 David Schneider
July
17, 2016
DC –
I asked David for his way-seeking mind story. Typed these notes while David spoke. We were at Johanneshof
in the Black Forest of Germany after his seminar with
Richard Baker was finished. Thanks to
Rick Levine (RL)
for some corrections, additions, and brief commentary.
David Schneider came to Johanneshof mid July, 2016 for a two day seminar
on lay and monk practice he and Richard Baker did. It was hosted by the
DBU (German Buddhist Union).
------------
See photos here at cuke blog.
Spring 1970. I was at Reed College in Portland
Oregon. I had been a cross-country runner, but had now
decided to learn to meditate. My connection to Zen came
about because I was in a sauna at Reed and in there I saw a
guy stretching and pulling his legs up into full lotus. I
asked what are you doing? He said “I’m a meditator,” and I
said I do that too, though I didn’t really know how to do
it. I had only tried from a book, called Meditation:
the Inward Art by
Bradford Smith. Another guy was with him and said you should
meditate with us.
They were
Rick Levine and Ron Sharrin, the latter who went to ZCLA later.
I sat with
them once in a while at their place on Clinton Street and did a
one day sitting.
Other residents there included Jim Bockhorst and Layla Smith,
Pat McMahon, Rick Levine, Jackie Warshall, James Collins, who never came to
ZC, Barbara, Lynelle
Jones?
RL: Deborah Green
(later an entomologist) and Terry Palmer (later a SF MD after
brief residence at SFZC. Also Drucilla (for awhile wife to
Patrick McMahon), Barbara Young, girlfriend to JC, later married
to Norm Randolph & moved to Minnesota w/Katagiri
The following autumn
[RL-when some of us moved to Harrison St from Clinton
St.,] I got to know them better. Maybe they had
moved to another house by then. Wherever it was, we had a
Thanksgiving party, and celebrated with Takara plum wine and
sake. I guess we got kind of loaded and eventually went to the
bluffs above the Willamette river at night— there may have even
been full moon. We were up there carrying on and screeching at
the moon, and then Rick drove Lynele and me home. When
he dropped her off, she asked, “Do you want to see new
book by Suzuki Roshi ?” We said yes and went inside and she
showed us the book – Zen
Mind, Beginner’s Mind -
and I looked at the Boni photo on back and went “That’s It,
that’s the guy – whatever it is he does, I want to do.”
The next
vacation from school, I hitched from Portland down to the SFZC
City Center, and rang door bell. I hadn’t told anyone I was
coming or anything. Steve Weintraub answered the door—
he was wearing moccasins, a V-neck sweater-vest, and sporting a
pony-tail. I said I wanted to practice Zen and he said they had
guest student program but I would have to stay somewhere else
for a three days, and he mentioned an apartment just down the
street. [RL-maybe 191 Haight St, corner Laguna]
Maybe it was until a space became available in the men’s
dorm. So I stayed in this other place and went to zazen – maybe
this was January 71. First saw Suzuki Roshi for lecture in the
Buddha hall. As he was going into lecture I watched him walk in.
I had two simultaneous thoughts— I wished a puddle of mud would
appear in front of him so I could lie in it and he could walk
over me; and at the same time, I thought, “This guy is made of
iron and doesn’t need anything from anybody.”
His talk
was slow, with long pauses, and it felt as though I could see
almost thoughts crossing his mind—not coming terribly fast, just
an orderly procession of them. He spoke into a kind of clip-on
mic, and had a cup of hot water before him. His jisha was Pat
Herreshoff. She fussed with the mic getting it attached on his
okesa. He had a little nyoi.
Every break from Reed from then on I went to the Zen Center. I
was there when Trungpa Rimpoche visited. They were together in
the dining room. Suzuki Roshi was sitting in a wing back chair
and Trungpa Rimpoche off to the audience’s right. Suzuki Roshi
tucked his robes in and crossed his legs sat like— he looked
like a picture of those Chinese Zen masters in chair. Composed,
settled, his eyebrows would go up sometimes at what Rinpoche or
someone said, but otherwise he didn’t emote much. Trungpa was
drunk—at least he seemed so at first— but when questions started
it was like he’d just gotten a Jedi sword. The dinning room was
full to the back with people standing on chairs. I asked a
question: “Don’t
we have to try to take care of ourselves?” When
Trungpa Rinpoche said to me “There’s nothing to protect, I
looked up at Suzuki Roshi and he looked at me with raised
eyebrows, like “What areyou going to say to that?” And
all I could think to say was, “Thank you.”
[See David's full account of this
exchange in his
piece on Trungpa Rinpoche and Zen.
It’s also in the introductory material to The
Teacup and the Skullcup, which are two seminars
from 1973 on Zen and tantra, given by Trungpa
Rinpoche]
Steve
Weintraub was work leader and he had me and another student
painting a closet in Suzuki Roshi's bedroom. We scrubbed it with
TSP and painted. Suzuki Roshi and Mrs. Suzuki were not in
evidence while we were painting. To end work period someone went
around with a gong in the afternoon. We had almost completed the
painting, but hadn’t thought about cleanup and we would have to
walk out through the bedroom and into the apartment just covered
with paint. Suzuki-roshi saw us and indicated we should just
wait. He came back with a stack of newspapers and he started to
spread out newspapers in front of us, for us to walk over. There
was just such a terrible physical contrast—between us in our
dirty paint clothes and him bending down in front of us, and
backing up, spreading out the newspaper for our paint-spattered
shoes. It was like he had to bow down in front of us. It was SO
embarrassing - it was like walking on hot coals.
Suzuki Roshi came to Portland for a two day sitting with a
Friday open talk at Reed. Saturday and Sunday we were at a
rented place—the “Hillside Center”. Suzuki Roshi was staying
with Rowena Pattee and Reb was with him. His talk at Reed
started with him saying, “Usually when I give a talk, it’s to my
students and we’ve been practicing together and now I’m speaking
to you whom I don’t know and am not sure what to say. He talked
about the four noble truth and started with suffering.
As I remember it, he only gave the one public talk,
and it was at Reed, on this Friday night, 12 March, 1971. It was
held in the dining room there, which was officially called The
Commons. The two-day sit started the next morning, Saturday, up
at the Hillside Center, a different place, not at Reed.
[Shunryu
Suzuki's talk at Reed College, March 12, 1971]
I went up to Suzuki Roshi after his talk. The dining room had
two levels with him speaking from raised level. After the talk
he was leaning on a railing that separated the levels - like a
cowboy on a corral rail. I said So are you going to give dokusan
to all of these people? and he looked at me and said, "I will
try."
The next
morning in the zendo he did a jundo (a walk around the sitting
students) and half way through the period he got up and hit
everyone on the shoulder twice - like a blessing. I think for
Rick Levine he had to stop and move Rick's love beads to hit
him.
RL-Well...Well,
well, well. Something like that did happen but it was at
Tassajara during summer of either '69 or '70--I don't remember
at the moment. (I think I told this vignette to dchad for his
book of Suzuki-roshi recollections--I don't remember if it made
it into the book or into the "Out-takes" These "love beads", as
you charmingly describe them, were actually a Very Fine
108-rudraksha seed mala given me by my then brother-in-law Rick
Berman (who later produced and otherwise ran-the-show of Star
Trek from 1987-2005 or so). Rick was wearing it during a
private audience with the Dalai Lama who took it from him,
blessed it, and attached a string holding 10 silver little
ringlets ("the ten perfections") and a tiny dorje before giving
it back. I later gifted it to a Tassajara girlfriend named
Peggy Rague.
We had
oryoki breakfast and sat the morning then there was a work
meeting after lunch. Pat Mcmahon was work leader that weekend
and Suzuki Roshi asked him if someone could rub his shoulders
and Pat took that job.
DC: That's a most unusual request. It's clearly
because he wasn't feeling well.
And then
during work period he left and went to Roweena’s in a lot of
pain and according to what I've heard, Reb asked him if he
wanted a wheel chair when the plane got to San Francisco and he
said, "No, I’m a Zen master," and managed to get to the car on
his own but then when he got in bed said, "Now I can be a
little baby."
RL-.I gather this is correct as you have it, occurring at
arrival in SF. What I know, and have told before, is this:
Rowena told me that on the Saturday afternoon when he left
sesshin he arrived at Rowena's and crossed her threshold with
fortitude & bearing, then fairly crumpled and said "Now I can be
a little baby, I don't have to be a Zen Master". Then went to
bed.
Suzuki
Roshi died the next December fourth. I couldn't make it to the funeral.
RL: I was there and passed through his room to pay respects
that first morning of Rohatsu. But I didn't make it to the
funeral. I had just completed my thesis and flew up to Portland
within a couple days to present it.
I was
trying to practice as a Zen and college student and I couldn’t
do both so dropped out of Reed. I didn’t know what to major in
and said if have to choose one I'll do Zen and went to Pittsburg
and stayed with my folks.
Went to a
Korean Zen temple in West Pennsylvania near Philadelphia. A guy
named Don Gilbert who was a student of Seung Sahn had a big barn
whee I stayed for a couple of weeks. The students stayed in a
loft and we would wake up to someone singing the Heart Sutra
with clackers going around the barn. There was kimchi on the
food table always.
I applied
to be guest a resident at the City Center and arrived in the
spring of 72. Philip Whalen had moved in Feb 1st. You
were the work leader.
DC - You were a great guest student. Super good
worker. You organized all the closets and put calligraphed
labels to show where things go and put calligraphed signs on all
the valves in the boiler room. The officers were telling me I
was taking advantage of you - giving you too much responsibility
when you should be doing something more practicey like sweeping.
DC: Was your calligraphy the result of studying with Lloyd
Reynolds at Reed?
Lloyd had retired a year or two before, but was
around and visitable sometimes. I mostly studied with Bob
Palladino — a great guy, who recently was made famous in his
obituaries, because it was the work his students did—it was up
all over Reed: announcements, signs, posters.—that Steve Jobs
saw during his time at Reed.
When I did
a reading of Philip’s bio (Crowded by Beauty) at
City Center the dining room was full like when Trungpa Rimpoche
and Suzuki Roshi were there. I knew almost no one, very few. I
remember Laura Burges and Steve Silberman.
Outside of the interview at
dinner with Richard Baker, David told about being in bed in one
of the hill cabins and, in a pre-sleep hypnogogic state
experiencing what seemed like beings from another realm come to
him and , in a gravely voice, ask him to come with them. He said
okay and started to depart with them and then thought better of
it, sensed some danger, and didn't go. The next day, working in
the sewing room, he mentioned that dream to Linda
Ruth Cutts who
suggested he tell Baker Roshi about it. In fact, she went ahead
and told Roshi about it herself. Soon enough a dokusan was
arranged, and Baker said something
I didn’t
find terribly comforting at the time. He listened to my story,
and then asked me if I’d ever read the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
I said I hadn’t,
and he said it was worth doing, but that the main point was
about seeing appearances as part of/product of/not separate from
mind.
David spoke with Shunko
Mike Jamvold shortly before Mike died and when Shunko told him
he had pneumonia, David said he should take it seriously. David
said he’d had pneumonia and at one point experienced dark hands
pulling him down, realized he was dying and that it would be
easy, almost comfortable, to die this way. He struggled to come
back. He said that experience made him realize first hand why
pneumonia is called "the old man's friend."
[David Schneider will give us more
later on his sesshin with Joshu Sasaki and his transition from
the SFZC and Zen to studying with Trungpa Rinpoche.]
Reed College page
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