I've been thinking about the words to an old song last couple weeks. It was written by George M. Cohan. I don't know how many people here have ever heard of him. Has anyone heard of him? Oh, good. My grandmother, my mother's mother, the Irish side of my family, had a collection of his records. She had one of those old wind-up controllers, and when I'd go to visit, she'd let me play with the records. She'd say, don't break them. And lately, I was thinking of this one song, I don't really know the name of it, but I know the beginning of it goes Life is a funny proposition after all. We're born, we live a bit, and then we die.

[01:50]

I don't know what the rest of the song said, but I'll at least remember that. And I guess maybe I've been thinking of it because I'm trying to prepare for this Last week, Red mentioned... Red's in Tassajara. Hi, Red. He's listening. We hope it works. But last week, he mentioned that the turtle moving towards fire explained a little bit brought up about from that Buddhist saying about how difficult it is to practice Buddhism or how difficult it is to be born a human in order to be able to practice Buddhism.

[02:57]

I guess some schools think that only humans can be Buddhist. But it's what the odds are the same for being born human as it is for this turtle who's blind or has a eye down here to find that log in the middle of the ocean that has a hole in it. And they put his belly eye up to it to see the sun. We're very lucky to be born human. We can practice Buddhism. This is George M. Cohan. We live a bit It really is a bit. Even if it's 80 years, that's not very long. Some people only live 30. Well, I was born 54 years ago.

[04:04]

not very far from here. My parents were living on Julian Avenue, which is over by the rock seat. 40 years later, I was knocking on the door. I'd heard about Suzuki Roshi's book. I came over to buy it. I think it was, I think Yvonne opened the door. This Saturday morning. And she said, well, the bookstore isn't open right now, but we're just about to have Zazen instruction. Would you like to spend your time with me? If they have any Zazen instruction, then the bookstore will be open. Well, I really can only buy the book, you know. But I saw some people in black wandering, going into the single file room.

[05:10]

But I went down to his angle, and that's where they had it. And Mel was giving that size of impression. Wow, pretty good. At that time, I wasn't unfamiliar with meditation or, I mean, it was just a lot of, I was going out to, San Francisco Oshawa was out on Fulton Street, he's still there, Dr. Chowdhury was a teacher there. He taught a lot of Sri Aurobindo thought and meditation we did there was in chairs for about 10 minutes. So I was in here, But I thought, well, I like the way Nell was talking. I don't know what happened. I think after that, there was a lecture. So Zipi Roshi, I think he just came back from Japan, Pasahara. And I was taken by the Zazen instruction.

[06:13]

And someone said, well, you were upstairs and went to lecture. I'd be here, and this man comes in, and I said, he's the guy who wrote the book. Right away I felt something. I saw him. He teaches this Zaza. So the next morning, I think we had Zaza on Sunday morning. Anyway, I was back. I went home and practiced. I approached that leg to check. And to the Zenko. I kept trying that. I couldn't hold still for more than five minutes. And I kept coming. That was the time that Suzuki Oshii was becoming ill, or he was ill, so he stayed here. And he was in the Zenko, it seemed like, every morning.

[07:17]

went in and there he'd be. He always seemed to be there early. I'd get there at 10 to 5, he'd be there. So I tried to record it if he'd be there. I was trying to beat him to his ember, but he was there. That's when we sat on the floor, but there was a tongue at the end. I guess that would be the west end of his ember. He was just sitting there. I never got to meet him, I mean to talk to him, besides bowing in the hallway, but that year I felt that he taught me a lot. I was studying Tai Chi at that time. I told my teacher, my teacher's name was Fong Ha. And he was kind of a seeker like me too, trying a lot of things.

[08:26]

But I told him what was going on over here. So he came over to Zazen Instruction with me. I used to go to Zazen Instruction every Saturday. I did that for about a month, a month and a half, I figured, well, maybe I can learn something more. So I got to have Zazen instruction with Bill Kwan and Reb. Anyway, Fong liked what was happening here. So we would meet, we'd go to first period. And then we would do kin-hin. We liked kin-hin because kin-hin reminded us of Tai Chi. It was kind of that meditation movement. And then we would leave after kin-hin. So everybody's coming in, and we were always going out. I don't know if anybody was here then, thinking about what the heck we were doing, why we stayed for kin-hin, and then leave second good. But we went through my house up by, I lived on Waller Street at that time,

[09:33]

And they go to Tai Chi up there and have breakfast, talk about whatever. I was thinking about what to say tonight. And I thought about that knocking on the door. And I tried to think back over my life of when did I take that first step to come over here. The last week or so I've been like reviewing my life. I stayed a drowning person,

[10:35]

But at least they'd have it all set, I think. I really don't know. I was brought up Catholic. Catholic mom, French Catholic mom. School at Bayview District. at Candlestick Park. It was called St. Joan of Arc. And there was some period there that I became very, I don't know what you call it, loud. I was an altar boy, and I'd go to Mass every morning hoping that the scheduled person wouldn't show up, so when he, the priest would ask me to come in a circle. And fine, people never showed up, because you weren't going to be sitting there. So that made them think that I wanted to enter the seminary.

[11:40]

I got hits. I might may have. But a friend of mine bought a trumpet. So I, my father said, I want a trumpet. And he said, trumpets are too loud, I'll buy you a saxophone. I found a letter because he wanted to play the saxophone. So I gradually became interested in music, saxophone, and I started being good enough to play in a teenage band. And I wasn't getting up in the morning and going to the bathroom. I'd be up late playing music. And in fact, I stopped going to church altogether.

[12:45]

And music became part of me. The main part of me. I had no interest except music. Which wasn't classical music. It was jazz band type jazz. So that took my life up in Jehovah. Maybe it saved my life. Because I was in the Marine Corps during the Korean War, but I was banned. I never left California. We used to go down. I was at Camp Pendleton. The band would go down to San Diego at the docks. And we played the Marine Corps hymn for these young Marines who were going over to Korea. We'd go down maybe once a month.

[13:49]

They were called replacement drafts. They were going over to fill the spaces that were made. And then they started coming back. We were playing for them coming back. And a friend of mine who I Paid off. He's coming back. I didn't know him. I'm standing on the dock with my clarinet. His voice yells from the ship. He said, Gerardo, you S.O.B. You were here when I left and you're still here when I come back. I'm glad he got back on it. I met my wife Barbara while I was in the Marine Corps. And I got out and we came back here and I started going to San Francisco State.

[14:53]

I think it was there that maybe something happened towards getting me over here. It was a humanities class and the teacher recommended biography of Mahatma Gandhi. And that, something happened to me reading that. This was during the 50s. A lot of things are happening down here. Creative things. And then old Alan Watts Some of the people I hung out with were starting to talk about sand and one-handed clocking. Far out. Alan Watts had a program on KPFA on Sunday nights at that time. Every Sunday night, about 10 o'clock in Barbara's line bed, I'd listen to Alan Watts.

[16:05]

Wow, he's far out. But we were, he was teaching us something. And then, I think, I was wondering more about was his Buddhism. Because Alan Watts never mentioned that. Nick Barber bought a book at Christmas Humphreys, who's probably still around. And he never mentioned that. But I was, it was interesting to read him, and I was reading, and then D.T. Suzuki. But all of this was, it wasn't, we weren't trying to practice, it was more of an intellectual pot of wine, as you said, talk about it. There was something Alan once mentioned about going with it, like going with the flow.

[17:21]

He's like a man. When you're riding a bicycle, from when you start to fall, you have to go into the fall and then pull yourself out. And I said, oh. And so I decided to start falling. So I kept falling for several years. Didn't land on the bottom, but I didn't pull up either. So I think I dropped out. I had some money saved and that was the time all this, the drug culture was going on. I bought a little camping trailer. The car I still had, which some of you know, it was black then, now it's orange. And we took our son out of school and just traveled around for a year. We settled down in San Diego County, northern San Diego County, a year of Canada and Mexico.

[18:39]

I was just wondering what was going on. Somehow I got across a book on Hatha Yoga. I forget his name, but he's still around. He's the teacher that flies around in an airplane. It's all painted different colors. Everybody knows his name. He's from Canada, actually. based in Canada. And so I was doing, I was on a health kit. I was built about very tan, bleached hair, white hair and all. I just had to get healthy. And I started doing, we had photographs of the book, doing the asanas. And something happened to me one of those. unusual.

[19:43]

It was very relaxing. I didn't quite ever have that feeling. Still had those books, Christmas Humphreys and Pallon Watts. I kind of look at them once in a while. And then we came back and said, let's just go. I think it was 68. And I still kind of search it. I mean, there's something. Maybe I'm still following, but there's something. I don't know what it is, but I want to find it. I saw an ad or a poster. I bought the I Ching.

[20:49]

I had that. I used to throw the coin. But I had that. There was a class given with the I Ching. The I Ching. And with the end of what it was, the old American Academy of Asian Studies that had already broken up, but it was still a few classes left. They're right over here on Devos and Fillmore, a building that's now a Baptist church. And this class was being taught by an old Chinese gentleman named T.C. Chao. Della knows Chao. He used to call him Dr. Chao, or Mr. Chao. He was an interesting man. And then they were teaching Offering courses in the Bhagavad Gita. That was the chant of the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit.

[21:55]

And I started going to the California Institute of Asian Studies. Took a class in the Lotus Sutra. I was going to the ashram on Sundays. Barbara and I started going to the ashram because they still had an ad in the paper, Saturday religious section. But they were celebrating Gandhi's birthday, and Benny Buffano was going to give a talk. Barbara had been trying to get me to go out there, but I didn't. It's not too much of a religious church or something. But Bennig-Fano and Gandhi combined, I couldn't resist that. I think you all know Bennig-Fano. There's a little sense of sculpture in many things around town here. But it turned out he had been on the salt march, that march to the sea that Gandhi did.

[23:00]

The British wouldn't let people make their own salt. They had to pay tax, they had to buy salt, pay tax. So anyway, the guy didn't talk about that. And he was a short guy. He talked kind of like a cab driver. And he got up to talk. He said, well, I went over there. There was all these people, and Yondi was there. We walked to the seat. Everybody's waiting. But what I'm trying to get at is that I was going in many directions. I even was going to Alameda on Sundays to a place called the Home of Truth, which was a Christian, but a different kind of Christian.

[24:02]

It kind of, we might say, came out of if Emerson had folded the church. Not exactly like the Unitarian church, but And I was very fascinated with the preaching of this minister, who sounded very much like a lot of Dr. Chaudhry would sound. There was a lot of East-West in his sermon. I don't know if I found the step yet. There might have been many steps, but it was at the American Academy. on their bulletin board that I saw. What do you call them? Advertisement places of Hiroshi's book. Excerpt. Something about our practice or Zazen means like a steel rail, riding on a single steel rail.

[25:09]

That brought me over here. In fact, that morning, I was over at a motel in the Rio district, buying a mantra from an Indian teacher. met when I left there. I said, I think I'll go buy the book when I get home. I think about this Hindu teacher who sold me the mantra. He had a, he would go into this very small motel room, and his assistant was in the room, and there was no, the guru wasn't there. There was about three of us in We had been in a talk by the assistant the night before, and he told me that he was interested in bringing a $10 bill, a piece of fruit, a flower.

[26:24]

So we go in the room, and he's talking to us, and I'm still wondering. The teacher's room's really small. And he tells us, he gets, the assistant gives us the lunchroom. He takes a $10 bill and gets it out. You go in the other room and you have the flower and the fruit. So there's a door, an open door, and it's the bathroom. And there's this very old yogi sitting there. He looks very old. I mean, I can't believe he looks. And so I have my apple. I sit down. There are a lot of athletes who fight. And he comes over to me. Get up and leave. You thought I'd better come over and get the book.

[27:30]

I'm not making fun of this man. I believe him. He didn't have much money. Yet he now has a big suite for me. So I kept sitting every day. I don't think I spoke to anybody here for maybe a year. Come and go. It took me a while to get used to servers. I guess that's what I'm used to a lot of people. I still had to use something. Pregnancy.

[28:39]

And after, I don't know how many, a couple of years, we'll cross the computer, she died. And I felt sad that I never spoke to him. I don't feel sad anymore. We were speaking to each other. And then, this is a piece of the Bissensei I'd offer in G-class. And I felt drawn to that. I didn't know why. Well, I do know why. I used to go to Japantown a lot before I came here and look around. I was always interested in Japanese things. And there was a place no longer there called Honami.

[30:00]

It was basically, I guess it was a stationary store. A lot of papers and Japanese brushes. But they also had tea equipment. And Japanese magazines. And I always was fascinated with the teabowls and the whiskey. I remember that head of, like Mr. Honolulu was a very old man, 70 or 80. He was always there, and his two daughters and wife. I would ask him, what is that? One time I saw these boxes, fukusas, a cloth that she used for ceremony. I said, what's that? And he took it out, pulled it, popped it, did what you do with tea ceremony, but I didn't want it.

[31:04]

I thought he was doing some kind of magic. I was watching. And then he watched the tea ceremony. I went, what a cloth. And he said, what's that? And maybe that's why I signed up for the tea class. I couldn't sit Sais in more than five minutes. Philippi Saint-Saëns used to say, why do you want to study decent? Gradually, it came longer. I did it too much, and then a couple of years ago, I did it. I came close to talking to Zipi Roshi, that's right. My first session, maybe it was three days, five, you know, I think we did seven.

[32:06]

But Katagiri was, Katagiri Roshi was here, and Zipi Roshi, we both were doing the session. And there was a sign-up sheet. That's right, so when I first came over here, some And I heard a friend, I told him I was coming here, he says, oh, well, that's too bad. You'll never get to talk to the teacher privately. And I said, well, why not? He said, well, that's Soto. And only in Lorenzai do they talk to each other. So maybe that's why I'd never be required about talking to him. Anyway, that was the sign-up sheet, and I was on both sheets. But then he became more, you know, they canceled it or something. It's like Suzuki Sensei used to ask me why.

[33:10]

I'm sure some of the people here watching me doing sessions used to wonder why I wanted to do juggling. I went around riding it very soon. If you told me to stay, I think I used to expect something. You know, I was going to be rewarded for being here, enlightened or something. But I learned that. This last June session was kind of, being here, reminded me of my first one.

[34:16]

It felt very good. It wasn't just like nostalgia. It just felt like something very good was happening. During that week, there was a lot of flashbacks and pretty much what I'm going through for this, I guess, category. And then we had a visitor in and spoke to us. I forget her name. Woman Roshi. And she brought back out of memories of the past, because right away she started quoting from Meister Eckhart, quote, the eye with which I see God is the same eye which God sees me in.

[35:24]

And that was one of my favorite quotes. And here she comes in, so she's already had a lot of nostalgia, and she says this, and then she quotes life, and did all the translation of haiku. What's going on? Past coming up. Are we supposed to have questions?

[36:24]

I mean, wait till the end of December. Whatever you like. Whatever I like. I don't know whether I should. Does anyone want to ask a question? Are you a poem? Yeah. A couple of weeks ago, in Rhett's Blue Cliff class, he brought up the Chinese poets of the Tang Dynasty.

[37:49]

And I thought I knew these poets. But he was saying their names, and I never heard. I said, who are these people? I thought I know who the famous poets were. He was saying, . And I always called them Li Po, because that's how they pronounced it in those days, and now they have all the modern Chinese scholars, and they wrote it. And I used to say, tofu. This is Li Bo, Li Po. There's a bar in Chinatown called Li Po. And I guess that's named after him. It's on red. It has a big Buddha behind the bar. This is called Drinking the World Beneath the Moon.

[38:59]

A pot of wine among the flowers I drink alone, no kiss or kin near. I raise my cup to invite the moon to join me. It and my shadow make a party of three. Alas, the moon is unconcerned about drinking, and my shadow merely follows me around. Briefly, I cavort with the moon and my shadow. Pleasure must be sought while it's spring. I sing and the moon goes back and forth. I dance and my shadow falls at random. While sober we seek pleasure and fellowship. When drunk we go each our own way. Then let us pledge a friendship without human ties and meet again at the far end of the Milky Way. We are in the church.

[41:11]

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