From Los Altos

Chronicles of Haiku Zendo Including Memories of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi - Part I
edited by Barbara Hiestand
Haiku Zendo Foundation Los Altos, California 1973

Another selection from the In-house Publications, one of the selections from Bibliography on the Cuke drop-down menu on the home and key pages.

This is the zendo where Shunryu Suzuki delivered the lectures edited for Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

Cuke nonZense Blog

This is a reminder that there are daily posts on the Cuke nonZense Blog. Today there's a Covid-19 map of Denpasar, Bali, with explanation. We live in the bottom right area, Sanur.

I used to post everything on Cuke What's New but a couple of years ago the nonZense blog was created so Cuke What's New could be Zen or our sangha related and Cuke nonZense could be more personal posts on topics such as environment and music. All the Dchad Miscellaneous stuff goes there too. Any story I want to tell or new poem or song I've written, what's happening with Katrinka and me in Bali. It's a little like my diary. Lot of climate and science posts. Only one a day with Sunday a day off. Cuke nonZense automatically uploads onto Cuke nonZense Facebook.

One figure, the number of reported positive cases - 32 in Bali and 4 in Denpasar, I think think of as indicating what the situation was two weeks ago.

You're invited. - dc

Impossible!

Student D [Stan White]: Docho Roshi, Zen is impossible! I will continue to practice. 

SR: If you know that you are here moment after moment, that is already practice.  -------------------------------- Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture - 68-09-00 as found on shunryusuzuki.com. Edited by DC  - Going through Suzuki lectures and posting anything that can stand on its own. Not looking for zingers or "the best of." I find that following these excerpts daily provides another way to experience Suzuki's teaching. - DC

Wind Bell publication

All the Wind Bells of the SFZC are on cuke.com with all the lectures excerpted and many other excerpts. Check it out at the Wind Bell page.

Nothing Special

Student C [Alan Rappaport]: Docho Roshi, what are you doing here?

SR: Nothing special.

Student C: Docho Roshi-- [Silence.]

SR: Yes, I am here.

Student C: Thank you very much.  -------------------------------- Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture - 68-09-00 as found on shunryusuzuki.com. Edited by DC  - Going through Suzuki lectures and posting anything that can stand on its own. Not looking for zingers or "the best of." I find that following these excerpts daily provides another way to experience Suzuki's teaching. - DC

Mayumi Oda's recent Newsletter

Read all about it here.

Look at her great Black Tara below.

Trace

Student B [Bill Shurtleff]: Docho Roshi, you have said, “Just listen to the Dharma.” And you have said, “The instant the 'I' appears, it vanishes.” When you speak, to whom am I listening? When I speak, to whom are you listening? When thoughts seem to speak, to whom are we listening? When the stream seems to speak, to what are we listening?

SR: To listen to Dharma; to speak about Dharma-- all of those practice should be Buddha's practice, which will continue forever without leaving any trace of them. You should not try to follow the trace of it. Just let them go and let them come.

Student B [Bill Shurtleff]: As a person speaks to us each day?

SR: You should react with single-mindedness. But don't leave any trace of it.  -------------------------------- Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture - 68-09-00 as found on shunryusuzuki.com. Edited by DC  - Going through Suzuki lectures and posting anything that can stand on its own. Not looking for zingers or "the best of." I find that following these excerpts daily provides another way to experience Suzuki's teaching. - DC

Cuke Audio Podcast

We have just entered into the podcast realm. Here's the first one:

May All Beings be Happy

on Podbean Cuke Audio

In the space of an hour, I tell the background story for the lecture that was used for the epilogue of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, read the opening, and then play Shunryu Suzuki's voice as he said it in the Page Street City Center on Nov. 16, 1969. To give the unitiated an idea of what Cuke is, I read the Message from the Cuke 2020 Presentation (linked to from the home page of cuke.com) and then read one of the thirty statements of support - from Michael Katz who explains how Cuke is a record of the saeculum of Suzuki and early Zen Center, a saeculum being an Etruscan measure of time. In it he refers to my dream about Bill Lane so I read the account of that. Lastly I tell about the yearly 24 hours of Nyepi in Bali when everything and everyone comes to rest, a trip to the emergency room the next mornin, and reflections on what transpired there. May all beings be happy. - DC

Beginning a stretch of Q & A

Student A [Claude Dalenberg]: Docho Roshi, questions come into my mind; none of them seem to be good questions. My heart comes into my throat and I do not know what to say, nor what to ask.
SR: When you have no questions, and when you have nothing to ask about, there you have true way.   -------------------------------- Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture - 68-09-00 as found on shunryusuzuki.com. Edited by DC  - Going through Suzuki lectures and posting anything that can stand on its own. Not looking for zingers or "the best of." I find that following these excerpts daily provides another way to experience Suzuki's teaching. - DC

A Message from Silva on reading Whalen

Got this email from David Silva today and thought it would be good to share. - dc

I'm recommending you read Sourdough Lookout by Philip Whalen today. Wonderful poem. His best, possibly? Certainly his most famous.

 

Here it is online,  

I then continued reading backwards in On Bears Head, got as far a Souffle.

 

Speaking of trying to find your PW books. Upon my return from Japan, I read Scenes From Life At the Capital in its totality. Then wanted to read Schneider's PW bio,  Crowded by Beauty, on the parts when PW was in Kyoto. Weirdest thing, I could not find either book, even tho I'd just read Scenes, and Crowded By Beauty is way too large a book to lose. Maybe I should spend my time sheltering in place organizing my library.

Philip Whalen Cuke page

David Silva page