A Retrospective from the Streets of San Francisco - 1985- 1990?
After two years at a Zen monastery, I learned something I did not expect.
I learned that I could lose everything—my place in the Sangha, my roof, my safety net—and still carry something no one could take from me: a beginner’s mind.
When I left Green Gulch Zen Center, I was homeless. No money. No plan. What I did have was the kindness of friends and a willingness to start again from the bottom. I slept under a kitchen table in a converted garage on the corner of Haight and Ashbury, right at the edge of Golden Gate Park. From monastic silence, I stepped straight into the noise and grit of San Francisco.
An odd job cleaning a yard led me to work at H&H Ship Services and Environmental Services down at China Basin. I started as a sweeper. Within days, I learned that a man had died there just a week before I arrived—killed instantly when a fuel tank exploded during cutting. There had been no proper safety precautions. His body had been thrown through the air like debris.
That knowledge changed everything.
What I saw in the yard was chaos, neglect, and fear disguised as toughness. Men worked in lethal conditions without training, protection, or dignity. The toilets were unfit for animals. The yard was littered with waste. It was not just dirty—it was dangerous.
Somewhere between cleaning parking lots and scrubbing latrines, my Zen practice followed me out of the monastery. Beginner’s mind met real life. And I realized something simple: if I could clean this place, I could help save lives.
When I was promoted—first unofficially, then formally—I became an outsider in charge. Asian. Non-union. New. I faced resentment, threats, and violence. I had a knife to my neck. Took a punch that nearly broke my jaw. Was threatened with a metal pipe in the middle of the yard. Rumors spread. Envy followed.
But I also found brotherhood.
Men stood by me when things turned ugly. Elders, laborers, fire watchers—men whose lives depended on trust when cutting twelve-thousand-gallon fuel tanks. I learned to communicate across cultures without words: Cubans, Filipinos, Black elders, and Vietnamese youth. Many lacked formal education, but all understood dignity when it was given honestly.
I made safety training mandatory. Clean coveralls daily—for everyone, including truck drivers. I reminded them, again and again, of the man who died. Not to frighten them, but to anchor responsibility.
What USTD was all about. With Brother Oddel Edwards.
Out of all this emerged what I later called The Broom Philosophy:
Keep the house clean—literally and spiritually.
Start with the toilet.
Then the yard.
Then the mind.
Then the soul.
Cleanliness is not cosmetic.
Discipline is not punishment.
They are forms of care.
Eventually, they called me The Yard Boss. Officially, I was the Yard Superintendent at 220 China Basin, beside the old Third Street drawbridge. Over six years, the workforce grew from fifteen men to more than forty. Alongside researchers from UC Berkeley, I helped draft safety protocols for underground storage tank disposal—procedures that later became national standards under new EPA regulations.
H&H became the only company on the West Coast licensed to do that work. The business flourished. But the real heroes were the yard boys—the men who crawled inside the dark bellies of fuel tanks, scraping toxic sludge by hand.
That yard is gone now. Buried beneath a baseball park. The company is gone too. But the lessons remain etched in me.
Leadership, I learned, is not about authority.
It is about service.
About protecting those who cannot afford mistakes.
About doing the work no one wants to do—first.
Beginner’s mind did not leave me when I left the monastery.
It followed me into the dirt, the danger, and the brotherhood of the yard.
And it has stayed with me ever since.
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