Well, good morning, good morning. I was trying to remember the last time I gave a real Dharma talk from this seat, I think it was 18 years ago. It doesn't seem so long, everything seems pretty much the same, maybe a few more statues here and there. So I'm very happy to be here, thank you all for coming. When they asked me, or reminded me that this was my date to come, I said, well, what should someone like me talk about? Because you know I live over the hill in Tam Valley and I have my life. And they said, well, today is Sagaki ceremony this afternoon, and maybe you could say something

[01:01]

about that. Well, Sagaki, for those of you who may not know, or even for those of you who do, is a Japanese ceremony for, it's partly a memorial service, partly something more, and it's unclear to me how Buddhist it is. It certainly is somewhat Buddhist, like many things. I don't know exactly the origins of it. I know the origins of it here. When I was here, living here, Sagaki was something we did every December when we did our memorial service for Suzuki Roshi. And having done a memorial for him, we turned around and did a memorial for all the other people who had died. So that was the genesis, and as I understand, over time, the date of the ceremony got moved to correspond roughly with Halloween. So it's a kind of Buddhist All Saints Day in an exoteric sense.

[02:05]

And that's okay. It's good to have something to do together this time of the year. Probably most cultures have some kind of group or community activity as the leaves change and the weather becomes colder, the sun starts to go away. I'm sure that in ancient times, that was a very frightening thing. One never knew, really, if the sun would deign to come back. It was going, and like many things, it might just keep going. We never knew. So it was nice to do something for the benefit of the sun, make it come back. But also do acknowledge that this is a time of the year when we tend to think about people who have been lost to us or who we remember. There's a little sadness or melancholy that sets in around this time.

[03:08]

It's bittersweet. There's a quality. Some people say, oh, California, you don't have any fall. We don't like that. We like to see the leaves change. My business partner drives to Colorado every year just to see the leaves. And I know there are big tourist deals up in northern Minnesota just for the leaves. People go up there. It's quite a big thing to see the leaves, all the different colors. And we know that the leaves are dying. But they're very beautiful, more beautiful than when they're all green. They're kind of monochromatic at that time. But if we look closely at the Sagaki ceremony, there are some questions about it that we need to look at if we're really going to be Buddhists with it. So, the only immediate teaching here in this lineage that we have from our founder, Suzuki

[04:13]

Roshi, is when he was dying. And we were all there at that time and watched him. I watched him. I was quite young, or in my 20s. And I'd never really been with anybody who was dying. And I kept waiting for some change or something that would say, oh, this is a dying person. But he just was the same. I mean, he started to turn green, and he became weaker, and there were all these dire things that we'd been told. But as far as he was concerned, it was just business as usual. I remember being very distraught. I'd just been ordained then, and my teacher was dying. So I was very distraught. And that summer, I had taken some wood from the remains of an olive tree that grew at Tassajara up in the upper level where the Zendo now is.

[05:14]

Maybe it's not there anymore. But at the time, the olive tree had died, but there were saplings coming out of the root. So I took one of those saplings, and I carved a walking stick for Suzuki Roshi. I was very diligent doing it. It was a gift to my teacher. I thought he would need it as he got weaker. And I gave it to him, and he said, oh, thank you. And then I never saw him use it. So I'd keep peering down the hall. His room was not far from my room, and I'd watch him come out to see if he was using the stick. And he wouldn't be using it. It must have been obvious as anything to him. So finally, one day, he tapped out, and he had the stick. And I was very happy, and then he never used it again. He didn't really need it. When he could walk, he walked, and he walked just like he always walked. He laughed just like he always laughed.

[06:15]

He was, I mean, to all intents and purposes, quite outwardly unaffected by the fact that his body was rapidly turning to ashes before our eyes. Of course, that wasn't the whole story. This was a big tragedy for us, for him, for everybody. And I heard later that to someone privately, he said, I don't want to die. That was strangely comforting to me that he would say that. I mean, that's the way everybody would feel. Nobody wants to die. So, that was really his teaching to all of us, was there was no teaching, really. The teaching was that he didn't change at all.

[07:15]

There were some little unusual things, like he arranged to die the morning of the first day of a five-day Seshen. I don't quite know how he did that, but he thought that would be a good time for all of us. So, we woke up that first day, and I was hitting the bells. His wife came down and called to me, and I jumped like a, you know, I kind of knew that she wouldn't come unless it was a big deal. And then we had five days to figure out what had happened. So, that was a kindness, I thought. There's a lot to Buddhism, because anything that's been around for 2,500 years accumulates

[08:18]

a lot of things. But, fundamentally, it's not that complicated to say. It's pretty complicated to do. But one time, I think it was David Chadwick, who is Suzuki Roshi's biographer, David was always the most outspoken and, how shall I say, unintimidated student that we had. And, one day, I don't think I was there, but I've heard the story from him a number of times. Maybe it's in his book. You know, all these things, after so many years, I don't even know whether they're true. But they're good, anyway. He said, he raised his hand after a lecture like this one, and said, Suzuki Roshi, you keep talking about emptiness, and form is emptiness, and all this stuff, and the Sandokai, and Dharma, and Karma, and I don't understand anything.

[09:18]

Just say one thing that is what Buddhism is about. Something like that. I don't know what he said, really. I'm probably exaggerating and doing injustice to poor David, but you understand, I mean, he was very sincere. It was a very real moment. And Suzuki Roshi took it completely seriously. He didn't smile, he didn't act dismissive, or say, oh, this is a new student, you know, he's got his problems. He just sat there, and then he quietly said, everything changes. And then we went on to the next question, that was all. Now it may sound flippant to say, oh, that's Buddhism, everything changes. Everything changes is like a bumper sticker, you know. You can read that on, you know, somebody's private website, everythingchanges.com. It seems trivial. But this is the Buddha's first teaching.

[10:24]

It's the first thing, really, that came out of his mouth, the first thing he realized. And I was realizing as I was thinking about this, we're kind of hostage as Westerners to the vocabulary and terminology of the scholars that first teased out and translated Buddhism. So for example, the word enlightenment, you know, that was really D.T. Suzuki's translation of a Japanese word, satori, which doesn't exactly have a Sanskrit equivalent. It's a Japanese thing. So we're stuck with that, and we think about that, talk about that. And in the same way, we hear this word impermanence, anicca. Anicca, Sanskrit's very much like English, and anicca, not eternal, anicca. So anicca is the first truth of Buddhism, and it is usually translated as impermanence.

[11:28]

But impermanence, the more I think about it, is very much a scholar's word. It's a very dry word. You know, it's a Latin word, really, impermanent. It doesn't have much, at least for me, much emotional zap. But if I were to say, everything dies, see, that's a lot stronger. And then we're back to sagaki, the ceremony about dying, about those who have died, about what it's all about. Everything dies. We die. All that we love dies. Not only that, dying is happening all the time, beneath our feet, everywhere we look. Insects die in two weeks. Fish die in two years.

[12:31]

Dogs die in 20 years. We die in 60 or 70 years. Impermanence isn't nearly strong enough. We have to say something like, radical impermanence, or everything dying all the time. But that sounds very gloomy, and the first thing that anybody noticed when they came to Zen Center when Suzuki Roshi was alive is that this little man was constantly giggling all the time and laughing. And it wasn't until years later we learned that he'd had a very tragic life, much more tragic than most, and a lot of disappointment, a lot of things very bad happened. You can read about it in his biography. He was kind of a laughing machine in some ways. Everything was funny to him. We were particularly funny. He thought we were just a gas. But he would do anything for us. In fact, he died for us. I'm sure that coming to America the way he did and living the way he did, it shortened

[13:35]

his life considerably. It was all he thought about was bringing the Dharma to Americans. I think the Second World War was very much in the background of his thinking. We were once their enemy, and the whole country that was his native land was sworn to destroy us. And time healed those wounds somewhat, and in 1959 he showed up here in the enemy, former enemy land. We never thought about it much, but I think there was something in his thinking about that, to bring the best thing, as he put it, to bring the best thing Japan had to offer rather than blood and violence to its enemy, its former enemy, and show us that his culture had something very precious that he could share. They say that, if you read the newspapers, that we're at war.

[14:39]

And the ending of things, I think, is very much on people's minds these days. We say, oh, you know, 5,000 people, it seems too much to bear. But to be very honest about it, and not let ourselves off the hook, it's just that we noticed it was in the newspaper, you know, 7,000 people a week die on the highway. It doesn't make the headlines, so we don't notice that that dying took place too, that all over the world, everywhere, everything is constantly going away, leaving us. When the Buddha was asked directly about this, this passage I'm going to read is from one of my favorite books, and I want to give it a plug, even though it's out of print. The Buddha, His Life Retold, Robert Alan Mitchell, preface by Roshi Philip Kamplo.

[15:53]

This man, Robert Alan Mitchell, was an amateur astronomer. And in his attic, in his spare time, apparently, he taught himself Pali, which is the language of the first Buddhist scriptures, and on his own, in secret, translated large portions of the scripture, and left that manuscript to be discovered after he died, and it was, and this is it. I think it's the best book about the actual words of the Buddha that you can find. His translation is quite wonderful. This passage is one of the best known in the scriptures. It's often called the 14 Unanswerables, but that doesn't really do it justice. I won't read it all, but this is called Vajragotra's Questions. And once a wanderer by the name of Vajragotra came to the Perfect One and greeted him with a friendly salutation, and then he said, Well, Venerable Gautama, is it your opinion that the universe is eternal?

[16:56]

I am not of the opinion, Vajra, that the universe is eternal, replied Buddha. And Vajra immediately thought, OK, I've got him. Then it seems, revered Gautama, that you believe the universe to be temporal, right? I mean, if it's not eternal, it's got to be temporal. But Vajra, I do not hold the opinion that the universe is temporal. Well, is it your opinion the universe is infinite? No, Vajra. That the universe is finite? No, Vajra. That life is the same as the body? No, Vajra. That life is other than the body? No, Vajra. That an arhat exists after death? No, Vajra. An arhat is an enlightened person. That an arhat exists, or anybody really, that an arhat exists after death? No, Vajra. And it goes on. There's 14 of these things. And they banter about it more. And finally, Vajra says, well, has Venerable Gautama any opinion on anything? The term opinion, Vajra, has been, now it becomes very scriptural.

[17:59]

The term opinion, Vajra, has been discarded by the Tathagata. What has been perceived by the Tathagata is body, feelings, perceptions, formations. These are the things we chant in the Heart Sutra. We say, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color. Now, this is it. So they go on and on. Finally, the Buddha says, this Dharma, Vajra, is profound, subtle, hard to see, hard to comprehend, beyond the sphere of mere logic, to be understood only by the wise. And finally, Vajra Gautama didn't give up easily. He says, finally, Venerable Gautama, have you nothing to say about the existence of the soul? Does the soul exist? At these words, the perfect one was silent. Silent is in capital letters in this translation. So it isn't like ordinary silence. He was silent. How is it, Venerable Gautama, is there no such thing as the soul?

[19:03]

The perfect one was silent. Now, people think that Zen, which did come a lot later, is kind of different than the so-called original Buddhism. But this particular passage gives the lie to that opinion. This dialogue could have come directly out of the Majamaka school of Nagarjuna. Or, in fact, there is a Zen koan that's very similar to this, although it's a bit more down to earth. A master and student were going together to perform a funeral. And do some of you know this story? A student, who's obviously working very hard on something very deep, can't contain himself. And in the middle of this rather somber ceremony, he runs up and he bangs on the coffin.

[20:04]

And he says, is it alive or dead? Very rude. Okay, very rude. It's somebody else's funeral. The people are all there. They're trying to be respectful. And he says, is it alive or dead? He's totally wrapped up in his own world. And the teacher is not dismayed. This is what he's there for. And he says, I won't say. I won't say. And the story is a lot longer than this. It goes on for years. Finally, at a certain point, the student says, if you won't say, I'll hit you. Well, this is in the Chinese Confucian society. This is like capital offense, you know, to hit the superior person. And the master says, quite calmly, I won't say. And he gets hit. Eventually, the guy who keeps asking about is it alive or dead figures something out and comes to some resolution. But it's years later. In the sagaki ceremony, which they'll do here at Green Gulch this afternoon,

[21:27]

there is a memorial quality to it. All the names of people who have died during the year are submitted by the attendees of the ceremony. And then those names are read out. But there's also a part of the ceremony where there's an evocation or an invocation of the so-called hungry ghosts. And hungry ghosts in Buddhism are a type of being that, interesting kind of being, that has a great deal of hunger, but a very narrow throat. So it's a constantly unsatisfied kind of existence. It may be pretty similar to a human being, but more exaggerated. Anyway, in the ceremony, the hungry ghosts

[22:29]

are implored to open their throats and be fulfilled, not by food, but by the truth, the dharma. Well, we can just do a ceremony like this. Because it's very beautiful and comforting. It makes us feel better about something that's very difficult to face. But if we're truly rigorous as Buddhists, we have to be like Vajragotri, or the Zen guy who said, is it alive or is it dead? Do we mean to imply in such a ceremony that after people die, they persist in some way, that their soul does exist, that they become hungry ghosts? Do all the people who die become hungry ghosts? Some of the people? Do we invoke all of them just to sort of make sure we get everybody like a kind of insurance policy, even though...

[23:30]

Is it true, like the Tibetans seem to imply, that we're reincarnated in some other way? Even the early sutras talk about, one of the reasons Buddhists don't kill anything is because you never know, that moth might be your mother. And they're quite serious about this, that little moth might be your mother or your father. Because everything changes, everything turns into everything else. Throughout the world, it seems that one of the major elements of most religion is, well, we don't really die. There's a heaven, or we're reincarnated, or we're a hungry ghost who can be helped by the ceremony today. Somehow we go on. And such a thought is comforting, beyond belief, really.

[24:48]

It helps us. And there's no question that having such a belief eases our pain. I remember when I was quite ill recently, I was lying in bed and thinking, gosh, it's such a drag to be a Buddhist. If I believed in God, I could let God take care of me. But I'm a Buddhist, so I can't. I have to deal with it myself. And I felt cheated for a little while, that I didn't have some deep faith, that I could turn my fate over to some higher power. Which is not to say that there is some higher power, or there isn't. Vajragotra asked some version of those questions, and the Buddha was quite radically unresponsive. But are we comfortable, are we content to leave it this way,

[25:51]

that, oh, the ceremony is okay, we don't take it literally anyway, there aren't really hungry ghosts, we're just kind of pretending that there are, because that's the way the ceremony goes, and so on. Or do we take this as an opportunity to really look at what we're doing? One time during Zazen, Suzuki Roshi spoke up and said, sometimes Zazen doesn't help. We think as Zen students that, well, at least we have Zazen. We can always return to Zazen. I didn't really believe what he said anyway.

[27:00]

I thought he was just doing some Zen master thing. But a lot of times you continue to learn from your teacher many years after he's gone, and I'm no exception. I think I can confirm what he said. Sometimes Zazen doesn't help. Another time he said to a student who was querying him much in the way of Vajra Gocha about trust. What can we trust? What can we count on? And he casually remarked as though he were talking about the weather, kind of sotto voce, I don't trust anything. What? Is this guy suddenly some paranoid geek who doesn't trust anything, isn't bound by affection to things in this world? It's a very odd thing to say.

[28:03]

If you take it at face value, I don't trust anything. But it's some kind of version of everything dies. How can you trust anything if you truly understand that whatever we love in this world, whatever we care for, is going to go away. Not going to go away, it's going away now. See, the going to go away is one of our ways of putting it off. It isn't radical to say, well, one day. One day we'll all be gone. We know that in our heads. Yes, that's true. But practically speaking, we are quite comfortable with the notion of persisting at least for a while. To quote the words of Woody Allen Roshi, no, I'm serious about that. We take wisdom in our culture where we can get it.

[29:05]

He says, I think some of you may know this, it's not that I'm afraid of dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens to me. sometimes zazen doesn't help. I really thought for a long time that at least zazen would help, my gosh. Otherwise, what's the point? But the Zen lore has an answer for everything. There is another Zen story that was particularly important to me at a certain time. Probably you've all read it or heard it. This was a time when the great teacher Nantuan was young

[30:11]

and he was doing zazen very diligently in a hall very much like this one. And his teacher Mazu, who was probably one of the great figures in Zen, Suzuki Roshi loved Mazu. This was long before there was any sects in Zen or Soto or Rinzai or anything. This was in the very early days. And Mazu came by and he says, hey, what are you doing? This was in the days when people could talk during zazen and the teacher would come in and do anything. It wasn't quite so formal. And Nantuan said, oh, I'm trying to make a Buddha, meaning himself. And Nantuan walked over to the corner and picked up a stone tile and started to rub it. Do you know this story? It's very famous, started to rub it. And although he probably didn't literally say so, the story has it that Nantuan said, oh, what are you doing? Duh. And Mazu said, I'm making a mirror.

[31:14]

And they complete the thought, which is already implied. Nantuan says, how can you make a mirror out of a stone tile? And Mazu says, how can you make a Buddha by sitting zazen? What is zazen anyway? It's nothing. It's just you on a cushion. Everything that it is is what you are. So it isn't anything, really. It's just you. It's different for everybody here. And if you think sitting there is going to do anything, that's already Nantuan saying, I'm on some kind of conveyor belt that will lead from ignorance to awakening. I just sit here long enough. The factory will produce me somehow. A Buddha will fall out. And Mazu is, you know, this is not that different than Vajagotra and Gautama, the dialogue. You know, is there life after death or isn't there life after death?

[32:19]

Is it alive or dead? And it's not exactly that we come to the point where we don't care about life or death. On the wooden board that we hit in Zen Monastery to keep time, there's a verse that begins, life and death is a big deal. That's a colloquial translation, but it'll do. And it's not like two different things. It's one concept, life, death. All it says is life, death. And it's not as though there's life and then there's death. And they're both big deals. The whole thing together is a big deal. And it's not as though we get to the point where, oh, I don't mind if I die. It's fine, you know. What are we saying? Are we saying that we don't understand the preciousness of being here, of being alive, which is the same preciousness that every human being in the world feels?

[33:24]

Are we distinct from that? Have we stepped aside? There was a very interesting quote in David Chadwick's new book, Called to Shine One Corner of the World. Have you all seen it? It's a collection of quotations of Suzuki Roshi. And he included one I'd never heard before, which I thought was very interesting. Some new person was saying to Suzuki Roshi, well, you know, if I understand what you're trying to say, it sounds as though you are getting to the point that you've given up the will to live. And Suzuki responded, yes, but you don't develop the will to die. Even he, at the extreme moment, said, I don't want to die. So it's too simple, too logical to say, well, the whole point here is to become fearless,

[34:33]

to become calm in the face of death. That's a common misunderstanding. And I think that the Japanese form of Zen got a little confused with the patronage of the warrior class there during the Middle Ages, where they had a professional need to become fearless in the face of death, because they fought with very sharp swords. You're right up close with those swords, and they're razor sharp. And in order to wield them effectively, you have to control your emotions. So it was very important to them in a practical sense to develop the ability to face an opponent with a weapon like that and not be frightened. If you're frightened, you don't move properly. You slip or something. But it's a mistake to think that that's Buddhadharma.

[35:35]

Are we afraid of death, or are we not afraid of death? I won't say. You know, there's a quality in the Buddhist literature which I've always found rather charming, and partly it's propaganda, because the Buddhists, at the time of their origin, were in competition, really, with the Brahmanic tradition of wise people, of which this guy Bhattagotra was presumably one. He was a yogin of some Hindu sect. And the way it's told, the Buddha teaches human beings during the day, but at night he teaches the gods, the Hindu gods.

[36:38]

So right away you understand who's on top in this scenario. The Buddhists are better. But that's just a superficial understanding. A lot of Buddhist sutras are kind of propaganda. The whole notion, you may have heard this word Hinayana. Hinayana means the small vehicle. That was the later Buddhists putting down the early Buddhists, and so on and so forth. There's a lot of that. But if you get past that, it's described that the gods come. They congregate in the Buddha's hut, and he teaches them, tries to teach them. But strangely enough, they're quite slow, very hard for them to get it. They try, you know. Indra, who's the king of the gods, is particularly dense, doesn't seem to pick up much. And the understanding is that it's not really so good to be a god. It may look pretty good, because the gods don't die, at least not for a very long time,

[37:44]

maybe 10 billion years. It's a pretty long time. And they don't suffer. They're gods. But it's very hard for them to get anything real. They don't understand much, because they don't pick up on the reality that everything comes to an end. Everything's always coming to an end. So the way the Buddhists set it up is that the gods live a long time until their karma runs out, and then their karma runs out, and then their karma runs out, and then their really in bad shape. Because all that time, they haven't learned anything. And they're stuck in some other realm all of a sudden, and gosh, they're really sad that they've wasted all that time as a god. Now most of us would say, well, being a god isn't so bad. Maybe I'll try it for a couple million years at least, and then maybe I'll have a job change or something. But there's a deeper meaning to this.

[38:47]

I'm sure that I'm always thinking, you know, trying to cut through the mythology of what was really going on. The India of ancient times was very much like poor countries today, only worse. There were desperately poor people who lived desperate lives and didn't live very long. And then there were a few very, very wealthy people, rajas, kings, who lived for those days a life of splendor. And I'm sure that every so often these people would come by in their palanquins and chariots and armed guards and jewels, and it was like seeing a god. Sort of like somebody in a very poor part of the world with a little satellite dish watching Dallas on TV, you know, same kind of deal. Who are the gods of this world? Who are the people that the poor person looks up to and says, oh, those people, they're gods, they don't suffer. You know, and they have a combination of envy and hatred, really.

[39:53]

But also they would like to be gods, too. They think, well, gosh, it's very much like, you know, when we first tried to have some kind of environmental treaty, the developed countries went down to Brazil, I think it was, and tried to get the developing world to buy into this notion. And the developing countries all said, look, you guys have had 150, 200 years to rape the world and use up coal and pollute and all that before you've finally gotten wise about ecology. Can't we have the same amount of time before we have to do that? Because otherwise it's not fair, you know. You guys got to enjoy all that high standard of living, and we didn't, and now you want to impose your newfound religion on us. So there was a lot of arguments that way. And perhaps now it's become quite a bit more serious. Same kind of argument, you know. The Buddhists really stress the point that to be a human being with all the difficulties

[40:56]

and all the suffering that we have, and to be conscious, to be conscious unlike any other kind of being, to know, to have self-awareness that we and everything we love will pass away, is the best place to be. Far superior to being a god, far superior to being a hungry ghost, far superior to all the other realms of being that they teach about. In fact, there's a story that is in the sutras somewhere about a turtle floating in the ocean. Not an ordinary turtle. Its only eye is in its stomach. So it's floating around, and the eye is down. And it's developed this wish in its mind to see the sun. It really wants to see the sun. But it can't. I mean, first of all, the only eye it has is facing down. And how is it going to turn around and get up there?

[41:58]

There's no way for a turtle to do that. So the idea, they say, is that suppose there's a board floating around in the vast ocean with a hole in it. It's just the right size for a turtle to grab up. They're very imaginative about this. What they're trying to say is this is the great chance to be a human being. This is how rare it is. This is how wonderful it is to be human. It's not that easy. It's like being a turtle in the ocean and finding that board, finding that birth. So to be somewhat hasty and say, oh, well, you know, I've become so spiritually advanced that death doesn't frighten me. I'm not afraid. If I go away or anybody goes away, I'm immune. That's not quite enough. That's like slipping off and trying to be a god, you know. Part of being human is that we love. And it's very, very painful to see what we love disappear.

[43:03]

How painful it must have been for Suzuki Roshi to see at the very inception of his lifelong dream to bring the Dharma to the West. And he had hundreds, thousands of students. He had a monastery. And in the very beginning of that, the middle of it, he had to leave. How painful it was for me and for all of his disciples who had a dream, too. We had finally found someone that was so great who really understood what we needed. I don't think it was easy for him. I don't think it's easy for anyone. If you think it's easy, there's something slippery about that. And at the same time, we can't become gloomy.

[44:08]

That was what I meant to tell you the story about how Suzuki Roshi was. He was not gloomy. It was amazing. He laughed at the same silly jokes that he did to his disciples. Two years before. And I don't think it was just an act for us to make us feel better. It's just that was the way he was. The pain of the situation and the joy of the situation were not two things. And that teaching has been enough to sustain me for over 30 years. I've never forgotten it. He used to complain, one of his few complaints about us all, he would say to people, mostly in Japanese, to people who understood Japanese, Americans are so serious. Why are they so serious? I think he had a lot more to say than just serious.

[45:12]

But, you know, I don't think he wanted to elaborate too much. By serious, he meant something, I don't know, linear about the way we're going about this. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. And it's okay. He accepted us so wonderfully. And those were the hippie days. I mean, there were people that came to Zen Center. Everybody's pretty. In those days, my gosh, it wasn't just how people looked. It was how they smelled sometimes. And it was never a problem for him. There was one guy who used to come. He liked to come during session, and he would noisily bop in. He was very unkempt, and he would sit down. He'd never follow the schedule. He'd get up in the middle of Zazen and walk around. One time he got up and hit all the bells. And every time we were sitting there, you know, in Zazen, and his voice boomed out.

[46:13]

If you hit me with that stick, I'll kill you with my mind. I was always waiting for the master, you know, to do something. Why wouldn't Suzuki Roshi do something about this guy? He didn't belong here, you know. But, you know, he would never do anything. He would never do anything. In a lecture, this was a big deal for me. I'm sure it's not so memorable for other people. But this guy was sitting quite close to Suzuki Roshi, like maybe you to me, you know. We were all kind of crowded in this room, and there was a candle like that. And this guy decided that his job in life was to blow out the candle. So he would sit there, and while Suzuki Roshi was trying to talk, he would go, You know, real clown kind of thing. And I started to get really nervous.

[47:15]

I thought, this guy's nuts, you know. He's going to hurt Suzuki Roshi. Who knows what he can do? He's an idiot. And Suzuki Roshi completely ignored him through the whole lecture, you know, everything. And then he got up, you know, to do his bows, like I will do shortly. And then he whirled around and went to the candle and blew it out. And then he was just so full of laughter. He was like, couldn't stand up. He was laughing so hard. He walked out, and he was like staggering, you know, just completely undone. And I think this is related to his comment about Sirius. You know, he had such a good time, not just with this guy, but with us. You know, he could feel, you know, how we were. And I mean, to him, there was something wonderful about this American hippie, you know, or whatever. He lived for that, you know, he lived for that. And he died for that.

[48:16]

And it's hard for me to express today, you know, how I feel about it. But it was something quite great, something that you very rarely see in this world, kind of like the turtle. And a friend of mine who's a Buddhist teacher, just after the September 11th events, terror attacks, said to me something I hadn't really thought about. He said, you know, I listen to these people on TV, religious people, they're saying, you know, how can we fathom? How can we understand this suffering? We have to have faith. We can't understand. And he said, you know, we Buddhists may not know much, but we certainly know something about suffering. That's kind of our thing. And the one thing we don't really need to have faith about is suffering, because it's very clear in our teachings why we suffer, you know. So that's the one thing we're kind of clear about. We may be out to lunch about almost everything else, but at least we have a clear sense. And I thought, yeah, that's maybe something we can offer at this time,

[49:26]

this very difficult time, is that we suffer for a reason. We suffer because everything is connected. We suffer because everything is always passing away right before our eyes, and there's no Woody Allen moment where we can kind of wait and, you know, put it off and try not to be there when it happens. That's natural. That's the reason why that's funny, is because it's so human, you know, to say that. And I don't think Buddha Dharma can be anything in the West or anywhere in the world, really, unless it's human, completely human. And I think that that's one way that we can understand a ceremony like Sagaka, is to understand it as a human being, not as a god or as a hungry ghost. To the extent that there are hungry ghosts, we're the hungry ghosts.

[50:30]

I mean, there is no afterlife that's in the future. The only life there is is the life that happens right now. The only Sagaki that there is, is the Sagaki that's happening, when is it? Five o'clock this afternoon? That's when it's going to happen. Any hungry ghosts that are around are going to be right there at five o'clock. They're not going to be floating around in some kind of ethereal zone waiting for us to open their throats. They're here. And one way I think that we can more rationally understand how we can continue and why the Sagaki ceremony moves us is that we continue. We exist in others and we continue in others. We're not just me, you know. I'm not just me. I'm everyone who knows me, who has known me. And you're all in me too. We're all mixed up. And in a very real way, when we gather together to

[51:35]

evoke the hungry ghosts of the world, the unresolved pain, the suddenness, the disorientation, the complete tragedy of it all, it's all happening right there, you know. And whoever has died, we use the past tense, is dying and living, you know, at the same time. When we say life-death, we mean two halves of the same thing, you know. We can't really understand one without the other. You can't die unless you're alive, in other words. So this ceremony, although probably it's about 60 percent Japanese ancestor worship, or maybe more, I don't know, there's enough Buddhism in it to make it worthwhile, I think. I haven't done it in a long time. I think I may have even led one. It shows you how quickly memory makes things fade.

[52:37]

But I think that it's worthwhile because it gives us an opportunity to be like that guy in the story, you know. Is it alive or is it dead? If that isn't our question as well as his question, then there's something a little bit, you know, we're not really fulfilling what Suzuki Roshi came here to do, which is to give us something we didn't already have, something fresh. He used to say, I love America because there's such a spiritual vacuum here. It wasn't a put-down. He just was being honest, you know. He just, it was really fresh for him. And, you know, he spent the first 55 years of his life being a kind of country Japanese priest with hardly any students and not much recognition. But underneath there was something that was waiting to come out.

[53:42]

And we are the inheritors, you all, even though you never knew him, are the inheritors of his dharma, his tradition, his energy, which is enormous. I come out here after so many years and I look around and see everybody running around, most of whom I don't know. And they're his descendants, you know. All of you are. And it continues to, I mean, my wife and I were eating breakfast the other day. And, you know, we were allergic to milk. So we drink soy, silk, soy milk. And I turned the box around and there was a quote from Suzuki Roshi on the milk carton. In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind, there are few. Do you remember that from Zen mind? There it was on the milk carton, you know. And then underneath was Yogi Berra. You can't think and hit at the same time. And the title was Two Yogis. I mean, if anybody had any doubt whether he made it to America, I think that,

[54:49]

you know, that milk carton really set that question to rest. You know, he's here. And I think we can all be very grateful. So, my gosh. I got, from the second grade on, I got graded down for talking too much. Thank you all very much.

[55:15]

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