November 6, 1967 [Originally misdated - Friday, February 18, 1966]
Lecture B
KPFA/KPFB Studio, Pacifica Radio, Berkeley, CA
Elsa Knight Thompson:1 —by telling us something more about our
guest, Suzuki Roshi.
Richard Baker: Roshi came to America about six years ago, and he was only going
to stay for a year or two and [2 words]. Many Americans came to meditate with
him. He kept postponing leaving, and finally there was such a large group
meditating with him in San Francisco we had no more room, and there wasn't an
opportunity to study with him as well as if we had a place in the mountains.
And, we found Tassajara Hot Springs, which is a beautiful, old, historical hot
springs and historical site in the San Lucia Mountains.
Thompson: Now, we're still talking about Suzuki Roshi. Didn't he have a
congregation in Japan prior to coming to this country?
Baker: Yes.
Thompson: We can ask him at what—prior to coming to the United States—
SR: I was appointed by our headquarters to Sokoji Temple. And while I was
there, I would sit every morning, and many Caucasians started to join my
practice. That is why I started sitting with Caucasians.
Thompson: In Japan you were a Zen priest attached to a monastery or a center? What
would the proper explanation be?
SR: I was the head priest of Rinsoin, which is a pretty big temple, and I was
always helping the monastery near there.
Thompson: I see. You were attached to a temple, and you worked also with the
Zen monasteries. And you came to this country for a visit and acquired so many
people who wish to study with you that there was first a congregation in San
Francisco, was there not?
SR: Yes.
Thompson: And then this whole situation expanded suddenly into something which
is now the Zen Mountain Center. And perhaps, Richard, you could tell us how the
Zen Mountain Center came about? Where it is and so on as you started to do a
while ago, but I wanted the audience to have a little better acquaintance with Suzuki
Roshi before we began on the center.
Baker: It's in the San Lucia Mountains down inland from the big coast about ten
miles. Should I say something more about his background in Japan or anything
like that? It's not exactly clear. Let me say that Sokoji, which he mentioned,
is the name “Sokoji.” “Soko” stands as the Japanese shortening for San
Francisco—“ji” is temple—is the Japanese congregation in San Francisco which he
was asked to come to because he knew English.
Thompson: I see.
Baker: And there are very few Zen masters. There's two major sects. There's Soto and
Rinzai, and there's only about 20 Zen masters or less, maybe 10 in Soto. And we
were lucky to have him come here, and he was only going to come for about two
years, and then he was going to go back to Japan. And then he—because so many
people needed him to stay, he stayed.
The San Lucia Mountains are part of the Los Padres National Forest, which
stretches from about Carmel Valley down to the Hearst Castle. It's about
350,000 acres—much of it is a wilderness area. And right in the middle of it,
the northern middle of it, there's Tassajara Hot Springs. There's a 20-mile dirt road that passes from
Carmel Valley up through the mountains over a 5,000-foot pass and down into
this narrow valley where the hot springs are. We bought the 160 acres
surrounding—well, we're still in the process. We've paid two payments, about
$90,000 on it. We still have $220,000 to go or something over the next two
years. And, we purchased it and, because so many people gave us money, and
helped us, we really weren't prepared to start a training period and monastery
operation right away, but we felt obligated to do so, and this summer we ran
our first practice period. More than 200
students, probably, all together participated, 70 students at a time staying
for a month to two months to a year.
Thompson: Well, are there buildings and things of that sort that were connected
with its previous use, so that you have been able simply to move in and, for
the time being at least, make do with the physical facilities that are there?
Baker: Right. The facilities are beautiful old buildings. In Buddhism you talk
about the dao or the way. Well, the road
itself was built by Chinese who'd worked on the railroad. And it's a road that
couldn't be built now—it's too complicated and expensive. It's rather
precipitous mountain country. They built
the road by hand, laying stones up and then packing dirt on it. The road still
exists, and they built these buildings about 100 years ago, quarrying the rocks
themselves.
We've changed the buildings. Put a large zendo or meditation hall in the
largest building. Made a guest dining hall in one of the other buildings, so
the people who have been coming there for years for the hot baths can continue
to come. And made a dormitory and equipped all the cabins for the students. And
have done an enormous amount of work making it—the students do all the work
themselves. We cook for ourselves and take care of ourselves and grow food.
Thompson: Well, now you say about 200 people were there this summer. Is it simply a cooperative effort, or do they
come there for specific training? Is there a fee for courses? How physically do
you go about all this, before we get on to its significance?
Baker: In a Zen monastery—“monastery” is not such a good translation of the
word that's used in Japan, because monastery in America usually means monastic
life, and exclusion from outside society, and a place where you live maybe all
your life. In Zen, it would be better to translate it as “practice center” or
something. It's a place where you go for intensive meditation study and
practice with other people and with your Zen master or your Roshi for a period
of time. It may be three months, or four months, or a year, but it's not for a
lifetime, and you're expected to go back into ordinary society again.
Generally, you stay two or three months and then go back into ordinary society
and then back two or three months. Over
a period of several years, you might do this to develop your practice.
And students pay two dollars a day if
they stay a short time—, or they pay a dollar if they stay a longer time, and a
few students don't pay anything if they're staying a year or something like
that.
Thompson: Well now, another thing that “monastic” means is that it's all male.
Baker: This is men and woman.
Thompson: This is men and woman. [Laughs.] I wanted to be clear about that. Now that explains more or less the physical
aspects of the situation. I take it that Suzuki Roshi will in fact be in
residence at the Zen Mountain Center most of the time, so that the students
will come and go, but you will remain more or less stationary. Is that it, Suzuki
Roshi?
SR: I was moving there so much, and at first I didn't have that idea of staying
there all the time. But recently, the Japanese congregation agreed to my stay in
Tassajara most of the time. Recently we had a meeting, and they agreed to it.
So I can stay most of the time at the center or the monastery.
Baker: The Japanese congregation has been very reluctant to give him up.
Thompson: This is the Japanese congregation—
Baker: In San Francisco.
Thompson: —in San Francisco? Yes.
Baker: But they've helped us a great deal, and we have two other priests—both
younger Zen priests—one who's in charge in San Francisco named Katagiri Sensei,
and a new, young, brilliant priest we brought from Japan, who's in Tassajara at
the mountain center when Suzuki Roshi is not there. And he's there all the
time, and his name is Chino Sensei.
Thompson: Well, let me ask you questions which may seem to be completely beside
the point. There have been a number of people who have lectured on Zen, among
them Alan Watts, whom I believe is concerned with this center also. There are
places where, in general, the problems of the mind and the spirit and
psychology are discussed at length, like the Esalen situation. What would you
say distinguishes what you are trying to do from the other things which appear
to be in some way related?
[Suzuki laughs.]
What—now, don't both of you sit there and ask the other one the answer. I will
ask you to both answer in succession.
Baker: Who's first?
Thompson: I don't care which one of you goes first, but I want an answer from
both of you.
Baker: Okay. If you look at it sociologically or something like that, there's
an underlying change in orientation going on in society which is at the basis
for people when they first get interested in Zen, or when they go to an Esalen
encounter program, or other things of that interest. But once you're into the
practice of Zen, it's quite different because we so thoroughly emphasize the
identity of body and mind. You can practice from a mental point of view or a
physical point of view, but both really are one. We emphasize the directness of
this kind of practice, that goes beyond mental or emotional or physical. And in
order to practice, we emphasize sitting as calmly as possible, so that you know
your mind and body before it takes any activity. In other words, if you sit as
calmly as possible in a meditation posture—it doesn't necessarily have to be
lotus posture or anything like that—it can be in a chair with a certain way of thinking about things,
it frees you from conceptual ways of thinking about things. You come to know
your mind and body before they take any activity. And out of that balance or
almost a kind of silence, you take your activity. And this strong orientation
in this direction is different from the others, I think.
Thompson: And your answer?
SR: Please, continue.
Thompson: No, he said what he wanted to say for the time being, I think. And,
I'd like to know from you. You had come into the American society at a certain
very turbulent period in America's development in every way, when this country
is, without doubt, the most powerful country in the world, and in the minds of
many the most dangerous. You came for a purpose. You are attempting to fulfill
that purpose. What purpose in the context of this society, which you have now
had an opportunity to observe for some time, does your approach, and the
approach that presumably the people who will study with you, have in the
general context? We're talking to an
audience which includes not only many people who for years have heard Zen
lectured about, but also many people whose views are largely political rather
than spiritual in direction, have a great interest in. So, I would like to know
from you what you feel the role of this group and this activity or lack of
activity, that you are about—engage in is intended for.
SR: First of all, I think it is necessary for everyone, not only American
people or Japanese people. For everyone
the most important thing is to have a more flexible mind, so you can observe
things as it is and accept things as it is without any prejudice or one-sided
idea. When I say it like this, it looks quite easy, but actually it is not so
easy. Without directing our practice or our human life, in this point whatever
you do will not be successful because we will create problems with each other. When
someone is successful, for some other person that may mean difficulty. So in
this way we have various problems in this world and in this society—even in our
family. So, first of all, our life should be concentrated on each moment—without
much prejudice, or not one-sided or rigid—
Thompson: What you're talking about is a total awareness all the time.
SR: Total awareness, and to know our situation always. To be aware.
Thompson: Yes. Now tell me, supposing one does train for total awareness, which
is after all not exclusively a Zen concept—
SR: No.
Thompson: —but has been the concept of all great mystics throughout time, I
believe. Doesn't that mean also being aware of what's wrong?2 So many times, as soon as people become
involved in this kind of idea, and they grasp the idea intellectually, they
begin to assume that they have achieved purity rather than the beginnings of
consciousness. And this, it seems to me, causes more difficulty with some of
the practitioners and talkers about what everybody should be doing. Then the
person quite frankly admits that they know that such a thing exists and might
be possible, but that they are also infinitely aware that they have not yet
arrived there. And this has always seemed to me to be the great problem with
getting people to understand this, because they hear people talk about it and
then they say, “But that person is not this and this and this and this,” and
they are not. I want you to talk about this please.
SR: Yeah. Intellectual understanding of something if it is about the future, will
bind our activity or it will restrict our activity. If it is about something
you have done already, it is a limitation of the actual experience which should
be forgotten. Without forgetting the previous intellectual understanding of
something, that means you are bound by something which is not real. This
attitude will create some other difficulties. So in this way we are bound by the
future and past without knowing the—
Thompson: Without knowing the future or understanding the past.
SR: —without knowing which is real—without any real understanding of anything
[laughs, laughter]—sacrificing, you know, most valuable present living. This is
what we are doing. Not only do we lose the true meaning of our life, we are
creating problems for ourselves which exist only in the present moment. This is
an important problem for human beings.
Thompson: What if you know what you're doing at the present moment, you know,
supposing a person beginning with this idea knows that at the present moment he
is aware of something, but he discovers that what he is aware of in himself is
evil, and he knows it. Isn't this part of the process? In other words, you're
becoming aware of something, and you realize that you are covering your real
motivations with good intentions, or pretending to yourself that you are doing
something for one reason, when actually you are about to do something for quite
another reason. I mean, isn’t there a great deal of, well, I won't say
suffering, but isn't there a great deal that might be discovered that would not
be too easy to accept for people who attempt this path? Why don't you talk
about that, Richard, because you, I understand, are doing just that.
Baker: The experience of the person who's beginning to sit—to do meditation, to
do zazen— meditation, again, is not too good a translation because you don't
meditate on anything; you sit there ready for whatever happens—you find that it
uncovers many things. Many things which ordinarily would happen in
psychoanalysis or something like that happen to you, and many other things
happen to you too. None of them do you give much importance one way or the
other, except as sort of occurrences. But you find that the sitting—the process
of meditation—has a deep wisdom in it somehow, so that as it uncovers, it
strengthens you at the same time to be able to accept what it uncovers. And,
you begin by sitting so that you don't twitch and scratch your nose and move
just because you're restless. That imperturbability, which you begin to get
physically and then mentally, helps you when visions or monsters or some very
disturbing part of yourself comes to your awareness. You have a kind of
imperturbability which just lets you let it happen and find out what's going
on.
Now the earlier thing which you said, trying to relate this kind of practice to
the political situation and also does the person practicing feel he's achieved
some purity or some special state which means that he doesn't have to do much,
maybe, or something like that? I think that to feel that you've arrived at
something is a completely mistaken idea. I mean, Zen is completely against the
idea that you ever arrive. There's only this moment. There's nothing you
achieve. There can't be any achievement because there's nothing to compare that
achievement with.
So, Suzuki Roshi often says that the best way is to have a beginner's mind—just
the beginner, who's just starting, who takes everything from a fresh and
spontaneous point of view, because the expert mind is only capable of one or
two things. The beginner's mind is open to everything.
And then it's much better to say that Zen is something which makes you ready
for any activity, so that if you are confronted with a world in which there are
many problems, who you are is defined by your situation moment after moment.
Right now I'm a person talking on a microphone. That's who I am. I'm not Dick
Baker or something like that. I'm a person talking on a microphone. When I get
in the car, I'll be a person driving a car.
So if I'm marching in a peace march, I'm a person marching in a peace march,
because that's the situation that's presented to me and I'm taking that. If I'm
more for individual freedom in some way, then that's the kind of person I am at
that moment. The Zen person becomes a person who responds and is at one with
his situation moment after moment. So if he's in an evil society,—society isn't
really evil or good, but there are many problems which occur in society—your
response will be moment after moment to bring yourself in tune with it, and at
the same time, it in tune with the natural order of mind, and you can almost
say cosmic naturalness that you experience.
Thompson: Well, I was also sort of headed toward the idea of the difference
between knowing that a thing can be done and being able to do it. I mean, I can
accept as a fact that you or you may be able to be totally aware—mentally,
emotionally, and spiritually—from moment to moment, but the fact that I know
that it's a fact doesn't suddenly put me in the same position. And I think that
frequently when people have studied with their minds a great deal about any
religious process—and I'm using the word “religious” in its broadest possible
sense—they tend to confuse the desire for virtue with the achievement of
virtue. And, does it not take a long time for the achievement? Or is it—well,
for example, when you're meditating—again I'm trying to use it in the widest
sense that you have referred to—and particularly in a beautiful place
surrounded by people who love you in the biblical sense of that word, in the
religious sense of that word—you might be able to be aware of everything from
moment to moment. It might be a great experience, but is it not the purpose so
that you can in the marketplace be that same person?
SR: Here, in your question, I think you put emphasis on intellectual
understanding, or your point is intellectual understanding is not achievement
itself. Here you put emphasis on achievement. But actually, we do not achieve
anything in our practice. Just to be
ourselves in that moment is the way. So when you have some idea of achievement,
just achievement is already something which you will achieve. So, that is not
what you have right now. Achievement should be something you already have, and
how to have it is to forget all about the idea of self or being one with the
surroundings. That is how to achieve our goal. Our goal is right here, not
somewhere [else] or in the future.
Thompson: Yes. And right now.
Baker: Your question—is a real expression of yourself in some way, I feel. It's
quite interesting. It's so fully packed with ideas that it's hard to answer or
respond to any of them almost. But, one thing you said, and I'm not sure how it
fits in, is that you may want to achieve something, but can you know you can
achieve it or that's not the same as achieving it. With the emphasis on the
“nowness.”—Everyone says the now. There are even rock-and-roll groups named
“The Ever-Present Now.” But to really
physically and emotionally be totally in this nowness, which is rather radical,
you really perceive first that you have to change to perceiving space rather
than time, and then almost where you don't perceive time or space. Past and
future are totally in this moment, so that you'd act on the future only in the
realistic sense in which what you do now has effectiveness—now as the future is
present in this moment.
So, you don't sort of speculate, or you don't find your mind putting yourself
in situations which you actually physically and emotionally can't be effective
in. In other words, if you find yourself taking action on something, it's
something which that future is present in this moment, and that you can
totally, mentally, physically, and intellectually be involved in.
At least from my own practice—I've been sitting every day or every twice-a-day
or longer for about six or seven years now. My experience is not one of having
achieved anything or any special total awareness or something. I suppose I
notice some differences from the way I used to be. It's more—what I mean to say
is—it's not a freedom from problems, perhaps the sting is gone from the
problems, but life is still a constant series of inadequacies and problems and
things you cope with. The change is the immediacy and spontaneity with which
you cope with them, more than that there are no problems.
Thompson: Well, I wouldn't certainly assume that, even if the problems weren't
yours, that the world is far from free of problems.
Baker: Sometimes when you read the teachings, though, it says things like you
have to realize that the world is perfect as it is. There's something called
the Madhyamika school,3
which Zen is part of, and out of this they
had the idea that samsara, the world of delusion, is the same as nirvana, the
world of complete—
Thompson: Are one.
Baker: —enlightenment. “Are one.” So you can get the idea that, well,
everything's okay. It's all nirvana, you know, we're all perfect. In some way
that's true, but that doesn't mean that in the practicalities every day you
still don't brush your teeth, and take care of things, and worry about the
world's problems—at least for me, anyway [laughs, laughter]. I don't know about—
Thompson: Yeah, well, how is it for you? [Laughter.] Go on. Let me try to put
it in another way. To many people listening, to talk about this sort of thing
is purely an intellectual thing, you know. They hear about it. The same as they
hear about the fact that there's been a demonstration in Oakland or anything
else that they haven't been involved in, you see. But, I think that also people
are very much interested—these ideas and ideas related are very current in our
society today.
I think that many of the younger people, without even knowing it, are
withdrawing in many ways from what we call the establishment for reasons that
in some way are related to these reasons. And therefore the relationship
between what you in Western parlance “believe” and your conduct, your ability
to live in a society surrounded with violence, surrounded with poverty,
surrounded with human suffering, and to do so from moment to moment with love
and clarity is quite a project as to be envisaged by the average person, you
see. And, I wanted in this interview, if I could, to shed some light from your
standpoint on those problems to the person who might be interested in involving
themselves, from the people who are already involved as Richard here is. Is
there any comment you would—either one—like to make?
Baker: It's pretty easy for the average person, maybe, if he practices
something like zazen. That kind of practice is really a kind of shortcut,
though you have to really practice fully with your whole mind and body in order
to make it work, if there's some idea of it working. You can't say that that
kind of awareness is impossible for other people, but if you don't have some
ideas and way of going about thinking and moving your body and life toward that
orientation, then it seems impossible. But if you have some suggestion, like
Zen Buddhism, it's a way of freeing you from all conceptions, all frameworks,
all body or mind hindrances. So, when you really do it, Zen Buddhism doesn't
exist, but it's certainly helpful to feel it exists for a while.
Thompson: Is there anything else you would like to say?
SR: How to help people is not a very difficult thing, but it is rather
difficult to explain. To help people, in its true sense, is just to join their
life, and lead their life as they do, and to be always a friend of others. That
is the only way. Even if they find me different from them, even though we are
in the same condition and living the same way. This is, I think, how to help
them and how to teach them real practice of Zen.
Baker: I'd like to say that the possibility of all of this occurring and the
opportunity for many people to come in contact with Suzuki Roshi and with other
teachers, is really only for the first time possible in America through Zen
Mountain Center. There's a few other places where you meditate two or three
times a week, that kind of thing. But with a real Zen master, the situation of
being able to live there for months or a year or something like that is now
possible.
Thompson: Thank you both very much for being here.
Announcer: [Gap in tape of unknown length.] — in a talk with Elsa Knight
Thompson. This is KPFA and KPFB, Pacifica Radio, broadcasting from Berkeley.
One of KPFA's most important functions is to present our listeners with
material unavailable from other sources.
_________________
1 The opening words were not recorded. Presumed to be: “Why don't
you start — ”. The sounds of conversations, a lunch being consumed, and of a
cat meowing loudly can be heard intermittently throughout the interview. It
appears that there was an open mike in an adjacent room.
2 Suzuki-rōshi says "Mm-hmm" or "Yeah" once or
twice per sentence during all long questions.
3 A Middle Way school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by Nāgārjuna and
Āryadeva.
Source: Copy of a commercially available tape. The original tape is believed to
be in the possession of KPFA/Pacifica. Verbatim transcript by Adam Tinkham
(5/15/01). Lightly edited for readability by Wendy Pirsig and Peter Ford
(10/2020).
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