Remembering Sojun, Part 1

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and carried on and i was fond of him similarly me have recording were recorded in the news media's okay
and i so as it reached out my hand and he kind of withdrew and held up his hands like this
and there was kind of a a little flash i believe of disapproval on his face like know this is a way we do it and it as of course i did the same thing and then that was it but afterwards i i saw a that was really uptight you know i'm reaching out my hand to shake your hand you can just shake my hand and i do
be so rigid that you have to be to a buddhist about
because and i knew and i haven't been around much but then at the same time i had the feeling that i appreciate how strongly he believes in what he's doing and wants to set as a standard for
some guy training that he feels is important even though i think it's a little silly that to get carried away with that i also appreciate his determination so i was a mixed feeling of both those both those emotions and i think both those motions are actually true that he was being a little uptight
and i think that also he was really maintaining his sense of what he thought would be good leadership
another instance that happened there was i live downstairs with patrick mcmahon and i albert the night and we got along pretty well and a mellow is that the upstairs
and i we wanted to smoke some marijuana
so we didn't want to do it covertly so wait we went and asked him a salad you feel if we smokes marijuana downstairs a little bit not not get carried away with it and he he didn't really want to say yes and he didn't want to say no
eh
he he obviously wasn't enthusiastic about it but he didn't want to say no so that's what he conveyed he didn't even say it words but what he conveyed was i don't want to say yes but also don't want to say no and i are appreciated that you know and illinois is the opposite of the first it
experienced that he was loose enough to permit us to do something that he really didn't feel that great about but that he didn't want to be the authority figure who was saying no in this particular case
and then recently working on his book with a giga and him there's a whole chapter or a bit in the
in his memoir memoir it goes with the lectures where he talks about his involvement with marijuana when it was young much younger and how he was really consumed with marijuana for awhile and as though he had that kind of experience and i grew up it and it was in north beach in during the all a beach
teen and you know artists and so forth a he was quite into that but then at some point he just let go get totally he never did it again he just made a decision that he didn't want to go down that path and he just stopped doing it
i'm not the story is when now we transition to russell street from dwight way and nineteen seventy nine
but he has been spending at least a year to driving around berkeley on his bicycle looking for a place that we could actually owned because we couldn't play by the place we were going he didn't want to sell it
and we found one place that was in a hits than lot of time doing that put a lot of energy into it and then the one place that we really tried to get he found down a street i believe it was
it just didn't work out we couldn't get it even though the people who are selling were just very wonderful people themselves but it just didn't work out a homeless guy is appointed and then it just happened that a woman who was gonna peripheral part of the sanga mentioned she knew about this russell street property that the owner wanted to sell it to a group
it wouldn't gonna make it as a cohesive for unit property not just for separate rental units so that's the only way we knew about it and i went by and i think a couple of other people as this really that good we told them about it he wasn't that interested in it i may i think he went looked at it too
ooh but my feeling was that he was disappointed that he wasn't able to find it
i'm just projecting that so i was i thought there's some ego their why would he be excited about this but he was caught on mute mute it about his enthusiasm for it is a but he didn't say no he said well if you wanna if you want to get everybody to go by there and look at it and tell me what they think about it than we can go
take a look at it but it was like okay you do the work to bring it forward and then i'll respond
whereas before he had been one going out and really search it so course he followed through on that and as soon as people came back said you know that looks great than he was totally willing to go and look at it and it was happily ever after
but as it is interesting to me how there was some resistance there that i felt it is his enthusiasm because he wasn't the one to accept that's just my projection i can't be sure that
in the last one i think i would say is there's several morbid

just a interesting practice yet after lectures for quite a long time when he gave a lecture on saturday immediately afterwards after you know having tea with people he would go down to the flea market spend an hour down there just wander around a come not usually with anything he just liked at he just liked being in that atmosphere of being
the flea market after the lecture and eat that for years and years that was his habit i just always appreciated the fact that that he wanted it after jimmy as formal lecture about zen you just wanted to go to the marketplace and just hang out and just enjoy the scene
and lastly i to say working on
oh maybe many one two little more
that he was always you know what kick and i've worked on his book with him for the last eight months or so in
you know having meetings with them weekly more or less and he's really enjoyed it and it's given me some insight into his life in his memoir particular that i think everybody will be interested in when it finally comes out hopefully
but it really delighted be that he was enjoying it and and he had a very colorful light there's lot that we don't know that in his book about you know the different phases he went through before he can design center had a very colorful life and he really a get me a lot of appreciation
one for his dedication you can see it early on it just isn't focused on zen but it's a very spiritual dedication and is looking for an outlet for that somehow and he finds a with suzuki roshi so
seeing his enthusiasm about reliving his life like that as he was basically dying over the last year or you know about approaching that ah was very satisfying to me that he could enjoy that and kind of relive his life with some people assisting him and being interested in it
so i think i'll stop there but ah it just a i want to say as i have their memories of him and they usually involve
something was as a little bit friction and it's a question but always there's a feeling of or something very positive and strong in his deeper deepest motivation which i always always trusted and still trust
thank you so much on thank you so much
on my stolen muted yes thank you and that was really interesting ah yeah more stories about how do i weigh on but in our next speaker is going to be pica at heaton who is a resident here and when
i moved in she was already here
everybody i had pica
it's kinda weird that i can't see people hang on a second only to bury here or that's better i any target myself
ah
well i do need to look at myself up
i'll take a break from it at the base of such a
and thank you ron am it's really get to see you so ah
am
really were
mel created in a way and and what that meant meant to me so i'm
you know my my relationship to him a was really he was just always my zen teacher there was yet he had no interest in my sight in my psychology but that was kind of a big
force in my life when i got when i got to the zendo i just wanted to read a couple things that i wrote about
to divert and banks which have to do with the zendo and then kind of the culture of the zendo and hat and how that affected me so i'm the first one is i came to the bc and nineteen eighty seven
i lived over on alcatraz avenue at the time and i walked there
i was really anxious in anticipation of of going there summer and suggested i should go see his friend mel cause i was
but you know looking for some way to settle my life
it was a really really windy day and i almost decided to go back home so i sometimes i think about that moment and my whole life would have been completely different if i had gone back home and man pressed on walking against a furious wind
and finally reached the gate the same game that's there today and to the right and the gate was the tiniest of science i mean it was like this big the berkeley said that may be smaller
at bow not big on advertising i guess
so am i went in the gate
and it was really really quiet they're a minute really felt different when i went into the gate and there was nothing going on of course it was during the week during the day
oh it just felt really different to me
a like foreign it felt foreign and i wandered around a bit not knowing what to expect as like bear in the middle of the week know it nothing's going on and just wandered around i'm sure it's happened a million times people just walk in there they wander around somehow they they find a way to cut connect with somebody
a year
contact the temple at the time we had a
a message machine and the in the community room which it was somebody's responsibility to answer all those calls but that happening was kind of rare
so you could call and say i liked it more information but it was really kind of that crap shoot where the uts hear back or not
so i'm a young woman happened along and greeted me and gave me a brochure and then disappeared
and i found out later her name was slow and she was one of the residents so
that was kind of my first a bit of time there
so i'm
another little story is a i was told by bob ghana zach let this go on record i should go to docusign once a week
so that's what i did i signed up for docusign once a week
and i'd go there and i always told me i don't really have much to stay and on it say that's okay that's okay so i would basically i would just sit there with him for a little bit and then leave that was my to phone
so i tibet for about a year
and and then i found out that most people don't go to docusign everywhere
and somebody thought that was really funny when i lived like you're going to focus on what school
so anyway back then we didn't most people didn't go to doug son once a week but it it was good for me because somehow during that time
i as i read remember it i was aligning myself kind of neurobiologically biologically to his com so really helped me to calm down just spending that time at them and and not really not saying anything at all
ah so about docusign
my first oak son i'll never free get so
i remembered knocking on the door and i was following the instructions that that bobby anissa gave me or robert
and i remember knocking on the door and i remember the bell ringing and to this day i don't remember how i got sitting in front of him there is i remember kind of wish in my ears so i know it sounds kind of weird but it was as kind of mystical experience hatch i resist right in front of them like that and
i have no memory of bowing to my cushion or doing any of that stuff that we usually do my go to doug son and so i often had these kinds of experiences with him and on i didn't talk about it much because yeah it it can be a can sound kind of will will to some some people
he gave me the name pica after many times of going to doug signer not talking to him about much i eventually did open up to him and let him know ah
where i came from and what kind of happened to me before i got to zen center and i think that's why he gave me the name by kirkus
a bike is sort of represent courage and i'm you know even though they've been through great suffering and that are tendered and there's frost on the ground they still come out so i think he was just kind of giving me a you know high five for 'em
persevering even though i'd been through so much before i got to zen center and and that really was kind of colored my whole practice was this trauma that i had m
that i was kind constantly dealing with but being at the zendo and the practices lot of people who don't like the form so much fled
i'm you know melded we did so much training with mel around chanting in m
in whatever chanting bowing ringing bells doing or aoki and it was really a place where i could settle and have some focus and just let all that stuff on
i just let go of that stuff in those moments so i was really drawn to the forms because they were sick so healing for me
and so that's kind of been my own
yeah my practice has been very much forum for him centered
oh
and then a mostly every related to him through zendo projects i've just come up with an idea presented to him in that practice committee in
ah he never really you know he he was very encouraging but it was always kind of you know ought to the side i don't really know how to explain it it wasn't like hey good job it was more like him somehow expressing to me and and i you know when i talk about myself i feel like i'm talking about everybody
the they're expressing to me
ah how i was
part of this wonderful thing that we were doing like i was really part of that and
it's just the the berkeley's under what what know created help me have a life and on something that was wholesome and good and made me feel good inside
even though i had all this other stuff to tell and i still do so i'm just eternally grateful
and there's all sorts of funny stories i could tell but ah
mostly they just you know things that that that i am enjoyed or went through or passed through i'm so besides bad i just on
set my mind to practice and showing up in the zondo and ah you know the garden and cooking and all that stuff in it it just really really really helped me
so was that i think that's about all all i have
thank you so much pica and gets really good to see all the old people and in people know now we went we can hardly wait to share or physical space with people who haven't been married
a new people that you're coming with us oh yeah yeah
big okay yeah so i will go next and you know i've been using this metaphor of the daughter in law for you know my feeling at for soju may i moved in not
to be at berkeley sense on her but to be with alan and and i'm you know i had a teacher and so you know i was i was kind of like a daughter in law and he was so
welcoming and and you know it was his very matte he was just always so matter of fact for me you know like you notice like will where where shall we meet where can we meet you know however let's just meet wherever we can now and i certainly he was a teacher for me and i went to docusign and
and so he always i just felt like he made space
for me and you know corrected me did he just treated me sort of like he took me a base value is you know what i can say which was in on its it just was really a nice experience and
you know i know he thought i was way too permissive of a mother and you know it it he just always
there was always a sense of a dance there was never a coming down or a rigidity i felt like you know
and one of the things that i admired about him the most am
oh so actually before i get to that though you know it took me awhile to figure out what was going on at berkeley sensitive because i'd spent you know eight years at san francisco zen center part in the city and part as a and am
it was it was kind of like as a daughter lives like if you marry into a family that is really really way nicer have prepared to bethlehem a new of are born in a way nicer but at least you know everything was on this scale this very manageable scale whereas at zen center like everyday
he's moving it's really hard to make friends be rose moving on you know i'm it just felt like this very manageable scale and you you didn't really it was hard to see what mel was doing until you really observed these tiny little elements of the way he created berkeley's
and center and one of the things and and you know in particular his the way he was so available to people was just like unheard of
at san francisco zen center that you would like go by
baker richard bakers or ribs cabin yeah no-one's in on your inoue any time you know it just was totally unheard of and in particular this thing that where the cooks when you when you cook for breakfast or says shane you would go into it you would go to have a little encounter with them
after the meal and i know that some people have framed that to me as like going in and getting whether you get a thumbs-up or thumbs-down like like having some evaluation but i never took it the way i was like oh you get to have an encounter with the abbot and i just seemed so amazing and up and kind of almost like
cole on like or something like you could have some kind of amazing encounter about the food you know
and just in little ways like that little ways that i began to see how he how he kind of directed things and he he listened to people he you know he he was not as you know and many people have talked about him like he
was definitely a strong leader and he wanted everything to go through him and needed you know to have his way and such but for me coming from this other environment he seemed very flexible actually and am
one of the things that i was most impressed ah with him was off his his way he was at a meeting which is for some of us is kind of like vote in the waterloo of is and student as to is to be some kind of meeting like a board meeting our practice committee meeting or something
it just feels like we we're for the conflict diverse we didn't really know how to do that and i just watched him and i was just so impressed with the way he
he he would take everything in and it wasn't like he ignored if if like if there was some heat if people were getting upset you know it wasn't like he ignored that it's like he took that in as as information and just a processed it but he never rarely was thrown off hymns
self that i saw and he would sort of being completely quiet through the entire meeting you know this is not every single meeting but i experienced this a lot over thirty years you know take everything in and at the very end of the meeting he just say something very
grounded and pointed and appropriate and helpful you know and
i just i was really impressive to me and yeah i remember this one particular meeting where we got very heated and he and i were on ones are both agreeing and and a a lot of the other people were disagreeing and it was very it was extremely contentious and
and after word i sort of went up two men admitted like that you know i i'm really not sure i right or something along those lines he goes yeah me neither you know like he was totally eat out he was too so he just was so matter of fact about things and it was never a
i'm
i mean you don't falsely com or or overly taking things personally but he's just really was listening when people would get upset he's like oh that's interesting so and so's getting upset that's information for me and now and he took everything in and sort of
process did and and didn't didn't say a lot always ah
so i i just really admired him and in i wanna be more like that at a meeting where you know
you're you're taking people and in your sort of taking people for what their as information in out for yourself to to think about that to come to your own understanding he he would come he would take time you know mel was just always feeling his way he was not he did not think programmatically he
did not
think about pros and cons he was it seemed to me like he was always just feeling his way and he would take things in and then when he knew what he wanted to say he would say it and
it was really for someone who'd been in a fair number of meetings i was on the san francisco and center board and you know when during a really contentious time so i'd been to a lot of contentious meetings by the time i got here we didn't have such contentious meetings but you know people do get heated something
times and i just really liked to watch him and watch him was always really curious to see what he was gonna say hum
so that's one thing i may be all retail this i don't know how many people were there on
whether it was friday or saturday when i tell my shoe so story but i'll tell it again cousins a good story so you know and a again
he was he was very kind to me during my shoe so time and it's it's one of it it's one of it's a really fun time to be with him when your shoe so so you know
that there's a job that you have to do when your shoe so which is that you you when the person's officiating so he was all almost always the person officiating the service and at the very end like a more in the morning at the end of service that person that we called him the doshi the efficient way
walked out while everyone is still standing there and suddenly when you issue so you are supposed to follow him and that was there were there were all these physical ways that the shoe so was kind of put in front you know and i'm in in a very bought in a body sense you know and so i
i would always forget because i tend to be spaced out and i was as you know sitting there doing what i'd been doing for two thousand and ten or twenty years by van you know and someone the next person next to me would like nudge me and where someone would say laurie
and then i would follow than i would follow him so and then at the end of that and at the end of service you would actually that you saw would go into his office with him and have a little nice little moment of greeting there and so after this happened like maybe four or five times he
when we got to the room he looked at me with these and i don't know i mean not enough everybody's experience the dragon you know but there's definitely a dragon there and and it was these eyes you know these fiery eyes and he said
this is the problem we always have with you you never you won't step forward when we need you to step forward and it was just so perfect it was like this physical you know it was like he was sort of he was modeling something and he was pointing me to it it just seem like this very complete
body mind that you know of the two of us and that it was so it was lovely and it at has really stayed with me and you know my most often memory of just as of him laughing you know especially that the more more and more in recent years he was just all
i was looking for a reason to laugh and and joke around and tease you and r you know just be laughing about something you know and so this this memory just really stands in my mind as that other side of him that that dragon that was that was there if he needed it
so that's about all i had to say and and we have plenty of time for
and i think you're yoni gonna explain how we're gonna raise our hands and all that business so thank you yoni
hi everyone
i'm so we're gonna proceed by raising our hands and a lorry why don't you call on people and i will a search for and put a spotlight on you once your name has been called and an invite you to unmute yourself ah so if you need help with a
raising your hand you can if you have the newest updates to zoom you should see a reactions button at the bottom of your screen if you're if you're using i'm using your computer and if you click on the reactions button there should be a raised hand option when to do that if you don't have that option you
can go to participants select your name where it says more and it should give you the option to raise your hand there as well and that should be a crisp consistent across all of the the different updates
hum
let me know if you have a problem with that in the chat you can just send me a message and you can ask your question in the chat to and any audio read it out to us and you can you don't have to only of questions i mean mostly we we want to hear your stories and of course if you have any questions for me or bike or on that's good but
we we mostly want to hear your stories to so please don't don't hesitate

susan
not sure which susan you are but susan somebody
i'm a snake eyes
i wanted to say
first of all just how wonderful it is to hear of stories it's it's so heartening ah thank you all three of new so much
i'm not a question for ron sincere dwight way
melton told tommy once you know we'd love to garden right and there was a yard there a big yard i guess and i remember he told me once kind of a long time ago that he had a big garden and he grew so much swiss chard that he sold it to berkeley cole
and that he will either email or somebody built a will greenhouse for lives because she also like to garden and i just wondered if you had some kind of stories about that and i also know that it was a time when
you know in that time period some of you have little ah
businesses
and how he fit into that so that's my question
okay
i couldn't stand on that chart
if there's so much charged in that yard and i don't really like chart so i'm not really enthusiastic about i never heard that he sold it i'm glad it did not yet hit lot of charred and he just like being out there and we actually had practice
committees out there in good weather was very nice and i highly recommend every practice committee outside if you can do the next time
and i
and had a really a funky but very effective compost heap that was pretty big you know like like big sensing holding it all in so and i'm not a gardener i like vegetables but i'm really i wasn't so i wasn't as attentive to all the details of that as one might be but yeah is definitely a feature the place
ace and it gave the place a whole dimension which was important that you could go out hang out in the backyard and it was big so it had those those possibilities and then you can also read that he did version of the good vegetables to
and the businesses were interesting and the main business was at some point of advertisement man who was a gardener
you came at the idea of having a landscaping gardening collective this is like a nineteen many seventy seven seventy eight
and so we kind of got together several people who were interested in that and we will develop the gardening and landscaping business with him as kind of the expert and current weakest live next door with i'm valerie correlates and they are current became a
a irrigation specialists and a week we started from scratch with nothing and i was a business manager so i took care of all the phone calls and objects and we did everything legally with taxes in the whole bit
and occasionally searching will go out on a job with us but just as very occasionally just to get it you know to see what it felt like the we felt that from scratch and i think it went on for five years including over on russell street and then when to solve all the tools and moved on as people went different ways
but i was very impressed with how that people were able to get together and they could going concern from nothing and and development for five years and we supported ourselves without that was the main business
on july way
thank you so much thank you thank you so much kan nam
i had please i
i think i just don't need advanced often more you did or contest on now let me get this
papa about my screen on
yeah i like runs first thing on
ah i think my longest experiences with malware on putting the mountains and rivers because i was doing it for so long and
i had come to that because i had taken part in ring of bone on mountains and rivers with for more longer and more windows and so i pretty much knew the ropes like what with the possibilities and how the sort of same work and no did not while he didn't
even go on the first few understood people did in the bodies but when i started being the director in two thousand ah to my pleasant surprise you signed up he said i'll be i'll be gone so on he came to the first you know the meeting that we have the
form where we're going out the next morning but if orientation meeting
and i'm so i went through kind of modeling myself on how render bone did it with detailed instructions about how we would you know all the logistic things and how we would hike and how we make sure nobody would get lost and then
all these different things and then towards the end of the meeting
ah he kind of came in and said a more or less ah
raleigh i will add ah just sort of said well wouldn't want gonna go out there will just you know i'm just gonna take it as adults you know just be hectic
this was not what we will going to do
been a would have been completely ridiculous it would just be like if you had associated to to sink will show up whenever you feel like it and sit wherever you want
this stinks i had gone over were essential and he did not know that ah because he had not experienced of it but the reason i bring this up i didn't even argue with him about it that's the last time and fifteen years victor was any conflict with us
like as soon as we got out there the next morning and we had a little thing by the trail side and then started hiking he picked up on how it worked and there were no more of that and fruit
after that you know he was just like can ah can i do this
will this work out okay representing and a it's just so remarkable when winger ah
sort of to people that are leading a thing i'll go in different aspects of it
there could be all kinds of disagreements and really there was almost nothing in fifteen years it's there was just that one little road bump the first time because he didn't know what exactly what was going on and after that there were fifteen years of no bumps
so i think that's all i have dessert which is so unobtrusive it was just a pleasure to work with him thank you
thank you very adaptable
i'm okay unless maybe list is going to tell us about the gardening it quite bay or something else from oh yeah night i wanted to run
about the garden yes there was a lot of charred and i used to make directors i think i made breakfast every morning for a long time there was always charge
but there are also a lot of other things in the garden the boy wizard or which you can go buy it was at sixteen seventy two i way it was on a dell accepting big old victorian and i found a double why not just a double lot but a very very deep double-wall so it had a huge garden i mean
from berkeley city lot it was enormous and on
he had the greenhouse it now build me was type
i took over another sense to new entice her as she had built up this
alfalfa sprout business and i took it over for her when she left for tassajara m sold our self respect to the car which used to be the main berkeley supermarket thrill and i used to sell a fast response
to the co-op know
i think that oh yeah no run said about selling chart where recent berkeley bowl didn't exist to the time we saw charge to a place on the corner of shattuck and asked me to north east corner of shack and sp
was a little natural food store called holy foods
and they used to buy her chart and other garden vegetables when we have too much
that was it was wonderful
hmm
yeah so that's that are going to say
thank you so much thank you
we want to ask you to tell us how you met what were what about the story about you and mount meeting

okay rise
thank you lori
live how did you and me and
i'm i'm really curious your that thriller i have heard it a parts of it before of my question before that is to ron and i wonder your run of you could say a little bit if you do third any difference in surgeon from the early days dwight way we
yeah i gathered with just sitting in the attic and guarding in the back to btc on russell street where it got more
former oil and committee even more complicated if if you noticed any difference it is it is presence that his practice and his relationship to you all
thank you

ron
ah m
i'm glad you asked that because that was one thing i've left out that i wanted to say
mel went through phases like we all do it over a thirty forty year period there are a number of phases that he went through as as we all do and there was a phase where were on russell street at one point in that in the first couple of years there he started talking
about correct practice for instance he never talked that way and white way and this is correct is correct do it this way and the correct attitude is baba and that he kept saying it you know and it really started bugging people especially if you said it xander like what you know list all the scorpion king
read all about and eventually his he dropped a he got that but he had to go he went through that phase of doing that so there is there is a innumerable examples but it is so gradual ah that is hard that you know because i'm growing up at the same time
he's growing up and it it's hard to to see when there's a a change but the
he became wiser
it said he became more mellow and wiser and less
less any talked about this he knows it's feeling less anxious about doing things the right way although he still maintain there was a right way to do things but it was less anxiety and tightness about doing things properly and it was more enjoying and sort of seeing the old the bigger picture desk with average sort of summarize
it as adam
i am
eh
the being able to loosen up a little bit and up after 'em
a melon this is wedding at green gulch ah
talk show klong but i was talking to me in a couple of few people and he said well you know mel has
you know his last that stink of 's in other words he's not as as set fixated on being a good zen teacher as he was it is more subtle and more easy going so i think gradually that's what happened and he just because you can grew with everybody else
as great big europe
glares that you still your hand is still up did you want to circle back or or am with address he didn't put your hand down oh i didn't realize i was most to put my own hand down some way you probably don't i can lower it for you own and i'm so so mom
hi so ah
yeah well
just that going back to the driveway times which i i was there than to and ah the question that ross just asked ah a innocent
much more informal for one thing it was much smaller i mean when i started going sometimes they would only be a few people in the zendo in the morning am and
and it was a mess like a family i'm in sounds very nostalgic but really me when lives would make these delicious oatmeal breakfasts and we will ever especially i remember there was always the case on monday morning after monday morning zaza we've come down from service and when served this delicious breakfast for who
ever happened to feel like staying you didn't have to sign up for anything you're just stayed if you wanted to stay and am there is a table in the dining room there and we would sit around the table and eat breakfast and chat informally and
and then and there was the samo for little while i guess it would have been and enough with before or after breakfast i suppose it would have been before but it and the living room which was the front living remember the victorian house and and i remember well it may be in sessions we have long your work periods but it was it was the lead
ingram of i in the fact that mel and letters house was also the
house of the zen center i'm said they didn't really have any privacy at all and meet the living room is where we would have meetings it was there living room but work period we will be i remember waxing the floor and i have never in my life with not a good housekeeper and i learned various housekeeping and the time
at them zen practice it has been to help to me in learning housekeeping and how you wax of large and things like that and also about cooking of course but anyway i'm so we took very good care of the place as good zen students and that was a sort of revelation to me and then
the sense of informality that that man was just welcoming the different people coming and i remember for a while i'm in those days that at i'm right way there is a young japanese monk who was staying there named gitai remembered yutai run and he was
really nice young guy and ah
he was just kind of always there and a wit and works or rag wrapped around his head during where or period me without the garden and a lot and and i'm not i'm not sure by he spent so much time there but mel has been very hospitable to him and am and then
there were came we had things like
cookie sales to raise money for the zen down with our bake cookies when time we went into the ah are couple of times maybe we did it every year or something for a while we're going to the tassajara bakery in the city and take over the bakery at night because they're busy working there all day so we would go and work at night
bake hundreds and hundreds of cookies till four o'clock in the morning or something and then we would sell them the next day and live oak park at the himalayan fair or something like that to benefit the berkeley city centers there was red down home type of things that were going on and and mel was kind of
going along with all that informality and and hanging out and ah
to read at the breakfast table and stuff like that so it was ah
it was different and it was also i mean wasn't just always so wonderfully perfectly family life exactly because there are difficulties to of course but but i think we were all growing up i mean i think of how
i was just so
ignorant about zen practice and and we were all kind of learning together so i'm
yeah and mel i think he was really i think it is really appropriate to the size of the group i mean he was growing as this sense and or he grew it from whatever was sixty years or whatever i'm and the whole time his his behavior and his leadership was
kind of appropriate to the level of the people who were coming and the numbers of people who were coming and i'm so
and so he changed along with present the sangha changing a lot that that was it interconnected type of change that was happening
yeah
thank you so much yeah i mean i don't see any more hands maybe and residences or doesn't have to only be all stories from the old days it can be newer yet nor students or middle students you want your hands of room oh there's merry merry go ahead

now i think i'm i'm new is that right
yes hear me yeah fuck it can hear you are just ideas wedding i'm sorry this is another story about the old olden days i was not there but one of my favorite new movement stories which you may have heard before that he loved to tell us know he and black started practicing like the birthday september
there really no will the art and was when you when you lean back we lose your sound very well so
everybody knows hulu art and was a really great blue was very a you know in his hand a lot and he tells you told a story about a year as starting out reading a lot of things and he read some book that he that was just marvelous and he went by the berkeley's and center
on white way and people as people have said that that just felt like a mill was always there at any rate lou went by and he had this book anything to smell like he's running down this using you have to read this book
well said no i don't i don't have to read that book but you can sit with us if you want just go on upstairs
and that's just a perfect encapsulation of awesome thinking
thank you thank you randy please on mute yourself and tell and fight i think it was be or charlie sorry well august two two quick ones i remember lou higher on very well and he was very charming guy and he came in
and as a guest lecture ah one monday morning and he sat in the and see ah
the speaker seed
i am somebody came in and them
and i am a book wrapped in the suit or cloth and he picked up the book and he said in them the book is always upside down
anyone argh i got another one here bell was very interested in real estate having witnessed the fact that he took his bicycle around practically every city block in the in berkeley for a year looking for a place for
for
other than do i weigh a new place
yeah
ha i guess marianne radii and i came and eighty eight and surely after that
ah a large complex on chabot road opened up and was for sale then i asked know whether he'd like to take a look at it we we went up there he said sure i want take a look at it and
it was built by someone who was very interested in japanese architecture and japanese carpentry and there were three buildings on this triple lot
and so we looked around and he was he was impressed and we got back and i said well i have no idea what the prices but whatever it is are you interested he says yes a very adjusted and the next day
he said charlie forget it
the kiva roshi and yoshi bought it
out from under us
and will show my
so is probably worked out pretty well and we didn't we didn't go up there
yeah i think we would think we're happy where we are ah
linda has please and meet yourself and speak up
i ah i'm old but i haven't new story a recent story ah then i just thought of so am i have a dog mel always had dogs felon liz and to one day recently maybe a year ago or so i was at point isabel with my dog and you know that
it's like the greatest off-leash dog place in the world
so i often go there with my dog maybe you can see her over there just kind of resting on the bed and i i ran into mouth with a dakota
and i said all right now my dakota
and i wish our walk in together but i was very kind of anxious about my dog because my dog wasn't good at recall and she would run away from me and ah i was just always anxious i get this give we have to go chase her i have to make sure she said i gotta give her treats and it's a point you just said
she's gonna come stay with us don't worry so much she i promise of hidden say i promise you but he kind of conveyed that she's gonna stay with us don't have to worry so much so i was worried but i sort of stopped chasing her and demanding that she come and get a treat and stuff we just
want you know we walk from one end two point isabel to the other end where the cars are parked and johanna few wasn't right she walked off leash all the way to my car and then she peacefully jumped into the car so i thought move melded demonstrated the giving your
your animals and people a large field so that's it
thank you so much thank you so much
one thing i've been learning from karen dakota is just a sec jaws that you know it's okay if there's no hands raised for a couple minutes we can just sit quietly and then then you know so don't get anxious when there's no hands raised but now we have a hand jaw please your hi i have to
questions for on rum about marijuana ah which is the first is did you guys want of smoking or not after the fruit after your encounter with milk and the others offered lots of different stories about mill stopping doing drugs and
most of them are stuff like he went the first time and set with suzuki roshi and that was the end or so anyway it just those two story is just have this questions
and
those a story to have the biker suggest a remind me of the first time i got to berkeley's ten center for the first one and only time i went in a plane had a cab and when we got to russell street we could not find a and center and
the caribbean i looked around russell street for ten minutes together and you could not find a and center as the extra i saw this little sign totally covered by this big butch
worked and mills on the porches and though so i introduced myself and set i was very simple and quick and wonderful and said the guy and then years years later he said from the very first time i admit
you i knew you were crazy and he thought that was perfect and it certainly was true so run if you can tell us more metal and grass what can i tell you get the exertion

okay i'm not allowed to tell i think what i don't have a clear memory
but at may get my senses we we did smoke marijuana but very lightly it was actually kind of consists inconsistency with when his attitude was so we did it but we didn't get carried away with it at all and i don't think we ever did it again so that we will
addicts that we have the satisfaction of smoking the marijuana at the berkeley zen center and it was okay to do it we were violating somebody's rule and that that was enough action and then i looking at his memoir yeah there's a very i can't remember exactly what
pointed his after he sets the koji for the first time with suzuki roshi but it bears some time at some point is very clear to him that because he was feeds realize that he was getting carried away with it is he liked the mystical quality of it it also is kind of consistent with his fundamental interest anyway
but he was you know depending on the kind of drama of that the of the drug to and they could really live make bringing to life that's my interpretation and he realized that just wasn't going to work and it just stopped any and he never went back the other thing that people don't know probably as he was a smoker he was caught
white a smoker for quite awhile and i think probably before he was at dwight way and for least ten fifteen even twenty years and fairly heavy smoker so he he stopped that as well so those are two aspects it by the time most of us had seen him those were not part of his life but er
earlier they were definitely very strong parts of his life
kay thank you
thank you i also think and think i even overheard him or l recounted to me about his painting he was a painter he was an abstract expressionist and he just once he started zen practice teaches made a right turn and that was that he just left it completely without a backward glance which is
you know even started big picture him he he started did things without a backward glance and away know
ah ok
we can sit quietly for a moment see if anyone else
wants to say anything
on we don't have to go on forever either
elizabeth and then charlie
oh well i just thought i would show him a little bit more about
the subject it was just been talking about
more started smoking in his early teens
and he smoked a pack a day
and when we were at tassajara in the early seventies so he was
it is mid forties
ah
and you are on his birthday
i have this perverse idea that as a birthday gift
you're not not many birthday gifts you can give people at teixeira but so as it as a birthday gift
used to roll his own it has already had a can of can have tobacco on picked in papers and even role anime so for his birthday i hid his tobacco and papers
and that inspired him to quit smoking and me quit smoking
come
and then on
yeah
well another time in the early seventies and android way him
he went out people have been around a long ten new rebecca my yeah no you to go out to wrong with rebecca
and so many people out to baleen us were a close friend bliss
twomey at the time loser camera lived and
no one day they went out there i was realism but they went out there and somehow i don't know how
ne aunt and they all ended up dropping acid
and milk came back
and he he had to give a lecture in the zondo
and he was still a little bit stoned when he was giving this lecture
that he managed to give the lecture
that was the last time he did that
thinking that was that was ever seen i was gonna add to the story about drugs and tobacco
thank you thank you so much and charlie is that you again or is it russia as it may again i just want to mention a to facets of them so just lived though we don't hear too much about he was in the united states marine corps
he was a cabdriver in san francisco i wonder whether anybody has any stories from those lives of now

who had wrong yeah the most dramatic story is a twice or people pulled a gun on him
but this is it as memoir and both times they were just you know they are basically i don't know if you call it fooling around they were really serious they were trying to scare him and the one time he i think
he probably perceive that ah he said go ahead you know i'm not gonna beg for it or not gonna beg for my life if you really you need to do that go ahead and the guides has put out his gun and felt ashamed of himself that as a mills telling of it and the other one i don't remember what the fuck
situation was but twice he had a gun presented the thing that they'll told me about taxi driving was that that he wound up game like sort of a therapist for is this passengers you know they were tell him his problems and he would kind of like offer a year but also offer suggests
jeans are you know chat with them about their problems so he was actually being a priest as he was being to a taxi driver i just came naturally to him
thank you one thing that anterior said that stayed with me on sunday was that he he he theorizes or he felt it mel was probably always a very intuitive person but he he he just found some way to ah
ground that and and express that and solidify in his and practice so he would enter that if there was some that was a capacity he probably had all along that was hit his feeling
oh okay well it's eight fifteen and the hands are not raised so does anybody wanna have a last word or
last comment before will and we're gonna we're going to gather again in a couple of weeks
i'm so woke up to see many of you again and other people can tell their stories oh allen did you want to say something

your muted your muted your muted

i notice that these gatherings coincide with the seven day cycle of sojourns transition
ah so today is the seventh day on
the next ronald b the twenty-first and and so forth in our last session will one of our last session we have to see how far we go but we will have a session on the day of the of the forty nine day and maybe we'll do a little ceremony then but i also want to suggest that
what's traditional actually is to do a little a private ceremony for your teacher every every seven days for that forty nine day period so ah you can not each of us can do that at home very
a simple put your photo a photograph of him
of sojourn on the altar
this ah do it a chance of either the heart sutra the and made you can and go ah and
just recognize recognizing coincides with with our gatherings as well so ah and something that you can think about doing to thank you
and thank you also yoni for tech hosting our sangha
and everybody for your good listening and participation thank you so much
i think maybe we can can we do the thing were reused all on new to say good night if we wander thinks everybody that was a wonderful
thank you very much thank you here link you for all the wonderful stories when you place your around here
glory the good guys thank you for hosting a girl stories swords
take care of oxtail out or five know there's people on this screen who have good story so don't be shy they can be negative that they can be we can have a little we can have a little spicy
on and are a thing here to there's no with facility or if we could talk about practice committee some
the eighties early nineties says it will
yes i know the women were having an uprising fasteners that would be a span would be a good one i got cause
night can i duty and abernethy good night letting air