May all beings realize the emptiness of the three wheels, giver, receiver, and kiyosaku. I remember Suzuki Roshi saying, when we use the Kyusaku correctly, there's no one who hits, no one who receives, and no stick. He really loved using the Kyusaku. When I first came to Zen Center, 1964, I remember sitting down and I heard this whack.

[01:20]

And I thought, who's hitting the floor with a stick? Never occurred to me that somebody was hitting somebody else. Who hit the floor with a stick? And then I found out that somebody hit somebody else and I thought oh this must be something I when I heard the floor hit with a stick it then had it had a feeling to it and I I thought what is that why are they doing that you can't hear yeah why are they doing that um So I know that when we hear the stick, the first time, it's always a surprise. And Suzuki Roshi always carried the stick. He had a short stick. Karigiri Sensei at the time carried the stick too.

[02:27]

Eventually, all of us carried the stick. Everybody who was a regular member carried a stick. And so we just took it for granted that we used a stick. It was just part of our everyday practice. And people loved when Suzuki Roshi would hit them with a stick. I never heard anybody complain about the stick. Ever. That I can remember. They loved to be hit by Tsukiyoshi. He would hit you twice on each shoulder. Bam, bam. Bam, bam. And everybody would wake up. It was very sweet, actually. I remember one time, Page Street, where we were having sashin. And... I was the wake-up person.

[03:36]

And somehow we had, anyway, I won't go into detail of how this happened, but I woke up an hour early and started to ring the wake-up bell, running through the building, ringing the wake-up bell. And everybody started to come out of their rooms and people were looking at their watches and saying, hey, wait a minute. You know, it's an hour early. And Suzuki Roshi came out of his room. And people were starting to go back to their rooms. And he said, wait a minute, where are you going? He said, the bell rang. When the bell rings, you go to the Zen doll. That's all. And he took his stick and he started, you know, telling everybody to get down to the Zen doll. the bell rang go down to the zendo so everybody went down to the zendo and then he went around the zendo and hit everybody bam [...] all the way around everybody loved it it's the most wonderful thing they ever experienced there's a kind of wonderful communication you know we think that

[05:00]

We have various ideas about what it means to be hit with a stick. But these are just our ideas. With Suzuki Roshi, it was love. And it wasn't tough love. It was just love. Nothing tough about it. It was very sweet. But we had various personalities. Some were more rough than others. But generally speaking, everybody did their best. And then... Richard Baker was Abbott. There were a lot of students... And he kind of upped the ante.

[06:05]

You know, he had, well, people, a lot of, the Zendo was always very full. And we had two juncos, people that carried a stick are called junco, two juncos, every period, walking up and down. And they would hit everybody. But whoever they felt was sleeping or whatever. But then people didn't like that. So at some point we said just hit people who asked for it. Okay. So that worked for a long time. But everybody in turn carried the stick.

[07:05]

It wasn't just a few people or some select group. Everybody eventually carried the stick who felt that they could or wanted to. And there's still, sometimes there were complaints. I remember one guy who liked to hit people really hard. And he hit this one person whose name I won't mention. And the guy grabbed the stick and pulled him over. But, you know, in Japan, I talked about this in my class. In Japan, in the Rinzai monasteries, there are a lot of young boys, young men. And they have a huge keisaku, which is we use the Kiyosaku. They use the Keisaku. Keisaku is much heavier and broader and longer than our stick.

[08:09]

And they use it full force and they don't care where they hit you. And I think that's a kind of travesty on using this wonderful instrument. And so that gives it a kind of bad name. They try to see who can break the most sticks over each other. But that's not our attitude at all in using the kyusaku. It's interesting. Some people like it and some people don't. So we always gave people a choice. If you like it, you can have it. If you don't like it, it's okay. but allow those people who like it to use it. There's an old saying, when Jill drinks wine, Jack gets drunk.

[09:10]

The person that receives the stick feels fine, but somebody else feels hurt. Who doesn't use the stick? Who doesn't receive the stick? That's kind of interesting. My question is, where does it hurt? Sometimes the stick hurts when you receive it, but the jungle is, did I hurt you? And a A person will say, oh, a little bit, but it's okay. That's usual. Maybe you were a little off. You hit my shoulder blade, but, you know, it's okay. So there's... It's not a big deal, usually. But if you received the stick and you didn't ask for it, then you can make a big deal out of something.

[10:24]

So... When you receive the stick and you bow and you ask, we enter into an agreement. I will help you because you're open to me and I'll do my best to accommodate you. I call the Kiyosaku the wake-up stick. I think I'm the only person that calls it that. We just call it the stick. But I call it the wake-up stick because you can understand why we use it. If I say wake-up stick, you're feeling sleepy or, you know, we get kind of tensed up during Zazen. Our shoulders get sore and we feel some tension.

[11:28]

It's hard to let go of that. So we ask for a little help and the stick kind of opens you up. It's like you can start all over again. So it's a little aid from your friend who's willing to help you out. There's nothing, even though it sounds aggressive, there's really nothing aggressive about it at all. It's, as Suzuki Roshi said, when the hit is just right, the person who hits, the person who receives it in a stick, all disappear.

[12:46]

And we wake up in emptiness. You know, Dogen says, If you want to experience enlightenment, you can experience it when you have a big sneeze. You disappear. The world disappears. It's just sneeze. And then you come back. The same thing with a stick. It's like a big sneeze. Thank you very much. Then you settle back into where you were, sleeping. I remember there were always people who indulged themselves in the stick.

[13:51]

You know, every time you'd walk by, they would want the stick. And then we sometimes just ignore the person the second time because, you know, too much like candy. So, sometimes, I remember people sometimes would say, well, it's like, you know, my father used to hit me with, beat me with a stick. So every time I hear the stick, I get that feeling, you know, and it makes me tense or whatever. And we appreciate those kinds of feelings. And there are other kinds of feelings that are similar to that. And at some point, there were, people voiced these concerns. And so at some point, at Zen Center, we stopped using the stick, the kiyosako.

[15:00]

And then I remember my father always used to threaten me with the strap. The strap. See, I'm old enough that my father used to use a straight razor and a razor strap when I was a little kid. Razors, you know, before they had safety razors, they used, men used straight razors. And there was a leather strap. You'd sharpen the razor on the leather strap, like barbers used to do. And then you'd shave. So every time you shaved, you'd sharpen the straight razor on the leather strap, on the big, heavy leather strap. And so my father would always say, I'm going to get the strap on you. He never hit me with the strap, though. He hit me with a coat hanger. It's a coat hanger. But when I heard the Kiyosaku, it didn't remind me of a coat hanger or the strap or anything. It's just the Kiyosaku.

[16:01]

Kind of understood what it was. Also, my feeling is if you have some fear of something, it's good to face that fear. Best way to get out of your fear or to let go of your fear is turn around and shine the light on what the fear is. Just go into it. We can't always do that, of course, but it's a good way. So, my feeling about the stick is that it's rather benign, but it can give you, it can bring up things for you which seem like aggression. In Berkeley, people, you know, the idea of the stick keeps coming up. Can we have the stick sometime? People ask this question.

[17:04]

Mostly women. And in my experience, can we have the stick again? So it came up again in Berkeley some years ago. And we had this big powwow about the stick. And what we came out with was, during Sashin, we use the stick, but sparingly. We won't carry it all the time, but there are certain periods where we'll carry the stick. I think that's what we said. I can't remember exactly, but even though there were people that didn't want the stick, they agreed that it was okay to use it. I have a little problem with being ruled by the minority.

[18:07]

A little problem with the tail wagging the dog. there will always be someone who doesn't want to do what everyone else wants to do or what the majority wants to do. And that's quite legitimate. But, you know, an entrenched minority can't stop things from happening. Sometimes when we have a meal, we kind of all eat at a similar pace in order to get finished at the same time. So some people like to eat fast, some people like to eat slowly.

[19:10]

But when we get involved in practice, the slow people have to come up And the fast people have to come down to where there's a kind of agreement in how we're going to, at the pace of the meal. We don't like to have things kind of drag on. So sometimes somebody really likes to eat slowly, and they're eating very slowly. And they're not aware that everybody else is finished. They just keep eating the meal. So, and the soku is waiting for that person to get done. So everybody's waiting for that person to get done. So that one person is controlling the tempo of the meal. But if the soku has good understanding, the soku just starts the servers or the cleanup

[20:13]

And with that person eating, then that person has to hurry up and finish. So that's how we gather everybody together. The slow ones, the slowest ones have to move faster, even though they like eating slowly. I chew everything. When I eat, I chew everything. But I try not to be slow and hold everybody up. So when we began the practice period, several people asked if we could have the stick. And I said, yeah, let's have a stick, which hasn't happened much at Tassajara for a long time. And so we started using the stick. So that's the history of our stick.

[21:18]

the short history of our stick. So I want to ask you if you have any questions or would like to say something and not feel that you inhibited to say anything you want to say because everything you say is appreciated. Richard? You have to really speak up so all these people can hear you. One time this morning, I think Greg went around without the stick. Yes. What was happening then? I asked him. He adjusted somebody's posture. So then he went to sit down. He said, well, why don't you just go around and adjust posture? Also, I noticed at Berkeley, when we have the stick, just about everybody wants it. I would say two-thirds. Two-thirds. Yeah. So a lot of people that like to use it.

[22:22]

Craig? I was not one of the people who asked if we were going to have this practice period. And it came as a surprise to me, actually. I think it actually was the ENO's announcement in West Circle that I was going to be You will be carrying it, yes. Yes. Well, she knew that Mio, former Tato here, used to carry a stick sometimes, and he trained myself and Eric, my Dharma brother, and Shogo, another priest, shortly before he left, just because he was interested in sharing that. understanding and that practice is still on the people. So I guess I meant to say yesterday and forgot I was going to put it in the talk that I just wanted to apologize for my learning curve.

[23:25]

Your curve ball sticks? I think I haven't not 100% effective right away. Mostly it's been, like, reticence and holding back and like, hmm, like that, you know, just being, erring on the side of caution with a couple of testifiers, but I haven't heard anybody, yeah. That you know of. That I know of. Well, yes, we chose myself and you, and to use the stick. It's not necessary to be limited to that, but the three of us have experience with the stick. And since we haven't used it for so long, people don't have experience carrying it. And we usually train people to use it. how to manage, how to hold it, how to hit someone correctly.

[24:35]

I was very impressed with Leslie. I watched her use the stick and I was just totally blown away by her ability to use it. The main thing is you listen for the sound. When people are wearing a lot of clothes, it's, you know, fuck. But everyone's back or shoulders are a little different. But this whack, the crack, you know, there's two ways, two techniques. One is to quickly, to snap it and quickly lift off, like whack, like that. So you really don't feel so much, but you get this charge. And the other way is to just go bam, like that. I've done it both ways, but my way is to go bam. And Leslie's way is to go bam, like that.

[25:39]

And both ways are effective. But we're always thinking, you know, where is exactly the right place to hit somebody. And Junko can feel, where's your shoulder blade? During the winter, people wear a lot of clothes, so it's hard sometimes to see exactly where that place is. And then if you wear a scarf around your neck, the whole shoulder scarf, that whole area, neck, shoulder, and back, it's a guess. So in that case, you should bend way over and have the stick on your back. That's really a very effective way, anyway, to bend way over and have the stick on your back. You're less likely to get off that way because you have a pretty broad target.

[26:43]

Yes? If I'm present in here and now, the stick is just a noise and sensation. It doesn't have a whole lot of other baggage. Right. There's not something behind it. But if I'm not present, that's when that old stuff comes up. to the sensation that that means nothing for us. I feel a lot of tension within myself. Yeah. My shoulders are growing tight. That sharp movement on my shoulders can be very helpful. Yes. Well, I think that's the point. Yeah. We do a lot of hitting here. We hit the heart, we hit the mouth. We do. I heard you, yeah. And I feel, to me it's like, I think of myself as being a bell or being a drum, being picked, and as you say, the way you make, you know, the way you cast it, we talk, you know, bell, we break out the bell or we break out the drum, like, with the chorus, and I actually think of why not assign humans instead of that child?

[28:12]

LAUGHTER All right. I appreciate the the intention of the stick. I had the right to stick myself, at least yesterday, but I was out of the experience because the sound, I thought it was something from the past, but it was deep and grainy, and it was hard to avoid that. But I think that maybe I'll be more rude and have the same experience.

[29:14]

I spoke to When I hear you ask me yesterday, when I walked out the room, what was happening? It caused some tension in my chest. I get released when it hits me, but then the rest of the time, I get tension in my chest. So I walked out the room, the project that I wanted to make a statement. Yesterday, I said, okay, dry physicals. I might have done that yesterday, but it was more of a physical practice. I appreciate that, your willingness to go ahead in some way that we have some doubt. We have some other people here.

[30:15]

Yeah. What was coming up? Well, you know, we were all just having fun. It's like, you know, not fun exactly, but, you know, it was just something that, it would give us a way to relate to each other. I just felt, you know, I'll help you, you help me. That's what I thought. We were just engaged in this together. And it gave us some way of relating. Yeah. I was going to mention that when I was living at the city center, Michael Wenger used it during a session. And there was someone that was having a lot of apprehension around it. And what he suggested was that during the period while he was using it, she phased out.

[31:16]

So instead of just hearing smacking, she got to see a human being walking behind, leaning somewhat over, feeling the spot on her back that's the most appropriate spot and what it looks like, and a little bit of humanity behind it instead of just the sound. And I think that seemed to be a little bit helpful. Yeah, that's nice. I like that idea. You know, Suzuki Roshi saying, when we sit and face the wall, our back is facing Buddha and we're totally trusting. You know, we sit and we face the wall, but our back, we're totally vulnerable in our back. And so, whatever happens, you know, we just trust. So we do have to have a lot of trust. And we trust each other.

[32:18]

We have to be able to trust each other that whatever we do behind, whatever happens behind us will not be harmful to us, especially in this end up. Steve? to share a brief relationship that I have with the stick. The first time I received it in Berkeley, I think it was during a session, and I'd been sitting morning and evenings there, and every morning, Roshi does a jindo, and we all put our hands in gassho, and he was walking around the zendo, and I didn't know he was carrying a stick. I thought it was just a jindo. I put my hands up in gassho, He stopped. He grabbed my shoulder and said, oh, he's going to adjust my posture. Well, this is interesting. And just before it happened, I thought, I'm going to get hit.

[33:20]

And he turned me to the right. I came up and it was just like... And I sat there and I went, oh, that's pretty cool. And I never let it go by again for years. Even after coming here, I never let it go by again. And then maybe in my third or fourth practice period, it wasn't effective anymore. It didn't do anything for me. And I stopped asking for it. And I didn't ask for it the first year. Two days. I didn't ask for it until yesterday morning when it was coming around. I was feeling a little bit sleepy and I said, hmm, perhaps it's time to ask for it again. And I got it yesterday morning and it woke me right up. And then this morning it came around and I didn't feel I needed it. But I asked for it anyway. And were you carrying it this morning? Yeah. So he hit me with it, and I didn't even feel it.

[34:24]

All I heard was the sound. I didn't even feel it. I came back up, and I went, hmm, I guess I took that one for all beings. And that's it. That's all I want. I'm going to get these guys. Yes, Danny? I'm joined in. You're what? I'm joined in. I understand. It's a little challenging just hearing so many people getting hit, not because they're, anyway, just not because of emotion, but just this, it's kind of hard to concentrate, you know, or I come back to a breath or whatever when I just leave it for 20 minutes, get to 20 minutes, just whack after whack after whack after whack. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. I was suggested by Vicki Austin that the stick would be very beneficial for tight, blocked shoulders.

[35:28]

Did you make that up? Can you listen, blocked shoulders? Pardon? Can you listen to your blocked, tight shoulders? Yeah. I think it was like training them or something. I found it very beneficial. Yeah. Oh, yeah, well, you put yourself in a position, and then that's where the person hits you. You tell the person where to hit you by the way you position yourself. So, you know, you're like this. And then you say, shoulder. Or you say, back. So you give the person the best position, and then there's no problem.

[36:29]

But sometimes people are hesitant. They say, please hit me, but don't. That happens. And then, you know, the person will show you, and then as soon as you start the swing, they change. Like, I changed my mind. You know, that happens too. So there are these little problems that come up. But you present the place where you want the person to hit you, and then that's the easiest. So you can make your own selection. I was wondering if sometime during the practice period you or if you so or less we would be willing to give a short workshop on how to use it. A good idea. Well, you know, this is all sounding very positive, but I know that there's also some negative, you know,

[37:40]

people who don't, who would rather not have this. And I'm not hearing from them, but I know that they exist, that you exist out there. So, but I agree with your idea. I think it's very good. So you think it's being up a little bit? I want to say something since I kind of brought it up yesterday. I don't have any trouble with the stick, but there was this great site in New York City, and it woke me up. I have some questions about whether or not we, what I want to say about caution is why we should maybe be cautious about relying on something outside ourselves. Well, yeah, you know, a stick is not something we rely on.

[38:43]

It's something that helps us, you know. And it's a kind of mercy. We don't rely, I mean, we can do without it. We can sit okay without it, right? But it's kind of a merciful little help. There was a record of you being I had her in the body. [...] Well, I don't think that people do that.

[39:46]

Yeah. I don't think... I wouldn't say, well, I'm going to fall asleep, and the stick will come by pretty soon, and I'll just wake up when the stick comes by. I don't think anybody does that. I really don't. it's hard to wake up by yourself. You know, early in the morning, it's just, you're trying to wake up and you're trying to wake up and you just keep falling and it's really hard to hold your back up. And then, you know, thank you for helping me. That's the way I see it. No. I mean, it's, why, you know, why not get a little help? You know, although, you know, we should, you know, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, right? But, you know, we should also allow for a little weakness.

[40:55]

Well, I'll allow you that. Okay. I am one of those people that came from a past where there was a lot of beating and hitting and throwing things in the house and stuff. Especially if there was four of us. So when I would hear somebody else getting smashed or something, it always made my hair stand up. Oh no, my neck, you know. Get out of the way. And the stick was used at City Center by Michael Wenger, as he said, and I remember it was such a novel thing that it was a real waker-upper and it was a real thing, but we didn't use it very often. And since we started using it here at this practice period, I noticed that I have a few memories of those childhood things, but they're light. And the stick is waking me up in the mind as well. As long as it's doing that, I'm... all for it and it certainly wakes me up physically too and I find that baggage or whatever it is is just drifting along and becoming part of the experience and it's on its way out and as long as it's productive I'll keep asking for it I want to say goodbye to the kitchen thank you for leaving

[42:23]

And I want us to end on time. Greg. So, in Berkeley, during sashins, some periods, sparingly, when people carry the stick, they usually say, I'll be carrying the stick now? Well, you know, that's me. I say that. Because we use it so seldom. Yes. that I want people to know what's happening. If we use it all the time, then people know it's coming, they expect it. But because they didn't expect it, I say so. I would suggest that sometimes that first sound, if someone doesn't know that the stick is going around, the first time they hear it, it can be kind of... Oh, I see. You mean give people some warning. So, I was thinking about, you know, my dad, he used to hit on me a little bit, not too much, but

[43:30]

It made me think of something. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. He did it, and that was his shit that he hit me with. And this is different. You said with love. It's just nice to learn that someone can hit me with a stick and love me, and I enjoy it. And it's not punishment, and it's just re-education. Instead of avoiding this shit, I'm going to dive into it and maybe open up to something that used to be painful, but now can actually be a little Bodhisattva. Thank you very much for that. I want to sound one other cautionary note, which is sort of outside of our sangha right here. You know, people tend towards sensational sorts of things, and the idea of the Rinzai model of people breaking sticks over each other is kind of a little game that people, you know, kind of... It'd be really easy for people to get the wrong idea about Zen Center when they start hearing about people going around with sticks because all of this discussion we've had around compassion and love and waking up and giver and receiving and the emptiness of it is not what comes to mind for most people when they hear Zen stick hit.

[44:47]

And so we have enough war toys in our society and we have enough militant energy that we need to be really careful about the way The use of the stick leaves this road. I agree with you. You should be very careful. You have to really speak up. I just wanted to say something to Tian about the question that you brought up, Tian, about, you know, we don't have some of the actors at the stake, you know, waking us up. I really find that being here at Takahara is such a support for my practice that just having a window, like having a rated-up bell and having a schedule, those are all supports for waking up for me. So I don't know if that helps to keep it that way. The other thing is when I think the person who you're speaking about giving the lecture, I think they were referring to times where the stick was used without being a subject.

[46:00]

There's a person over there who wants to take an article for something. All right. I didn't think about the support practice. It seems like the support is teaching us how to be okay with ourselves. If I don't like something, it's, you know, if I don't like something, it wants to keep rising and then go over and it gets a little sadder. But so, you know, where I'm not sad, you know, working, it's really unsafe because I'm not getting it. That's what it's going to see in me, so... Okay, this is the last one.

[47:19]

Linda. Sometimes I think of it as kind of chiropractic work. You know, you get an adjustment, but then you learn how to move in that direction. So all forms of support here. The whole range of it is helping me to learn a particular way of being, and then when I'm not in that situation, my body and mind have been trained a little bit to go there. Leslie? Maybe you're going to say this, but just in case you aren't. I think this is a pretty hard place. If someone does have difficult feelings about the stick, this conversation would have been a pretty difficult place to bring them up. Yes. It's been so positive. Yes. I would really request if people do have an experience of the stick that they don't want to practice with now, and they don't feel it's useful for them to practice with, they do talk to Mel about it, because it really is...

[48:20]

at his discretion that we're using at this practice period, and he needs the best information that he can get to make that decision about whether that's a good thing for us or not as a group. So please do. Yes, please do. Thank you.

[48:44]

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