A little like a vacuum cleaner. Do we have a hand vacuum cleaner? Do we have a hand vacuum cleaner or some kind of vacuum cleaner? We have a vacuum cleaner here, right? Yes. Should I tell you all about it? Take the table for water? I need something, yeah. Okay. Okay. Give me something to hold. Yeah, I'll take this. Okay. Thanks. Would you like it to the side? No, it's good. Huh? Is that good? Thank you, surgeon. Oh, you're welcome. You hear everything?

[01:19]

No. Now? Now? Yeah. Even I can hear it. Don't fall asleep. I used to fall asleep in Dokusan. People would suddenly be talking to me, and I'd just go... Well, some of you have heard my story, so... Not this. So I can subject you to it again. So it's not so interesting, but it's long. That's it. Okay, well, I was born July 9th, 1929, in the Los Angeles County Hospital, which is no longer there.

[02:25]

And it was somewhere in downtown Los Angeles. And I lived in Hollywood until 1948. No, 1941. And then moved to Long Beach, California. And that's where I graduated from high school. So, my parents were Jewish, and my father's family came from the Ukraine, and my mother's family came from the Ukraine. My father's family came in the middle of the 19th century somewhere. My father was born in 1989, 1898. And my mother was born much earlier. But she was older than my father for some reason.

[03:27]

So, my father, my father's family were kind of intellectual peasants. And my mother's family lived in New York. And they were very sophisticated artists and... My mother's nephew was Zachary Solow, who was a famous ballet dancer. When I mentioned his name to ballet dancers, they said, oh, I never met him. But his parents were deaf and dumb. But he used to always seat them in the front and he'd always do sign language whenever he performed. But I lived with my father's family. My mother's family was very remote because I never went to New York.

[04:44]

Although people say, you must be from New York. People say that to me all the time. You're from New York, aren't you? And I say, no. I've only been to New York. I didn't go to New York until I was about 50 or something. So... But there's something about that. I don't know what it is. Probably something about my mother. So... I was born... I ushered in the Great Depression. And, you know... During the Depression started in 1929, and lasted quite a ways up through the 30s. And it wasn't really over until World War II, and that's mobilized the economy, unfortunately. And so we were very poor. And my father worked for the WPA, that was the Works Project Administration, which was started by Roosevelt.

[05:52]

Roosevelt was the only president I knew for, up until junior high. And they loved Roosevelt because he was such a, he issued in Social Security, which is now under attack. Anyways. So, we didn't have very much money. We never talked about money. And I had a brother, and my brother was four years older than me. And it was a kind of depressing time, you know, childhood, depressing circumstances. My brother was very intelligent and talented.

[06:57]

His teachers loved him, and people encouraged him. He was four years older than me, and I always kind of admired him, but he didn't want to have anything to do with me because I was his little brother. And I think that he was jealous that I got some attention, although he got all the attention. Isn't that the way it is? We always think the other one's getting the attention. But so he just ignored me, which was really difficult for me. Because I wanted to have a relationship with him, but he just would never have a relationship with me. So it was really difficult. And he used to beat me up a lot. And my father was really, my parents were very nice. They always fed us. They always took care of us. But there was something that wasn't there. Even though we didn't have any money or means, my father always provided something for us.

[08:07]

I remember my mother once sent me to the butcher to get a bone for the dog, and she put it in the soup. That's what it was like in those days. um but we always had you know something to eat and a very steady home life but there was no life in it you know it was my father was kind of depressed and he had been his his one um you know uh What he really talked about a lot was his past, never his present. So in his past, when he was a child, he lived in Philadelphia, and he drove a beer wagon with a team of horses. So he loved horses. And when he was in the Army during the First World War, he was in Hawaii. And he had a Cadillac.

[09:09]

And I have this picture of him in his Cadillac, you know, 1914 Cadillac. And that was the big high point in his life. And the rest was zilch. So there was just something missing there. And of course, I spent all my time drawing pictures because that was my creative outlet. My brother was very talented, and so I copied my brother, you know, and we both did drawing and stuff. And all through school, All I did was drawing on my papers. I wasn't so interested in mathematics or any of my classes particularly, although I learned something, and I got through school. I remember one time

[10:12]

when I was in high school and I was walking someplace and I had this feeling that this was not my real life. There was a life I knew that was my life, but what I was doing was not my life. It just was not real. And that was a very strong feeling I had and I kind of had that feeling all through school. So I'll tell you one incident that really affected my relationship to my father. When I was about 16, the man in the corner who had a gas station had this old car. I think it was an Essex or something. It was like my 20s car. And he said he would sell it to me for 15 bucks. And I asked my dad if I could have it.

[11:15]

And he said, well, if you earn the money, you know. So I mowed lawns and all this, you know, and it earned 15 bucks. I says, I got the money. Can I get the car? He said, no, I can't let you get the car. I understand why he wouldn't do it, but I didn't understand it then. It was just like kind of betrayal that I felt. And I just never respected my father after that. I mean, you know, they had to buy insurance and... and so I felt that my parents would, my father would never take responsibility for anything that I wanted to do that he needed to sign for. They wouldn't let me play football because you had to sign for it. You had to sign away, you know, that, because I was just a little guy anyway, but playing football in my league, I wanted to do. I was in high school, I ran track and that was nice.

[12:16]

But I started smoking when I was about 12. I smoked a pack a day up until I was, well, up until 1973 when I came to Tassajara. I'll tell you about that later. So when I got to be around, well, I remember one time we were riding in a car. We used to take joy rides, what we called joy rides in those days. We'd get in the car and take a ride out to San Fernando Valley, which is all orchards. at the time, and I was sitting in the back of the car with our dog, his face out the window. I always had a dog. And there was a magazine, I think it was a Life magazine, and on the cover of the magazine were pictures of these rabbis with big, long beards.

[13:21]

I didn't know who they were exactly, but I just felt this terrific affinity with them. And it just wakened something up in me. My parents were not religious at all. The whole family was not religious. One time, I think I went to Sunday school once, and that was it. But I had this kind of longing in me that was never fulfilled anywhere. And Sunday school wasn't it either. And then when I saw this picture, it just awakened something in me, some kind of feeling in me, which I didn't understand exactly, but I kind of knew what it was. And then I kind of forgot about that. And when I was in high school, I joined the Marine Reserve.

[14:24]

This is during the war. The war started in 1941 when I was in junior high. And in Long Beach, we were living in Long Beach at that time. And I remember when the war started, we had searchlights going all the time. Everybody had to draw their curtains. They all had blackout curtains. And every night we'd have to draw the curtains. And the searchlights were going all the time. We had gas rationing. You had A, B, and C sticker on your windshield. If you had an A sticker, you could get a couple of gallons of gas a week or a month or something, and A, B, and C. So priority gas. Everything, you know, Lucky Strike cigarettes, if you're familiar with those, had green circle. They took the green out. He said, lucky strike green has gone to war. That was like the feeling. So there was this whole feeling the whole country was mobilized to go to war.

[15:29]

And everything was geared that way. And my brother was in the army and he went to Europe. And I had this feeling that I wanted to get in the army too. Because it was just the thing you wanted to do when you're a kid. So I joined the Marine Reserve when I was in high school. And I used to go out on weekends. to participate. And then when I graduated from high school in 1947, I went on active duty for a year and a half. And I got the GI Bill. The two things I wanted to be, one was I wanted to be a soldier and I wanted to be an artist. So I got the soldier thing out of me, out of the way.

[16:32]

And then I went to art school. So all during high school, I just drew pictures. That's all I ever wanted to do. And so I just continued doing that, and I went to art school in LA. And so I met these two friends, and they said, well, you know, the real art school is up in San Francisco. called the San Francisco School of Fine Art, which is now called the Art Institute, up there on Chestnut Street, 800 Chestnut Street. And so we all said, okay. So we moved up to San Francisco. This was in 1950. And I was only, let's see, I wasn't even 21. I remember walking down the streets of San Francisco, which were totally different from Long Beach. Long Beach is all these houses with spaces in between, green lawns and everything.

[17:33]

But San Francisco was, all the buildings were up against each other and the streets were all dirty and it was cold. Totally different feeling. But once I got used to San Francisco, I couldn't go back to Los Angeles anymore. Matter of fact, every time I go back to Los Angeles, I don't recognize it. Totally different place. I remember going back some years ago to where I lived, which I thought was this broad intersection and wide streets, and just this narrow little place. Anyway, so after I got discharged, I went to art school in San Francisco, California School of Fine Art. So I took art classes, and I met my teacher, my art teacher, Clifford Still. I was teaching there at the time. Clifford Still, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock, these were the big names in what we called non-objective painting at the time.

[18:44]

abstract expressionism was the name that the critics gave it. But we always called it non-objective painting. And Clifford Still, when I first saw his paintings, they just completely took me over. I was completely knocked out by them. And so I took his classes and that was what really consumed me. I remember thinking that I should take commercial art courses because, you know, how was I going to support myself if I didn't work, if I wasn't working as a commercial artist? But as I was taking these art courses, these commercial art courses, which I had no talent for, no feeling for them at all, wallpaper, you know, I didn't want to design wallpapers. When they're sick.

[19:52]

But I just got so into the painting, that's all I wanted to do. And I remember one day saying, I don't care if I starve to death. I don't care what happens to me. I'm just going to paint. I'm not going to do any of this stuff anymore. And that was, for me, that was a big release in my life. That was where I felt my independence. I was no longer attached to this world as far as feeling that I needed to do something in order to be within society and support myself as a member of society. So I took various odd jobs and somehow money always came to me. I don't know, it's always been that way. When I needed something, some money, when I started running, a check would arrive from someplace. It's just the way it's been. So I remember when I was going to art school, the Korean War started.

[20:58]

And I was still in the reserve. So one day I got a notice that said, we want you to report to get a physical. Go downtown, get a physical. in order to go down to San Diego to join the Marines. I did that, and of course I passed, and I was packing up, I had all my bags packed, and I went to bed, and I got up in the morning, and under the door was a letter. And the letter said, if you want to resign from the reserve, sign this letter and send it back. So this is what I did. It's very unusual. I never heard of that. I think I've always had a guardian angel somewhere.

[22:07]

I do believe that. So, I was going to art school and then I got a job, my friend and I, who lived in Sausalito, lived on a barge in Sausalito. And, He had a job at the Simmons Mattress Factory on Bay Street. And so, at night, so he got me a job, and we worked at night rolling up mattress ticking and cutting it. Wrong. With electric cutters. And then he said, well, why don't you come and live with us in Sausalito? So, okay. So we lived on the barge in Sausalito. And it was interesting and kind of neat, you know, and wonderful.

[23:17]

So the way it ended up was a menage a trois, And he flipped out, and I was left with what he had. Not funny, but kind of. And so I stayed around there for a couple of years, and then I still was like 21 or something, you know. Yeah. Then I started working in a boat shop. Did I accept him? Yeah, I was working in a boat shop. Well, here's what happened.

[24:21]

One of my painter friends, said, you know, I have, I got a job as a journeyman painter. Journeyman painter is like, you know, after you've been an apprentice for four years, you can be a journeyman. He said, I got a job as a journeyman painter in a housing project in Marin. big housing, huge housing project. They're hiring anybody as a journeyman painter because they need painters to stain carports and stuff. You don't have to know anything. So I signed on and I joined the union. 240 an hour. In those days, 240 an hour was like $30 now. It's incredible pay. So we'd drive every day to ran and so that was really a good job so I kind of learned that was my beginning I learned how to be a house painter and then after that I would get jobs with house painters go to the union get a job and they would teach me on the job you know so I learned a lot about house painting and I supported myself as a house painter and then but I didn't like it very much

[25:45]

You know, it's very hard work. You have to, in a housing project, in a housing project, you have to paint so many doors a day. You have to paint so many windowsills a day. You know, it's like, and you're working all the time. We never, the roller had not been invented. So it was all... Electric sprayer? No. No, no, no. It was all brush painting. We have had wonderful paint brushes, which they no longer make anymore. The Chinese bristle, and the bristles were, I like them. There was a brush called the 47, I think it was. And it was about this wide, and the bristles were about that long. And the Chinese pig bristle. And it was just this beautiful paintbrush. And the wall brushes were like this. There's a technique to painting a wall, because when you paint woodwork, you go with the grain.

[26:54]

You make the lines go with the grain, right? And you don't leave any brush marks. But when you paint a wall, there's no grain. So you just go like this. Any which way. And there's no way that it goes. So you have to know these techniques. And so my right arm got very strong. Also, you learn how to wash brushes. You learn how to wash buckets. So there's no paint left in the brush when you're done. And there's no paint left in the bucket when you're done. You can eat out of the bucket. So these are all wonderful techniques. When I look around at how we take care of our paint, it kind of upsets me. But I've learned to not let it upset me. I've learned to just ignore all that. But there was a time when it really upset me.

[27:55]

Anyway, so then I got a job in a boat shop. There was this boat shop, Nunez Brothers in Sausalito. They built Errol Flynn's yacht, the Zaka. I don't know if you remember Errol Flynn. They were Portuguese boat builders. And I worked there off and on. They would let me work because I was still painting. I was painting. I'd paint huge, really big paintings. And I would spend a lot of time doing that. And then I'd have to go to work. So I had the privilege of being able to work. When a boat came in to paint, they'd call me up and I'd come in and paint it. And then I'd work for a while. And then I'd work on my own stuff. So I had this job at the boat shop, which was really great. The thing about the boat shop is they paid 10 cents less an hour than house painting.

[28:56]

So no house painter would ever do that. Because maybe 20 cents less an hour. But the work is such far more interesting than painting houses. So I learned how to paint boats and all that goes along with that. That's difficult painting because the paint is very heavy with oils. These oils are very heavy. And if you don't spread the paint evenly, it all sags like that. So anyway, I enjoyed doing that. But I have to say that I did that for about six years. And I was always covered in paint. I was always covered in acetone. And this is when, and in dust. This is when fiberglass first came out. And so we were fiberglassing the bottom of boats and sanding it all and all these fiberglass. I was just enveloped in fiberglass dust and paint dust and copper dust and nothing ever happened to me.

[30:03]

So then I left. I left the barge. And I went to San Francisco and I met my first wife. And she lived in a room that was painted black. And she had green hair. And she wore her dresses inside out. And she was a poet. And we really connected. What year? What year? 50-something. This is still the 50s. Maybe 55 or something like that. I was 25, I think.

[31:03]

24, 20, maybe 23. Over 21. I think, you know, something like that. And, of course, I wasn't going to school anymore. And so then we moved into a little room. And we had a lot of friends. You know, she was a poet and I was a painter. And we were in North Beach. And, you know, we were struggling to get along. moved in with each other. We knew all the poets and painters in North Beach at that time. So we lived that life for some time.

[32:06]

Then we moved to the Mission. We moved to the Mission in 23rd and South Van Ness. We had an apartment upstairs. I kept the door wide open all night because we had this great dog. And I just let him go out at night, you know, and roam around. That was dumb. It was really dumb, but I did. And then we were in the third floor, but I just left the door wide open all night. Nobody ever came up. Nothing ever happened. We never locked our doors until... This is true. I never locked my door ever until around the 70s, no matter where I lived. Reagan era is when people started breaking down doors. True. So what happened?

[33:11]

Oh, yeah. So around that time, what happened? What happened? Well, I was thinking about my painting. When I think about the painting I was doing, which is what we call non-objective painting, in other words, there was no representational figure. It was non-representational painting. The painting itself had its own meaning. the shapes and movement and color evoked its own meaning. And so you were always on the edge of creativity because you were not copying anything and you were creating something out of almost out of thin air, but you would create relationships.

[34:15]

I felt that my painting was always, I was trying to get some kind of spiritual feeling in my painting. And I could see that that's what was driving me in my painting. And I knew what I really wanted up to a point. But it's also frustrating because since there's nothing to copy, you always have to have something from inside that's coming out. It's easy to get fallow, right? This is why painters and musicians drink and use dope, because there are times when you're so fallow that you have to have something to fill you up. And I remember seeing other people's paintings who didn't quite have the same feeling I had.

[35:19]

And to me, they were just decorative. And I could never paint anything that I felt was decorative or I felt was valid as a decorative painting. If you're going to do something decorative, do it some other way. Don't defile this kind of painting as decoration. So I was really into my teacher's way of thinking. But that suited me very well. So I was really drawn to his way. He was, still was, you know, he always felt that he was fighting the art wars. He would say, he would go to the East Coast. He said, the East Coast, New York, you know, is where the art wars are. And then he'd come back to San Francisco to rest there. Well, I had a good relationship with him, but he was in New York a lot, and I never had any feeling for going to New York.

[36:28]

I always felt that wherever I needed, I would find where I was. I never felt that if I went somewhere, I'd find something, or... I didn't have to go someplace to find something. And I knew it. I was on a big search for something, which I didn't know what it was, but I knew that it was where I was somehow. And I always felt that California was a great place to be. And I never had any desire to go anyplace else. So I don't know why, but it's just the way I always felt. So... At some point, I started to feel this kind of need for a religious outlet. There's something in me. I knew it was searching for some spiritual way. But I couldn't find it.

[37:33]

Oh, I know what happened. Someone turned me on to the Hasidic tales of Martin Buber. I don't know if you've ever read those, but this is like Jewish mysticism. Yeah, mystical realism. These were like the Jewish mystics of the 18th century. And it was all very inspiring to me. And I was totally turned on and inspired by it. And I felt, but there was nothing like that, no place you could find that in San Francisco, in the Bay Area. It was, Judaism at that time was so anti-spiritual, you couldn't find a spiritual person, a spiritual leader. or congregation or anything like that. It was all materialistic, totally materialistic, which is the thing that I hated about Judaism, was that it was so materialistic.

[38:44]

I had this kind of love-hate relationship because I felt something very deep about Judaism, but at the same time, I felt that it was so corrupt and materialistic and kind of callous in a way that I couldn't connect with it. But I really connected with the Hasidic tales. And so I just imagined myself by myself following that kind of path by myself. And it was great. You know, I really, I went through a lot of changes. And I was totally supported by my wife to do that. And I studied a little bit of Kabbalah and a little bit of the inner mysteries and

[39:54]

I realized at that time that the great meaning of all this mysticism was just be a person. Just, we call it in Jewish, just be a mensch. That's all you have to do. That's what the whole thing means. So when I met Suzuki Roshi and he said, beginner's mind, I knew right away what that was. I just totally connected with it. So... Then I found a rabbi who was nice. He was from Germany. He was nice. He and his wife. And my wife, Ruth, and I got married. He married us. And there was so much stuff I can't tell you about, but we were still in the art community, you know, with our friends and doing all kinds of things.

[41:08]

And I also started getting interested in music and in jazz. All my life, you know, I can remember when I was a little kid, And my brother asked me, what do you like best, popular music or classical music? And I thought, I think I like classical music better. And I shifted that way. I used to go, when I was a little kid in junior high, I'd go to the library after school and listen to classical music records because we didn't have a phonograph. Television had not been invented. It was invented, but it wasn't used. I knew this person who had a television set. She said, and when there's a television station, we'll be able to see. And then when it did come in, it was wrestling.

[42:18]

That's what was on this TV, was wrestling. Believe me, that's right. Anyway. So I started getting it and reading a lot. Somebody gave me a book of Mahana Maharshi. And I really got off on Mahana Maharshi. I just glued to those books that would keep coming out from India. He died in 1950, I think. And then his disciples were printing his books of his life. And I just read them avidly and really got off on that. So I was in this very kind of wonderful, mystical state. I would make up mantras. And all day long I'd have this one word going on.

[43:20]

And I was just really high, so high on this mantra. And totally dedicated to what I was doing. And I felt like this mystic. And then I got a job driving a taxi cab. So that was really the job I wanted, was to drive a cab. I always wanted to do that. And I did that for six years. I did everything for six years. I drove the cab for six years. And it was, it started out with Yellow, And Yellow Cab, he had to... Yellow Cab was owned by Rothschild, a man named Rothschild. He was one of the Rothschilds. And they called him the rabbi, the taxi drivers. And the wonderful thing about taxi driving is that you get so much money every night and then you...

[44:23]

turn in your money, and they gave you half of it back in cash. So it was all cash. Everything was cash. And 50-50. It was really good. Really nice. Every night you get paid half of what you earned. But you kept your tips. And then I got to driving for DeSoto Cab. I told them that I was an artist and I didn't want to I wanted to work part-time. So the nice guy, he said, okay, you can do that. And so I did that for a good four years. And so I'd just go in whenever I wanted to. Whenever I needed some money, I'd just go in and work. It was great. And cash on the line, you know? I never felt that I needed money. See, my parents never talked about money. They never taught me anything about money. And so I had no... I would work for... My mother would give me a dollar when I was in high school, a dollar a week to do the laundry.

[45:36]

So I did have that dollar for the week. And then she'd give me 25 cents for the bus fare to go to school and hitchhike and keep the 25 cents for spending money. And that was all the money I had. So I never, I always got along without money. And when I see how kids are today, it just boggles my mind. And parents giving their children all this money and all these things. And he charges $20 a month. And then, after we lived there for a while, he reduced the rent. to 15, because he liked us so much. So we always had good luck that way. Good thing he didn't have a long life, though, just... So... So I was, one day, well, my wife had a lot of poet friends, you know, a lot of painter friends.

[46:43]

And this one friend of hers was her best friend, a very eccentric, wonderful guy. He was always turning me on to things, you know. I think he turned me on to Manu Maharshi, and he also gave me a copy of the Platform Sutra. this little brown copy, the first edition of the Platform Searcher, Wang Wulong translation. He said, you should read this. So I read it and it really turned me on to Zen. And then it kept expanding my spiritual horizons. And then he turned me on to this George Fields bookstore on Polk Street, which was the only place, except for the metaphysical bookstore, that had any Buddhist books or, you know, spiritualist books.

[47:47]

And so I used to go in there a lot, and I used to get these books on spirituality, which were really good. And vegetarianism... and how to take care of yourself in accord with spiritual practices. And they were all American stuff, you know, probably stuff that came from the Midwest and just out of the ground of this America, you know. And so I started getting interested in that kind of stuff and some theosophical stuff and... So there was this man who had a white beard and very clean. I remember how clean he was. And his name was Mr. Williams. And he dabbled in meditation and theosophical books and He knew a little bit about everything.

[48:49]

And so he said, well, if you want to learn how to meditate, I'll show you some things. And so he showed me some ways of meditating with the breath and looking at a candle. And I really liked that. Meditation was a word that always appealed to me, but I never knew anything about it. So when the word meditation came up, I was really drawn to that. So I worked with him for a little while. And I remember one time he said, you should go see this Reverend Suzuki at the Zen temple. But I never went. I didn't go. And then I met Philip Wilson. Philip Wilson was Suzuki Roshi's one of his early students, who always, Gerald Wilson is just indescribable, but he was a football player at Stanford, and he would, you know, just as, he had polio when he was a kid, and he built himself up, and he was this, you know, pesky guy, strong, and he loved reverences, reverences, you know.

[50:05]

And Suzuki Roshi ordained him, sent him off to Japan. But when he came back from Japan, he couldn't practice anymore. And he went to Hollywood and became a gorilla in the Planet of the Apes. LAUGHTER Sounds like a wrench. Right. So, I love Philip. I love Philip. I've seen him through the years almost. He's totally degenerated. But he was so in love with Suzuki Roshi. He just... And Suzuki Roshi used to beat him all the time with his staples. He'd go, big ego. Which he did have. LAUGHTER So Philip came to our house and was talking about, you know, there's this Zen temple I go to, you know, and it's a teacher there.

[51:13]

I'd read some books on Zen, but D.C. Suzuki is about all there was at the time. The library at Sokoji was about this big. It was about three shelves. There were no Buddhist books to speak of at that time. Now, anyway, so I got interested in, but I still didn't go to the Zendo, which is on Bush Street. Then there was this good friend of ours. Daniel Moore and Daniel Moore had been a friend of ours he was a lot younger than me and I don't know if you remember Diane Varsi she was at Peyton Place it was a movie I don't know if it's one of those movies that probably everybody forgot about but at the time it was a big movie she was the star of Peyton Place and she left Hollywood

[52:27]

And she fell in with us, you know, became our friend. And Daniel Moore married her sister. Daniel was a poet. And he had this troupe called the Floating Lotus Theater in San Francisco. It was just this wild, you know, poetry, dance, music. do your thing theater that would just perform spontaneously all over the place and so he was the director of that and so I was at his house which he left me it was an old house that came around on the horn on a sailing ship and it was built in the middle of the block DeVicidero and Fulton and DeVicidero. So anyway, I was there with him and we were smoking pot all night.

[53:30]

I had started smoking grass in the 50s and I had this love-hate relationship with it. Paranoia. But when I would smoke pot, I would get these wonderful spiritual trips. I smoked pot in order to have these wonderful spiritual trips. That was what it did for me. So that's where my mind was. So the pot just enhanced all that. But it was also top-heavy. It was spiritual heavy. And I didn't have any grounding. And what I needed was grounding. I had all the spirituality I needed, but the grounding's what I didn't have. And so although I would get really high spiritually, I'd just get tossed around in my life. And I didn't have any way to control my life.

[54:33]

So Daniel Moore said, you know, I go to this Zen temple. And I said, I've heard about that place. Because I go early in the morning. And at that time, it was 5.40. So I was at 5.40. So we walked up Fillmore Street at 5 in the morning. I had my little black dog with me. Yeah. We went to Sokoji. So we went in, and there was this room with tatamis around the edges, around the walls, and this altar covering one side. We went in, sat down, faced the wall, and then somebody came up behind me and adjusted my posture. and showed me how to hold my hands, and not saying a word, just all feeling, all touch.

[55:39]

And it was a Siddhi Roshi, of course. And then I was sitting there, and then just this wonderful, I thought, here I am, just sitting here, all by myself, with nothing else but, you know, this wall, and this seat, and this place, and this... It just felt like coming home or something, you know, because right there. So that was my first time. It's so coachy. And it's time to stop, right? So part two, some other time. That was the last time that I smoked pot. I don't remember. I remember. I made out. That was 1964. Okay, thank you.

[56:36]

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