Dor Ben-Amotz | Podcast - Dor Ben-Amotz is a science professor who, in this podcast, talks about his experience teaching a course in Buddhism and Meditation at Bennington College in Vermont. He also speaks about how he got into Buddhism and meditation, his time at Green Gulch Farm, and more. Here's a link to the syllabus on the course he taught: cuke.com/pdf-2015/Fun_Buddhism_Slides.pdf
David Chadwick: DC | Dor Ben-Amotz: DBA
DC: Good day to you, sir. Mr. Dor Ben-Amotz, am I pronouncing that correctly?
DBA: Yes, that's exactly right and good to see you, David.
DC: Are you in Indiana?
DBA: I'm in Indiana currently, but I just got back from Vermont where I spent four months. I was teaching at Bennington College, which is my alma mater. I don't know how much of my life story I need to tell you, but I was at college in Bennington, Vermont, and then I've been a professor in
Indiana for 35 years in science, Physical chemistry. But, I'm retired now and I was teaching voluntarily at Bennington College. I was teaching two classes, one was the science class called Energy, Entropy and Quantization, which is sort of my bread-and-butter area.
DC: Say that name again.
DBA: Yeah, the first class was called Energy, Entropy and Quantization
DC: What was that last word?
DBA: Quantization, it's like quantum mechanics, you know quantum things. It's really about what makes the whole universe tick and what makes everything go, just like Buddhism is. You know, it's a strange thing, but it's from the scientific perspective what makes everything go is Energy and Entropy, usually in a tug-of-war and without Quantization nothing would be what it is. I mean none of this would exist without quantum phenomena. So they're all just fascinating topics and they really drive how the world works. I guess I'd say I've always been interested in how the world works and Buddhism is really exactly the same. It's just mysterious how those two things are connected. I mean, I still don't know and in some ways I chose to teach this class on Buddhism, called Fundamentals of Buddhism and meditation, and I've been doing this stuff for years, probably close to 50 years on and off starting really when I was a student at Bennington College in Vermont and I took a class (I probably was interested in some of this stuff before then even) but I took a class called Religious Experience by a man named Claude Fredericks who was a Buddhist. He had us read all kinds of interesting things including the Dhammapada, basic Buddhism text and there was one book he assigned about Zen by Huang Po.
DC: Yeah, it's a great book [The Zen Teachings of Huang Po, translated] by John Blofeld.
DBA: I've had this book on my shelf for 50 years and I keep revisiting it. I've also recently learned by reading up on it that it's one of the few, kind of like Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, in the sense that it was actually Dharma talks that were written down by one of his students who was actually I think a sort of future emperor or something who studied with him and actually wrote from memory his lectures at the time, instead of much later. So it's interesting that way and it got wonderful things in it that I keep revisiting. Even in the very first section it says something like the only difference between Buddhas and sentient beings is that sentient beings don't realize that they are Buddhas, or something like that.
DC: Yeah, that was a very influential book for me too like before I came to the Zen Center.
DBA: Really? Yeah. So, you know, I was fascinated and confused by that book which of course, you know, that's a good thing. I remember thinking this is wonderful and I really want to do this. But what does that mean? What do you, how do you do this What does doing this even mean? It took me actually, probably about 20 years after that when I finally, graduated did different things and was a postdoc and there's a long story, but I became a professor at Purdue University and then was introduced to Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and Zen Buddhism by a wonderful poet named Neil Myers,
who was a poet here for years and years and he had a meditation group, and he had some sort of overlaps over the years with Katagiri and several other people that came through the university, Japanese. He started his own Zen group and the structure of it was just sitting and then he would read a section of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and we would sometimes chat a little bit about that
There was a little chant we did, I think it was the four vows.
DC: Yeah
DBA: But we did it in the Kanji [Sino-Japanese] form, you know, so we didn't even know what it meant.
DC: Oh you did?
DBA: He said this is just to get your voice going again,
DC: Yeah, I say it every morning
SHU JO MU HEN SEI GAN DO
BON NO MU JIN SEI GAN DAN
HO MON MU RYO SEI GAN GAKU
BUTSU DO MU JO SEI GAN JO
DBA: Oh man, I almost, it was many years since I've said it in the kanji, but I almost could repeat it with you. But that same group evolved to saying it in English
Beings are numberless, I vow to free them
Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them.
Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them.
The Buddha way is unsurpassable, I vow to realize it
Yeah, that same group says that little chant now
Anyway, this was a miraculous thing for me because when I finally started meditating which was in the early 90s. Before then I’d been reading a lot and feeling like I love this, but I don't know how to, what to do with it and how to sort of become it, you know. Then when I started meditating it was very strange to me because I still don't even understand why that's true. But when I started meditating I suddenly realized oh, that's what they're talking about, you know, even though I can't even tell you now how the physical act of meditating and those words actually go together. I mean, I guess I can say more things about it now, but it's still a mysterious thing that meditating makes all those kind of spooky and interesting and mysterious words meaningful, or you know, they're connected with with something real.
DC: Mmm, yeah.
DBA: That we're all connected with
DC: Yeah
DBA: That we're all running away from all the time, you know
DC: Yeah
DBA: There's something real that's right here that we're all sort of seeking elsewhere. What? Where are you gonna seek that elsewhere? But, no, no, it's right here. Don't go anywhere else.
DC: Yeah
DBA: Anyway, so I decided to teach so it just came to me one day, you know when I was setting up to teach at Bennington this for the semester and it was the due date for submitting the syllabus information for the science class I was going to be teaching. I was meditating in the morning, an it just came to me that, wait a minute, you need to teach a course on Buddhism and meditation, which I never thought. I taught for years and years, but I taught science and I was doing meditation. And I'd been in several Sesshins, going back to the 90s and Hokioji, the Minnesota Zen Center, and then at Sonoma Mountain, with Bill Kwong and Shohaku Okumura at Hokioji and then most recently two years ago, was it two years ago? It was a little over a year ago. I was at the Rohatsu sesshin, at Green Gulch for three weeks.
DC: Oh, wow
DBA: Over the years about every 15 years I immersed myself. I forget how torturous a Sesshin is and I go do it again.
DC: Yeah, yeah
DBA: So, somehow all of that just came together and I just felt like I should, I want to teach a course on Buddhism and meditation. And so I submitted it, unsolicited, I submitted this course proposal and they sort of looked at me askance. They called me back and said, you know, “I don't, I'm looking at your bio, your CV, and I don't see anything, you haven't published any papers on Buddhism”. So, yeah, I said “you're right about that”. Anyway, I ended up having the idea of using my mentor in the San Francisco Zen Center these days is Zachary Smith, who's a wonderful guy my age and I've been kind of basically corresponding regularly with him. We have a sort of a semi-regular monthly thing and he's just been really great to know, and I said “well, maybe Zachary Smith could vouch for me”. So, I gave them his contact and asked for his okay, and he said yeah. I knew he was excited about me thinking of teaching this class, so it was all good. Anyway, so I did teach the class and I was, I think appropriately, worried about it in a way because I'd never taught a class on Buddhism. It was gonna be nothing like teaching the things I've been used to teach, and I wanted very much to be helpful and useful and, you know. I felt half the time like I didn't know anything and the other half like I had something that I really wanted to offer and I didn't know how to do it.
Okay, so I wrote a little syllabus description of it and the students had to sign up and it was it was an immensely popular sign up. It was overbooked. I couldn't take that many students. I ended up having 21 students in the class.
So they're in their 20s and something about it was very resonant with this time right now, I mean these students. I didn't know what I'd be getting into with the students, but they were, I would say, remarkably way-seeking in a certain way, you know, they really wanted, they know that things are, you know, a mess, which has been true for quite a few thousands of years.
DC: [laughing]
DBA: But they really feel it right now. They really feel the Dukkha thing right now, even though they didn't know the name for that. Some of them, a few of them, did have some meditation experience, but most of them not. They just thought, Buddhism and Meditation, this sounds like something I want to do. So, it's really pretty interesting. Honestly, I felt a little bit like, (I'm not going to over stretch this or anything) but I felt a little bit like, you know when Shunryu Suzuki came to San Francisco and the timing was just right.
DC: Mmm
DBA: You know in those days for him to do that amazing stuff and the people were there ready, you know, they were sponges ready to soak this up, right, in the 60s. Of course, it's not in anything like the same, I'm not trying to overly compare. But, I still felt like there was something kind of right about the timing of teaching a Buddhism class right now.
DC: Mmm
DBA: That this generation really, you know is quite seriously seeking something alternative to what they're doing now and what's what's not working
DC: Wow, that is not something I have been hearing, so that's good to hear.
DBA: Yes, I was surprised at that. I guess I wasn't surprised that they're feeling stressed and uncertain and dissatisfied and you know, those were all like different translations for the word Dukkha. I've always been interested in that word, it's usually translated as “suffering”, that's one of the meanings. A long time ago someone told me that a better translation from Sanskrit is “unsatisfactory” like life is unsatisfactory. There is something just not quite right about it.
DC: Yeah, I call it and “I can't get no satisfaction”.
DBA: Yeah, there you go, unsatisfactory, I can’t get no satisfaction. Another translation I've seen is stress. So, you know, life is stressful and the students really resonated with that, you know, unsatisfactory and stressful. They're like, they know exactly, that, to them, resonates. Suffering, they had a little trouble with, because they, like everybody does, that word suffering doesn't quite hit the mark because everybody knows that they have some wonderful days and there's some beautiful things in the world. Nobody thinks of themselves (or few, some people may) but I think people don’t think of themselves as just walking around suffering all the time.
DC: Yeah.
DBA: They all know that there's stresses. Everybody knows, we all know, that there's stresses and there's unsatisfactory elements and we want to complete the picture. It's like an incomplete picture. We feel disconnected
DC: Incomplete, is you know another way of looking at the meaning of Dukkha.
DBA: Right, exactly, all those things are so much about the same thing. The whole no self, you know, it's like no self is another concept they had a lot of trouble with, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit.
DC: [laughing]
DBA: (Getting a little ahead of myself, no pun intended anyway). When I first got into this class, I was struck by how they were looking for something and they had some ideas about what meditation was and somehow that attracted them. So, they had some preconceived notions about this, and it was quickly clear that the main thing I had to do is get them to just throw away all those preconceived notions. They were not going to be very helpful, whatever they thought Buddhism was or whatever they thought meditation is, it's totally different. Sometimes not entirely different, but they have to let go of all those preconceptions.
DC: Yeah.
DBA: So it was that sort of challenge, just getting them to just relax and just be. They had all kinds of ideas about what they should be doing when they meditate, the same problems we all have when we first start meditating, you know it’s like, I'm sitting here, what do I do with my mind? What do I do with my body? What do I do with my aching knees. What's going on here? I'm clearly not doing this right? And I say no, no, no, you're doing it exactly right. Just don't worry about it. Don't beat yourself up so much, you're fine. Just let those thoughts come and go don't fight with them.
I tried various kind of images on them that have kind of been helpful to me, like sitting outdoors somewhere and you're just sitting quietly and you see little squirrels or birds come across your field of view, and you can interact with them in various ways. You could say “get out of my way I'm trying to meditate stop bothering me”. Or you can have a little bag of seeds and you can say “come over here and eat out of my hand, let's play” right? But really the best thing to do is just to sit there and let them come and let them go. That was always a helpful image to me about how to deal with thoughts. Just let them come and let them go like some wonderful creatures that you're blessed to be observing, but let them go, don't try to wrestle with them don't try to drive them away, don't try to befriend them or get engaged with them, watch, watch, let it be.
Anyway, so that's sort of... I had them write every week in this class. Every week I gave them a little bit of a prompt, like something to read, a section from Shunryu Suzuki or two, or some other things to read. And then I'd say write something. At first, when I got some of the first writings back every week...
I said just a paragraph, it doesn't have to be long. Some of them were a little bit like book reports. So, I said I don't want a book reports, I want you to just say what comes up for you when you read this. Like what does it make you think or what's confusing about it? What do you not understand or what's going on?
That was helpful, and it was helpful for me! The amazing thing, which is no surprise really, but I learned a tremendous amount from this, and got a tremendous amount out of teaching this Buddhism class. I learned from what they were going through. Oh. oh, that's where they are now. I kind of remember that or maybe their version is a little different, because of the current era that they're living in. Alot of them were very idealistic and very concerned about fixing the world, you know, and how in the world is sitting somewhere gonna help fix anything, you know that kind of issue, right? So, of course I gave them different answers and whatever, the best way I could. But they weren't really answers and they never were very satisfactory, it's like full of contradictions.
I mean I tell them things like What occurred to me one time, that a Tibetan Buddhist sitting in a cave somewhere. In a cave and meditating for their whole life, which there are people apparently that do basically meditate most of their whole life in a cave. Well, what in the world does that do to anything? But, I know that there are people like that, that do this, and therefore my view of what it means to be human is greatly expanded. Just because I know that there's such a thing as somebody that sits and meditates all day in a cave
DC: Mmm.
DBA: It's weird that I don't even know this person, but they have influenced me. If I grew in a world where there was nothing like that, I would be greatly diminished.
We would all be greatly diminished if we didn't have the knowledge of people doing things like that.
DC: Yeah, Bob Thurman thinks says that, like monks meditating in monasteries keep the world more sane.
DBA: Yeah, and you know in some ways I entirely believe it, and in other ways it sounds kind of absurd, and they're both sort of true. Another thing I told them though is much more practical and actually this I got out of your book. It's very connected with what I got out of Crooked Cucumber, which was a great inspiration to me, David. I don't read books twice, ever, but I read your book twice, you know, it's just somehow, I want to read it again. It was a wonderful learning experience on so many levels, you know, about Japan and pre-world War II and Buddhism and you the way that you've integrated his teachings into it. It's just amazing.
I picked out, for the class, I thought what do they need to see, Wo I found these little quotes that were from your book that were buried in there. You'll probably recognize,... this is how I introduced Zazen. Mitsu, am I pronouncing her name correctly?
DC: Yeah.
DBA: His future wife
DC: Yeah
DBA: So there's a part in there where I'm quoting from your book, from Crooked Cucumber. It's at the time after he hired her to teach in the kindergarten, the Buddhist kindergarten that was being kind of brought up after the war, and they were trying to bring this kindergarten back. They needed a principal, and the old person that was doing it was no longer capable, and he heard about Mitsu and he felt strongly that she would be good to do it for whatever reason, even though she wasn't Buddhist, by her own description, she was not a Buddhist. She was kind of confused by why he wanted her to do this, but eventually he somehow convinced her. I mean, you know the story, because it's in your book. It's a wonderful story. But then at some point after she's already teaching in the kindergarten. She comes to him and she said “Could you please tell me what is being gained from Zazen? I don't want to do it for no reason“. And Shunryu Suzuki says this, he says “the practice of size and makes you capable of dealing with the situation in the best way on the spot.” So, I told the students that, like, early on I said this is what you need to keep in your mind, you know what I mean, just do this. How does it help with that. It's mysterious, but just do this.
And then I told him this story about how I have sat over the years like on and off. I've had times of sitting more intensely and going to sesshins and then times where I take time off. And I sometimes honestly would, you know, feel like it's good when I'm meditating more and I've been doing it a lot more seriously for the past few years every day. I kind of could tell that it was good, but my wife, Stephanie, she definitely could tell. When I tell people I don't know if meditation really does anything to me or not, she said oh, no, it does. It does a lot. You're completely different, you know, when you meditate more regularly.
DC: Hmm
DBA: Because of exactly what Shunryu Suzuki said, you can deal with things more directly on the spot when they come up much better. When things, you know, problems come up, which they do all the time. When I'm meditating more it's like oh, there's a problem, let's figure out what to do, that's all. Just you got to deal with it, you know, it's not all about the past and all the reasons why this shouldn't have happened or all the bad things that are gonna come from it. No, no, no, no, no just, none of that matters, right? Just deal with it. It's a thought it's like a thought coming up. It's not your enemy. It's just the thing that's coming up and it's unpleasant to some extent, but not really, because in some ways it's a challenge. We're here to meet challenges or what else would we be doing? You know,
DC: Yeah. Hey with your class do you have some meditation? How long, how do you do it?
DBA: Ah, yes, always meditation in the class. That is a good question, so I started out being very, just figuring I’d better not dive into it too deep to start with. So, we started out with five minute meditation. I told them just barely anything about it, you know, just sit. I said it's very important to get your back in the right position so that you can comfortably, I was more on posture, so that you can sit and let gravity basically hold you up. So you're not like causing great pains in your muscles and you just feel stable, like a mountain. So yeah, I told them some little things like this, but we should meditate for five minutes. Then I'd increase it. It was a weekly class. We met for two hours every week. So every week I increase it a little bit ten minutes, fifteen minutes, then I wanted to increase it more. I was not really sure if the students were ready to go to half-hour or whatever. So, I decided to do this, “Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna come in 15 minutes early” the class was in the morning (which by the way was a great testament to these students seriousness, because in this school, Bennington College, probably like all colleges, they're night people, they are not about morning classes. it's very hard for them to get up and be ready at 8 in the morning. This is the earliest class that they have there, my class was 8 in the morning. It was kind of like the only time slot, whatever, it was early and I liked the fact that it was early. So, I came in even earlier, you know a quarter to 8 and said anybody's welcome to join me for 15 minutes and then I'll continue meditating for another 15 minutes so you can join anytime you want and you can be shorter or longer.
DC: Yeah
DBA: You can be there for the whole half hour or you can be just coming in right when the class is supposed to start and meditate for 15 minutes. So we did that for a while and only one student actually came regularly early with me. And then it was very funny, and kind of wacky, because the students would be straggling in. It was a very strange way to meditate where people are straggling in. I found that to be an interesting challenge. Okay, all these little gophers and birds and trees and birds, you know and things are coming into my field of view and it's a meditation experience. You know, it's okay. Not quite as bad as the time we were meditating in our group in Indiana and suddenly, after we start meditating, somebody started drilling in the in the walls, you know, like the loudest kind of drilling you can ever imagine and we're in the middle of a 40 minute meditation and it went on for the whole time, you know, it's like okay. But anyway, then after a while in the middle of the semester, I did this for about half the semester, then they have this feedback time. They have this interesting thing where they meet on their own and
they give me feedback about the class. So one of the feedbacks they gave me was that they really like being there in the beginning of the meditation when I rang the bell and we all sat together quietly. And they didn't like this straggling in business. So, I realized I better do it a little differently. So, I still came in early and meditate since 15 minutes, and then the class started and we talked a little bit and then we'd meditate in the class for another 15 minutes. In the middle of this two-hour class when there was a natural break. I said, okay, should we meditate now? Good, there was always a nice natural point to say, okay let's meditate, so we would. Then at some point I brought up kinhin (walking meditation) and they were like, oh, yeah, okay, can we do that? Yeah. I thought we'd do it in the class. But the time we were doing it was right at the peak of foliage in Vermont. Vermont has this beautiful foliage. It turned out to be the absolute peak. I was like, yeah, we got a meditate in class. The students were saying “can't we go outside? You know, it's so beautiful outside”. But, I thought it's gonna take up too much time. I was kind of like in my mind I was just balking, you know, and then another student said let's go outside. I said, okay, you really want to go outside? Yes. Okay, let's go outside. So we went outside and we walked around this beautiful burning, you know on fire looking, maple tree. It was wonderful. So, we did and I said so you want to keep doing this walking meditation outside every week, even if it gets cold and snowing and stuff and they said yes we do. So, from then on we meditate in the class and then we did a little kinhin outside, and then we came back into the class. Usually there wasn't much time left after that. It was towards the end. So yeah, they meditated and I didn't tell them, I forget if I even ever suggested that it might be interesting if they meditated more than just in class. I was very, very low-key about that. I really felt like it's important not to be like you should meditate every day. If they want to they'll do it. I don't even know how many did but from their writings I gather that some of them did meditate more often maybe every day. I just didn't want to micromanage that. Let them find it on their own. That's how I did. I meditated sometimes, there was a lot of my career of meditating, where it more or less was once a week, meeting with this group, and it was helpful. Then I go to a Sesshin once in a while and then there were periods where I'd meditate every day, and now I've been doing it every day for several years and I'm very happy to be doing it, but I am kind of ready to do it. So, I was just let the thing evolve in the way that it wants to evolve and it kind of did. That class was a wonderful class for me and for them. After we'd meditate, I would do a little gassho and just say “thank you”. I said this is kind of traditional. When we would finish meditating, we would just bow to each other and say thank you. It got to the point where, kind of spontaneously, either then or at the end of the class, we just all thanked each other, and say thank you for this class. I kept stressing how much this class was wonderful for me. I wouldn't over stress it but, you know what, I would just make it clear to them. I love this class. I remember even saying one point in the class, I said “I love this class”
DC: Mmm
DBA: And they were kind of like, “we love this class too.” So it was just kind of great. We got to be a refuge for each other!
DC: Yeah, well that's really something. I'd like you to describe your course. First, what you sent me, what do you call that, a syllabus? Outline of the course. why don't you describe it? There was a lot in the Shunryu Suzuki lineage, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Why don’t you go over that. It's gonna be posted. Peter Ford will will post it. He's running cuke.com now. While I’m getting up a book called Tassara Stories. It's coming out in September and I'm sort of involved with that now. But, anyway, it's really neat and it's going to be posted on cuke.com. It might be posted by the time this podcast is posted.
DBA: Okay well that's nice, I mean thank you for offering to do that. I didn't think that would happen, but I'm glad we were corresponding and it's wonderful that you'll put it on cuke.com. Which I'm so fond of. I keep going back to that as a resource. I quoted stuff from there often, like your daily things. I would quote them and a lot of stuff from cuke.com ended up sort of shaping this course.
It [the syllabus] started out with two textbooks, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and this book called What the Buddha Taught, from the 1950s by Walpola Rahula.
DC: Oh, yeah.
DBA: A monk who, for all his life, as a kid he was a monk in India. So, those were the main texts and I'd assign things from there, but I also ended up just finding stuff, serendipitously finding stuff, that I thought would be cool, sometimes instigated by students, but maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. So, there were various optional books including books like Being Nobody, Going Nowhere by Ayya Khema, and your book Crooked Cucumber, like optional reading. I didn't assign that they had to read Crooked Cucumber, but I kept telling them how wonderful it is. And Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, I added Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, because I thought they would really resonate with that, and I think I was right. But I don't know how many of them actually went and read these alternate books. But they're interested in saving the planet. There ended up being a lot of online stuff. I also had a page full of links that are like, Shunryu Suzuki in person. That was wonderful to do and I would actually show his Ri and Ji talk, meditation instructions, the three-minute thing. That's just him, oh my goodness. It's so wonderful to see him not just read him. Just because there's so much you, I mean, you know, and I wish I had known him in person, But just even that little video clip you get this sort of radiance of just his personality. Like every Buddhist teacher, they're always smiling, right? So that's not a big deal. But when you see Shunryu Suzuki smile, he's like he's just joyously happy to be here and you know, this is amazing fun, you know, that just comes through in this way that is rare.
DC: You mentioned a video clip, you know all the film and video is on ShunryuSuzuki.com, more than a few minutes.
DBA: Yes. Right. I'm glad you mentioned that, and it's all linkable through cuke.com. You can find all that stuff
DC: Just go to ShunryuSuzuki.com and go to the film section and there's even some more recent stuff that doesn't have him.
DBA: Yes, and I think I found a lot of those things like Study Yourself
Shunryu Suzuki, it's a compilation of his talks without him in person in video, but it's a put together, I think it 2023 by the Zen Center. Other things Branches of the Sandokai a little longer clip of him talking. So, I showed some of those things including also talks by people at Green Gulch, like Sara Tashker. I heard her give a wonderful Dharma talk on one of their Sunday things. It's open to the public. My wife and I have been going there for years on and off to Green Gulch, and she gave a talk about a year or so ago called Birds and Precepts that I just thought wow, this will be good for students. So, this is an hour-long talk and I didn't play that in class, but I assigned it to them. Somebody even suggested, “we're seeing these videos in class. Sometimes give us some assignments of videos.” I said, oh, okay. So, I assigned this Sara Tashker video, Birds and Precepts, which is just wonderful and has very surprising an amazing story in the middle of it about a heron and a gopher. That I could try to retell but maybe I should just, you know, it's incredible and it's about the precept of not killing.
DC: Oh, go on and tell it.
DBA: Okay, I'll tell my little version. So, she's walking around in the garden one day. She was like the head gardener, I guess, at the time. She talks about the precepts in general, but not killing is one of the difficult ones, you know, to figure out how to deal with as a gardener. As an organic gardener, she's killing all the time. They have to deal with bugs and squirrels and things they always have to figure out how to manage all these life forms that want to eat all the same stuff that they're growing for everybody else.
DC: Yeah
DBA: So, the precept of not killing is a very difficult one to know how to just sit with, be with. Then, one day she's walking around and there's this Great Blue Heron about fifteen feet away from her, suddenly, and they catch each other's eye and she just stops and looks, there's this Heron there and it's not flying away, and so she just looks at it and then she realizes that it's a bit distracted. It's got it’s focus on something else. Then, before she knows it, it swoops down and grabs this little gopher with its beak, and stabs it, and it's still squirming around and then it swoops up, flies up, and goes into a pond and dunks the gopher in the pond and drowns it. This all happened just right there. Then she says, she kind of lets that sink in and then she starts talking about it. She said it never even occurred to her when all this was happening that any of this was inconsistent with the precept of not killing. You know, like how is that? How is that? Then she ends up connecting it to kind of like non-dual basically, you know, like the gopher and the heron are one they're one. Nobody's killing anybody. They're just, they're one thing that is transforming from one form to another like we all do all the time.
DC: Hmm
DBA: So, somehow she ends up, that shocking example, it was just amazing, you know to illustrate the precept of not killing and what it means and it's not like she had the answers all laid out, but she said some wonderful things and quoted Shunryu Suzuki in her talk. So, here's the quote. She says. “... to not kill means forget the self and realize profound connection, beyond our ideas even of connection.” That's one thing she says. Then she quotes Shunryu Suzuki saying
“We say do not kill. But do not kill doesn’t just mean don’t kill
flies or insects. Actually, if you say ‘here is a fly, should I kill it
or not?’ it is too late. We always have this kind of problem,
even before we see the fly. In duality where there is me and
there’s the fly, the completeness, the oneness, is already
obscured. This is the kind of problem humans have.”
So, she quoted that in her talk. Then later she goes to another one. He says, “It is not possible for anything to be killed, so the only way is
to be grateful for everything that you have,
that is how you keep our precepts.”
These are like, I don’t even know what to say about these things. Wow, right?
DC: Yeah, yeah.
DBA: So, you know the thing went on that way. There was a student, this amazing student in the class who actually was dealing with a lot of struggles, health-wise and things that I didn't fully understand but she told me some things that were quite horrendous. I don't want to divulge her personal things, but she was an amazing student, just very wise. She introduced me to bell hooks [she preferred spelled her name in lower case]. Said she loves bell hooks and then I started looking up, I heard of her vaguely but I didn't really know about Bell hooks. She was a Buddhist and she is amazing. So, I started assigning, you know, I found great interviews with bell hooks. I played one thing in class with bell hooks talking about how she went to meet Thich Nhat Hanh, and she was very excited about finally meeting him, (this is in this very little tiny talk that's on YouTube). She says, I went to meet him and on the way there I had a really bad day. I was having all kinds of
these difficulties and experiences that were very unpleasant with people basically she inferred, I think pretty much said, there were kind of racist and sexist interactions that were just like really disturbing to her on the way to go meet Thich Nhat Hanh. Then finally she meets him and she says, you know, I'm just very angry and and he says oh that's good, take your anger. It's good. You should appreciate your anger. Take your anger and put it in the soil and it'll make it grow things, you know, I sort of paraphrasing in some way. So, right, don't kill, don't be angry. All these things have other meanings
DC: hmm
DBA: and usefulnesses and they're there for a reason. So, whatever, you know the students taught me, and this was an example of bell hooks, and Laurie Anderson came into it, another interview with her.
DC: Laurie Anderson the musician?
DBA: yeah, the musician and artist who's also a Buddhist and there's this other podcast called Skeptics Path to Enlightenment by, what is his name? It's an interesting podcast series where he interviewed Laurie Anderson. That was wonderful. The students really appreciated that one too. So I assigned things like this. It's Scott Snibbe, I think is how you pronounce his name, A Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment. So, I'd assign these kind of things and then they would write about them and it would be very interesting for me to see what they got out of these things. I urge them to tell me what they're confused about. So, they were still very confused all through the semester still like, you know, settling on some things, but other things are very still, they have to work on. They see this. Like how to deal with desires this whole business of Buddhism seems to tell you that the path, you know the four noble truths are like we have this problem with Dukkha and the problem is due to our, sometimes it stated as our desires, and the way to get rid of it is to get rid of our desires. Then there's the eightfold path, for how to do that. What they really had trouble with is what does it mean? We're not supposed to desire anything?
DC: [laughing]
DBA: So, I really had to work on that myself, you know and figure out like, what, nom absolutely not. When we're hungry, we need, our bodies are telling us we need food or we need sleep or we need to see somebody or there's lots of desires. There's nothing wrong with desires! What's the problem? It's like cravings or hanging on to stuff and not letting it go or you know wanting something else to be other than what really is. So, how to get that across that is why I think that Buddhism has a bit of a bad rap. It’s harder for it to take hold because it's got this overview of, there's life is suffering and you have to get rid of desire.
DC: [laughing]
DBA: Somehow both of those don't quite hit the mark. They don't really hit the mark at all. You have to realize that what it's saying is not. First of all, it's saying there's problems in life but as the Dalai Lama says, the goal of life is to be happy.
DC: Mmm
DBA: That's what we're supposed to be doing is to be happy, right, Buddhism is not pessimistic,
DC: Yeah
DBA: And desires are not something that we want to get rid of but when we’re desiring things that don't exist or we're desiring something other than what is, it’s a problem. Wanting something is not a problem at all, the problem is what happens when you do get it that can be a problem, or what happens when you don't get what you're desiring. So, anyway, these are the kind of issues that I realized, ohm they're having trouble with this and I see why because it's difficult
DC: Mmm, yeah, yeah, yeah.
DBA: But I'm not sure what more you want me to say more about the syllabus? I kind of went rambling there.
DC: If you want.
DBA: I mean pretty much, it will be available if people want to peruse it. It ends with examples of assignments of things that I had them read and say write a little something about it. I called it a journal. So, each of them wrote a journal and every week they would make a contribution in their journal. At the end of the semester they all sent me their complete journals and it was very interesting to reread these things not just as I did every week. One of the hard things for me was reading their paragraphs and then figuring out what in the world to say back. I could say, hh, thank you. There were things I could see them being mixed up on that they have to just go through so, I had to figure out how to say something that would be helpful in some way.
DC: Yeah
DBA: It wasn't always at all obvious how to best do that
DC: Mmm
DBA: You are somebody that I kept thinking about as somebody that says helpful things to people in a way. Not right up in your face telling you, you should behave differently or what you should do, but more like accepting of everything and the different paths that everybody's on. The sort of things that I've heard you say over and over again in your interviews. I've enjoyed listening to many of your you know podcasts.
DC: Yeah
DBA: SO, you've been like my teacher, David, even though this is the first time we're meeting but I feel like I've been learning from you for sure.
DC: Oh, is that right [laughing]. That's really interesting to hear because I'm usually either alone here at home or with our housekeepers or gardeners or drivers. I probably spend more time speaking Indonesian than English. You're talking about the class being there. Oh, it must be nice to be with people [laughing].
DBA: You are teaching a class you have a big audience. You're not getting the benefit of being in the same space and breathing the same air and there is something special to that. But, you certainly are reaching more people.
DC: Yeah, I really love the people here though. I really like being with them and around them and. Anyway, that's very interesting for you to say because I don't about that I don't have that sort of identity, you know.
DBA: I know. I've noticed that in reading Crooked Cucumber, that you kind of seemed, like from your own description, you kind of balked at the idea of becoming a Buddhist teacher.
But you know, I was listening recently to you're reading of the old interview from 1995 with Betty Warren and that was wonderful. You and her, to me it seemed like there's a similarity there, that you took Shunryu Suzuki's, what you got from him... a path to take on your own... I feel funny putting words into your mouth or what you're thinking. But what I feel like I'm learning from both of you is that Shunryu Suzuki was saying “be yourself!” and you go on your own path. I feel like you manifest that and so did Betty Warren. I ended up reading her biography too. It's just wonderful. It's also pointed to in cuke.com, and it's just an amazing thing. There's a lot of great stuff in there.
DC: Yeah
DBA: She was she's a person I wish I had met, and I could have, even though she's now passed away in 2006, but I didn't know about her at the time. But I kind of wish I did.
DC: Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was really something. You mentioned Hokyoji. Did you ever meet Katagiri?
DBA: I was there right after Katagiri. Shohaku Okumura was the head teacher and Katagiri, there was already a stupa there for Katagiri.
DC: Oh, well, all right now Shohaku, you're in Indiana. That's where he is
DBA: Yes
DC: I have a great deal of respect for Shohaku Okumura.
DBA: Yeah. Yeah, he's amazing. He's amazing. That was my first session and there was him leading it and you know, I got a lot out of it. He's really very much of a kind of scholar of Buddhism, right? He goes right into taking texts apart and delving into all the nuances of the resonances with different other texts. I remember him talking about Indra's Net and various other things, that really were influential to me like we're all part of Indra's net. It's like a fishing net with the knots. We're all like the knots in this net and the knots don't exist on their own. There's no knot on its own, the knots are all just interconnections between other knots.
DC: Yes
DBA: When you move one knot the whole net vibrates. When anything happens in the net we all feel it, you know, so yes.
DC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DBA: But it was still pretty early in Hokyoji. I gather that now, I haven't been there's since like 30 years ago and we were still camping out in tents and stuff. They had a zendo that was very nice. But the living thing was just bring your own tent. So I spent a sesshin, living out in the tent.
DC: Is it still going? I can't remember.
DBA: Yes, Hokkien exists and they still have various practice periods and sesshins and things there.
DC: Yeah, right, right, right. I have to be reminded of a lot. And that’s great, you’ve been at Green Gulch recently, that's wonderful.
DBA: I really love that place, it's just paradise. My wife and I have been going there for years just as on the Sundays when outsiders can come and meditate and listen to a Dharma talk, and we then we would walk down through the gardens and go to Muir Beach and we just love doing that over the years. There was a point a couple of years ago where for I think it was for her birthday, that I realized they were taking guests now. So I got us like three nights as guests there
DC: Mmm
DBA: That was just wonderful and I ended volunteered myself in the kitchen. I just talked to the Tenzo and said hey, can I help cut vegetables and they said, yeah sure. Then I said that I just got the bug. I just said I have to come be here. So, I ended up arranging to come there for three weeks and the third week was the Rohatsu Sesshin, and it was not this past December but December before that and yeah with Jiryu, Mark, was heading it.
DC: Yeah, he's the Abbot
DBA: Steph Blank was the Shuso, she was amazing. She ended up saying some things at certain points in the sesshin that were just like wonderful bombshells of just greatness, you know, it was fantastic having her in that space. We ended up corresponding and having some more, we're keeping in contact a bit.
DC: Yeah, so did you first got interested in Buddhism practice meditation or your way seeking mind path and everything. You talked about reading the Huang Po book at Bennington College. Can you trace your way seeking mind story back further than that. It's a little fuzzy, the biggest point I can remember back for sure was that Religious Experience class at Bennington College. But I know that I was reading things before that like William Blake and stuff, and I think the Tao Te Ching. I was always interested in sort of people that
Well, what was a book about like Sufis and stuff, you know, I was reading things just all that kind of stuff like what's going on here? Or The Gospel of Thomas, I don't think it was till later that I didn't discover The Gospel of Thomas. There are people that have figured some things out about this interesting predicament that we're in and, what did they figure out? What can I get? How do we get? I guess I've always felt like I really not only wanted to somehow delve as deeply as I could with that stuff but I wanted to, it's evolved to wanting to help people. What am I here for? What am I here for? I mean, what are any of us here for, right? We can do things. We can make stuff. I've been a scientist. I publish papers. All of that is wonderful. I've taught students. I've enjoyed teaching. I love teaching. I mean all of it is part of the same thing.
DC: Yeah.
DBA: But we're here to do… Even the worst people in the world. I won't even mention names of people that maybe we all jointly despise. They also, when you really look at their activities, they actually, as diluted as they might be, they're putting tremendous effort into their life to make an impact of some sort. We all basically have that in common, that we're trying hard to put ourselves in, to do something. Some people have tremendously diluted views about what they're trying to do and they're trying to do exactly the opposite of what it is that's going to actually help them and everything. And they create more problems for themselves and others than they solve, but nevertheless they're putting huge energy into it. We all are driven internally to participate in this process and we, most of us, all of us, do it in diluted ways a lot of the time, right, a lot of the time. That's a theme that I guess I've been wanting to struggle with. I've been struggling with for all those years it just slowly grew and it took many years because my first exposure to reading was probably 20 years or more before I started meditating and I never really thought that meditation was the thing I had to do. I thought reading and understanding I was gonna understand this stuff, you know, I was just gonna absorb it intellectually and get the idea. That reminds me very much of a student in my class just now who's a brilliant guy, but he was all that, he was very smart, and he just wanted to understand and he was very frustrated. He liked certain talks because they seemed to him very logical and they made sense. Like Nicole Baden gave a talk [about Emptiness] that I assigned to them to see and he liked that because it had a logical thread to it made sense and he understood it. Then Shunryu Suzuki and other things that I would say and read, and they would be self contradictory all the time, and he was very frustrated with this. It's like I don't get it. I want to understand Buddhism
DC: [laughing]
DBA: but it keeps contradicting itself. I’d say one thing and then you say the opposite. I'd say yes, now you're getting somewhere. He even told me one time we met outside of class once and I saw him and I said hey, I won't say his name. I said, hey, it's good to see how you doing? He had already been telling me his frustrations. He was very honest and kind of brutally honest about himself in his write-ups that he'd send me. He tell me all the things he's struggling with. He was struggling with a lot in his life and unsatisfied and had a lot of Dukkha going on in his life. But he really wanted to figure things out. When I met him, he told me, you seem to me like a very mysterious person. I told him, you seem to me like a very mysterious person. We're both mysterious to each other.
So, I've been just doing this, and more and more I guess, where I am now is that one signpost that we actually have is that when we do things that are diluted, the consequences are not fun, and when we do things, when we behave in ways that are more consistent with the way the world is actually structured there's a joyfulness that comes from that. When we abandon our false artificial self idea and all of its baggage. We suddenly are liberated, to just be at every minute. All those kind of things, so in a way who knows what, there's no guidebook to this business. But the one thing I think we have to hang on, like my current way of thinking and maybe that's evolving as it always is but it's just that we can tell from the consequences of how we feel whether we're on the path that we should be on. We're all getting confused all the time, but when we do things that are, behave towards each other or towards ourselves, in ways that are deeply diluted and trying to... insecurities and, which we all have and trying to either reprimand ourselves for not being good enough for self aggrandized ourselves. All those things cause great pain and when we let go of that stuff there's a very good feeling associated with that. So, I don't know, that's kind of where I am.
DC: Hmm. Hmm. I want to ask you about your name. It's very interesting Dor and then Ben-Amotz, son of Amotz. So tell me about your name.
DBA: Okay, I would have had a different name if my father hadn't changed his name. He was born in Poland, pre World War II. He escaped, well it was in the Zionist era where there were Zionist Jews sort of soliciting children to go to Israel, you know to go to Palestine and he was enamored with that idea and basically pestered his family enough. There's a lot more to that story, but he basically got them to agree to let him go and he went to Palestine and then that's the last he saw of my grandparents and my aunt and uncle. They did were all murdered by the Nazis. So, he went to Israel and basically, like many people in his generation in Israel, the founding generation of Israel, they sort of were remaking the country creating a new country creating new identities for themselves. So many of them adopted new names. So his name his last name was Tehilimzeigger. My last name would have been Tehilimzeigger. But he adopted the name Ben-Amotz which is kind of an Israeli sounding name. So that's where that name came from and then my first name Dor came from somebody that he admired greatly who was a little older than him
and was very brilliant artistically, a writer and wanted to be a future director, and he was sort of the mentor of my father and his last name was Ben-Dor and he named me after him. He was killed in 1948 so,I got that name for that reason Dor Ben-Amotz.
My mother, just to come full circle, my mother who was from Californian from the Bay Area. Not Jewish and went to Bennington College the same college where I just taught this Buddhism class. So she was a graduate of that college which has 700 students now and it was 500 when she went there in the late 40s. She was in New York working as an editor of the Hudson Review and she met my father and like they got married within a week, it's crazy. She was crazy, you know, in a good way. I mean she was willing to take huge leaps in her life
DC: That’s a huge leap, married somebody a week...
DBA: It was a huge adventure and a huge leap and that's how I came about.
DC: Hmm, and where did you grow up?
DBA: I grew up, I was born in Jerusalem. I grew up there until the 10 years old. I was in Israel in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. I remember asking my mother once when I was very young in Jerusalem. I said, where is the center of the world? And she said, you know, it's funny you should ask that because a lot of people say it's right here. That's what she told me, but she explained it as like in ancient times that Jerusalem was like a crossroads between the Far East and Europe and everything. Everybody went through Jerusalem. So, Jerusalem was a crossroads for everybody. So, I was there until 10 years old and then they got divorced. She left him. I won't go into all the sordid details, but it was probably a very good idea that she did. She took me on a different path, me and my brother and sister moved back to California. So I grew up in the Bay Area after that, Berkeley.
DC: Oh, so when you were a kid you were in Berkeley
DBA: I was in Berkeley in the 60s.
DC: What year were you born?
DBA: I was born in 1954, so at 10 years old, in 1964 I was in Berkeley, California. It was just after you know Kennedy was assassinated. I remember Kennedy's assassination when I was in Israel. I remember that as clear as day. I mean, the day that happened is seared in my mind too because of the impact it had on my mother. But anyway, so I then I came to Berkeley, California, and they still had you know black ribbons around the flags in the classroom from Kennedy being assassinated. And then Johnson was elected. That's when I arrived in Berkeley, California. And all the anti-war movement and the free speech movement and all that stuff and I was in Berkeley, California. My mother was a graduate student at Berkeley. So I was kind of right in the thick of that. In the middle of all those things I would meet her sometimes and get tear-gassed, because of all the stuff going on in the campus.
What's crazy to me now is that I was a junior in high school in 1971. So, I theoretically could have overlapped with Shunryu Suzuki, but I was a kid. I was a junior in high school, the year he died and he was right across the bay. I even remember some time in high school. Me and some friends of mine were in San Francisco, we go to Tassajara Bakery. I mean I met some you know, just barely, I kind of overlapped with some people in the 60s from the Zen Center.
DC: Have you ever been to Tassajara?
DBA: No, but I would love to. I've been to the San Francisco Zen Center and I've spent quite a bit of time at Green Gulch and teah, we’ll see what you know future holds.
DC: They always want people for the guest season what they don't really have against season anymore. But I think they're having... Well after Covid they just couldn't get staff because Covid just changed everything.
DBA: I would love to go there as a sort of whatever they call it a student or worker over the next few years, to the extent that I'm physically able. I know the work there's can be very tough.
DC: Well, it depends on what you're doing. You'd be more likely to go there for a for a you a two-week workshop or our practice session with some teacher practice period or maybe do some things working in the kitchen or whatever
DBA: I would love to go, and I'm looking forward to your book about Tassajara Stories
DC: Yeah, it's it's the first volume of three
DBA: Really?
DC: Yeah, yeah.
DBA: It's so great how you've been keeping Shunryu Suzuki. To me it feels like Shunryu Suzuki is about as close to being alive as you could imagine because of what you're doing, because you keep releasing these new things. I mean like talks, like oh, it's a new talk by Shunryu Suzuki, here it is. I feel like I can be discovering new stuff about Shunryu Suzuki because of what you're doing.
DC: Yeah, well, but other people do, I mean there's a lot that comes out of the San Francisco Zen Center and other groups in his lineage
DBA: Yeah, yeah, no, no, of course, of course. There are many people that have been influenced by him and they're all carrying on in whatever way they can but it really is a very special thing you're doing. I'm not just trying to. you know, it's just true David. It just is.
DC: Hmm
DBA: What you're doing is bringing this stuff to life in a way that is quite unique and amazing to have it, and then it's just going on there's three volumes coming of Tassajara Stories, it's like second best of being there in those days.
DC: [laughing]
DBA: I can't go back and be there in those days, but you help us all live through it in a certain way.
DC: Hmm. Yeah. Well, it was really different back then.
DBA: I learned the lessons, you know, that's really why
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind is so popular with so many different people, because there's something that he's teaching that everybody wants. You just feel like, ah, this is food. This food is good. This food tastes good. I want more of this food, it's good for me. Yeah. Yeah, you know, so you're you're offering these good foods for all of us.
DC: Yeah, well, just in terms of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, one thing that the book does, it's not just about Tassajara at all it really shows you how the Haiku Zendo came about and the book came about, how Tassajara Bread Book came about. A lot of it's just memoir about me.
DBA: But you know all your books that I've read, not all of them, but I did read Thank You and OK!. They all are great. You are a great teacher. You teach in this very wonderful way and Crooked Cucumber. Yeah, it's a biography of Shunryu Suzuki, but boy was it a useful lesson in many dimensions.
DC: Huh? Well, that's good there.
DBA: You know this. I mean it certainly is. It was for me and there's no doubt that anybody reading it is gonna have, you know, everybody in a different place in their life. And sometimes there's just something you're not ready to hear yet. It's like meeting some of Shunryu Suzuki Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind chapters. Sometimes I've had the experience of listening to one of those like in my old Zen group and it's like I don't know what he's talking about. I don't get this, but he even said sometimes, if what I'm saying doesn't make sense to you just forget about it, it doesn't matter, doesn't matter at all.
DC: [laughing]
DBA: I mean he'll say stuff exactly like that, or even if it does matter to you should forget it right away. You know, you should forget it right away because it's not about hanging on to it. It's not about feeling like oh geez, I'm ignorant, I don't know anything because I don't understand what he's talking about. Like if it resonates with you then you'll feel it. He doesn't say that but that's how I feel about it.
DC: Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. I want to say one other thing about Tassajara. I want to make it clear to the listening public. If like if you wanted to go there and work in the kitchen, you know like be on staff then that's to me, that's the way to go. It's very expensive to go there and be in a workshop. It was it was a dollar and a half when we started to come there for a day. It can be a hundred times that now.
DBA: Yeah, right.
DC: It used to be in the old days like it was two dollars a day to be go there and be a guest worker. Yeah, two dollars a dollar and a half. I think if somebody was there for like the whole practice period or something right at the first and like a dollar and a half. One of the big differences I think about back then and now is money was much much more evenly distributed and we could live much cheaper the way it is evolved to be, you know, it's so hard to get by now that I really feel for young people trying to figure out what to do now because it wasn't that hard back then, right?
DBA: I mean, yeah like Betty Warren on her teachers salary, you know, not only living comfortably but kind of supporting the Zen Center, right?
DC: Yeah, she bought a home in Sausalito.
DBA: Yeah, and she donated to help buy food at the Zen Center and everything, right?
DC: She's she's helping to support the Zen Center. She bought a home in Sausalito. She's a school teacher.
DBA: That doesn't happen anymore. It can't financially.
DC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I do not think I will get into why I think that has happened. But, society doesn't have to structure itself that way. But anyway, the forces that, it seems to me that money is like almost like a form of life that wants to grow and expand and people basically serve it.
DBA: Yeah, right. Well it's a manifestation of a certain kind of illusion that we have that you know money is somehow gonna buy us what we want, and it's got a life of its own and it's running a bit out of control. And it's all our doing in some way. We're all asked for this, you know.
DC: Yeah. Yeah
DBA: But there are a lot of things like going to Tassajara, going to Green Gulch. I mean you can be a guest there and and I did that. Really, people should know if they're inclined to go and be like a guest student at Green Gulch. It's not very, you do pay a little bit, but it's room and board included, you know you pay a little bit and you basically live in this wonderful place and get to meditate and and, it's just a great fantastic experience and Tassajara is the same. My understanding is now you have to kind of do something at Green Gulch or in San Francisco Zen Center before you can be a candidate for going to do the something at Tassajara.
DC: Except at the very first, it was always that way.
DBA: I often get emails now where they're looking for people to, no money involved, they're looking for people to work in the kitchen or do a work period in the spring or whatever. So, even though the world is difficult to navigate financially there are things like that, that are there still, and they are fantastic things, and you know Tassajara and Green Gulch are examples.
DC: I'd want to be staff. I wouldn't want to be there working less, to study Buddhism. [laughing]
DBA: Yeah, right no, I mean exactly, that's how I felt when we were guests at Green Gulch,I felt like well the real experience I want to have here is I want to be in there cutting carrots.
DC: You're right [laughing].
DBA: I mean, that's that's the real thing.
DC: Yeah, Yeah, well we had we used to have a thing we'd call Guest Students and the term Guest Student, it's been used in different ways in the different centers. But, people who would pay a good amount to be a Tassajara guest. I guess they'd be a student in the morning and then a guest in the afternoon.
DBA: I don't know how they do that at Tassajara, but I think I was called a Guest Student for two weeks at Green Gulch. I paid something it was I forget. It was like 25 bucks 35 bucks or something a day to be a student there and you know, you get well-fed and you wonderful experience and I did work, and it was a great experience and then the third week I was in the Rohatsu Sesshin, which I did pay for. But if I had been I guess members of San Francisco Zen Center, if they accumulate whatever they have some point system where you can you can participate in say Sesshins and it isn't financially overburdening. I mean, it was not a problem for me to pay to be in the Rohatsu Sesshin, and I was happy to do it. But there are ways to get involved in that also without being financially well off.
DC: How much did the session cost.
DBA: I don't remember but it was some hundreds, I don't remember which hundreds. It's all on the website though, like 500 or something like that. I really honestly don't remember the exact number. You get a room and you can choose to be in a room with a double room. Where you're sharing it with somebody else and then it's a bit less expensive or you can have a single room in the guest house. When I was there as Guest Student I was sharing a room with another Guest Student. That was fine and great. But during the Sesshin I opted to be in a single room at the Guest House, which was also wonderful.
DC: Yeah, I can understand that. I had a dream just the other night, it was sort of one of these sort of quasi Zen center dreams and somebody who I knew was getting married so there was gonna be a wedding. It was like at a sort of Green Gulch type place but then he was very upset because they were charging everybody to go to the wedding and for the food. Then all these people were leaving the wedding and and I said well, I have some money, I'll pay for some of you to go and, so I paid for I remember these four guys to be able to eat the lunch and go to the wedding. There were just two of them and I said, hey, where's the other two said? Oh, well, they decided not to go anyway. I said, well, hey, I give you money for four [laughing]. Anyway, that was my dream. I know it's hard, Zen Center has to figure out how to keep going, and everything is so expensive in America. In Asia, you know Temples have hundreds thousands hundreds and thousands of years of history for support. If you go to a temple and or an ashram or something in India, the thought of paying anything is really, you don't pay to go to a place like that, but America's really got a problem with how much things cost.
DBA: I guess a mark of the culture is appreciation of those things and valuing those things and here value is always money. Anything or something has to be expensive and it taints everything in a way even though, what is it? It's really nothing, it's just this piece of paper, but it just disassociates us from each other in many ways. Well, it's just a manifestation of our culture’s... hole that we've dug ourselves in.
DC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Well on the other hand here, it's expensive to be a Balinese Hindu. I mean it takes it takes about, I've read, like a third of people's incomes goes to the neighborhood group and the priests, and that's aside from any federal tax they pay, which I imagine isn't a lot. So, you know, nothing is free anywhere this it's coming from something.
Well, Dor. Yes, we've covered a lot of ground here would you like to say something in conclusion.
DBA: Yeah, I guess one thing I've learned is that there's nothing really to say in conclusion, you know, I mean It's never really done. There's always something right around the corner to be another adventure. So, I don't know. This was a wonderful adventure and I just thank you for all the things you do.
I feel like I one of the things I wanted to do when we talked is, I wanted to get more of a sense from you about how it really was directly learning from Shunryu Suzuki. But, I feel like I've absorbed as much as I can of that from just the things that you say and write and Shunryu Suzuki's writings and people like Betty Warren. But, I don't know, it's probably impossible to communicate, how it is the Shunryu Suzuki inspired people to go somewhere that they were looking to go but didn't know how. He had this magic way of doing that. What was that? What was that? You always ask your guests that. You always ask your guests, Okay, so Buddhism is wonderful, what is it about Buddhism? Why do you like it? What is it about Shunryu Suzuki that you found interesting, that attracted you, that inspired you? I feel like I didn't get a chance to really ask you that.
DC: Oh, well.
DBA: That could probably be another hour of conversation. I'm sure it's very hard to put into words right?
DC: Well, it gave you know, running into Sokoji and him and Katagiri and the practice, it wasn't just him. It was the whole thing all around. It gave my life focus. No matter how far I've strayed from it, that focus has continued in one way or another. When I first went there, I remember I thought, well, this is good. I've been looking for something and I and I wasn't really comfortable with anything else I'd found. This is good, I like this, I'll do this, I thought, well, I'll give it a year. I'll do this for a year without questioning it, then I'll think about it. But I never... I forgot about that and never questioned it. I'd be living outside of Zen Center and people would say oh, when did you leave Zen center? I didn't leave
Zen Center. It's like if you go to a college, or go to a school and you know you study something. Not everybody is going to be staying in the school. People will be leaving, but they'll bring with them what they learn from the school.
Suzuki said to Bob Watkins and Sandy when they left, we didn't want them to leave. They were they were there very soon after we bought Tassara. They just rode in on a pickup truck in the it was snow and rain when you got lower. They were very important, the first work leader. They were experienced and knew things. Then they left in October and we didn't want them to leave. Suzuki said to them, when they met with him before they left, he said, well “you can leave the monastery but the monastery won't leave you.”
DBA: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got the impression that for you in particular, you would do these things like stay up reading these sutras at night and study and then not show up on time in the mornings. You know you were being criticized for doing that by some people there and he was like, no, it's okay, you’re doing good stuff. So, it's kind of like he had this way of encouraging people to be who they are. That's what I've learned from you and Betty Warren. He had this way of telling people go find your own path.
DC: Yeah. Yeah. He would he would be more strict in general and you know, but then if someone strayed from that, and we're like really into it in a way that he could accept, he would be very encouraging. One example is people who wanted to sit a lot. He said, well, just sitting a couple of times a day is enough and one or two sesshins a year is enough. So, we had some students who decided to do a hundred day sashin on their own. A lot of people were like putting it down, but when Bob Walter came back from it, and saw Suzuki -- he was sort of regarded as not a real student, like too much on his own trip -- but then Suzuki saw him and you know invited him in and was very excited. Tell me about your sesshin, how’d it go, this and that, and they had a very close relationship.
You can have some extreme examples of that like Gurdjieff group. There was a guy who was like very contrarian and he just caused a lot of trouble and Gurdjieff said where is so-and-so, and they said well, we kicked him out. He said, go back and get him [laughing]. Bring him back. Well, anyway, everything sort of individual.
DBA: Yeah, take refuge in the Buddha, for the benefit of all beings, all beings.
DC: I'm very grateful for having to having run into Shunryu Suzuki, the Zen Center, Buddhism and all that, and also to having talked with you. It's been very interesting.
DBA: Well, thank you. It's certainly been wonderful for me to meet you this way, even though we haven't met in person. I would love do that at some point, and I look forward to whatever comes next.
DC: Okay. Hey, send me a photo of you, like a headshot or something a picture of you, and send me one from when you were younger.
DBA: Okay, I'll try to find two photos, I will do that and thank you. I'm glad this worked out.
DC: Okay, well you take care.
DBA: Thank you very much and Gassho.
DC: Okay, you take care.