Yamada Koun

And if you practice this wonderful method, there is that kind of intelligence starts to permeate our life.

A bit of a segue here, but it reminds me in saying that, that years and years ago when I was in Hawaii, Yamada Roshi who was Aitken Roshi's teacher came and led a session and one of the things that he said which struck me he said that when people commit to doing Zen practice over years and he's coming from a a Japanese culture where they've been doing this for centuries, so they really know it very well, said nearly everyone becomes more successful in their life, whatever that might be, in their work, in their... hobbies in their relationships and so on.

And I think that is because it's not just we're living in the moment, but we do develop this adaptive intelligence to respond appropriately in each moment when it comes up.

And that's what makes the difference in our interpersonal reactions with people and the kind of work that we do and the play that we do.

So radical acceptance has now been adopted by various Buddhist teachers.

You talk about it and they'll name some Buddhist teacher and say it comes from them, but it comes from Marshall Linehan, who actually studied with a teacher who I think was a student of Yamada Roshi, one of Yasutani Roshi's, well, Yasutani Roshi's successor.

Anyway, there's a whole teisho there that we won't do.

So when you do, well, let's, here, let me jump ahead to this, because I'm definitely gonna run out of time.

He perfects a perfection or paramita in one fell swoop and becomes an exemplar for the ages.

Yamada Roshi said that the point of Zen could be summed up as the perfection of character.

Zen calls this the long maturation.

The Jatakas show it as a process extending over lifetimes.

We were speaking about you were doing co-op practice with him.

You trained with Ruben Habito and then Yamada Roshi, who appointed you as a teacher in 2010.

And you've kind of touched on it already there in terms of you didn't think that people would be projecting onto you when you took on that role of a teacher.

Is there anything else that you would say about, you know, that transition of going from students to teacher and what that was like for you?

Yeah, I think, yes, I'd say, I mean, I'd say that because of the way, you know, this particular lineage, Sambo Zen, structures things, all teachers remain students as well.

We continue to study with somebody, you know, whether it's Yamada Roshi or another teacher.

Yamada Roshi is the abbot of the lineage.

By the way, also, I had this great teacher, Joan Rick Roshi, for much of my training as well.

And we find, oh my gosh, this is a vast life already here before I've got anything.

I remember the first time I did a retreat with my current Zen master, Yamada Roshi, a Japanese guy.

He gave this powerful little bit in his talk, the first retreat I did where he was saying, Humans have got this problem.

We want certain things.