John Steiner cuke page

How can you expect to do anything in the world when you can't tie your shoes?

This undated interview with John Steiner was done sometime between 1994 and 99 when I finished Crooked Cucumber. John mentions his early peace work here but volumes could be filled with the story of all he has done to try to make this world a more harmonious place. I was involved with him on work to bring about a nuclear freeze and that's just a highlight on his decades long path of peace and environmental concerns, hard work, and philanthropy. His spiritual path has also been strong and constantly renewing. Recently he has been studying Great Freedom with Candice O'Denver (no longer - 4-14). Maybe we can get a more thorough picture of where he's trod and what he's up to now but I don't think I can hold him down long enough to get a thorough answer because he's always engaged in something or things that are happening now.

John starts off here by talking about the second most famous incident in Zen Center history in the Suzuki era, the best remembered and most often referred to event with the exception of Richard Baker's mountain seat ceremony, the highly emotional last public appearance of Shunryu Suzuki. This story happened during a Suzuki lecture at Sokoji on Bush Street. I wasn't there, was at Tassajara at the time, but I've heard this story related so many times that I feel like I was there.

- DC forgot to date - sometime in 2012

Go to Suzuki's Explosive Answer page for more accounts on this story.

Interview

It was in the fall of 1968, October I think. I was sitting on a zafu in the second or third row from the front. At times Suzuki had trouble understanding what someone had said and an older student would tell him what the person had said. There had been a big anti war march on I think the previous day that I went to. I was quite concerned about the war. A guy in the back during the question and answer period said, "How come we're meeting here when there's a war going on out there? Suzuki Roshi didn't get it and I repeated the question. He jumped off the stage and came behind me put his stick on me and started hitting me over and over shouting, "You fool! you fool! You're wasting your time!" I remember that distinctly.

When he got back on the stage he said, "How can you expect to do anything in the world when you can't tie your shoes?"

When he was hitting me I thought, Oh this is like something out of the books and wondered if I was going to get enlightened.

Afterwards Bob Halpern came up to me and said, "Steiner, you forgot to bow." I really appreciated that because it brought me back down to earth and showed me how self‑centered I was.

Then Suzuki Roshi apologized to me and said, "The reason I hit you is I was reminded of what I went through in Japan during the war and it brought up that old frustration.

He put his hand on my shoulder and I saw his thin arm, and from the underside loose skin hanging down just a little, and I was struck with his age and fragility. It was a very touching intimate moment. He wouldn't have done that if he hadn't felt that I could receive it and it was appropriate for me.

The core issue was that he realized I wasn't ready to go out into the world yet. I came to sense it at the time but realized consciously later. I had actually had a thought like that two years before in 66 when I was a city. planning student at UCB. I was in on the first anti-war stuff - the Navy recruiting table incident. I was involved with Mario Savio and some others and everyone was at an impasse and I had a vision of bringing the various parties together and I got the administration, faculty and several factions of students to agree to a live round table discussion of issues on KQED. I did it solo. All agreed but then the administration started to have second thoughts and pulled out and then some of the faculty people pulled out. I realized then that I didn't have the personal power and integrity to be able to manifest my vision. A half year later I was at Zen Center. In my time there, especially the three years at Tassajara, I learned to listen to my inner voice.

One morning I drove Suzuki Roshi to the Los Altos Zendo. The night before, Catfish hunter had pitched a perfect game. He didn't seem to know much about baseball but was struck that somebody could be called Catfish. He fell asleep and as I got toward Los Altos I realized I didn't know what exit to take. He woke up 100 yards before the right exit and told me to take it and directed me from there to the zendo.

It reminds me of the lecture he gave at Tassajara where he said that when he was a new student he got the job of having to ring the wake-up bell but he had no alarm. He tried to stay up but kept falling asleep and finally fell asleep for good. Then he awoke and saw it was just at the right time. He realized then that he could wake up when he wanted to without a clock. It was a double wake up. He realized that there was more to him than he'd thought and that he could depend on himself.

He always lost and forgot things. Once I answered the phone at the office on Bush Street and it was Okusan saying that Suzuki Roshi had forgotten his false teeth and I had to take them to him. They were in a container and I didn't look inside.

Once in the early days at Bush Street I was walking in the zendo during zazen for some reason that I don't remember and I looked at Suzuki Roshi sitting zazen and his face looked like a death mask. Years later I realized I was looking emptiness in the face.

Suzuki Roshi's practice is now deeply in my soul.

Searching through cuke archives, among those that mention John Steiner, are the following: