Senior Student Tributes

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Serial: 
BZ-02793
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shows shows on gran
i got up and on like don't remember what it was i was even spending at a certain point a world court asking and just said to me what is it that you want
and i replied
to be free of these burdens and you simply bound to me in a way that a sharp right through me and i go back and which is carried out with me just the way or her your physical presence stand
what you do without words
and when we talk to people appear about of a berkeley's and centers and to with the kind of or lineages like it's that her
by simply being present for her
sitting and
just let him go and thank you so much
oh i gotta say also by the way you know you've been bugging me about throwing pots i've been throwing pots

andrea your mutant
walter
surgeon hello
so jim
i've studied and served you for seventeen years there at berkeley center than four years ago i moved away to my new home in sonoma county
ultimately though what is this time and distance
but is this time and distance
when i say
you are there bow your their chant and your their ring the bell and you're there and i'm not kidding every time
every time i hear you say no no fish or that code horse it's a constant presence in my life and practice i can't i can't express enough gratitude for your teaching your generosity and patience is boundless thank you
so much
susan marvin
i think surgeon wants to say something and he isn't you know what i want to say is that a good many of you are sitting below the waterline so i you from the know zach
please raise yourself
i'd rather see the whole one club prison

however sojourn i can you see me from i can see okay real position okay so i the feel
now i lost you where are you didn't really get the
there you are god
yeah version
well
somewhere out there
now with person so one of the first couple times that i ever went to docusign with you
so i didn't really know you very well at all actually and i said to you i've not really sure this practice is for me and you looked at me and you said something like oh really why not kind of just like that and i said well i'm just not
very intellectual and you just started roaring you just laughed out loud so loudly and i said what you laughing about and you looked at me and you said don't worry about that just practice and i was thinking
the other day that that way that you just laughed right out loud really set the tone for the decades to come for me
and that what i really appreciate appreciate about you most of all is this blend of serious effort and such as spirited humor and i just want you to know that i have enjoyed practicing with you all these years
thoroughly and laughing with you thoroughly thank you so much
like up
such a know she
hi everybody
ah
let me see i think i'll let me put this on speaker the recycle actually see
er no hold a second i think i'll kill by compact there you're okay an
oh ah thank you for this beautiful practice that saved my life

so
it's me the willies to think about
how i could have taken a different path

julia i'm not exaggerating it it saved my by the practice and uma saga
that so thank you about
and we had a nice check-in recently
and i was really grateful that we had a chance to you know this catch up
and besides that are just hilarious moments of living at present on others excruciating sustains that were so much fun somehow anyway
for example but yeah zach riding his new mountain bike up and down the xander steps per se
you know having dinners with the israelis and you know just so many crazy times i can remember that time left and then answer okay i'm so just are lots of gratitude and you know what i'm talking about so
thank you
that was
carol
hello search you will she
the up the teaching while there's so many but the one that i am really practicing with is that the teaching you gave me after outside and you said you take one step and then you take the next step and you enjoy your life then
that time of great sorrow i really took that up to enjoy my life
and i wanna thank you for that and
ah i also want to thank you for laughing at my jokes and let you know how much fun you are oh you just it's just a very light feeling not that you couldn't you can't be serious but you have a lot of lightness
the shining through you
i also wanna thank you i'd never felt judged by you or criticized know didn't realize until i started thinking about this the last day or so what a gift that was and that i hadn't felt that from for my father for example
and the last thing i want to thank you about is when i told you i started to date al
i thought you'd be excited for me were instead you said oh that's great for l
and i thought well what about me
and it took a long time for me to realize that you just looking out for al two
then i really appreciate their
so i just dumb with boundless love i just thank you for all the guidance and the encouragement and confidence that you have expressed towards me
thank you
ellen

you know that on ellen unmute

about that
oh i just want to say that i share many of the things that others have said either today or other days so i i wanna say the thing that has been the most am special really unique for me ah which is
the way
sometimes in a humorous way and sometimes in a very ah
bracing way you have allowed to see the workings of my mind and am i will be forever grateful for that

carrie
i saw them
another my best my growth might give out but
like always like kind sure mind off experience for i share my experience with
that's what i was kind of my varma
oh
you know when we entered the xander we all come with hum
baggage things that we are really necessary or were struggling with and one of mine was a hive which is kind of odd because like her current position by fashion director and i had had server from of a number of years
and whenever i had served your eyes were always on me they never let me and i noticed that and i felt
hmm
ah
i'm sitting in a way that made me even more ah want hide
and am
but there was as one time
i was waived getting the present now everything was set up and we would i would help serving and i've stepped in the room and everybody's eyes were on me and i was totally naked
and
it just
free me from my whole thing with hiding
which was a great ah featuring that you somehow live
well i could get on want to say but i love you and ah
i'm grateful to have had the chance to practice with you

harry

the a surgeon
ah
did you think did you say merry and if would go for i did i misunderstand you're fine
hurry ah
i think i was keying off of gary just said about being seen and i want i confess that i am
didn't always realize how well that you see and that those that i realized it slowly on over over time when i was very afraid of gk i was afraid of getting a name
especially the name which says what is the edge working on i think i anticipated it to be you know a criticism
what i didn't anticipate and never occurred to me is that that the name would be
am deeply reassuring and deeply
cause me to feel deeply seen that
eyes i realized that slowly over time just like
being like like we say walking through mist make the the name you gave me
the first name is hunky oh which means original home
and i had always felt homeless
so
to be reassured in that very deep way
and to realize that it came from your intuition has been deeply impressive to me know remark as a married him if you can ramp up soon they'll be great
and i have plenty of things i want to say that we can continue this conversation with me
jerry

are you i'm muting jerry
the you're moving your lips jury but we can't
there we go
so rather for me rather than get lost his narrative which i can
i thought i don't read a couple of poems sojourn that i'd written after my dude my shoe so experience with you and one that was part of my
restored a nation with you
which i would
put under the heading of them
face to face transmission
so the first one was from she's so ceremony my shoe so colin was a medicine and disease subdue each other
a monk sets out from saga show gawker ji temple to find the cure for her disease she scales mountainous searches for its rivers of murky cohen's trudges through the muck of karmic hindrances never finding the elusive it she comes
upon a sign left by her teacher to arrow points meeting marked this is the way
the path is strewn with flowers
laser grass a shit stick tea cakes pebbly rice she sees a man who raises a single finger a wild goose flying in circles above her a fox basking in the sun
she stops in studies each one fighting them all empty all medicine and not medicine distinct but not separate a dynamic interconnectedness the road leads back to chicago g meeting her teacher they both smile
go back into the zendo and sit
one with all the others
i think we'll need to stop with just one poem okay that's fine ah archaeology more later it
grace
thank you
good evening to all and to surgeon
surgeon i've been thinking about your superpower
and what is your superpowered and i think we see it here which is your ability to connect to so many
despite conflict
yeah and
being a rosenberg in my being rosenberg we have a
now sword said meet
and i often tell people
that there hasn't been any pair any student of yours who's had more difficulty with you that has stayed with you but i believe that's your superpower not mine so thank you thank you for showing it to me

greg
hi soldier mouth
i've never felt more frustrated with about coated in zooms than i do right now i wish i could crawl through the screen and sit next to you
and actually i wish i could hold your hand
i mean we've done so many things together i've been with you so many times and there's so many ways but i've never held your hand and i wish i could do that
i'm
i too think a lot about your smile and the that the sparkle in your i o
thank you
you know so much that you do is like shockey mooney's flower right to me it operates like shocking when he's flour and you just did it again
did it again
what can i say it all without you and berkeley sense better i wouldn't be sitting next to my wife right now my shot my children wouldn't exist
i'm
you have done more to help me become an adult than anyone i know you've done more to help me be my
continuously mistake an ordinary self
and like so many have already said i i two i deeply in love you so much thank you for everything

hannah

so i came here knowing a lot about you from your students who were my teachers and
came having been to so somewhere else
and i'm so appreciated our meetings
you have a way of
being completely bare open present receiving
happened the other day on the walk walkway you were coming out the gate and i had come in happened so many times in the kitchen serving bread or salad
thank you
in my heart means alive

cake

zojirushi
why your surgeon
i
i am so be eternally grateful
you know you
i'd track i knew
where are you would i want to do to be my teacher
when we bury out
you know we've the zendo looking at your eyes
it's something about that
totally accepting non judgmental
his eyes and that as i got to know you that it is you're being in a great gift to all of us in one of the things you gave to me was to
oh
let go
to continue my in
the cushion the same thing off the cushion find my breath ago and then let letting go everything is possible and i want to read something
your frozen jig
mm
my century and again jake you're frozen
okay this is my rocker sue from way interesting and what just my only thing i want to read what sodium wrote me the true person is not anyone in particular were like the deep blue collar of the limitless sky
it is everyone everyone are everywhere in the world

judy

dan savage and i have your face on a big screen right now so it's just so wonderful to see you with that tree behind you and just have this sense that you very much like that to me home you'd really taught me what faith and buoyancy real
we are on when i first came to c c
i came really from a different culture of sand of of practice with similarities and and and a lot of ways
meeting you was an enigma
and one of the things that i've really appreciated of her all this time is your constancy of how you would need name and whatever was coming up around that to really shift to really getting what faith and boy and seem really look like that they
that they are all the waves that that i've experience when you and one wall man that that retains out for me was on it was in the sand out there was some difficult conversation about something painful going on in the world this wasn't long after i think nancy
been killed and we had gone through all that
and you did something i've never experienced with you before which is when we left the sun go and i just walked over to to your office and you were just outside and somehow you must have sensed because you were turned towards your door but you turned around and our
i's just met any he just you put your arm around me around my shoulder you know and it was really had that sense of what it is to stand beside and to me that was a beautiful teaching him and equality that really includes
the of difference come to me that studies really your ways of shining through one other thing i want and to say about that is to me it's how you also can do what you did when i first saw you in two thousand and three and japan and a truck stop
when we were on our way the some temple i noticed you right away as onwards
you are delighting in a monstrous saucer just go into town on mac kong so that's how i see you and i wanna thank you for the and includes everything
good
mel so june
we met when i was so young ah i wanna thank you most for your attention you know
i did my father never had one minute of time for me on
so it took me about twenty years to realize i could knock on your door and i so appreciated their on
and
i really one of my best memories as all those times we met and studied oh you snapped at me once cause i pretended to understand the heart sutra and i really didn't and you told me you don't understand a thing and i could have been i
then you said come study with me and we met regularly for years studying the heart sutra and spending that kind of time with you really meant so much to me and it helped me with my i think i'd learned the most dharma from just those face to face meetings
and then after that we studied have faster bond do and transformation at the base and i just really enjoyed your company and your understanding and your patience with me so thank you so much
mary most seen

i thought i wasn't done a tough as i said a lot less leakers home but ah
surgeon
i just you've been hard on me lots of times
and i deeply appreciate it
three
and wave
laughed together a lot

and your eyes looking at me
stray i will stay with me forever
so
a show

penelope
q
virgin mary she
i've always been delighted by the fact that we share july ninth is our mutual birthday and that we've sent emails and cards back and forth to appreciate that along with remembering other people have the same birthday tom hanks
david hockney and then of course oj j simpson
he laughed about that people were
well i haven't really worked closely with you sir john roshi i've been i've appreciated being part of the sancho and watching and experiencing your steadiness and your constancy your presence in the zendo when we were doing that then all the time your
very steady this and availability
i think has been very touching for me
to watch how you communicated your love of suzuki roshi is teaching and how you then embodied it and brought it forth in our sanga so that in a very meaningful way i feel like i've gotten to know his teachings really through you
are the people have mentioned this but i'm a lover of laughter and i have cherished your humor i liked the way you laugh at your own jokes when you're doing a tv show when you laugh at other people's jokes is a sense of your
laughing with never at and also just the embracing the big humor of it all that we live in so
it feels very hard leavening for me thank you so much
re
virgin
ah
oh very favorite moment of mine
can you hear me
you can't hear me
pick up okay
i'm a favorite moment of mine is when you and i were standing on the porch waiting to go inside the zendo and it it might have been
during a real hot zoo but it was very cold outside and i watched you take off your flip flops in your bare feet and i have the biggest socks on i could find and i said to you aren't your feet cold
and you smiled at me and he said yes but i don't mind
and it was something that always stuck with me that whatever happened i always have the choice to say you know i don't mind it's okay it's influenced my word gets influenced my life and that is just one of the many teachings that on
i took from you
for that i am grateful for so many things on i am grateful i am grateful to you for my husband and for my children
for berkeley zen center which is like a second home and a second family
i am most grateful for as and practice which is the very best part of my life
it's a it is a part of everything and it is so reassuring and i am so grateful to you for it
so on
i love you and i will enjoy forever having you in my heart and mind
thank you

peter
surgeon
about her boss fifty years ago
i snuck into the birth of trendsetter i'm driving a cab driver in the corner of is the first
and i just went and sat down when i heard you say did you come for obstruction
no yeah i'm still here this is the rear
when i was reflecting on the reason i'm still here
which is then
you are we have the and
the given below the mother proprietor by live
marriage family know brad is
a particularly of these times but it's too much
you're gonna sugar in engine
difficulty
i always felt like from the very first not an issue if you saw me and you saw it clearly
let us help me so much cheaper so clearly without preconceptions and never found that you brought to bear is of idea where should be there were always looking to do with eyes wide open i'm so grateful for that
thank you

pro
i surgeon hi everybody
nice to see everyone especially those i haven't seen for very long time or years perhaps in the hear me well
yes
i'm
first i wanted to tell you that the we're gonna be doing a to a blue mountain a small group of us i was local that are with thursday and go are rigamer wrong
oh i thought was important to do know how to this year since it's been such a difficult year for for many people for all of us though ah i thought it was a good way to in the year
am so the characters continues and
if they want to see say that i i won't be able to know
see you again anymore
i will not be able to not see you again
and then
thank you for teaching of a lifetime
ah i still remember
our first dog dog isn't at our driveway
long time ago
and though i just want to say i love you

richard
i i am have a story back in nineteen seventy four or i was a first year student we're practicing dwight way
so i was late for the season which started a five am back in those days i quickly took a shower jumped in my car drove over to the right way banked on the dark as was office of the forgotten
mail came to the door i said we forgot spasm can i get up conduit a reached over and grabbed a clock and he showed it to me and said about start two o'clock in the morning
i turn around he turn around and went back to bed
up their morning
though you know that thought there was a wonderful teaching and
i was i left i left in sort of sat on my own for several years and then came back and have been there ever since sept since i'm now you're poor linda
i said thinking about all of you guys geyser to bring present center which i miss very much
as someone said that they got their life because they practiced practice and center saved our lives
and they grew up in and became human beings between human beings in my case would be mature man and i think that's true for me as well really appreciate the practice what i had their and i sure miss the perquisite center mel thank you very much for your practice and
the showing me that clock
ah

big now
it's what my kids always quality big mouth
and i think of you that lead
the first time i was a i cook for out i think it was a saturday morning
and add you called me into your office and you said to me
he said i have a call on for you
ah he said is a cottage cheese with peppers or it's a sweet peppers with cottage cheese
and i was stunned and confused and you've went i'm teasing you
and i don't think i really understood until
maybe twenty years later i put you on the spot and i apologize and i apologize for all the times i was prickly and put you on the spot but i asked when you die and someone asks me what's your teaching what should i say
and he thought and you said when i forget myself
i found i find myself
when i forget myself i find myself
i'm endeavoring turf
follow that path the amount of gratitude i feel is i can't express it but the first words which came to mind when i thought of us talking about you which you know what dizzy gillespie's said of louis armstrong
no he
no me
and i say that about you
no you know me on thank you
thank you for being you
helping me be me
i love you
i miss you i want to sit and listen to music with you forever endeavor
thank you for your music

ross

let a surgeon roshi and hello all of you all hurry up looking at his computer and seeing twenty five twenty six or so mirrors
and had wanted to see everyone at once and look at a single dot on the frame of the computer
so the teachers are all around me
adam he wants to well i get a glimpse just be right here berkeley's and center where i moved to and eighty seven am so grateful for all of you all
and especially soda roshi you brought me and you all together
by way of introduction i arrived at our first docusign with the gift of a teapot
shortly afterwards you gave a talk about receiving many gifts and while appreciated you said don't be surprised if i read give yours to somebody else eddie the best gift a student can give to their teacher is
their ego
thank you for helping me better understand my ego the thirty three years and i will continue to work on this
it's been said that in order for the dharma to continue the student must have passed their teacher
you responded i didn't surpass my teacher i'm just carrying it on to the for the next generation
thank you for helping us establish the right of lay entrustment in this generation
i believe this to be one of the most significant turnings of the wheel in are not quite priest not quite lay cart of practice
i moved into this apartment in ninety five and i have two pictures on the doorframe which has passed for twenty five years and just a few moments ago i saw them for the first time
their pictures of the same perspective on the steps outside of a jade blossom one picture is jade the jasmine latham one picture is the jasmine's in bloom and you can imagine their fragrance
and the other is all withered and brown and dried having completed a cycle
and i just realized that depending on which picture i look to first
i see birth
and then i see death or a feed death and then i see birth
and it's only right here in the see in your high bar of maintaining a standard of zen practice that i so admire and appreciate and in devoted to that i was able to see
birth and death a new today in front of all of you thank you very much

ron the last word for us

okay can you hear me okay
okay now ah when i wanna say is i trust you
and that's the first thing that came to mind when a couple weeks ago we started to do this and has to stay there
and i don't know
i can't really elaborate too much on that i just have a deep deep trust in you
at a trust in what you
show what you what you
once you are
and if i put words to it it makes it it's a chops it up so i don't want to try to do that i just have a deep fundamental trust and in what you are and who you are and
i feel a lot of a being an accord with that i feel as a a
at a
as a symbiotic kind of feeling with that even though our personalities are almost in various ways opposite so that somehow that that i can't touch that i don't know what that is but i've always ever
as i've always felt that connection with you and what you teach and what you what you should like john said is how you behave i've heard millions of your words and lately i've been able to look at thousands more and a is how you behave that i trust the most it doesn't mean you're always a nice
like me particularly are you don't like me as a matter of that you either something honest about you no matter what
and to meet a simple and guess the most important thing so
ha i was at the first senior meeting and i hope to see you at many more of our meetings as well and
thank you so much
intense everyone who is able to make it today sojourn would you like to say something to the world anew yourself
here's i muted
oh okay
look i have two things that i'd like to say i was a my statement to you told you
and the others are a few days ago
oh we had a am a garden party
easy with actual people
the andrews told me that
there was some new people who had never even know that there was a berkeley than center who are members
that that's really amazing
you know you think everybody knows what you know
and she said that when she she took them for a little tour and they were amazed at what they saw their when in which we all take for granted and they actually have and zendo and a zen practice in the place and has been going for lunch fucking
well my saw was every once in awhile
that we should organize the tour for new members and show them what that we actually have this place to zendo
scatter
so there was about a would are new to me
oh the other thing is
i actually went to respond to every single one are you because i have something you say that everything he said that does so many or woman or a wonderful things that you brought forth not just about me but
the affected our practice she had a new
so i can't do that but now i have to catch movement but sir
so on
from the bottom of my heart i love all of you
linda
i can't praise you and the uranus for between done and do
thank you andrew
thank you all so much will you want to unmute and we can say one great big thank you on a second
thank you
keystone checks how often
oh l a fairly well
chevy by really lovely yeah
the game
everyone lol one last thing is i pushed the recording button thinking that surgeon or lives might want to hear it again if you have i didn't ask your permission that vogue long as you're writing
i just i wanna say the buck stops with me so the computer at clam
yeah everything i say is public and
everyday
well remember that
ah
thank you all a courier yankee
the place
richard do have not aged a day i agree i think it's all my god
the did that smiles the same beginning of last test but that's it
a with all of you wonderful
i wish i were there
feminine gender that i love you
we love your search of no return them take good care they could care how i believe
an
am i a but i i know everyone seemed like everyone
see night every worm
by liz
why everyone leslie thank you so much for doing that how well you held the meeting him he was losing thank you all for nike lesley ann warren
and the area john st lotta catherine for us yeah oh yeah soviet union
really crazy jan will look like santa claus shadow
who is that when and i first saw you i thought who is that these old wood chopper had a chicken beater well you can spend you to look at him
what i say about two months ago three months ago
anyway look good
have you get to see you right now bob great to see you by i don't want to get off
hi guys by everybody and i didn't sleep well a well we like an allergen inches on thank you
but right now