It's been a long time since I've been here. Wonderful to see Catherine. A sight for sore eyes for me, and for you too. Kokyo and you and Shuho have been very good hosts for me. This has been a delight already. So I'm very happy to be here.
I don't think I will remember everyone's name, but I would love to hear everybody's name as we go around. Some of them I know. [Names around the circle:] Kiko, Kiko, Jiyani, Joe, Hira, Rain, Zee, Patrick, Edie, Brian, Lisa, Artie, Karen, Rob, Jane, Carolyn, Sally, Peter, Emily, Chris, Jeff, Lori, Harry, Arden. So glad to see you all.
Well, as I always do in giving a talk, I have some floating ideas, and then I get to where I'm going and I realize that there's lots more going on than I had realized. Coming here just woke Kobun up in me even more than he had been awakened before.
I've been helping to put together a book of memories for our teacher who passed away ten years ago in July. And so we're having a big do up at Jikoji to celebrate that. And the big do includes this beautiful book that's being put together with many, many memories of students from long ago, telling mostly stories of things that happened to him or her as they encountered Kobun — in places like the airport, or going out gathering wood, or taking a ride in the car.
And I'm supposed to give a talk at SFZC this coming weekend about Kobun and his sort of unusual and, I want to say, disturbing ways. We've been talking about how training priests — priests have to be ready for anything, and if everything gets too settled, they should stir things up a bit. And so they thought maybe talking about Kobun would be a real good example of how everything gets stirred up. Just by his — in his case, actually just by the way he did things.
I know a couple of wonderful stories. My favorite stir-up story is a Daido Loori one, where when they first moved into — is it Dai Bosatsu? It was an old house with an old shack in the back, and in the old shack was an old man who had been living there with his dog for many years. And so as they began practicing there, they had coffee out in the back of the house for the early morning students, and milk in the fridge and etcetera, to make it all comfortable. And the old man started making use of that.
And so the sangha became very split. They started arguing about whether the old man was a really kindly old gentleman — he'd been there all those years and they should take care of him. And the other side said he's a dirty old man and he doesn't belong here at all, we're doing zazen and he's interrupting us. And so Daido said, what do we do? What do we do? And they couldn't agree.
So he started a campaign. He started whispering to the people who liked the old man: "Did you see what he did? Ew. He's really — he's not very clean and he's really not very nice." And then he whispered to the other people: "You know that old man? He's really a kindly old fella." And before he knew it, they had switched. And then he gave a dharma talk saying, "Have you all noticed something?" Okay. So that's one way.
But Kobun was more subtle than that, and he didn't have such divisions to deal with either. But his way of being with his students was just to be totally unexpected. In every possible way. He never let anything go by him. He never avoided a kindness.
And so when I thought about this talk, I thought, you know, it should be something amusing — these funny ways that he had. And he did have funny ways. There's a wonderful story in there about a man who really, really wanted to be ordained by Kobun, and kept going, making appointments and trying to see him. And Kobun kept standing him up, which he was good at doing. He did the Japanese way of not saying no — just not being there.
And so finally, this fellow tracked him down in New Mexico. And Kobun finally let him in the house and sat him down and gave him a cup of tea and said, "I'll be right back." And there was a long wait. And finally, the man went into the bathroom and found the window open and Kobun totally gone. He just crawled out the bathroom window. It was not unkind, actually. It was just unexpected.
It's given me another view of him that... and I guess I had it before. As I think about Jikoji and the way he was at Jikoji, he was continually brave and inventive. We inherited sixty people who were already living on the land. Sixty — I always call them drug-crazed hippies, because there was an awful lot of that going on up there. And Kobun invited them all into the zendo and said, "Please come and sit with us." And a number of them did. They didn't stay very long, but they stayed living there, up on the hill. There were geodesic domes all built up on the hill, and tents and cabins, and a lot of dysfunctional activity going on of every kind.
But his way of handling it was so subtle and so inventive. We had endless meetings with these people. And at one point we were sitting on the porch, and they were complaining because the place was a mess. And it was a mess. It was a terrible mess. Sixty people living with absolutely no care about what they were doing. So there was just debris everywhere. And somebody was saying, "This place is a mess, and somebody should do something about it." And Kobun just leaned down in his robes and started picking up the broken glass that was all over the ground. And that got everybody working on it for a while.
So his way of communicating was much more subtle than our American way, which, when I look back, seems terribly brash. We were loud and took him for granted. And didn't appreciate a number of those being-stood-ups, where you'd go to the door and expect to be seeing him, and he wouldn't be there. But even the not-being-there was a kind of way of being with him. And you'd take your question or your issue back inside and have to deal with it yourself. And what else is there anyway?
I think because he was so soft and gentle, we all wanted to sit in his lap. We all wanted to be taken care of. And he never allowed it. He always slipped away and then came back, and was always teaching.
There was somebody who went to meet him at the airport, and the plane was late, and the fellow was upset. And Kobun came off the plane, the very last one, just strolling along. And the fellow started talking to him about the plans for the day, and that Kobun was late, and they had to hurry. And there was a woman weeping in the corner. She'd missed her plane, and her boyfriend was going to wait for her and he went away. And Kobun just went over and sat down with her and let her cry. And then slowly got up and went to the meeting.
So many things that, when I think about my life, I might not do. And yet would like to do — would like to be able to do those things. So it's something to be immensely grateful for, to have some kind of model, impossible as it is.
And yet he was very, very Japanese, and expected us to be American-style without telling us what it was. He told us the basics — how to do oryoki, how to bow to the cushion, and how to bow to everything else. He demonstrated the service, and when I got to the point of needing to know how to do the service, I would watch him like a hawk — and he would do it differently every time. So we learned what we needed, and no more.
And when we went to ask for more, he would say, "I gave you everything. I gave you everything." And of course he did.
There's so much that happens between us that can't be seen. There's so much in meeting with authenticity that can't be described or catalogued in any way. And it's about authenticity on both sides. About clarity on both sides. And a great deal of humility.
He was very humble, even though he was extremely reckless and brash. He was invited to meet the abbot of Eiheiji, whom he knew and had practiced with, down in LA at a big Sotoshu meeting where the bishop was. And we were in the middle of sesshin when they called him to come down. They wanted to see him. So he flew down like a good boy and greeted everyone and was very glad to see them, and said, "My students are sitting in sesshin right now — they need me." And went back to the airport and flew home to us and told us this story. We were kind of aghast. How can you do that? And he did.
There was a kind of boundlessness about him — the kind of boundlessness that Buddha talked about. It's not that there were no bounds, but that the bounds kept changing all the time. If something needed to be done, then by all means let's do it — even if it means looking ridiculous, or losing time, or even being out of money.
I was in the airport with him once, picking him up, and he was met by somebody — some stranger who walked up to him and said, "I don't have any money and I don't know what to do." And Kobun just reached into his pocket and gave him all the money that he had. He just gave it to him. And he may have been sorry later, but at that moment, that was the only thing to do. It makes me feel really tight sometimes, thinking about these things.
He was going out at Tassajara and gathering wood with somebody, for making a little fire. And he gathered lots and lots and lots of wood, and the guy who was with him said, "Kobun, we don't need nearly that much wood." And Kobun said, "We'll just put it aside for the next person." And the guy who experienced that said that changed his whole life completely. It doesn't take very much.
So being here is a kind of wonderful experience — to see it all gussied up in a beautiful way. It's lovely, just lovely.
And to think how rude Kobun was with the sangha at the end. Nobody knows why, but at one point he just didn't come anymore. He said, "I'm not coming anymore." And they all said, "Why? Why? What have we done?" Nobody knows to this day why he changed his mind about coming down here.
Kind of ephemeral, transitional, impossible — but extremely powerful teacher in extremely subtle ways.
But what it brings up for me, even more than a kind of marvel over his ways, is how we do our ways. He was Japanese, so we were always dealing with his Japanese mind, and he was dealing with our American mind — which he loved and hated, I think. He was fascinated by us. Sometimes he wore blue jeans and a cowboy hat. He just loved the whole wild kind of feeling of America. But he didn't understand it very well.
He said he was very scared of his women students. He was always scared of them — they were too powerful.
And he, I think, established Jikoji as he was at the same time teaching San Francisco Zen Center all the forms — which still exist in notebooks on a shelf this big — how to do all the ceremonies, everything from A to Z. And at the same time, he was telling us at Jikoji to make it up. He said, "Write your own Heart Sutra. Write your own four vows. What are your precepts?"
One time, he went up there — after he moved away, he came to visit — and I think it was Ryan, who was sitting in a circle with some folks and starting to tell them about the forms. And he said, "Well, Kobun, what do you think about the precepts?" And Kobun said, "Well, you should make your own." So then they got to work and started making their own precepts.
So I think he was watching us with big eyes to see how we were going to go, how we would develop, if we could carry the dharma in this kind of rude, barbarian kind of way. I mean, we're gaijin to the Japanese, which means foreigner — it's not a very nice name for us. And yet he trusted us. And better than trusting us, he helped us to trust ourselves — which is the most important part of it. Because without that trust, we can't practice. We just spin in circles.
And so what I bring to you tonight is the question that I carry, and so many of us do: How should we do this? How can we do this? We are mostly — almost entirely — lay practitioners, living in houses and raising children and having jobs. And now and then we put on different clothes and take on a different way of life. But the different way of life isn't meant to obliterate or even discount the householder way of life at all.
So our challenge, it seems to me, is how to keep one foot in the zendo and one foot in our house, in a way that doesn't feel like we're doing that. There is easily a split that can arise when we want to make it a "real Zen practice" and then all those people aren't the same.
Kobun said, "If you're sitting zazen and you think the people at home are not practicing, you're making a big mistake." That was a huge lesson for me. And I would go back and forth to sesshin because I couldn't stay for the whole time, because I had three kids. And I began to learn that of course it's happening as we go.
So — how we do this, as gaijin Americans in 2012...
[Questions and discussion]
Q: I'm kind of hearing you express the answer in your storytelling of your teacher, and seeing that much love and that much gratitude and devotion coming through your explanation and storytelling of your teacher — which may be a traditional term called bhakti yoga, or whatever you can put names to it, but it's a devotion, and it's a love. And I have seen that in students. And what mostly I see — this is toward the student, toward the Japanese teacher, where the cultural veil is still there, that allows that to enhance it. But if it comes into the American realm, or the Western realm, the veil doesn't make it so soft anymore. The lines are sharper, you know, and then that [connection] gets locked. So how we do this — I would also like to bring it into that discussion. How can we keep that [connection] point? How can we keep that transmission of life that you're just demonstrating in your talk?
Angie: Well, that's a good question. And that's why we sit. Our sitting is that. And if we're willing and accepting, then that's how we live — as best we can.
Usually people make concessions to the culture. And what I'm suggesting is that we need to make concessions — we are making concessions to the culture in ways that are sometimes wholesome and sometimes not. And how we sort that out, as we come to terms with our practice and the depth of the practice, which encourages us to be with others and still maintain our place as members of our world. How not to be special, and yet to bring that kind of loving care into every aspect of our lives.
Which means being very wide awake. Being able to see and to recognize a weeping woman in a corner — and then be willing to go there.
And when I think about that, that seems like a lot of extra effort, for me, for most of us. For one thing, it's such a speedy culture, such a speedy society, that we often just go right past the things that are happening — including the one in the gorilla suit that just passes by. It's famous. We're famous for that. And how we can slow down enough to be focused enough to cultivate that heart, and to see what needs to be seen, and give it value. Give the other the same value, instead of creating that sense of separation that we're always doing. That's how our mind is created — it's a double mind. But it can be singular.
And I think that's what he — he wasn't a good boy all the time. He fought with his wives, and he had three of them. And yeah, he wasn't a perfect person at all. But he carried the dharma in a way that was teaching all the time, when he was with us. And that's what I honor — not him particularly, but the whole of it. Thank you.
Q: I understand that Korea gave Japan a gift of a bronze Buddha during the medieval period, and they believed that it brought on sickness and they sunk it in the harbor. And sometimes something was foreign at first, and sometimes [it was understood] —
Angie: I think many Japanese in the Zen schools think that we're not nearly there yet. We have a long way to go.
When I went to Japan the first time, I was in my thirties, and I had a braid that came down to here — one braid on one side — and long skirts, long sort of brightly colored skirts. And I insisted on going. So I took my rakusu with me that Kobun had given me — that was bright purple, which later I heard was an abbot's rakusu. Beautiful silk. And I wore it into [a temple].
And when I told people I really wanted to sit, they said, "You — you want to sit? Are you crazy? Only monks sit," they said. So it's a different culture.
There was a woman here last evening who just showed up — she and her husband — and they waited until I was free to talk to them at the end of zazen. And it turns out her name was Andrea. She — you remember? She remembered you. She was an early student of Kobun. She lives in Houston now, and she and her husband were visiting relatives in Santa Cruz.
And I had a very good feeling of them. We spent basically the evening together. At the end of the evening she asked, "Do you think we romanticize our teachers too much?"
Yeah. Of course. Oh yeah. I have Suzuki Roshi's picture in my living room. You tell these stories, and I've been hearing these stories. Yes, I talk like this about Kobun too sometimes.
How do we find our balance? Well, it's not about them. And I think that's where it gets a little funky — that if that guru thing comes in, and people think this person is really special and can do no harm. And I remember how much Kobun was worshipped in that way, and considered to be really a magical kind of person. And what he did — some of the things that he did that were just ordinary, they projected all kinds of stuff on it. And some people are still doing that, just imagining that there's deep meaning in everything that he did. And it wasn't like that.
It was more just like the way the Buddha was described in the very beginning of the Diamond Sutra, when he just stood up and took his bowl and walked into town and gathered his food and came back and ate it. And it was just ordinary, everyday. But it was in a way — in a particular way — that had an effect. But then all the other stuff goes into it as well. I know it does. And that's fine — maybe — unless the really bad stuff gets covered up.
Kobun was an incredible drinker, and by the end he was really an alcoholic. And that was very sad. And he was going to a Chinese doctor to try to get out of it, but he didn't live long enough to do that. And he was not always tactful. In his young years he was crazy about women. So, you know, there were a lot of things that people don't want to talk about, and think, "Oh, you're ruining the image." But — you know, it's not necessary to have an image. It's just necessary to learn.
It's like learning the precepts — you soak up what resonates as right behavior, right understanding, right speech, as it comes to you. That's how I've thought about it.
And yet I was offering — sprinkling wisdom water on Saturday — and I had in my mind the image of Kobun when he was [sprinkling] wisdom water at Carolyn's ordination ceremony. And it was exquisite. Yes, yes — we carry those images. Oh yes, we do.
And I had to struggle with that for years, because I could never be like that. I'm the opposite — I'm a klutz. So your first impulse is to try to be like your teacher, and try to take on that whole persona, and be so exquisitely, you know, do the altar and all those things. And I never manage that. I never will.
I think that's why Kobun did what he did for me when he ordained me. He did it in somebody's memorial service. Somebody's grandmother died during sesshin, and they did a memorial service. And there was my okesa — the okesa that I had sewn three years earlier — and he called me up to the altar and he put it on my head and we did the verse three times and he dressed me in it. And that was the whole ordination.
So it's the way he did things — the careful way he did things — that resonate and are remembered.
Q: How did you understand doing your ordination that way?
Angie: Well, at first I was blown away, of course. But he told me as we walked out that it was not mine — that if somebody came visiting who had left his behind, that I should lend it to him. So I didn't even dare to wear it for a long time.
Not until Blanche invited me to come to Japan. And she invited me twice, and I said, "No, I can't." And then the third time I realized I had to go. So she said, "You bring the okesa. I will show you how to wear it and make you wear it." And she did. So it was like that.
So for me it was a teaching. It was all about my own fear and uncertainty, and deep — I don't know what the word is — but it was like the dharma was my life, and I didn't know how to make it my life. And so I was constantly working on that. And he kept giving me very modest ways of doing that — modest and humble ways — so that it stayed grounded. I stayed with my family, you know.
Q: So your task for yourself is: how do you pass that on?
Angie: Yeah. Yeah. How do you leap out the window? Yes, there are ways. Yes.
Q: Could you please tell us more about what you said a few moments ago about coming — apparently living in contradiction of some precepts, for example with his [wives], or perhaps his drinking — and yet carrying the dharma?
Angie: Well, it's everybody's dilemma, isn't it? And it's how we try to explain how this can be — this two-world kind of feeling is really just one way. So that the world of sharp edges — lives, and life and death, and lots of pain, psychic and other ways — is also the world of truth and light. That it's not over there somewhere, or it's going to be happening sometime when we work hard enough.
But how we live this, in the life of us as we are — as we are right now. And we tend to go leaping into the future in some frantic way, often. There are so many ways we distract ourselves from where we are and who we are. And our practice keeps bringing us back. So practice is the trick.
Q: I came across a phrase the other day, something like this: "The courage to live with one's contradiction."
Angie: Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Thank you.
Helen: In terms of worshipping Kobun — what came up for me was that he came here to teach us zazen. And I think because of zazen, we said yes to it, that it was just natural to appreciate the person who brought it to us. And so my feeling is that it's not that people worshipped him, but that they appreciated themselves and were grateful.
Angie: And I think that is probably the essence of what people [felt] — the things were [difficult], it's true. Yes, I see that too. So much gratitude. Yeah.
Which then really raised the question for me: what is it [that's different] when it's a Western teacher who brings [zazen] to us? It's harder to be grateful, you know. I mean, how many people have a falling out with their teacher, right? And that's it. They have stories about it, conceptual stories about it. And I don't know — that gratitude that seems to come so naturally to so many students over the years, despite all the difficulties that he brought them, and the disappointment from meeting him, and, you know, [not] supporting the expectations...
I don't know. I think there are some teachers who are very fine teachers, whose students are extremely grateful to their teachers. Extremely. You know, I'm taking Darlene Cohen's place [at this center], and I don't find anything except grief that she's gone and tremendous appreciation for everything that she brought to everybody, including me. So it does happen.
It's a mutual thing, you know. If you love your students, they will love you. It's very simple, really. And it isn't about me and you, of course — it's the between.
Patrick: So when I first came here, in addition to appreciating the lectures that I heard, and very engaged in exploring my relationship to practice and sitting, I was also really aware that there was a community here, a sangha, that was really kind of creating a warmth that kept me coming back. How did Kobun promote sangha? And what was that kind of sangha feeling like here, with Kobun?
Angie: Well, I first knew him at Haiku Zendo — which is named after a haiku, a kind of poem. And a lot of the people who were attracted to him were students from Stanford, or poets and artists and musicians. And so the people who gathered around him just naturally coalesced. It didn't last. It was a small group when I first went there.
And as it got larger, he felt that we should develop a larger situation and buy some property. So we did a tremendous fundraising, and then that piece of property [fell through]. And we ended up with a split in the sangha, actually, where half of us wanted a city place and the other half a country place. So we bought both of the places — we bought Kannon-do and Jikoji.
And so the sangha actually split. And most of the sort of poet-artist people were up in the countryside, and the businessmen and the householders stayed down at Kannon-do.
So then we ended up with a Jikoji sangha that included some drug-crazed hippies and runaway kids and all of that. And he embraced everyone. When we wrote the bylaws for Jikoji — that has to be approved by the state of California — when we asked him what we should say about membership, he said, "Oh, we should say all beings are members of our sangha."
So that's how we've been living it, you know. The sanghas coalesce around a teacher, but that's just a little piece of sangha. And everyone and everything else is a part of our sangha too. And that's way beyond the whole question of lineage and all of those things — and of course those are important too, on one level.
But Kobun always spoke on more than one level, and encouraged us to think on more than one level — or feel, feel our way into a situation, rather than just ride on the top.
I don't have a watch, I'm afraid — I forgot it. Is it time? It's over?
Well, thank you all. Thank you very much.
[Closing vows:] Dharma ways are countless, I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it.