Comrades Of The Quest: An Oral History Of Reed - Reed College Bookstore link

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Been corresponding with John Sheehy of the Reed Oral History Project. That's an award winning book on the subject. Like me, he's still at it and there are a lot of Zennies came through there and through the SFZC.

Reading through all of Shunryu Suzuki's lectures now and we're making little changes and corrections on shunryusuzuki.com on the default transcripts which can be downloaded and printed. Some really embarrassing mistakes have been in there for years. Many are the result of working with them. I shudder to think of all the downloaded versions there are with "Shunryu Katagiri" a half dozen times (Suzuki's given name on Dainin's family name). That was the result of a careless search and replace and was there for a couple of years. We frequently make changes and corrections and additions and subtractions when we find duplication.

Cause of all this Reed communication of late, was prompted to look way ahead at the lecture that Suzuki gave there (71-12-03) and found a nonsensical place in the transcript we're using. Checked it against the prior generation and the one before that and brought up two early unedited or hardly edited transcript drafts clearly straight off the audio which is lost. One version was more complete, had the questions and answers, but it had that weirdness. There was a missing mid part which had been somehow replaced with a repeat of an earlier dozen or so lines. Since there was no tape to check it against and since Suzuki often did get a little hard to follow, no one had caught it through a number of copies and reformats. This was the version that kept being recopied. The other early version was less complete but didn't have that mistake. So I got that done and shipped the newly corrected version off to the noble Peter Ford who manages shunryusuzuki.com in ways beyond my ken and sent one to John Sheehy then later realized I'd sent them the unfixed version and resent the right ones to them. Peter will have it fixed on the site before I have time to check it I bet. This mistake took over twenty years to catch. I feel a mix of shame and pride.

Here's how it read with the wrong text from a previous paragraph in bold:

The reason we say this mudra, or our practice includes everything, is that when you practice, you are taking care of everything, your whole body and mind. And this kind of feeling will be extended to whatever you do, whatever you see. You will see a thing not as an object, but as one part of something much bigger. So to take care e confused is that we want some definite answer for our questions. But your thinking mind will not have any definite answer for your questions. If you want to have some definite answers, you must take some other approach. The approach you may take is to have direct experience of time. But time is an idea, so it is not possible to have a definite experience of time, then you should appeal to direct experience of things which change, always, as time goes.

That is actually how we have a final answer for our life. Again, this is our practice. Here I must explain our practice a little bit more. When you sit, at first it is almost impossible to stop your thinking mind. You can do it, but you cannot stop it completely. One after another, various images come. Or if you work on a koan, as long as you are working on it, your thinking mind will be concentrated on one thing only. If your mind is occupied with only one thing, it is as if you have stopped your mind. You have a chance to have direct exows [typo?] as your surroundings change, is there actually no suffering; because that is non-dualistic thinking. That is zazen practice. Usually our activity is involved in the dualistic area. But in Zen practice our mind is not dualistic-our mind is always with things, one with things and non-dualistic. Whatever we seek is part of our strength. That is actually our practice.

Here's how it reads now after the fix with the correct missing material bold:

The reason we say this mudra, or our practice includes everything, is that when you practice, you are taking care of everything, your whole body and mind. And this kind of feeling will be extended to whatever you do, whatever you see. You will see a thing not as an object, but as one part of something much bigger. So to take care of your painful legs is to take care of the many things you hear or see. You become one with everything, and you take care of everything without trying to take care of everything. Things ar actually going on continuously, moment after moment. It is impossible to stop them sometimes, but anyway that is not possible. We cannot stay young so long. Even though you are young, in ten years you will be pretty old. You cannot stop it.

 The cause of suffering is not possible to eliminate, but as it arises, by letting go, we can take care of it as part of our being. Then we are part of everything. that is the practice of using everything as your own. To be a part of everything means to take care of everything with a kind, warm heart. That is the core of our practice. Only when you follow things, when your mind follows and you body follows as your surroundings change, is there actually no suffering; because that is non-dualistic thinking. That is zazen practice. Usually our activity is involved in the dualistic area. But in Zen practice our mind is not dualistic-our mind is always with things, one with things and non-dualistic. Whatever we seek is part of our strength. That is actually our practice.