arrived Friday night from Oklahoma, where he lives now. Actually, he was one of our first residents on Russell Street a long time ago, before he moved back to his old hometown in Norman, Oklahoma. And so he It was going to actually do later admission last year, but his grandmother died, I think. Is that right, Frank? My mother. Your mother. The first lay ordination in Zen Center was about 1962, I think.

[01:33]

Suzuki Roshi invited Bishop Yamada to do the lay ordination. You know, in Los Angeles, there's a temple with a Soto Zen Bishop. And Soto Zen Bishop He's kind of the head of the Japanese Soto Zen congregations in the United States, of which there are some in Los Angeles and San Francisco. with the bishop. But I remember in the old days, Bishop Sumi was once the bishop, and he was a good friend of Suzuki Roshi's, and so he used to come and sit sashin with us sometimes at Sokochi.

[02:42]

And I remember him Suzuki Roshi sat there, and Kari Giri Roshi sat there. And when Bishop Sumi would come, he would sit there. And I can remember Suzuki Roshi giving a talk, and Bishop Sumi falling asleep. And I just got so hysterical that I had to leave. But we didn't have any lay ordinations again in Sin Center until around 1970. That's when we first... it was just before Suzuki Roshi died, as a matter of fact, that he started doing lay ordination again.

[03:48]

He did priest ordination and there were a number of priests. I think I was the fifth one. The first one, I met the first person that Suzuki Roshi ordained one day. I was doing a wedding in Marin, and this guy came up to me and he said, you know, I was the first guy that Suzuki Roshi ordained. And then he talked to me a little bit about it, and then he left. And it seems like everybody All the Japanese priests who came, and their first ordinee, their first priest they ordained, left. Maezumi Roshi had ordained somebody as a priest, and his name was Sojin. And he left. Disappeared. Edo Roshi's first disciple disappeared. Suzuki Roshi's first disciple disappeared. My first person I ordained disappeared.

[04:50]

But anyway, I thought it was a good idea. I don't know whether... I remember I was at Tassajara with Tatsugami Roshi at Shuso 1970. And there was some feeling, you know, that there were some priests, but the laypeople didn't have ordination. although they knew that there was lay ordination. And for some reason, Suzuki Roshi was hesitant to do that. And I suggested to Katagiri Roshi, who was there, that it would really be good to give people lay ordination, to include them in the Sangha that way. And about a week later, going to do lay ordination. I don't know whether that had anything to do with it or if it was just coincidental, but they started giving lay ordination.

[06:20]

So we've been doing that ever since. I remember when I was, before I was a priest, there were almost no priests at Zen Center. I was a devoted student to Suzuki Goshi. In 1970, we had our first Sashin at Tassahara. After Sashin, he called me into his room and said, I'd like to ordain you. He said, I'd like you to join our order. I'd always kind of thought it was somewhere in the back of my mind that I would like to do that. But it never occurred to me that, how that would ever happen.

[07:27]

And then I said, well, when? He said, oh, when you're ready. And when I'm ready. That's all he said. And then, It must have been, that was about 1967, because I was ordained in 1969, two years later. It was interesting, you know, because I was kind of anxious about it. And I thought, yeah, once I got the idea, yeah, you know, let's do it. But he was just taking his time, you know. It's interesting. He waited until my excitement, until I forgot about it. He waited until I had gone through all the stuff that I had to go through, and then I completely forgot about it. And he said, well, I think it's time to do this. But I always admired him.

[08:36]

Sometimes people say, why do you want to be a priest? And also, in this day and age, after There are a lot of people who never experienced a wonderful priest. It's true. There are many people, and they only experience second-class priests or second-rate priests. They've never experienced a first-rate priest, a really good monk. So I was always inspired by Suzuki Roshi and wanted to continue what he was doing. But a lot of people who have only been exposed to second-rate priests have never had that inspiration. So they kind of don't understand So that was my experience, was because Suzuki Roshi was such an outstanding priest, I felt that I wanted to continue in his tradition.

[09:52]

So that's what I've been doing. But it's not easy to be a priest. That's why it's, it's not, I mean, it's not hard, but there's a certain kind of consistency that's really necessary in order to do that. And Suzuki-goshi really epitomizes that kind of consistency. And I think it's the one reason why Zen Center has been able to survive all the problems is because he introduced that kind of consistency. He didn't travel around. He just stayed in one place. And people would invite him So, he really planted a very solid, consistent practice at Zen Center.

[11:10]

That was one of his great attributes. But not all priests have done that. Some have, but not everyone. And it'll be interesting to see which groups survive and which don't in the long run. But anyway, So we have priest ordination and lay ordination. And basically we take the same precepts. But lay ordination is zaikei tokudo. Tokudo means ordination. Zaikei means at home. And shukei means leaving home. So Priesthood takes shuke ordination, and a layperson takes zaikei, tokudou, and how to practice while still at home, without leaving home, and to wear ordinary clothing, and to engage in ordinary daily life with people.

[12:35]

So a layperson has a certain kind of role, and a priest has a certain kind of role. A priest is more obvious, wears robes, and has a certain function. lay person is kind of relieved of having to do those kinds of functions. And, you know, in the old days, when there were maybe monks and lay people, I don't think there was a lay ordination. I think that lay ordination is something that was invented by the Japanese. in order to include everyone. I don't know the history of lay ordination, but that's my feeling.

[13:45]

And when a person becomes a priest, they have to live by certain rules, or they become a monk. It's very strict rules. And if they transgressed the rules, there are certain rules that if they transgressed, they may be kicked out of the order. Parajika offenses. And so it becomes a very, you know, rarefied kind of life. But a layperson has the opportunity to live at home and to develop themselves at a more leisurely kind of pace in a wider kind of way. Because not everyone is ready to be a monk.

[14:54]

But that doesn't mean that people who want to have ordination shouldn't have ordination. So in the old days, there were less rules for lay people. Lay people only took five precepts. And monks took 250 precepts. And in Japan, the precepts developed from the Tendai school. Saicho developed the Bodhisattva precepts in Japan for the Tendai school, in which he reduced the precepts to 16, which is the model that was accepted by most of the schools of Buddhism in Japan, eventually. And Dogen accepted that.

[16:00]

the precepts were reduced or condensed to 16 major precepts. You know, there's a Bodhisattva, there are lots of different kinds of precepts in Buddhism. The monks' precepts, 250 precepts, the nuns' 350 or something. And then there's the Bodhisattva precepts. And Bodhisattva presets include 10 prohibitory presets, which we take, plus 49, 48 minor presets. And minor presets are presets which, major presets can be applied are kind of universally applied in all Buddhist countries.

[17:05]

And the major precepts are accepted by all Buddhists everywhere. But the minor precepts are more like local precepts, having to do with a certain time and a certain place. So, in India, you have a certain kind of local precepts which, minor precepts, which have to do with how you eat with your hands, and, you know, manners and customs and things that you do and don't do. And Chinese have, in China, the Chinese have their own minor precepts, and the Japanese have their own minor precepts. And in America, we will develop our own minor precepts. having to do with our customs and our time. But the major precepts are pretty universal.

[18:08]

And when Shakyamuni Buddha died, they had developed major and minor precepts. And Mahakasyapa asked him, no, Ananda asked him, Do we have to keep those as well as the major precepts?" And Buddha said, no. And then later when they came to the assembly, Ananda said this, and Mahakasyapa said, well, which minor precepts did he say? And Ananda said, well, he didn't say which ones. So Mahakasyapa said, well, I think we should observe them all.

[19:11]

So the monks, the way the Vinaya has developed in India was that the monks observed all the major and all the minor precepts. There was one monk who said, oh, now that the Buddha's gone, we don't have to observe the precepts anymore. That doesn't count. He's always held up as an example of a certain kind of person. This is Mark, whose name I don't remember. So we have 16 precepts. And both priests and laypeople take the same precepts. But the ordination ceremony is not the same. and it's the same, but there's more to the priest's ordination than there is to the lay ordination.

[20:20]

Priests shave their head and put on a large rope. But the small rope is, some people say, this raksu, which is a Japanese invention, I believe, that the raksu is a kind of symbolic rope. But it's not just a symbolic rope. It's just a small rope. It's a... a Quesa, you know, goes around the body of the monk or the priest. but a small robe is held on by the straps. It just is in front. So that's a small version of the Marge robe, but it is a robe. And Kata-giri-roshi used to make, which I think is some kind of a tradition in Japan, make these little robes, small, very small robes, which are exact miniature of

[21:33]

But in the old days, in the beginning, Buddha and his disciples used to take rags and wash them and dye them and sew them together. That was the original of Kesa. And they would go to various rag dumps and get the materials and wash them, dye them, and sew them together. Then later, when the monastic community was more bigger and circumstances changed, lay people started giving the monks robes as offerings. He said, well, the robe can be made out of any kind of material, almost. Silk, cotton, wool.

[22:56]

There were six kinds of materials, as long as they weren't distinguished as silk, cotton, wool, or because the various nice materials would tend to create certain emotional responses in people. So at first, he didn't want robes that were made out of silk or cotton or wool. These were highly refined materials. In those days, people used to wear a lot of clothes that were Clothes that were made out of lots of different kinds of materials. They were mostly very crude, like the bark of trees, and grasses of certain kinds, and paper. Paper and grasses were very common as ropes.

[24:01]

And in China too. In China, they used to wear paper clothes, paper robes, and robes made out of grasses like mugwort was very popular. These were considered, you know, the cheaper kinds of clothes. And crude linens. like flax and so forth. But linen, and even cotton, cotton was considered a very refined material. And cotton has become very common. And now, cotton is again a kind of choice, refined material. And cottons are considered a very refined material nowadays. again, but for a long time they were cheap material. And they still are. It's kind of, there's this double standard. But, so nowadays, you know, we cut, we take a big piece of material and cut it into pieces, and then sew it together to make the robe.

[25:16]

And you laugh, but, you know, the robe, when Buddha designed the robe, It was a kind of pattern of rice fields and pathways. So we'd say this row of six, five, five large pieces and three large pieces and five narrow pieces or something like that. Five, pieces. It's a five joe, five... One short and one long. One short and one long. But it's one short and one long together, but it's five pieces, five joe, and with narrow... It's actually three large pieces and five narrow pieces. How many is it?

[26:19]

Five this way, three this way. And this is the rice fields and the pathways. Let me see here. And there are five stripes. Priest's robe has seven.

[27:25]

And a teacher's robe has nine. And then there's 21, 16, 17. They have various elaborations. But anyway, this is the pattern. And so nowadays, or not just nowadays, but ever since Buddha's time. They take a piece of material and cut it up and put it together. But it's not, it's, you know, this is the way everything is made. Everything is made out of one piece of material and we cut it up and we make things out of it. And so if you think about this, this is the way the universe is made. One piece cut up

[28:27]

So Buddhist teaching is in the robe. And so when we wear the robe, we wear the Buddhist teaching. Which is a field far beyond form and emptiness. We say this every morning, we do the rope chant. Chino Sensei used to say, people used to say, what about the people that don't wear the rope? He says, everybody wears invisible rope. That was his response, everyone wears invisible rope, whether you have visible one or not.

[29:50]

Everyone in the Zen Dojo wears an invisible robe. So, lay ordination is confirmation of your practice. If you've been practicing for two or three years, three years. We used to say three years, but we don't wait three years necessarily. Depends on the person's enthusiasm for practice. Seeing that you've spoken about Suzuki Roshi as your teacher and you've been speaking about the robes, is this a time you could tell the story about how Suzuki Roshi taught you to wash your robes?

[31:29]

Well, not that I have a case of it. That's a great way. You just put the material, put your rope in the soap and water, and you go like this. Do the whole thing that way, especially the hens, which always get very dirty. But you just rub one piece on top of the other. Is that what you meant? I can't remember. We had to do with waiting for your robes to dry on the roof of a cabin at Casa Hara.

[32:36]

It was a very hot day and it was too hot to wear any clothes actually. Then we hung him up to dry just in our underwear. He said, let's take a nap. So we went into his cabin. He said, you lay down over there, and I'll lay down over here. So I said, OK. So we laid down and started to take a nap. And all of a sudden, there was a big, poof, jolt. And we got up, and the cabin was gone. We looked out the window, or opened the door, and work period had begun, and they were taking the cabin away. I don't know if you've been to Tassajara recently, within the last ten years, but there's a building called

[33:45]

It's just in back of the Abbott, next to the Abbott's cabin. And that's where the Abbott's cabin used to be. And so, and we decided that we were gonna build something there. So we took the Abbott's cabin out, moved it, and moved it in between these two cabins. There was about an inch on each side. We put it on a cart, you know, and then moved it out. We're going to do that again soon, but I don't want to talk about that. They were putting the house on top of the cart, and then there was this big jolt. You can figure it out.

[35:00]

I'm curious, what did Gary say about the little... I can't remember. I can't remember exactly what, why he said that. I can't remember exactly the reason for those little cases. But he made more than one? slept with them. There's something like having them with them all the time, you know. I don't remember what it said, but in one of the old Udumbaras, you know, Kadakeri Roshi's magazine that's in the library, there's a whole thing about different robes written I was curious about these 100 extra precepts that the nuns have to take.

[36:09]

Oh yeah, women are always worried about that. They always smile at each other. What could it possibly mean? Well, a lot of them have to do with deference toward men. Toward males, priests. and probably certain hygienic things. Yeah, consistency is the key, actually.

[37:15]

Consistency in practice is the key. Although, one can be consistent and complacent. So, complacent consistency, there's some question no practice. But this is like someone who gets up every morning and sits eyes in, but there's no vitality. So sometimes a person needs some shock treatment or But it may be easy for someone to do this.

[38:16]

For most people, it's not. Most people, it's enough to just be able to get up every morning and do Zazen. That's pretty good. But I'm not so sure that I completely agree with that. I think vitality is really important in practice, and consistency is important. There are a lot of different factors that are important, and if you take any one and say, this is okay, it's too isolating. There are many factors that make a practice, and each one of them, and they have to cooperate with each other. personality, interest, enthusiasm, study, you know, all of these have to, faith, they all have to balance each other out.

[39:38]

And they have to encourage each other. All these various qualities encourage the other qualities. So to some extent they all have to be present in mindfulness. But consistency by itself is not enough. Although it does tend to But it can also turn into complacency, which is a minus. Is being ordained as a monk or a priest the same thing, or are they two different things?

[40:46]

They're two different aspects of the same thing. ordained as one or the other? There are different levels of the same ordination. In other words, lay ordination is ordination, right? There's a word called ordination, or tokudo, and this side is lay ordination, this side is priest ordination. But they're both ordination, so they both belong to the same genre. So that's why I say the different aspects are the same thing. I was asking between a priest and a monk. What's the difference? Well, in America, we have to have our own nomenclature. A monk, strictly speaking, is someone who is celibate and joins the order and takes precepts and lives in a monastery.

[41:58]

A priest is someone who could be a monk, or should practice at some point as a monk, but has a function, like in a temple, leads a temple life, or teaches, or that's a function, right? So we call that person a priest. And a layperson is someone who lives at home and is a householder, so to speak, and practices, and could have a function. And a lot of lay practitioners do have functions, and some function even the way a priest would. But a priest should have a role, should have a function. The reason we don't use the term monk so much is because monk usually refers to a celibate person.

[43:07]

So when we go to the monastery, we become monks. Whether you're a priest or a layperson, when you go to the monastery, you become a monk and practice as a monk. Even though when you have a men and women's practice, you're always running into non-celibacy. Pretty hard to control that. But if you go to the monastery, we try to encourage people to be celibate while they're in the monastery. So monastic practice is monk's practice. for us, and a person who is ordained as a priest should have a function, have a role. So it's not necessary to ordain a lot of people as priests, because it takes a certain kind of dedication that

[44:23]

a person may feel they have at a certain time, but not at another. So, pretty hard to be consistently a priest, because you may think you want to do that at some point, but then later you think, hey, you know, you get interested in other things. It becomes kind of uninteresting for you, because suddenly, you know, you have a problem. So, when I became a priest, I still had problems, and I still do. But I never let my problems stop me from doing that. I never got turned around by my problems. I never, you know, I never looked back, so to speak, even though my problems were right there in front of me. And sometimes weigh me down, I just plow through it. This is not going to stop me from doing what I want, what I'm doing.

[45:28]

But a lot of people get turned around. But maybe it's because I had a full life before I became a priest. But I didn't become a priest until I was 35. As a matter of fact, I didn't become a priest until I was 40. I started practicing when I was 35 and it was ordained when I was 40. And I still had a lot of residual karma, a lot of karmic drive that was active. And it was still playing itself out, still continued to play itself out, but I never let it turn me.

[46:36]

I'd always sit Zazen every morning. No matter what was going on with me, I always got up in the morning and sat Zazen, and it dealt with my problem. But I never let it interfere with my practice. I think if you're a priest, you have to have that kind of attitude. Have you ever taken an extended break from Zazen? Well, I don't know what you mean by extended. That you would consider extended. A week or two. Not very much. Not really. Did you notice, though, It was a complete surprise. There you are, doing the sweating. He comes up to you. You've never seen this cell before.

[47:37]

He says, I beat you up, man. Well, I didn't say that. He just said, I was Suzuki Roshi's first disciple. That's all he said. He wasn't trying to compare himself to me. Well, how did you feel when somebody said that? When he said that, I thought... You've never seen it before, and... Bango! I don't know what I felt. I felt... Why did you quit? Why did you run away? I didn't ask him that, or at least I don't think I asked him that. I was just kind of surprised to see him, you know. He didn't tell me much about himself. He was a little, you know, reticent to talk about anything. I kind of pried a little bit, but... have you ever been? Not Japanese. No, he's American.

[48:39]

Yesterday you were saying about being present and that there wasn't any need for anxiety, that there wouldn't be any anxiety. And the longer you talked about it, the more anxious I became over the rice that was cooking. And then he kept saying it. And finally, I let my anxiety get so high that I left, and it was done. But there's this fine line between anxiety and awareness, and that there's some purpose in being aware of a worrier. Well, yes. Anxiety is necessary, otherwise the rice gets burned. Worrying is necessary, otherwise things don't get taken care of. But there's a difference between a state of anxiety and a state of worry, and chronic anxiety.

[49:48]

That's different. All of those things. Anger is necessary. Rage is necessary. But... If you pay attention to it and take care of it, maybe it doesn't become... But you control anger. You control rage. You control anxiety. Instead of anxiety taking you over. Or rage taking you over. How do you control anxiety? Well, by taking care of things as they come up. Well, I tend to be on the anxious side, and I always have a background anxiety. It's always there, and I just have to deal with it. Most of the time it doesn't bother me that much. A good question, though, is, what am I anxious about? Anxiety is also an aspect of fear.

[51:00]

So then, what am I afraid of? So, to face the question, one of the problems with fear and anxiety is just allowing ourselves to be dominated by these emotions. but to actually turn around and say, okay, who are you? That's to take a positive step. Who are you? What is, what are you? And just really go into it, face this thing, you know, and investigate. What am I really afraid of? And then just keep peeling away the layers. And you may not be able to do it by yourself. That's why it might be easier to do it with somebody else to help. But it's very important.

[52:06]

What is this fear of what? And there are two basic levels for anxiety or fear. One is about things, events, which are happening. And a deeper level is, how long am I going to be alive? That's deep anxiety, deep fear. It's always present, but we don't always think about it. But it creates some, it controls our life, either in one way or another. So the important thing to deal with the problem of birth and death. That's what Dogen says is his practice. The main thing is to deal with this problem of birth and death because it creates the larger fear and anxiety.

[53:11]

Or fear and trembling, as somebody character How do we deal with that? If we can deal with that, then we can deal with the smaller aspects of birth and death, or of fear and anxiety in our life, in the events of our life. So, we have to be able to turn around and say, okay, who are you? What's going on here? What's the problem? The same thing with anger. Yeah, anger, whatever. Same thing with attachments. What's really going on here? Wait a minute. Because they catch us. And we struggle with them and they hold us down.

[54:18]

The more we struggle with them, the more they hold us down. And they get stronger. As we struggle, they get stronger. It's like those, you know, things you get in Chinatown, those little baskets that you put your fingers in. And you try to put, you know, one time when Bishop Sumi was, as I mentioned before, was sitting stachin with us in Sokoji, when Zen Center was on Bush Street. And we were just kind of figuring out what it was that was the problem. And I figured out, well, the more I struggle with Zazen, the worse it hurts. The more you struggle, the worse it gets. The only thing you do is let go. And so I went to Chinatown during the middle of Sashin. And I got a whole bunch of these little things, and I put it in everybody's seat.

[55:22]

Because, you know, when you put your fingers in, and you pull, and when you try to pull your fingers out, the more you try to pull your fingers out, the tighter it gets. And I thought, this is the perfect illustration of Zazen. The more you try to escape, the more you get caught. So I put it in everybody's seat and Bishop Simmey took it and said, what's this? He didn't get it. I was so disappointed, you know. He didn't get it. Is this some kind of joke? But it's a great illustration. The more you try to escape, the more you try to get out of it, pull away from it, the tighter it gets. So you can't do that, you know. You can't try to escape. You have to go into it.

[56:28]

And then it loosens up. And then you walk away, take it off. And this is what happens to us in Zazen. This is why we have so much problem. As soon as we get caught, we try to escape. This is the natural impulse and we have to go against our natural impulse. And we have to walk into the fire rather than try and escape from it. And same with birth and death. You can't escape from it. So how do you walk calmly into it? This goes for anything we're caught by.

[57:29]

Emotions, feelings, thoughts. This is why practicing Zazen is such a great teacher. You can't escape from it. I mean, it's there. So we get caught by life, and we're afraid to walk into death. And the more we try to escape from it, the more we get caught by it. Because our life is our death. Life and death are two sides of the same coin. You find yourself sliding down the hill. But there's no way out except in.

[58:33]

So we have to practice dying all the time. We practice living. But we also have to practice how to die all the time. We have to practice letting go all the time. And that's what our practice is. What's the monk's practice? The monk's practice is learning how to let go. And it's also learning how to accept. And the two problems are the problems of grasping and aversion. Those are the two problems. And they're with us all the time. Grasping is characterized by greed, and aversion is characterized by hate, or anger, or ill will. And those two causes the most problems.

[59:41]

And, of course, ignorance. But ignorance is not knowing We think that hanging on is smart, and we think that letting go is stupid, but it's the other way around. So it's really hard to let go. because otherwise the pain will get you. It's okay to have the pain, but if you don't let go, it'll get you. So, someone may say, well, I'm not afraid to die,

[60:57]

And that may be so, but I think everyone is afraid to die. But even though everyone is afraid to die, it's just like having pain. Everyone has pain. But don't let it catch you. We can't let ourselves be caught by, I'm afraid to die, even though I'm afraid to die. You still have to walk into it. So if we can learn how to let go moment by moment, then it's just like learning to let go of anger. If you don't train yourself to let go of anger, then when you have a big problem, you can't let go of it.

[62:05]

People say, well, how can I deal with my anger? Well, I can tell you 10 million ways you can deal with your anger, but what will help? Because you have to train yourself to deal with your anger every day. And then when something comes up, You have some basis for dealing with your anger. And it's the same way with dying, living and dying. You have to have some training so that even though you want something, you know how to let go of it.

[62:49]

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