One thing I want to share today is that it never goes a day when you're feeling really strong and really clear and the body's feeling really loose and you feel like you can do anything. If such a day should arise, which I'm sure it does, take it easy. Don't think very much. Don't hold yourself too much. There are three of us now that have suffered knee injuries or back injuries in exactly those circumstances. And it takes about a minute, 30 seconds to hear something. They'll pop. They'll feel something. And then it may take six months or a year or four months or something to get back to where you were in the first place. But fortunately, this is a wisdom tradition that we're practicing.

[01:03]

And so, of course, I am just where I need to be and should be. I'm grateful to be in a situation. Having me, I have to be very careful of. because there's something I need to learn about how this hip does or does not open up and rotate, how I use this knee, to help you attend to the movements of my body, not attend to my mind, which sometimes goes off and is thinking about, oh, the beautiful feeling this is, and to go deeper into this particular stretch. Now he's going with it. She used to talk about the most important thing all the time. It's always somewhat different, the most important thing. So if you were trying in the early days to learn the language of Buddhism, it would be easy to kind of grab onto this and grab onto this.

[02:11]

But it was hard to fill up the outline, get the structure down. A1, A, , et cetera. I found that in thinking about talking, being here today with you, I wanted to, what came up with something like that, which is that maybe for me the most important thing is inhabiting the body, inhabiting the body that each of us has. I love the line, I think it's from James Joyce, and Mr. Jones ripped a few feet from his body. And I feel that probably most of us have grown up living somewhere a few feet away. And fortunately, fortunately, Japan sends us a few to help us actually meet our bodies and inhabit.

[03:19]

Owned. At some point you realize, gee, your mind is quite able to make all kinds of decisions and all kinds of judgments. But in fact, you have to wait for your body to catch up. Because your mind may decide to get married or change jobs or go on a trip. But you can also be undermined by your body. So if we stay current with our bodies, we're less likely to be knocked out. With Descartes, he said, I think because I am. Therefore I am. I think, therefore I am. Around Buddhism, we say, I think, not thinking. Therefore I am. And there's a koan, which some of you do know, the monk. Ask the teacher, what do you think of when you're doing this steady, mobile sitting?

[04:29]

And the teacher says, I think not thinking. What is this? Think not thinking. And the teacher says, not thinking. Or another version is, how do you think not thinking? The teacher says, not thinking. So another way of being in the body, owning your body, is maybe not thinking. Maybe that's another language for it. And what is this not thinking? But part of notion is know what thinking is. When you get into not thinking and get into non-thinking, then we might wonder what that is. And this is a good topic for my practice every day.

[05:30]

Come to the center. What is this think not thinking? How do you think not thinking in this posture? This posture. is not our posture. This is Buddha's posture. The spine with the legs crossed, even with the sore knee. The legs crossed, the mudra, the spine and neck, the chest empty, the neck extended, the chin tucked in, head lifted to the sky. This is Buddha's posture. When you take this posture, We are sitting in Buddha's seat. As soon as I say that, I realize that those of you who are sitting in chairs, they feel left out. But actually, this posture is also sitting in a chair. And sometimes this posture, I think, therefore I am, is also Buddha's posture.

[06:37]

However, usually we don't know that. We don't think of this as Buddha. We don't know ourselves as Buddha. When we sit, when we plop our body, we don't know ourselves as Buddha. So usually we have to sit in this posture and settle ourselves into our hips, our pelvis, our abdomen, We connect with our city homes, try to talk to children, try to look before we can feel, not think, call through those bodies. That dimension in our life that is deeper than the normal dimension that we conduct our lives in, running around, thinking, doing, right? The great mystery that Paul Howard mentioned a couple of weeks ago and talked about, that quality of mystery, the mysterious aspect of one's life.

[07:56]

And I'm calling it not knowing. And this posture helps us come back to that dimension of our experience that is absolutely simultaneous, co-existent with, glued onto, interconnected with, not one, not two, but the every . Yeah, I had a cold this week, so I'm having trouble with my voice. Who missed that last pronouncement? You can close the door, it might be. Thank you. I'll try. This dimension of not knowing or the mysterious quality of our lives, that richness that we...

[08:57]

A sense of wonder, a sense of not knowing. It's absolutely, totally integrated, totally simultaneous with, totally not separated from every breath, every thought, every gesture, every activity. Wisdom or emptiness, mystery or not knowing is not the background of our lives. It's not something that is just two feet away from our life. It is absolutely, totally, inescapably part of it. It's right there. In each spot there is nothing. There is emptiness. There is wisdom. To meet this dimension, to trust it, to trust our life to this posture is not so easy to do.

[10:13]

We come to Buddhism, and I think it's fair to say that most of us come out of some suffering in our lives, some despair, deep desperate feeling. looking for something to connect more deeply with ourselves. And we're offered this form. Zaza instruction, the first time you show up here, somebody will drive you through this posture and all the particular form details, where the back is and where the hips are. Well, we don't say so much about emptiness or the not-born or the not-thinking side. Words defile it.

[11:21]

Lecturing defiles it. Lecturing throws out ideas and concepts, and you're already doing stuff with that. So if I could just come in here and sit with you, I would hear you lecturing to me. We would all be lecturing to each other. And that in Buddhism is the deepest truth, the deepest dimension. But it's not separate from sitting here and talking. It's not separate from having a sore knee. How to sit in this posture and simultaneously be free from, be liberated from, be unattached to the posture is the effort, is the practice, is the path, is the resolution, is the arrival of the non-goal.

[12:28]

The perfection of wisdom is to see that there is no wisdom. It's to go beyond wisdom. It's the dichotomy. So we practice the wisdom tradition to go beyond it, to let go. But we can't let it go before we have fully known it, trusted it, absorbed it, digested it into our lives. So telling you that taking this posture is Buddha's posture. When you take this posture, you bring your body and Buddha's body into alignment.

[13:37]

Telling you that doesn't mean so much unless in your own experience, in your own sitting practice, you have some taste of that freedom, that breath, that non-attachment, that non-grabbing that we don't grab to just form. You just take it and let it go. We sit for many years, many lifetimes, sometimes, realize that this is Buddha's posture.

[14:41]

And that bringing our body into Buddha's posture creates one Buddha body. Doug and Zenji, the Japanese monk who brought this tradition that we're practicing there from China to Japan has a classical body and mind study of the way. And I'd like to just read it briefly. He says, a little bit here. There are two approaches to studying the Buddha way. One is to study with the mind, and one is to study with the body. To study the way with the body means to study the way with your own body.

[15:48]

It is the study of the way using this lump of red flesh. The body comes forth from the study of the way. Everything which comes forth from the study of the way is the true human body. So to study Buddha, to study Buddha's posture, Buddha's life, Buddha's mind, is to study this body, your mapa-red body, not the Buddha body. But when you study your body, your sensations, your feelings, your muscle, your breath. You'll see that God extends everything to everything. But studying the body is simultaneously studying the mind. It doesn't exclude the mind. It becomes one. He says, to study with mind means to study with the various aspects of mind, such as consciousness, emotion, and intellect.

[16:52]

There is bits and pieces of straightforward mind the mind of the ancient Buddhas, everyday mind, the triple world, which is one mind. Sometimes you study the way by casting off the mind, and sometimes you study the way by taking up the mind. Either way, study the way with thinking and study the way not thinking. My experience over the years is that Buddhism offers us many practices for studying this posture, studying this body, studying this mind. And they're very helpful to get us started. Like the first foundation of mindfulness is following the breath, being in touch with the body and the breath, the physical experience. After a while, it's important to take these practices and make them very intimately your own so they're no longer practices that you're doing outside of your life.

[18:09]

And I feel that's one of the problems that some of us have run into over the years. We start doing zazen as an adjunct to our lives as a form or a technique or a tool that will help our lives. But our life is a little to the side of it. And these practices, these practices of following the breath, following sensation, feeling, following thought, somehow are outside of our actual life. We have to bring Buddhist practice, the specific practices which the tradition offers us, right on the point of our life. right to the point where we're hurting, where there is some disease or some desperation or some real pain. If all that is separate, something you do to get points or to get more or something, it won't work in our lives.

[19:16]

The classical Zazen-shin, which Dogen has written, has been translated by Katagiri Roshi as acupuncture needle-ness of Zazen. By that he means that Zazen is the needle, by which we apply to that point, the exact point in your body and mind that you need it. It's not around it. It's not just walking a couple of centimeters. It's right on the point. And that's the crucial thing that maybe some of us have missed. We think if we just keep doing this activity over and over, Many of us have been doing it over and over for years or so. There's 25. Another's been doing it for 35. At some point, you have to bring it exactly to the place of your life.

[20:25]

Bring your life together so they become one. So your pain, your confusion, merge. When we talk about studying our life intimately, we don't mean studying it from a distance. We don't mean looking at it. If you're like me, I sort of like to get a perspective on things, so I very easily detach myself and take a look at something out there. We come to bring it inside. in order to really know it, know it without the intervention of the conceptualizing, describing, discriminating mind. One of the definitions of the perfection of wisdom is the knowledge of all modes, which is meant

[21:31]

the intimate knowledge from the inside of every person, every piece of life, all of nature, trees, plants, insects, birds, to know intimately what it's like from the inside to be on a great . He wants that life to be in that person's mind and body, no gap, no judgment. When we know our life in this way, even a few seconds We can understand. Do we know someone else's life in this world when we're not there? That's the taste of this life.

[22:34]

From that place of not knowing, compassion, deep understanding, non-judgment comes forth. From that place, we can live our lives even more with things as they are. Another way of talking about it is something like suchness. Such a wonderful word. It is suchness. That which you can't add anything to. The way it is is just as it is. Things just as they are in their isn't, in their suchness. And that's so hard to do, because we wouldn't love to... We're always appropriating life to our preferences, to what we're comfortable with. Or we're adjusting ourselves to what we think is expected of us. I thought of...

[23:39]

Somebody came to Tassajara a year or so ago and gave a talk, a painter, and he did some calligraphy for us. And before he started, he said, I have no idea what I'm going to say. And we felt in each body, we didn't have any idea. He didn't come to meet us with any idea. prepared to talk, prepared to teach. Okay, folks, this is the Buddha speaking straight from Japan. And it was in Japanese. There was that feeling of just meeting this person. You immediately see the presence of his breath and his heartbeat. And I realized that if I came in here in the immediacy of my breath and heartbeat, in muscle, abdomen, and had nothing to say that I had thought it would be quite a different message or be quite a different teaching.

[25:15]

And I thought what a much deeper teaching that would be. I think it's just what it is. Here I am. I'm going to sit with you and be up here. I don't have anything special to say. I can't even say it back. Thank you. I had this thing about leaving you with a teacher, leaving you with a little gem, something that I'd wanted.

[26:21]

And you probably have just as much to leave with me. And maybe you've already had enough to deal with sitting cross-legged or sitting here on this day or wherever your mind's at, you know? But, um, here goes. Good to hear. The reading of the book my sister sent me, called Between Women, this is really important because my sister and I have been working on our relationship for years. And she sent this to me, and it's about women's lives together. It starts with the loving support that women give each other, just naturally, in the genes. And how they identify with or easily merge with each other. And at some point, When one of the two women, or usually we're talking about close friends, when something happens in the life of one of them, gets a better job, has a new lover,

[27:36]

It goes back to school to change your situation. If something happens, the other one, instead of joyfully supporting it and preaching it, feels anger and envy and competition and having been abandoned. If we're women, this is very hard to accept the coexistence of these angry feelings with the other's deep love and support and nurture. that's been around for many, many years. And what's interesting about this book that these two women are therapists to allowing it, that the projection of anger onto the other person for having abandoned or died deeper is a way of avoiding looking at what's really going on in your own heart, which is that you never dreamed for yourself that you might have the possibility of differentiating as much as the person who's just taking that step.

[28:51]

You've never thought about the possibility of going back to school, of being more independent, of breaking out of this huge and at the same time having the bar, not losing the bar. So to me, the deeper teaching is that our projections, our anger, all that stuff we put out, our indignation, as well as the people that we admire and want to emulate, use as heroes, All of that stuff is a little extra and is mostly a mask or a screen to prevent us from looking at what's really going on here. So the wisdom of Buddhism is to say, please pay attention to that. When you notice your anger, the object of your anger is your best friend.

[29:52]

Not in the sense I mentioned originally, but whoever lets you see yourself, that clearly is giving you a big thing. Please pay attention. So the person that you organize with, it's never any problem when you go bouncing off to the beach or off to the beach or whatever all the time. That's wonderful to meet friends like that, partners like that. But the person who brings out your involved, she can't bear to be here, whatever, that's the person who's your real, that's the person who's real healthy, see you to your love. into this mind and body in a way that can give you some liberation. Our pain, our difficulties are our liberation, our gates to liberation. This posture is to bring forth what we already knew, to bring forth our wholeness,

[30:59]

I want to be quiet. And like that, we'll be taking the talk off in another way. So I'll just end now. We wish you all happy Buddha's birthday. We had a little circumambulation here this morning. We'll have a picnic at Green Gulch tomorrow to get you all welcome. Thank you for being here so that I could figure out all this stuff and try to not say it.

[31:44]

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