From Bachelor trainee and TV Stagehand I
That first evening at the Zen Center, seeing and hearing Maezumi Roshi, was like coming home. This is what I had been looking for and thinking I might never find. This man radiated the depth, mastery, warmth, freedom, seriousness, and playfulness that I had only imagined. But he was real. And there he was. In his late thirties, physically small, but projecting a compact intensity, he was a dignified presence sitting cross-legged in his robes on the raised platform at the front of the room. Through a very thick accent, his English revealed subtlety and mastery both in the precision of its insight, and the seemingly artless imprecision of its strangely apt errors of syntax. The impish humor, with absolutely no sense of self-consciousness, was irresistible.
Excerpt from Farewell to the True Man of No Rank.
I decided this is what I wanted to commit to. The next morning I went back to the Center to see about living there. The house next door to the Zendo (Meditation Hall) was also owned by the Center. I talked to a resident member on the front porch, and told her how excited I was about the practice, and that I was going to dive right in. Her response sealed the deal. “Intentions don’t mean shit!” she said.
My determination had been challenged and I responded immediately. The rooms at the Center were all rented out. Within the hour I had rented an apartment across the street. I lived on the block or across the street for the next 28 years.
Breakfasts with Roshi after dawn zazen. Bob Walter at Big River Farm said instead of SFZC I should go to ZCLA. Close to home and a rare opportunity to get in on the ground floor with a major Japanese zen master still virtually unknown. I saw how right he was at the sweet little breakfasts we had around the low table in the sangha house living room after dawn zazen. The historical trans-cultural transmission was palpably present in front of all of us. Achingly sweet and poignant, fun, and very human.
#4.1 of SA4. ZCLA