like the vacuum cleaner. Do we have a hand vacuum cleaner? Do we have a hand vacuum cleaner or some kind of vacuum? We have a vacuum cleaner, right? Yes. I need something, yeah. Okay. Give me something to hold. Yeah, I'll take it. Okay. Thanks. Would you like it to the side? Huh? Is that good? Okay, I think we're ready to begin. So, thank you, surgeon. Oh, you're welcome.

[01:11]

Can you hear everything? No. Now? Yeah. I can hear it. Don't fall asleep. My mom. 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 one. So, I'm going to subject you to it again. So, it's not so interesting, but it's long. Okay. Well, I was born July 9th, 1929, in the Los Angeles County

[02:24]

Hospital, which is no longer there, and somewhere in downtown Los Angeles. I lived in Hollywood until 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 father was born in 1989, 1898. And my mother was born much earlier, but she was older than my father for some reason.

[03:33]

She was born earlier. So, 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 Solove, who was a famous ballet dancer. When I mentioned his name to ballet dancers, they said, But 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, although people say, you must be from New York. People say it to me all the time.

[04:49]

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. 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, you know, 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.

[05:51]

Roosevelt was the only president I knew up until junior high. And they loved Roosevelt. He ushered in Social Security, which is now under attack. Anyway. So, we didn't have very much money. We never talked about money. And I had a brother. 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. And his teachers loved him, and people encouraged him.

[07:03]

And he was four years older than me, and I always kind of admired him, you know, 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. 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, you know. So, and my father was really, you know, my parents were very nice. They always fed us. They always took care of us. But there was something that wasn't there, you know. Even though we didn't have any money or means, my father always provided something for us. 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.

[08:18]

But we always had, you know, something to eat and a very steady home life. But there was no life in it, you know. My father was kind of depressed. 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. And I have this picture of him in his Cadillac, you know, a 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.

[09:39]

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. But I remember one time 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.

[10:41]

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 a 20s car, and he said he would sell it to me for 15 bucks. And I asked my dad if I could have it, and he said, well, if you earn the money, you know. So I mowed lawns and all this, and I earned 15 bucks. I said, 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 a kind of betrayal that I felt. And I just never respected my father after that. I mean, you have to buy insurance and responsibility. So I felt that my father would never take responsibility for anything that I wanted to do, that he needed to sign for.

[11:56]

They wouldn't let me play football because you had to sign for it. You had to sign away, you know, because I was just a little guy anyway, but playing football in my league, I wanted to do. In high school, I ran track, and that was nice. 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 Tosahara. 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. You get in the car and take a ride out to San Fernando Valley, which was all orchards at the time.

[13:02]

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 a picture of these rabbis with big long beards. 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.

[14:16]

And when I was in high school, I joined the Marine Reserve. This was during the war. The war started in 1941 when I was in junior high. And 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. And everything, you know, like Lucky Strike cigarettes, if you're familiar with those, had green circle. And they took the green out and 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 so, and my brother was in the Army, and he went to Europe. And, you know, I had this feeling that, you know, I wanted to go get in the Army too, you know, because it was just the thing you learned 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. So, 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. And then I went to art school.

[16:36]

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. But San Francisco was, all the buildings were up against each other, and the streets were all dirty, and it was cold. It's a totally different feeling.

[17:42]

But once I got used to San Francisco, I couldn't go back to Los Angeles anymore. As a 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. It was just this narrow little place. Anyway, so after I got discharged, I went to art school in San Francisco, the California School of Fine Art. So I took art classes, and I met my teacher, my art teacher, Clifford Still, who 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. It's called abstract expressionism was the name that the critics gave it, but we always called it non-objective painting.

[18:55]

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 how was I going to support myself 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, I didn't want to design wallpaper. People design that stuff? When they're sick. 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.

[20:11]

And 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. Just the way it's been. So I remember when I was going to art school, the Korean War started. 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 and get a physical. In order to go down to San Diego to join the Marines.

[21:25]

So 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 that's what I did. It's very unusual, I've never heard of that. I think I've always had a guardian angel somewhere. I do believe that. So I was going to art school, and then I got a job. My friend and I lived in Sausalito. We lived on a barge in Sausalito.

[22:28]

And he had a job at the Simmons Mattress Factory on Bay Street. And so, at night, he got me a job, and we worked at night, rolling out 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. So the way it ended up was a ménage à trois, and he flipped out, and I was left with what he had.

[23:33]

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. And so, it went to some point. Well, 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. One of my painter friends said, you know, 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 know. You don't have to know anything.

[24:54]

So I signed on, and I joined the union. 240 an hour. In those days, 240 an hour was like $30 now, which is incredible pay. So we'd drive every day to Marin, and so that was really a good job. 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 and get jobs, 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. But I didn't like it very much. You know, it's very hard work. In a housing project, you have to paint so many doors a day. You have to paint so many windowsills a day. And you're working all the time. The roller had not been invented.

[26:03]

So it was all… Electric sprayer? Huh? Electric sprayer? No. It was all brush painting. We all had wonderful paintbrushes, which they no longer make anymore. The Chinese bristle, and the bristles were like… 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, you know, paintbrush. And the wall brushes were like this. To paint a wall, there's a technique to painting a wall, because when you paint woodwork, you go with the grain. 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.

[27:17]

Also, you know, 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. Anyway, so then I got a job in a boat shop. There was this boat shop, Nunes 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 painted huge, really big paintings. And I would spend a lot of time doing that. And then I'd have to go to work.

[28:32]

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. See, the thing about the boat shop is they paid 10 cents less an hour than house painting. So no house painter would ever do that because it's maybe 20 cents less an hour. But the work is 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. 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.

[29:42]

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 this fiberglass. I was just enveloped in fiberglass dust and paint dust and copper dust. And nothing ever happened to me. 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.

[30:51]

What year? What year? Fifty-something. This is still the fifties. Maybe fifty-five or something like that. I was twenty-five, I think. Twenty-four. Maybe twenty-three. Twenty-four. 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 we were struggling to get along. We moved in with each other. And we knew all the poets and painters in North Beach at that time. And so we lived that life for some time.

[32:06]

And then we moved to the Mission. We moved to the Mission on 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 the seventies. This is true. I never locked my door ever until I was in the seventies, no matter where I lived. In the Reagan era is when people started breaking down doors. It's true. So what happened? Oh, yeah. So around that time, what happened?

[33:16]

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 almost out of thin air, you know, but you create relationships. So 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.

[34:37]

But it's also frustrating because since there's nothing to copy, you always have to have something from inside that's coming out. So you have to, you know, 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. 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.

[35:40]

And 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 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. 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. 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 when 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.

[36:48]

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 just the way I always felt. So, at some point, I started to feel this kind of need for a religious outlet. You know, there's something in me that I knew was searching for some spiritual way. But I couldn't find it. 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 spirit mysticism. Yeah, mystical realism. These were like the Jewish mystics of the 18th century. And it was all very inspiring to me. I was totally turned on and inspired by it.

[38:04]

But there was nothing like that, no place you could find that in San Francisco, in the Bay Area. 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. So, you know, 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.

[39:08]

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 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 I realized at that time that the great meaning of all this mysticism was, just be a person. In Jewish, just be a mensch. And that's all you have to do. That's what the whole thing means.

[40:19]

So when I met Suzuki Roshi and he said, Beginner's Mind, I knew right away, you know, what that was. I just totally connected with it. Then I found a rabbi who was nice. He was from Germany. He was nice. He had his wife. And my wife, Ruth, and I got married. He married us. And 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. 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?

[41:33]

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 the television. And then when it did come in, it was wrestling. That's what was on the TV, was wrestling. Believe me, that's right. Anyway. So I started reading a lot. Somebody gave me a book of Mahana Maharshi, and I really got off on Mahana Maharshi. It just glued to those books that would keep coming out from India.

[42:52]

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 really kind of wonderful mystical state. I would make up mantras, and all day long I'd have this one word going on, and I just was really high, so high on this mantra. And I was 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.

[43:57]

And I started out with yellow. Yellow cab was owned by Rothschild, a man named Rothschild, who was one of the Rothschilds. They called him the rabbi, the taxi drivers. And this wonderful thing about taxi driving is that you get so much money every night, and then you turn in your money, and they give you half of it back in cash. So it's 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 De Soto Cab. I told him that I was an artist and I wanted to work part-time. So he's a 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.

[45:14]

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. 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, 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. 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.

[46:26]

So I was... One day... Well, my wife had a lot of poet friends, you know, a lot of painter friends. 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 the Ramana Maharshi. And he also gave me a copy of the Platform Sutra, this little brown copy, the first edition of the Platform Sutra. So I read it, and it really turned me on to Zen. And it kept expanding my spiritual horizons. And then he turned me on to this... George Field's bookstore on Polk Street 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. So there was this guy, this man, who had a white beard, and he was 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. And so he said, well, if you want to learn how to meditate, I'll show you some things.

[48:56]

And so he showed me some ways of meditating, with the breath and looking at a candle. And I really liked that, you know. And I felt 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. Philip Wilson is just indescribable. But he was a football player at Stanford. And he had polio when he was a kid, and he built himself up. And he was this pesky guy, strong. And he loved Reverend Suzuki. And Suzuki Roshi ordained him, sent him off to Japan.

[50:13]

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. Sounds like revenge. Right. So I love Philip. I love Philip. I've seen him through the years, and he's totally degenerated. But he was so in love with Suzuki Roshi. And Suzuki Roshi used to beat him all the time with his stick, his ego, big ego, which he did have. So Philip came to our house and was talking about, you know, there's this Zen temple I go to, you know, and there's a teacher there. I'd read some books on Zen, but D.C. Suzuki was about all there was at the time.

[51:22]

The library at Sokoji was about this big. It was about three shelves. There were no Buddhist books to sneak of at that time. Now, anyway. So I got interested, but I still didn't go to the Zen dojo, 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 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. And she was the star of Peyton Place. And she left Hollywood. And she fell in with us and became our friend. And Daniel Moore married her sister. Daniel was a poet.

[52:37]

And he had this troupe called the Floating Lotus Theater in San Francisco. It was just this wild, you know, poetry, dance, music, you know, do your thing, you know, 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. So anyway, I was there with him, and we were smoking pot all night. I had started smoking grass in the 50s. And I had this love-hate relationship with it, paranoia.

[53:46]

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, you know. But it was also top-heavy. You know, 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 is 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. And so Daniel Moore said, you know, I'd go to this Zen temple. And I said, I've heard about that place. He said, I go early in the morning. And at that time it was 540. So we walked up Fillmore Street at 5 in the morning. I had my little black dog with me.

[55:04]

And we went to Sokoji. So we went in, and there was this room, this bare room with tatamis around the edges, around the walls, and this altar covering one side. And we went in, bowed, sat down, faced the wall, and then somebody came up behind me and adjusted my posture and showed me how to hold my hands. Not saying a word, just all feeling, all touch. And it was Suzuki Roshi, of course. And then I was sitting there, and it was just this wonderful, I thought, here I am, just sitting here, all by myself, with nothing else but this wall, and this seat, and this place. And it just felt like coming home or something, you know, because, whew, right there. So that was my first time at Sokoji. And it's time to stop, right? So part two, some other time.

[56:20]

Well, yeah, that was the last time that I smoked pot that I can remember. I remember another time. Do you? I may have. That was 1964. Okay, thank you.

[56:48]

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