we were, we just feel his presence totally dominating the whole building. It was quite a wonderful feeling actually. And it was kind of mixed because this great sadness of his leaving and also this kind of wonderful joy of his permeating everywhere. And so there was nothing for us to do but continue to sit Sashin. So for seven days, we just sat.

[07:45]

And there was no particularly mourning space. It was just Sazen for seven days. And I think we all felt that he did this in a planned way that in order to make this... I mean, it was just too coincidental. And as Suzuki said, he suddenly decided to take a bath, right? And that was it. So it just felt like the perfect ending and the perfect beginning of our being on our own. And I felt that he had come here to America and planted himself as the root. And this root, he did as somebody, I think Yvonne said, he didn't go anywhere, he didn't travel.

[08:48]

He just stayed right there at Zen Center. When his peers were flying all over the place to promote the teaching, he was just there. And I just felt that this root was deeply planted. And I feel that it's our heritage as sprouts to continue. And I don't think we have any other choice. And we're part of the dream. We're really part of the dream. But it's an awake dream. Suzuki Roshi was very down on dreaming. He would never talk about dreams. And when people would talk about dreams, he would say, Dreamer, dreamer! This wonderful story about how he hopped off the tan during his talk when somebody was asking him about the Vietnam War, you know.

[09:50]

How come we're sitting here when people are out protesting the Vietnamese War? Why are we sitting... What are we doing here? And he hopped off the tan and started beating him with his stick. And yelling, Dreamer, dreamer, dreamer! Very famous story. But actually, he hit the guy next to him. LAUGHTER Jean Ross tells this story about when she was at Aheiji, how one monk was doing something that the teacher didn't like. So the teacher came down and beat the monk next to him. LAUGHTER Anyway, these are skillful means. I started practicing with Suzuki Roshi in 1964.

[10:57]

Suzuki Roshi... I didn't know about him. Phil Wilson first told me about it. And so eventually I came to Zen Center. I knew I would. And I'd been studying... I was always interested in religious practice. And I was particularly interested in Hasidic, Jewish Hasidic practice. I was inspired by the Hasidic tales of these masters. And so when I got to know Suzuki Roshi, I felt that he embodied all the qualities of the Hasidic master that I was looking for. So it was really interesting. It was perfect. Absolutely perfect. And I thought it was a great crossover. And so Suzuki Roshi was like a father figure to me. And I had that kind of relationship with him.

[12:05]

Where we would have time together, and then I would go off and play. And then I'd come back and check in. This is the parent-child relationship. The child goes out to play, and then... Oh yeah, my mom, you know. And then runs back and checks in. And mom says, OK, yeah, you're doing good. You know, doing fine. Or maybe you shouldn't do these things, you should do this. And then you go out and play again. So I felt that I was very trusted by him to go out and play. And my relationship with him had a unique quality in that he asked me to start a Zen Do in Berkeley. And I'd only been practicing for about three or four years. And he asked Bill Kwong to start a Zen Do in Mill Valley. And Marion Derby in Los Altos. So we had these satellite Zen Center affiliates.

[13:14]

And so I felt that he really trusted me to do this. So we would have a little bit of Zazen. And then I'd say to him, what else can I do? Can I have... we had Zazen in the morning. Can we have Zazen in the afternoon? He said, sure, go ahead and have Zazen in the afternoon. And then I said, what else can I do? And he said, do whatever you want. So I felt that he was really giving me a lot of trust. And so little by little, we built up the practice of the Berkeley Zen Do. And I remember on Saturday, and before we had the morning Zazen, picking up people in Berkeley and driving over to San Francisco every morning to sit Zazen. And I remember we'd go there on a four day or a nine day when the Zen Do wasn't open. And he'd look down out of his window, as Betty said,

[14:15]

and said, sorry, go away. That may have been the problem. I'm sorry, just go away. Go away. There's also a very strict side to Suzuki Roshi. I think people are bringing out this kind of nice, wonderful soft side, but he was also very strict. And he was often very strict with me. And I can remember sitting in the Zen Do with my cushion a little bit askew. And he'd come up and he'd just take the whole thing, me and the whole cushion, just pull me around. And I felt a little bit jerked around by that. But I was always grateful. And he was always correcting my posture. He'd never walk by when he didn't give me some posture correction. And I felt he was being very strict in that way.

[15:18]

And he used the stick a lot. People say like a feather. Sometimes it was very soft, but often it was, he meant the blows that he gave. And everybody was always very grateful for that. A certain kind of gratitude we had. When he was being strict. And I remember before I was ordained, he'd asked me to be ordained when I was at Tassajara. We did the first Sashin at Tassajara in the summertime. It was really hot out on the porch, which was not covered at the time of the dining room. And partly inside, partly outside. And I couldn't keep my legs crossed or anything. Just what I felt was terrible, Sashin. I'd only been practicing for three years, two years. And he called me later and he said,

[16:20]

I would like you to join our order. I thought, wow. And I said, when? He said, well, when you're ready and when I'm ready. So a couple of years later, after five years. So I've been practicing for three years. Two years later, he ordained me. And then he called me into his office and said, I want to talk to you. And Chino Sensei was there at the time. Just he and Chino Sensei. And he rolled out in the zendo. We went into the zendo and he rolled out goza mats. One line of goza mats. All the way across the zendo. From one end to the other. And he sat at one end on his zafu and he put me at the other end. And I thought, this is very dramatic. What is he going to tell me? And he said, for one year, I don't want you to have any relations with a woman.

[17:27]

So I said, OK. But I failed. But, he said, I know you, later, at the end, he said, I know you failed. So, but, when you go down to Tassajara to be shuso, be careful. And then I went to Tassajara with shuso. That was his way of telling me I was being shuso. But there were other times when he was very angry and showed his anger. But he always said, when I'm angry, I do it to express something. But I don't hold on to my anger. I'm not attached to this anger.

[18:34]

But I do show it sometimes. And I use anger to express myself. But, I'm not an angry person. I'm not really angry at you. I'm just giving you something to work with. So, and I think that's true. He was never really, basically angry. But, although he, anger, was a part of his personality, definitely. But somebody said, in Japan, he was very angry. But when he came to America, it was gone. That part of him was gone. So, I would come to him with a problem. And we'd sit down, we'd talk about my problem. And at the end, he would give me some guidance. But it wasn't really guidance. He'd turn my problem into a koan.

[19:37]

And then he'd say, and then he'd laugh. Chuckle. He'd say, I'm sorry. You came to me with your problem. And I just gave you a bigger problem. And then he'd laugh and laugh. And I'd go away. And I would go away and work on the problem. So that was the way our relationship was. He would give me these little koans that came out of my own problems. He'd show me where the koan was in my problem. And then I would work on that. And then I'd come back again. So, this was the way we had a relationship. So, and he used to say, when you come to the teacher, you meet the teacher, and then the teacher should send you away. Go away. And then come back. So, that's the kind of relationship that I had with him. And he helped,

[20:40]

although I was on my own to develop the Zendo in Berkeley. He would come every Monday and give a talk. And people knew him. And he knew people. And of course, this is 67, the same year that Tassajara started. And then, as Tassajara became more and more developed, he had less time to come. And then other teachers would come. And then, little by little, I was just on my own. And the Zendo and I just grew up together like an acorn growing into a tree. And so the Zendo was accepted in the neighborhood. It was like a tree growing up from a seed. And then we moved, the Zendo, 12 years later. And it was like moving a big thing into a space, a small space. We had a lot of trouble moving that thing that was already developed

[21:42]

into another space. But it worked, eventually. And the people accepted us in the neighborhood. So, I just felt that I was always following Suzuki Roshi's practice. And that I was always being faithful to his practice. And that his teaching was always guiding me. And I knew, also, that someday, he wouldn't be around. And that I was preparing myself for the time when he wouldn't be around. And that I was developing some independence for the time that he wouldn't be around. And sometimes people ask me, well, is there any other teacher after Suzuki Roshi that you would want to work with? And I haven't found any other teacher.

[22:43]

But I always felt that his teaching is always with me. And I'm always answering to his the way he taught me without teaching. And I feel that I try to do the same thing. The best role model I have is Suzuki Roshi. And so, this is the model that I follow. And sometimes it's a little baffling to people. Because there's a lot of expectation that's not stated for students. And you kind of have to read the teacher. With Suzuki Roshi, he didn't tell you anything. He didn't tell you what to do. You had to read his mind. And I think that

[23:43]

it's harder for a lot of our students to read the teacher's mind. And I remember Kata Yuri Roshi always saying, you don't know in America, you don't know how to treat a teacher. I think partly what he was talking about is you don't know about respect. But he was partly talking about you don't know how to read the teacher's mind. And Suzuki Roshi would always talk about that. Or at least he would make it clear, if you understood, that you have to kind of read the teacher's mind. I think when people talk about the teaching in Japan, and how the student is always kind of intimidated, a little bit intimidated, the teacher puts the student on the spot in that way so that the student

[24:46]

will always be aware of what the teacher is going to do next. So I had this kind of relationship with Suzuki Roshi reading his mind, or at least intuiting his intentions. And he didn't praise me, but when I did something wrong, he'd get angry. So this kind of style that we have inherited, and people say, gee, you know, as a teacher you never praise, you only get angry when we do something wrong. You only tell us when we do something wrong, so we feel we're always doing something wrong. But not saying something means it's the same as saying things are going okay. Okay. So Suzuki Roshi

[25:50]

gave me what I felt were some turning words, which I've told people before, and one of these turning words was, one day he just walked up to me for no reason. I mean, he just walked up to me and said, just being alive is enough. And of course I knew that just being alive was enough, but him saying that turned me around. I mean, it just gave a whole different dimension to the way I thought about that, and remains a koan with me still. And another one was when I asked him, what is nirvana? He said, just seeing one thing through to the end. And I felt that's the core of his practice. Just

[26:52]

continue, just keep going, just keep facing each moment totally, forever. Which is still a koan for me. And there are a lot of stories, a lot of things, but this may be enough to kind of give you a little bit of the flavor of our practice. Also, he was always pushing me, actually, to go further. Giving me space, but always pushing, [...] and never being totally satisfied. And the way he pushed us all, actually, in zazen, he would say, at the end of the period, in the beginning, people couldn't

[27:53]

sit so easily. One day of zazen was a lot for people. And nowadays, because there's so many people who can sit so well, you walk into the zendo, people walk into the zendo, after being there a little bit, they can sit sashin, without too much problem. But not in those days. It was very different. And he'd push us, push us, and then we'd come to the end of the period, and he'd say, we'll sit for 10 minutes more. So, I felt that we all loved his insistence and his perseverance. And I think the core of his teaching, he said, I can't give you anything but my zen spirit. That was it. And I think everything comes from that.

[28:55]

His whole teaching, everything he said and did, just comes from that. I can't give you anything but my zen spirit. So, there we are. Thank you.

[29:06]

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