I'm going to conclude, I think, Dogen's Sazenki. It's very short, so I'll read up to the part where I left off. I'll start again. Practicing Zen is Zazen. Actually, he says Sanzen, but he uses the word Sanzen for Zazen. For Zazen, a quiet place is suitable. Lay out a thick mat. Do not let in drafts or smoke, rain or dew. Protect and maintain the place where you settle your body.

[01:04]

There are examples from the past of sitting on a diamond seat and sitting on a flat stone covered with a thick layer of grass. Day or night, the place of sitting should not be dark. It should be kept warm in winter and cool in summer. Set aside all involvements and let the myriad things rest. Zazen is not thinking of good, not thinking of bad. It is not conscious endeavor. It is not introspection. Do not desire to become a Buddha. Let sitting or lying down drop away. Be moderate in eating and drinking. Be mindful of the passing of time and engage yourself in zazen as though saving your head from fire. On Mount Huangmei, the fifth ancestor practiced zazen to the exclusion of all other activities. When sitting zazen, wear your robes and use a round cushion. The cushion should not be placed all the way under the legs, but only under the buttocks. In this way, the crossed legs rest on the mat and the backbone is supported with a round cushion.

[02:10]

This is the method used by all Buddha's ancestors for zazen. Sit either in the half lotus position or in the full lotus position. For the full lotus, put the right foot on the left thigh and the left foot on the right thigh. The toes should lie along the thighs and not extend beyond. For the half lotus position, Simply put the left foot on the right thigh. Japanese like to be very precise about everything. Don't let your toes go beyond you. Loosen your robes and arrange them in an orderly way. Place the right hand on the left foot and the left hand on the right hand, lightly touching the ends of the thumbs together. With the hands in this position, place them next to the body so that the joint thumb tips are at the navel. Straighten your body and sit erect. Now, I think this is where I left off last time. Yes, I did this.

[03:12]

Straighten your body and sit erect. Do not lean to the left or right. Do not bend forward or backward. Your ears should be in line with your shoulders and your nose in line with your navel. This is where I left off. The rest is just one more, two more paragraphs. but actually it contains all the pithy material. Rest your tongue against the roof of your mouth and breathe through your nose. So when we sit Zazen, our teeth are closed and the tongue is at the roof of the mouth. This is just normal position. when your mouth is closed, for most people. Lips and teeth should be closed. Eyes should be open, neither too wide nor too narrow.

[04:15]

So when we sit Zazen, our effort is actually to keep our eyes open, but everybody closes. At least from time to time. So, sometimes, especially in the morning, you know, early in the morning, your eyes, my eyes get tired early in the morning, so I tend to close them, but then I open them. And I make some effort to keep them open. But if you just keep your eyes closed all the time, then it leads to dreaming and fantasizing and sometimes you just find your eyes closed. So we should make some effort to keep the eyes open. This is one big difference between zazen and vipassana meditation. We don't lose our connection

[05:25]

or our relationship to things around us. So, you know, eyes half closed. They're not wide open and they're not closed. They're kind of just open enough so that it's not an effort. But if they're too closed, then they tend to close, fall down. easily. So sometimes it's good to just keep them open. And I used to sit like that. I used to sit with my eyes. Because when I first started sitting, I put a lot of energy into zazen. When I was learning to sit, I really put tremendous effort into just sitting up straight. And because I was putting such strong effort, my eyes would going up to my couch.

[06:31]

That was very good actually. That's a good idea. So, having adjusted body and mind in this manner, take a breath and exhale fully. Take a breath and exhale fully. He doesn't say what to do after that. Take another breath. But, this taking a breath and exhaling is before settling.

[07:38]

So, usually the text says, it's translated, take a breath and exhale fully, then sit in Zazen. But that starts the next paragraph. What I recommend to people is when you sit, when you sit down, and just before you put your hands in the mudra, so usually when we sit down, We should put our hands like this, you know, and rock our body in order to adjust your body to the seat, to the sitting position. We don't always do that, but it's a good idea to do that. Maybe not every time, but often, especially when you first start to sit. And then if you take... I'm exaggerating a little bit.

[08:47]

Deep breath. And when you inhale, you expand your abdomen, like an inner tube, a balloon. And then when you exhale, you contract your abdomen. And for people who are not used to breathing abdominally, which is a lot of Zen students who have been sitting a long time, believe it or not, who still don't breathe abdominally, If you're not used to breathing abdominally, then take a breath and expand your abdomen. Fill it out and then breathe in and breathe out. Exhale and let your backbone and abdomen come together. So pushing it all out.

[09:51]

I push it all out until I get back on it. So that this primes your breathing. Take about three deep breaths like that. It primes your breathing. And then when you start to breathe normally, your breathing will be abdominal. So it primes your breathing, yes. When you first gave me zazen instruction, your instruction was to take a breath and let it out, and then let out some more. Yeah, let out. And then let out some more. When you think it's all gone. That's very helpful. When you think it's all gone, let out some more. And then when you think that's all gone, let out some more. Until you really get that strong abdominal breathing going.

[10:55]

Yes. Why is there so much attention, or does anyone know what originally created so much attention around the abdomen? Well, that's where, that's normal. It's like resuming normal breathing. Normal breathing is abdominal breathing. So just getting back to what's normal. Usually our breathing, I mean, often our breathing is up here in the chest, or we don't know where it is. And when we have anxiety or fear, then our breath gets very shallow. So normal breathing is deep breathing. I'm not trying to get you to do something abnormal or special. It's not something special, just normal. But our usual body postures and breathing habits are not normal.

[12:01]

When I say normal, I mean without conditioning. So our postures and our breathing are very sensitive to conditions. And we assume certain postures because of certain anxieties and fears and conditions, how we approach conditions. And the breathing is the same. Breathing is the most sensitive thing. As soon as something happens, our breathing either gets fast or slow or jumpy or we lose it or we clutch it or it gets up here. So Zazen is an unconditioned activity. affected by conditioning. So in Zazen, we resume our unconditioned postures and breathing and mind.

[13:05]

So when I say, take a breath, you know, it's just to get the breath down to where it's, you're not breathing, you're letting go of your conditioned breathing and posturing and resuming normal breathing. And if you watch children breathing, you know, the tummies go in and out. They're not breathing up here. So once you've taken some deep breaths, then just resume your normal breathing through your nose. And when you get lost again, If you don't know where your breath is or it becomes bumpy or you get confused or something, then just do it again. Every time you want to establish your breath, just take those deep breaths and that will establish your breathing in your abdominal breathing.

[14:15]

So having adjusted body and mind in this manner, take a breath and exhale fully. He's just saying it in a simple way. And then just resume your normal breath through your nose. So then he says, sit solidly or immobily in samadhi. Sit immobily in samadhi. And think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. This is the art of Zazen. So to sit in Samadhi. Samadhi actually means, literally, Samadhi is a Sanskrit word for concentration. So, in a simple way, it would mean sit in a concentrated manner.

[15:27]

And there are, in concentration, there's access, there's preparatory, or access, concentration, And then there's neighborhood concentration, which is getting close to the subject or the object. And then there's concentration, attainment concentration, which is being one with your activity. So a preparatory and neighborhood and attainment. These are three aspects of concentration. Now preparatory might be when you sit on your seat and then you sway back and forth and you take some deep breaths.

[16:35]

This is like preparatory concentration. And then you put your hands in mudra and are getting close to absorption. And this is neighborhood concentration. You're in the neighborhood. And completion is, or attainment is, when you're fully one with your activity. So these are three aspects of concentration. Each one of these aspects of concentration is actually attainment. Because when you're swaying back and forth, it looks like you're getting prepared to do something else. But actually, what you're doing is swaying back and forth completely.

[17:40]

So that is attainment of swaying back and forth completely. And when you're taking these preparatory breaths, that's attainment of preparatory breathing. So it has both aspects. And this is very important for zazen and for especially our daily life as zazen. In our usual activity, we think of preparation as doing something in order to do something else. And the one most important factor of daily zazen is to realize that although it seems like you're doing something to get ready to do something else,

[18:48]

The getting ready to do something else is the thing itself. So we waste a lot of time thinking that our life needs fulfillment over there. And practicing zazen, is actually fulfilling our life in each moment, in each moment's activity, without thinking, this is for that. I'm doing this to do that. I'm sacrificing this moment for that. So, with a pattern of normal life, often, is to sacrifice various time of our life in order to gain something over here.

[19:53]

So Laki Roshi says something like, we think that we go to high school in order to be able to go to college. And we think that we need to be able to go to college in order to get a job. And we think we need to get a job in order to make a lot of money. This is just wasting your time. Big waste of time. Whereas if you really want to waste your time, you shouldn't sit still. But samadhi has more other meanings. Samadhi is the oneness of yourself, subject and object, of course in concentration.

[21:08]

When you are completely sitting zazen, it's samadhi, because there's no gap between the thought and the activity. Each moment is a complete fulfilled moment, completely fully filled moment. And there's no thought of doing one thing activity is totally fulfilled. So although each moment has its before and its after, it's a completely discreet and complete moment of activity and stillness. And of course this is why we Dōgen speaks of Jijū-yū-zamai, self-joyous samādhi, self-fulfilling samādhi actually, which of course includes, it's not just self-centered

[22:39]

but includes the enjoyment and suffering of all beings. And it's also in another aspect called Shikantaza. Shikantaza is the samadhi of doing one thing completely on one moment, which of course includes everything. He says, sit solidly in unmoving samadhi. Unmoving has different aspects. Unmoving can mean sit still. But it also can mean within our activity we're in total stillness. Within our activity is total stillness. This is actually a basis of samadhi.

[23:49]

No matter how active we are, everything is perfectly, completely still. This is no gap, non-dual activity. So then he says, and sit solidly or unmovingly in samadhi, And think not thinking. This is the koan of Zazen. Think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? And then it says, non-thinking. But non-thinking is not the same as not thinking. A subtle distinction of words here. Thinking and not thinking are duality. So he introduces non-thinking.

[24:51]

This comes from a story of Yaksan Igen. And the monk asked Yaksan, what are you thinking about in Zazen? Yaksan said, I'm thinking not thinking. He said, well, how do you think not thinking? Yaksan said, non-thinking. So, non-thinking is the non-dual aspect of thinking and not thinking. Are you thinking or not thinking? Who's thinking? This is the point. Dogen, actually, when he talks about not thinking, he expresses it as the who's thinking or the how's thinking, which takes it out of personal thinking.

[26:06]

So how do we think in zazen? Who thinks in zazen? It's the same as who sits zazen? Who sees? Who hears? There is hearing. There is seeing. There is sitting. Zazen sits zazen. Seeing just sees. Hearing just hears. Thinking just thinks. But who thinks, sees, hears, sits? This is the koan. So think not thinking is the same as who is sitting, who is seeing, who is hearing.

[27:13]

And the answer is in the question. Sitting sits. Seeing sees. Thinking thinks. Or not thinking, not thinks. Just avoid the I word. So in Zazen, we complain about our busy mind. I'm thinking too much. All these thoughts come into my mind. That's because we think that we're thinking.

[28:23]

But it's not your intention to think when you sit Zazen. You sit Zazen. and you put yourself in the posture, and then suddenly the mind is flooded with thoughts. And you say, I just keep thinking all these thoughts, but actually thinking just thinks. There's no one thinking these thoughts. And you say, I am sitting zazen. with my body, but actually there's just a body sitting down there. And then we say, my legs hurt, but actually they're just painful legs. My back hurts. They're just a painful back. I am angry at

[29:32]

person next to me, there's just anger arising from somewhere. So Dogen quotes Yakusan, presents Yakusan's koan. He says, this is the koan, zazen, and it applies not just to thinking. So when we sit, it's very helpful to take the I out of whatever it is that's your problem. And just realize legs, and many thoughts are occurring in consciousness.

[30:46]

But don't say, these are my thoughts, or this is my body. Otherwise, we create duality. So, think not thinking means be completely one with the thought. When our body and mind are doing exactly the same thing, when the thought and the activity are the same, this is non-thinking. when there's no gap between the thought and the activity. This is non-thinking. And when there's not only no gap, but no I between the thought and the activity.

[31:54]

So then he says, Zazen, the way that it's translated here, he says, Zazen is not learning to do concentration. It's usually translated as, Zazen is not learning step-by-step meditation, which I think is more accurate. It's not learning step-by-step meditation. It is just the dharmagate of great ease and joy. It is undefiled practice enlightenment. So this is an important point. If we look at it as step-by-step meditation, it means you're not learning to do something a little bit at a time. Step ladder meditation, you know, usual way of learning something.

[33:13]

We go to the first grade, second grade, third grade, and then in the twelfth grade we graduate, and then we go to college maybe. But in Zazen, Zazen is not learning meditation step by step. And in Buddhist practice there are a lot of stepladder meditations, especially Tibetan Buddhism. homes of step-by-step meditations. But Zazen is just opening it all up. It's just the gate, opening the gate. And there you are. It's like jumping in the water. And then you swim. You start swimming. So we assume that everyone is a baby turtle. We assume that you all know how to swim. But we keep trying and then pretty soon we were able to swim.

[34:23]

But that's the Dharmakirti of Zazen, of our school. It's not learning something. It's like right away you jump into a pond. You want to do this? And then you swim around. But it doesn't mean that there are no rules. Go slowly. Take your time. Don't try to go too deep. Learn how to do this. Don't go too fast. Don't do a seven-day Sashin on your second day of Zazen. You know, you'd be out there in the middle of the ocean with nothing to hang on to. So... We go slowly. It's the best way.

[35:26]

Don't push people. But you can walk into this pond, into the, you know, pool. There are steps. They go down. But they don't... Maybe we can talk about stages. There are stages, but stages are not the same as learning meditation step by step, and then you come out with something. We start with jumping into the pool of enlightenment. So we start from enlightenment, and then our practice continues to develop. So people say, well, when am I going to get enlightened? Well, the first enlightened thing you did was to sit zazen. And what keeps you going is enlightenment.

[36:29]

What keeps you practicing is enlightenment. Otherwise, why would you practice? Why would you continue to do this? But you don't realize. We don't realize. Because our normal way of thinking is to go from delusion to enlightenment. You know, to go from nothing to something. So here we start with nothing. We start by taking everything off and jumping in. Problem is that when we jumped in, we didn't take everything off. That's the big problem. You mean we jumped in the river with our clothes on? That's right. You jumped in the river with your clothes on. And you've been trying to take your clothes off ever since. Now they're wet. Now they're wet.

[37:32]

But this is normal. be able to just jump in. Although some people, mostly women, I think young women have it the easiest time. It seems to be the truth. In Japan, people thought about this and their observation was that young women in their early maybe between 18 and 21 or something, seem to have the easiest time with Zazen. For some reason, maybe because they don't have so much baggage. They don't. So much to take off. So anyway, all this stuff weighs us down. and hard to move around in this place of freedom, because the most difficult thing for us is freedom.

[38:42]

You know, that's the hardest thing for us, is to have freedom. We all want this, right? Everybody wants freedom, but we don't know what it is. And we think that it means unrestrictedness, and it does. But we don't know what unrestrictive means. We think it means we can do whatever we want. So we're always caught in our own idea about what freedom is. And so the more we try to get into freedom, the tighter we get stuck. But the more we try to get out, you know, it's like those little Chinese And you try to pull them apart. The more you try to pull them apart, the tighter they get. So that's because we think we want to get our hands out.

[39:47]

That's just normal reaction. So we're always reacting instead of really trying to understand why we're stuck. And Zazen is a good example of this. In order to get unstuck, you can't pull out. You can't pull away. You have to go in rather than trying to get away. So when you're sitting there with painful legs, you have to go in rather than trying to pull away. You can't escape. The more you try to escape, the tighter it gets. The whole universe is there in your body, in this body. And you feel how heavy it is when you're not balancing it well.

[40:48]

So there's no trick to it. It's just a matter of closing the gap. So we jump in. And we don't learn meditation step by step, but we do finally have to give up. Finally have to just let go of everything. And then the door, the gate, stops banging us on the head. the dharmagate of great ease and joy. But ease doesn't mean that there's no problem.

[41:53]

We always have a problem. You can't live life without a problem. So, in zazen there's always some problem. Your knees, or your back, or this or that. Sleepy. Tired. Something. There's always something. And this problem is what we have to work with. So ease and joy doesn't mean without problem, but it means not being turned by the problem. So we let the problem turn us. And we get upset by the problem. And we think that the problem is overwhelming. And so we let it overwhelm us. But it can only overwhelm us if there's something there to overwhelm.

[43:00]

If there's nothing there to overwhelm, then there's nothing that can be turned over. So where it gets us every time, where we leave the hook out, is I. Because I is the hook. And it will get caught every time. Who avoids the I word? I. I avoid the I word. Who? Don't do the answers in the question. I have terrible trouble with this. Yeah, I know. But you're not alone.

[44:13]

Every once in a while, we all get caught by it. It's the eye. It's the eye. You said before, a lot of times we're thinking about sacrificing the present moment for some future moment. I might be sitting here and thinking, this moment is no good. I'm not concentrating. Sometime, a minute from now, I'll be concentrating. Or I might be at work thinking, I'm working, this is a waste. An hour from now I'll be off. And so, what I'm thinking is, but in each moment, even if we're thinking, this is painful, or I don't like this job, or all of these things, there's a full engagement in that dissatisfaction.

[45:19]

or pain or devaluate. In other words, I'm fully devaluing. And when I'm thinking, yeah, it's like, it's like we're already, it's like you say, we're already here. Even in full devaluation, full dissatisfaction, full Yeah. So when you're dissatisfied, be completely, fully, totally dissatisfied. Blam! So are you satisfied? Huh? Am I satisfied? Yeah. Total dissatisfaction is complete satisfaction. So what's there to worry about? I also had a feeling that I jumped in with my whole wardrobe and I might as well just drown and start over again.

[46:31]

Well, you don't have to drown, just start over again. But drowning is good. Yeah, drown, completely drown. We say, you know, it should be like a sieve thrown into the water. Thinking is thinking. Just seeing the thoughts as the thoughts.

[47:40]

The thoughts are just the thoughts. And the feelings are just the feelings. Is that what investigation is? Well, investigation is on various levels. But, you know, when thinking about the seven factors of enlightenment, You know, investigation is one of the seven factors of enlightenment. And seven factors, you know, are all present in zazen. Investigation is, I mean, it's paying attention to what's happening. So you could say that that was, to investigate doesn't mean to analyze. It really means to observe what's going on, in this case.

[48:42]

When a thought comes, to observe the thought, to let it come and observe the thought, and then bring your attention back. When you investigate the posture, all the points of your posture during zazen, When you're sitting there, what are you going to do? Both the mudra okay? That's investigation. The back okay? Sleepy? Wake up? Tense shoulders? That's investigation. Go. So you're continually aware and investigating what's going on in this room. I mean, this room. this house and keeping order. So yes, that's investigation.

[49:49]

Who's doing that? The investigator. Yeah, well, you know how in our normal life we're always busy doing something? And it seems like when you do all that posture and this and that, it can very easily become just a lot of doing. So, how do you strike that balance? Well, doing is non-doing. by not making a distinction between doing and not doing. Not thinking, this is doing. Just do it. Even not doing is doing.

[50:59]

There's no such thing as not doing anything. other than whatever it is you're doing. You may think that sitting zazen is not doing anything. That's true. But it's not doing anything because you're not moving. When you're out there supposedly doing, that's not doing anything either. So in Zazen and in daily activity, there's both doing and not doing. So Zazen is the most complete dynamic activity of not doing. It's called restfulness.

[52:16]

So within our activity, there's non-doing. It's total stillness. And within our total stillness, there's great dynamic activity. Just take the eye out. So, if you realize that it's okay to complain, you know, you're waiting for the last hour of work and you wish that it was really four o'clock instead of three o'clock, You might be wasting your time. But... And you probably are.

[53:31]

So... Because your I is demanding something. So, um... But, you know, you may enjoy that. So, that's okay. As long as it's okay with you. It's okay. If there's no I, it's just waiting. Just waiting. I love this waste of time. Just waiting. That's right. Just waiting. That's fine. No problem. Just waiting. If you want the bus to come, then you're just waiting, right? But there's waiting that has patience, and there's waiting that is not patient.

[54:41]

So if you're waiting patiently, it means that you're fully absorbed in this moment without anxiety. That's waiting. That is absorption in waiting. But if you're anxious and you can't stand the fact that the bus isn't here, that's wasting your time, unless you enjoy it. Some people enjoy anxiety. As a matter of fact, if you can't have something, you know, then anxiety adds spice to your life. So people like to get in anxious positions. So, you know, whatever you say is always something else, right? So really, it all depends on what we want.

[55:45]

Sometimes people say, you know, what is the way? It's very interesting. After my talk last Saturday, I said, you know, what a good thing to do is to come to the teacher and say, what's the way? And a whole bunch of people came. But I had to say, what way do you want? What way do you, what do you mean by what is the way?

[56:21]

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