So this is the first day of Sashin. So welcome to Sashin. We're going to be doing this for seven days. So there's the question, what do you think about in Zazen? when you're sitting so composedly in zazen. I like to say that whenever you sit, you give yourself zazen instruction every single time. And while you're sitting, you give yourself zazen instruction moment by moment. That's all there is to do. It's not so easy because everything is continuously changing.

[01:06]

Our posture is always changing, our breath, the rhythm of our breath is always changing. The world around us is changing. So every moment we have to adjust. our posture and our breathing and our attention. Yeah, can you hear? Adjust my microphone. How's this? Better? Yeah, that feels better too. I can't see it now. When we give ourselves zazen instruction all the time, it focuses our attention on what we're doing because there's really nothing else to do. So often when we have nothing else to do, we start thinking about things that are not really relevant to zazen.

[02:18]

So I call it micromanaging. Micromanaging our posture, our mental concomitance, and our breath. We don't really manage our breath. And we don't really manage our mental concomitance. We simply let the breath be the breath. as it is, as the rhythm of our body settles. So breath and mind are mental concomitants. We kind of let them go, but we really do manage our posture.

[03:19]

So posture is the most important thing. This is fundamental. We don't always remember that, or we don't always believe it, but it's true. So postures first, then taking care of or following our breath is next. and not getting attached by those thoughts that arise in the mind. Letting thoughts come and letting thoughts go, letting breath come, letting breath go, but staying with our posture. But there are many, many components, faculties, that make a zazen work.

[04:30]

So I want to talk about those components. There's a list of six qualities, qualitative factors, that I think of as to be mindful of in zazen, aside from posture. I've talked about these before. and I will name them and then I will talk about them. Six qualities to be aware of. So, the first one is tranquility. To be settled, settled mind. Tranquility and serenity, you know, are two calming factors.

[05:38]

One is tranquility is like a pool where there are no ripples. So even on the surface of a pool, even if there are, you know, like waves and so forth, the waves are on the top, but the bottom, as you go down, is very tranquil. This is our attitude in Zazen, to allow, it's okay to have the waves of the mind. You can't help that. You can't help the storms that go on in your mind, and the repetitious tape that goes on in your mind, and the music that you last heard going on in your mind. and the president's problems going on in your mind. But to allow that to be there on the surface, but to just keep going down deeper and deeper into the tranquil peacefulness of your mind.

[06:53]

To let everything settle. So, settled mind is the basis. The basis of Zazen is settled mind. Not to stop the wars, but simply to find the deep settledness of your mind so that you can actually have clarity. This is how we allow clarity to arise. And when we allow clarity to arise, we will know what to do. So there's no end to the depths of our mind. And this is where our intuition comes from. And it's where prajna comes forth. Settled mind is where prajna comes forth. And then when prajna comes forth, we will know how to deal with the fragmentary condition of our mind in a holistic way.

[08:12]

So people say, what do we do in these terrible, uncertain times? our answer is we go down to the bottom as far as we can go of our tranquil mind to allow our intuitive understanding to come forth in order to take care of, with compassionate mind, the problems that occur on the surface. So that's tranquility. Serenity is like a beautiful sunset where the sun goes down and everything quiets down. The world goes to sleep, except that it doesn't.

[09:17]

The turmoil is still going on. Nevertheless, it is a time when things go quiet. We go to sleep. Most people go to sleep. Animals go to sleep. Most of them. Some of them don't. But it's a quiet time. So tranquility, I think, is more of a good metaphor. So if people talk about peace of mind a lot, so you could say peace of mind, peaceful, passivity. Often though, this is, it's a problem. Passivity is often a problem because people think that meditation is passivity. That's true, but that's only one half.

[10:23]

The other half is dynamic activity. Dynamic activity is the other half of meditation. So the equanimity of passivity and activity is balanced zazen. So calmness is important. It takes us down to the base. And this is the heart, maybe you could say. But the bones is activity. Passivity needs the bones of activity in order to have uprightness. in order to have, we say backbone.

[11:24]

Backbone is really important in Zen practice. So that's the beginning and the end, actually. Tranquility and backbone, or uprightness. That's why posture is so important. Posture holds tranquility in equanimity. So that's why I'm always emphasizing backbone, posture, good posture. So I'll read you these six qualitative factors. Tranquility, number two is called agility. Agility means lightness. If when you're sitting Zazen, you attach to the pain in your legs, your body gets heavier and heavier.

[12:43]

And if you are really attached, then It's like the whole universe is pressing down on your body, on some part of your body. And then it becomes unbearable. So we have to understand how to not let ourself become attached to discomfort. what we call discomfort, pain. That's the trick of Zazen, really, how you escape from the pressure of the universe bearing down on your body. So, you know, we have the inside pressure of our body and the outside pressure should be balanced so that we feel light.

[13:47]

and balanced, light and lighthearted, agile, and buoyant, actually, buoyancy important. So, of course, you know, we go through many different phases And we can't say how any one period of Zazen will affect our body. But we have to know how to be agile, how to find the agility and lightness in Zazen. So in order to find the lightness and agility in Zazen, we have to let go.

[14:52]

And we don't know what that means until we do it. As soon as we have some little uncomfortable feeling, we tend to hold on to it. Because you say, well, I don't want to hold on to it, but we attach to it. Say, I don't like this. It's an intrusion. So it's an intrusion into our comfort zone. So when we stop thinking of it as an intrusion and simply let it pass through, without avoiding it, we feel light and buoyant.

[15:55]

It's like how we stay on the line. It's like a tightrope walker. How to stay on the line, right in the middle. It's so easy to fall off to one side or the other. That's why we say when you sit dozen, just sit very still. And within that stillness, all kinds of things will happen. These are called waves. So how you actually go with the waves, ride the waves, and not get overwhelmed by the waves, is how we should love him. As soon as we don't like it, we have a big wave. So we have the desire

[17:04]

to want to be comfortable. That's what our life is about. We're always trying to be comfortable in one way or another. So we keep changing our equipment to make us comfortable. But it doesn't really work. And Zazen puts you in the position where you can't change your cushions. So how do we accept each moment's, our life on each moment, our activity, what we're doing on each moment, without complaining. We don't know what a complaint is, necessarily, because it can be subconscious. You know, sometimes we'd be sitting, as in, And it's okay. And you say, oh, this is okay.

[18:07]

And then as soon as you say this is okay, it changes. Did you ever notice that? As soon as you say okay, it changes. And then you say, did it change because I said it was okay? Or did it just change? This is very subtle, really subtle. So I learned one day that if I simply, instead of trying to avoid it by thinking of other things, you know, you can avoid a lot by just letting your mind wander to other things. How do I just enter that feeling, whatever it is? You can call it anything you want. Usually we call it pain. And then if we don't like it, I call it suffering. So how do I avoid naming it and then calling it suffering?

[19:18]

By simply expanding myself. I don't know how to explain that. I just get bigger. So that whatever that feeling is, has a lot of room. As soon as the room has borders, then the walls start aching. That's the way it works. As soon as the room gets smaller, and a room can really get smaller quickly, even though the object inside of it stays the same. So the object inside of it starts feeling more and more problem because the walls are closing in. So if we let the walls expand instead of close in, then we're comfortable. So this is called a pliancy.

[20:25]

Pliancy is like soft mind or softness, flexibility, open-mindedness. Pliancy is non-attachment. Flexibility. Suzuki Roshi always used to talk about soft mind. We always have to have soft mind. Soft mind doesn't mean, you know, squishy. It's like grass, you know. In the grass, the wind blows and we say, oh, it's beautiful. You go to Mendocino, or you just go out here to Point Isabel, and beautiful, tall grass.

[21:31]

And when the wind blows, the grass just goes like this. It's beautiful. It's like the grass has such enjoyment, allowing the wind to blow it around without resisting. No resistance at all. And the grass does not break. But the trees break in the wind. Tall, strong trees break in the wind. So rigidity is the opposite. of pliancy. Conceit and rigidity. So, I don't want to talk about what conceit and rigidity are exactly, but you'd already know. Inflexibility, obstruction, stubbornness.

[22:35]

We have to let go of all those things. We have to let go of all those things. If we let go of all those things, it's easy to have blindsee. You know, as with tranquility, how do we get tranquility? How do we achieve tranquility? Well, the opposite of tranquility is anxiety and agitation. Worry and flurry. There's plenty to worry about. You know, but so much of our worry is unnecessary, because the worry becomes an obsession, a session of ob. Obstacle. Obsession. You don't want a session.

[23:37]

Obstacle. So, we're the obstacle. It's hard to let go of our stuff, you know. When we come, the day we come, this is obsession intro day, where we bring all of our stuff here, you know, and then we sit down with it. And little by little, it burns away, hopefully. And we can be more and more tranquil, more and more, and more and more flexible, agile, and pliant. Yeah, compliant.

[24:39]

Pliancy. Compliant means to have pliancy and to go along with. We used to say, go with the flow, man. I remember that. Go with hippie thing. But actually, it's our practice to not obstruct, but just go with as things are going. As soon as we put up an obstacle, we suffer. The universe will always win over us. So actually what we're doing is going with the universal activity. There's nothing in between. There's no worldly activity that we're involved with.

[25:43]

So it's just us and the universe sitting together. So how do we allow the universal activity to come forth? When we can do that and flow with the universal activity without obstructing, we have nirvana. That's what nirvana means. It's also called the cool state. This is what we mean by big mind. Allow big mind. You know, we do not sit zazen. Buddha sits zazen. Zazen sits zazen. What is Buddha? Buddha is the universe. So we allow ourself to find our place in the universe without obstruction, without interference, and directly let ourself be motivated by the universe, the universal activity.

[26:52]

We came here, we appeared as ourself in the universe. So what causes most of our problems is our self-centeredness. It's a trick that the universe plays on us. It really is, you know. People shake their fist at God, you know. Why not? It's a big trick. So, we just should go along with it. That's Zazen. Zazen is simply letting the universal activity have its way and co-operate. We do have an ego. We have a self, you know. Even though we don't have a self, we do have a self. And so we merge our self with our self.

[27:54]

We merge our small self with our big self, called the universe. And that's nirvana. And what blocks nirvana is when our self is fighting with it instead of cooperating with it. This is our chance. So sometimes people complain, you know, that Zen meditation is an escape. In a sense, it is an escape, yeah. But it's an escape by going into the mouth of the lion and we let the lion eat us up, if you want to call that escape.

[28:56]

and then we let the lion eat us up, and then we can roar like a lion. That's just me. So, the fourth one is called workableness. Workableness means balance, perfect balance. If you, it's like a potter, working with clay, if you've ever worked with clay, you know, you knead the clay and, you know, a little water, a little powder, and you get the right consistency, right? So it's consistency. not too wet, not too dry.

[30:04]

And it's also in cooking. This is the art of cooking, is workableness, consistency of ingredients. When you're cooking polenta, where's that guy? He always cooks polenta really well. Not always, even though it's not always so, that's right. So we're allowed, we're allowed to make mistakes. And our mistakes is what endears us to people. But if you just keep making mistakes in order to think that people will like you, that's not it. So, consistency, balance, and workableness. And our body's like that.

[31:09]

Our mind is like that. And our breath is like that. How we balance those three factors together. In Zazen, that's really important. Flexibility and workableness. When you're holding your body, it's not rigid. There's nothing to hold on to. In Zazen, there's really nothing to hold on to. But when we have a problem, we start to hold on to our body because there's nothing else to hold on to. We can't hold on to the pillar. Raul can't hold on. He'd look funny if he did. So we hold on to our body, and we make our body more rigid, thinking that, you know, because if we just let go, the universe will balance us, will balance us up with the universe, but we can't trust it.

[32:11]

We don't feel We don't have faith. If we have faith in the universe, we can let go and let the universe manipulate us in the right way, riding the waves instead of getting inundated by them. So, always this is a big problem. And this is what makes us comfortable. In order to feel comfortable, we have to let go of any tenseness in our body at all. Absolutely no tenseness. That doesn't mean no tension. Tension and tenseness are two different things. Tension holds everything together. Everything is held together by tension. But tenseness is the extra. It's the tension you don't need to hold you up or hold you together.

[33:13]

So it squeezes you if it's unbalanced. So all these factors working together, sometimes you think, well, these aren't so different. All these factors are not so different. They're not, but they are. And because they're all working together, sometimes they overlap and each one actually contains all the others. So, the trick is to find the right balance And know where you're, this is for a healthy person, the small of your back is the only place that there needs to be any effort.

[34:19]

And lifting up here, that straightens the back. When I give somebody Zazen instruction, I push in their chin, and put the hand in the small of their back, and just like, very simple. That's all there is to it. If you try to manipulate, you know, that's manipulation. If you just do this, and you can do it yourself, that's what I mean by giving yourself Zazen instruction. When you sit down, you cross your legs or whatever, however you do this, And then you push your lower back forward. If you lift up here, it does it. And then you're sitting up straight, and you just do that the whole time. And then you start going like this. That's micromanaging. Oh yeah, lift here, push in here.

[35:28]

That's all there is to it. And then you hold your ujjayi very lightly. Very lightly, the sun's nice and oval. And the sun's very lightly touching. And just to the end, you expand. I can't tell you how to do that. You just feel your body opening up. You just feel everything opening up. This is ascent, opening yourself with good faith that if the universe wants to take you, here I am. I trust you. I trust the universe that if it wants me to die, I'll die. This is called actually jumping off. But then here I am, still here and happy, even though the world is crumbling around me.

[36:35]

But it's always doing that. That's the job of the universe, is to have war and peace. And, you know, and to have problems and people, you know, killing each other and all, that's the nature of the world that we live in. And of course we have to help control it, but we can't stop it from doing that. That's it. It's always been this way. The big fish eat the little fish, eat the smaller fish, eat the smaller fish. That's the way Buddha described the universe. The big fish eat the smaller fish, eat the smaller fish, eat the smaller fish. Somebody said, well, how come we're sitting here doing this when the world's falling apart around us? You're not going to stop the world from doing all that, but you make a space.

[37:42]

It's great to make a space of peace. That's a good job. We have to do that, even though it will all fill in again. We do make a space, but it will all fill in again. There was a movie, The Woman in the Dunes. I don't know if you remember that. They're in the bottom of the sand pit. The more you try to get out, the more the sand falls in. But you have to keep trying. You can't just give up. At the same time, you have to have some space and know where you fit into the universe. ease. How do you find your own peacefulness in the universe? So, this is called the unwobbling pivot.

[38:48]

So, because you know how to go down to the very bottom, and help people without trying. When a peaceful person goes into a place, it has an effect on that place, whether you realize it or not. Anyway, so when we have a whole group of people sitting Zazen in the right way, that creates something in the world that allows peace to enter the world. It would be great if for a half hour every day, everybody just sat down and did Zazen.

[39:57]

So that's our hope of saving, that's my hope of saving the world. We can fix things, but things, you know, it doesn't work because you fix something over here, you put out a fire over here, and then the fires come up over here. And then, oh, and then you go fix that fire, and then this fire's coming up over here. So you just walk, it's whack-a-mole. Oh no. But, because people are always on the surface. Everything's happening on the surface. And it's hard to let go because we live, when we live too, when our life is too busy on the surface, we're cut off from the fundamental.

[41:03]

And so all the stuff on the surface is mayhem because it's not grounded. So to save the world, we all have to be grounded. I don't know if that'll ever happen, but at least we can take care of our small part of the world. create something in our small part of the world. That's why we teach Sazen. So somebody said a couple of weeks ago, this is nice, but what about all the stuff going on in the world? How are you people helping people in the world? I said, we offer Sazen. What better thing can we offer? We can fix people. Hospitals are great, you know, and mental hospitals are great. All those things are wonderful, you know, that people are helping each other. This is our thing.

[42:04]

This is my thing. To offer something really fundamental to people. The fifth one is called agility. I'm sorry, that's the third one. This one is called proficiency. Proficiency is like when you do something over and over again, you get good at it. So when you sit and over and over again, you get good at it. And when you work on anger, for instance, on when you are careful about to notice the source of anger and how to deal with it, when it comes up, when there's a critical time, you have a background of proficiency in dealing with it.

[43:10]

So you know whether you're getting caught or not getting caught, whether you're reacting or responding. People will ask me a question and they'll say, well, how do I deal with my anger? Well, I can't tell you because you don't have any background for dealing with it. You can't just, you know, give an answer and somebody would say, oh, okay. But when it comes up, since they have no background in dealing with it, they want a free ride, basically. Instead of having to work for it, they want an answer about what do I do about it. It doesn't work that way. You have to have practice. If you want to have good zazen, you have to practice it all the time. You know, if you don't practice it all the time, then you sit down and you have a lot of pain, you don't know what to do with it.

[44:13]

But if you practice it consistently, as soon as you sit down, you enter somebody. So that's called proficiency, to know how to, by doing it over and over, you know how to deal with it, how to do it. So proficiency is like fitness and composure. You keep your body fit so that it will respond to what you're doing. And the opposite is hesitancy, uncertainty, lack of self-confidence, People often say, well, I'd like to come to Sashin, but maybe I'll ask the Sashin director if I can come Friday. So there's no confidence.

[45:16]

So you have to build up your confidence by doing it over and over consistently. So faith and confidence. through constant practice. Consistent practice and devotion leads to proficiency. So this is called foundation. So uprightness is foundation, Selfless actions and spontaneity. Spontaneity is very important. You know, sometimes people think of Zen students as robots. They were described that way by Kirchner. But actually, our actions are all spontaneous.

[46:25]

It looks like We're all, you know, sitting in Raho and sitting up straight like, you know, in a straitjacket, but actually all of our actions are spontaneous. If we let go of discursive thinking and really sit dozen, depending on the universe to uphold us, It's all spontaneous. So the opposite, it's also called noble bearing. Zazen posture has always been called the noble posture, and Shakyamuni is often depicted in the noble posture as the noble man, the true noble man. The opposite is insincerity and hypocrisy and pride and selfishness and arrogance and hidden motives.

[47:43]

So posture is called backbone because that's what it is. You know, when I had my mountain seat ceremony to become the abbot, you give a talk, a few little talks, and one of the talks is called backbone. What is the backbone? I'm supposed to, the person's supposed to say what the backbone of their practice is. And also, posture can influence our state of mind. We usually think that our mind is the leader, our thinking mind is the leader, but actually, not always so. Our posture can influence our mind as well as our mind influencing our posture.

[48:49]

If we sit up really straight, that really makes a big difference in our attitude of mind. Big difference. I often see people, you know, they're sad. I'm sad and I'm unconfident. But if you sit up straight and make that effort, it can change your attitude of mind. and give you a lot of strength. Tranquility and uprightness together are a winning combination. So to sit up straight in tranquility is a winning combination, it's quite true. So posture can influence our state of mind. So I'm going to stop there.

[50:11]

I think that Sashin talk should not be too long. So I want to encourage everybody to sit up straight as possible. If you sit up, if you put too much effort in, you become tense. If you don't put enough effort in, you become lax. So find just the right amount of effort to do the most work. And refine your posture. Refine your posture so that you find just the right place to put your effort. And find your balance. Your nose is in line with your navel. Your ears are in line with your shoulders. And if you think about that, and you lift up your sternum, then you're sitting up straight.

[51:14]

And it's all balance. It's a little bit of effort. Just the right amount of effort. No tenseness. Think of all the tension. Is there tension in my mudra? Is there tenseness in my arms? In my legs? In my knees? In my back? How do I let that open up? How do I let that open up? How do I just open up? Forget fighting. There's no fighting. There's no conflict. Just open to, just open up. That's it. Defenseless. No defenses. Just open up. And you can do more than you think. Sitting in other ways, like chairs and so forth, that's great.

[52:18]

But how do I apply this understanding to that posture? So every one of us, you know, has a different abilities and non-abilities, but how do you apply the fundamental stuff to your particular situation? That's important. So that you're always concentrated on Zazen one way or another, and there's no need to give up. Except that it's great to give up our ego. That giving up is really good.

[53:14]

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