I vow to chase the truth and not to turn back. I'm going to talk about Zazen and hopefully stop soon enough so that we can have questions which are either about Zazen or about our forms. I was talking to someone early this morning and she said she wasn't sure she was sitting Zazen the right way. She thought she probably wasn't. And we all have that question, the question of right effort.

[01:09]

What is right effort? And I think probably all of us who've sat a number of years have gone through different phases of imagining that we're sitting zazen the right way and then discovering that we didn't know anything about sitting zazen and now we're sitting it the right way. and then moving through that. So, Zazen is very simple, and when you actually get into the process, it's endlessly subtle. And the question of am I doing it the right way is a good question, unless you begin to use it as a battering ram and tell yourself, everyone else here is doing it the right way and I'm doing it the wrong way.

[02:11]

And there can be a lot of grief in that, that this is a wonderful experience and I can't have it because I don't know the right way. So the question which naturally arises and is a good question, is my effort right effort? We need to practice with that question without making assumptions and having opinions about our zazen because our zazen is naturally and wonderfully larger than any idea that we can have about it. So what is our right effort and how do we sit Zazen so that we more and more have the experience of coming home, of coming home in the present.

[03:21]

I want to talk a little bit about the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, the Satipatthana Sutta. This was a sutra which the Buddha taught, and it's the basis of our meditation practice, both of the Theravadan meditation practice and of our Zen Mahayana meditation practice. And I'd like to read, I'm going to be using Thich Nhat Hanh's, there are many translations of it. And I'm going to be using Thich Nhat Hanh's, which is this book, Transformation and Healing. Sutra on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness. And it's quite a useful book. There are many, many exercises that you can use if you're interested.

[04:28]

So I'm just going to read you his translation of the very first part. of this Maha Satipatthana Sutra. And that's the sutra of great sati is paying attention to awakening, mindfulness. I heard these words of the Buddha one time when he was living at Kamadasa Dharma, a market town of the Kuru people. The Buddha addressed the bhikkhus, oh bhikkhus, monks, and the bhikkhus replied, venerable Lord. And the Buddha said, bhikkhus, there is a wonderful way to help living beings realize purification, overcome directly grief and sorrow, end pain and anxiety, travel the right path and realize nirvana. This way is the four establishments of mindfulness.

[05:34]

What are the four establishments? Because a practitioner remains established in the observation of the body in the body. Diligent, with clear understanding, mindful, having abandoned every craving and every distaste for this life. Two, he remains established in the observation of the feelings in the feelings. Diligent, with clear understanding, mindful, having abandoned every craving and every distaste for this life. Three, he remains established in the observation of the mind in the mind, diligent, with clear understanding, mindful, having abandoned every craving and every distaste for this life. Four, He remains established in the observation of the objects of mind, in the objects of mind, diligent with clear understanding, mindful, having abandoned every craving and every distaste for this life.

[06:47]

So, that's the four foundations of mindfulness and the rest of the book is Thich Nhat Hanh's commentaries and exercises for how to do that. So the first foundation, and you hear in each one this in the body, in the feelings. So each foundation of mindfulness has this common theme that it is not a subject looking at the object, but what's happening is the thing in itself. which is mindfulness. There's a Burmese meditation teacher, Usil Ananda, who used to come around here, who's also written a book on the four foundations of mindfulness. And he says, mindfulness is something like a stone hitting a wall.

[07:52]

In order to throw a stone, you must put out energy. You throw the stone with energy and it hits the wall. Like the stone hitting the wall, mindfulness hits the object. Whatever the objects are, the breath, the movements of mind or body, your mind goes to these objects. The hitting of the object is mindfulness. So when the attention hits the object, there's no gap. This no-gap attention is our mindfulness. And this mindfulness has a great deal of very powerful and very subtle power.

[08:54]

Now I'm reading, take my time. Mindfulness is like a lamp illuminating ourselves. As soon as the lamp is brought into the room, the room changes. When the sun rises, the light of the sun only has to shine onto the plants for them to grow and change and develop. The light of the sun appears not to be doing anything at all, but in truth it is doing a lot. Under the influence of the sun, the plants produce chlorophyll and become green. It is thanks to the growth of plants that the animal species have what they need to survive. Our mindfulness has the same functions as the light of the sun. If we shine the light of full awareness steadily on our state of mind, that state of mind will transform into something that So, all this day, we will be working with mindfulness.

[10:07]

So the first foundation of mindfulness, observing the body in the body. Talked a little bit about that in the brief instruction. How the body is always in the present. Our most reliable and closest teacher is this body. So we put our attention onto the body sensations from our scalp to our toes. And as we do that, we begin to realize how, what a whole underworld, like an underwater scene we live in all the time. how much is going on in the body that we have no idea of until we become quiet and mindful.

[11:13]

And as we keep the posture so that the body is open and we're continually being aware of the holdings and the little shutting downs, just two inches of beginning to slump. What a difference that makes in what the body, how the body is living. When an exciting thought enters the mind, what an impact that has on the body. How the energies in our body are always moving around. Sometimes we're very conscious of head energy sometimes heart energy, throat, belly, lower back, up and down the back. As we really begin to put attention on the body, the news of what's going on in the body becomes more and more interesting.

[12:27]

Just being aware of body in the body is an enormous correction to zazen because we're so oriented from throat up. That's where our experience, that's where most of us are used to taking in our experience, head up. So the more that we really become attuned to this musical world under the skin, and the more we sink, take the elevator down into the body, the more stable and rich and authentic our experience becomes. So, of course, these four foundations of mindfulness, body, feelings, state of mind, contents of mind, are talked about in separate ways.

[13:39]

And, of course, they're not separate. They have everything to do with one another. But we're talking about them one by one. So, the first The most important is observing the body in the body. You know our Zen practice, our Soto Zen practice is a very yogic practice. This school of silent illumination. We talk and there are words and there's a lot of instruction. But fundamentally it's an exploration of this body silence, this body-mind silence. Other forms of meditation give more instructions about what to do with mind.

[14:46]

And our instruction is body-mind. Just body-mind, body-breath, posture-mind. So the next foundation is observing feelings in the feelings. Now, it's an interesting question. What is the difference between, where is the boundary between a body sensation and a feeling? What if my leg is really hurting? Is that sensation? Is that a feeling? Now if my boyfriend has left me and I have a lot of feelings about that, that's very clearly an emotional feeling. So we have all this gradation between emotional feelings and sensate feelings. And that's an interesting continuum to be aware of.

[15:55]

Traditionally, our feelings are pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. And so as we watch, these feelings in one of the three categories arises, and we are aware that it's pleasant, or unpleasant, or neutral. And we let it be there, and we notice whether it is increasing, decreasing, and we notice when it's over. Now also, feelings, we have a tendency to ignore or to skimp our attention that goes to the feelings. not notice the whole feeling.

[17:00]

The feelings in themselves are very authentic and it's very healing to just allow them to be, to breathe with them and to watch their life. Whether it's feelings of joy or whether it's feelings of hatred or anxiety or bliss, just to cut the thinking out and to investigate these feelings. And to investigate, it's fairly compelling if the feelings are strong, one is drawn to deal with them and one usually thinks about them. One usually takes a strong feeling and wants to start some mental process around it. But the more subtle feelings, very important, the subtle ones that arise.

[18:10]

Now you may be sitting and sort of bored, sort of distracted, and there's just a slight feeling of openness in the heart. Very slight. So you notice that. You appreciate that. Or some thought comes to mind and there's a gentle feeling aspect to it. So you notice that and you stay with that. Again and again, these foundations of mindfulness, these instructions, help us to take what arrives on each moment, to look deeply into it

[19:14]

and let it spread out. Let it spread out to be as large as it wants. So that our experience becomes more and more that each moment of sitting there is nothing excluded. And we are sitting with no boundaries. So the third foundation of mindfulness is the, what is called in the traditional teaching, states of mind or thought formations, mental formations. I think in our translation of the Heart Sutra they're impulses. They're what? Thought formations, impulses, mental formations, the cetasikas, there are a lot of different translations of what they are.

[20:19]

And the old teachings have lists and lists. They're like anger, anxiety, worry, gratitude, You know, any of these, any of the usual inhabitants of our minds are these thought formations. So thinking of our minds in this way, you know, we have a tendency just to have a kind of slur, a mental slur going on that we, in a very loose way, associate with me. It's very familiar. and it's very blurred. So to take that, apply mindfulness to this experience of the slur and to think of what's going on as these discrete mental formations helps us, helps us to explore this habit

[21:34]

this dull but pervasive habit of me and helps us take it apart. So each, we're aware when we are angry, when we're excited, when we're bored. Boredom is a very interesting mental formation and some of us may experience that today. What is boredom? It is boredom. You feel like, oh God, this is boring. It's a beautiful day and I'm here and it's boring. So this idea that it's boring means that my well-being depends on some external thing. If I were out having a walk on Mount Tam, I would not be bored. If I were doing X, Y, and Z, I'd be having a good time.

[22:37]

So when we're bored, we are experiencing this habit that we have of feeling that we are dependent on the external. And we can investigate that. Is that true? So these mental formations, a way that Joko Beck deals with them is the practice of noting the thoughts. Oh, I'm bored. Boredom comes up. Oh, I'm bored. And what does that mean? What is the body state of being bored? What is the feeling state of being bored. Observing all those layers of the bored condition.

[23:40]

Observing them in the boredom, in the body, in the feeling. Now by the time you do that, you're probably no longer bored. Moved along. And then the fourth foundation of mindfulness is the contents of mind. The thoughts themselves. So if when one is really rooted in the four foundations, the body in the body, feelings in the feelings, the states of mind, the mental formations. When a thought arises, if those layers are really, if one has been paying attention to those layers, and those layers are alive and receptive, the thought gets received

[24:53]

A thought is received in a very deep way, in a very embodied way. We lose ourselves in our thoughts when our thoughts are from here up. When our thoughts are disembodied, that's when we have the long excursions into the fantasies and daydreams and plans, because it's disembodied. But when attention has been paid to the other three foundations, when a thought is received, it's like a little event. Oh! And the body feels it. And there's a feeling quality to it. And it has a certain mind state. And then it's a little event. And it may be your experience as you sit during this day and you settle down like the glass of muddy water settling the mud little by little coming to the bottom.

[25:59]

It may be your experience that the thoughts that you have, you're in a different relationship How do you think in your belly? It's a question that's sometimes asked. The Zen teachers in Japan, you often put a lot of emphasis on the belly. And I heard recently that there are so many nerve endings in the belly, it's almost as if we really have a rudimentary brain here. But as our mindfulness of all these different aspects of our existence is awakened and these levels become more active that our experience of ourselves is much more whole and we are no longer bothered by the question of

[27:18]

Am I doing it right? I'd like to finish by reading a couple of paragraphs of a Zazen instruction that Suzuki Roshi gave in the year before he died. And the emphasis is a little bit You can hear the difference in the style between Han, even the little I read, and Suzuki Roshi, and also the similarity. You should sit with your whole body, your spine, mouth, toes, mudra. Check on your posture during Zazen. Each part of your body should practice Zazen independently or separately. Your toes should practice Zazen independently. Your mudra should practice Zazen independently. Your spine and your mouth should practice Zazen independently.

[28:21]

You should feel each part of your body doing Zazen independently. Each part of your body should participate completely in Zazen. Check to see that each part of your body is doing zazen independently. This is also known as shikantaza. To think, I am doing zazen or my body is doing zazen is wrong understanding. It is a self-centered idea. The mudra is especially important. You should not feel as if you are resting your mudra on the heel of your foot for your own convenience. Your mudra should be placed in its own position. Don't move your legs for your own convenience. Your legs are practicing their own zazen independently and are completely involved in their own pain. They are doing zazen through pain. You should allow them to practice their own zazen.

[29:26]

If you think you are practicing zazen, You are involved in some special egotistical idea. If you think you have a difficulty in some part of your body, then the rest of the body should help the part that is in difficulty. You are not having difficulty with some part of your body, but the whole part of the body is having difficulty. For example, your mudra is having difficulty. Your whole body should help your mudra, do zazen. The entire universe is doing Zazen in the way that your body is doing Zazen. When all parts of your body are practicing Zazen, then that is how the whole universe practices Zazen. Each mountain and each river is going and flowing independently. All parts of the universe are participating in their practice.

[30:27]

The mountain practices independently. The river practices independently. The whole universe practices independently. Yes, yes. Of course, what do we mean by high or low mental activity? You think that you feel that you analyze constantly. Yes, that's right. But it has, I think there's a broad quality to it. I mean, this is a very subtle question now.

[31:32]

Again, it's a right effort question. If you are solving a mathematical problem, your focus is very narrow. That's the mindfulness activity, is that. If you're sitting zazen and you're not thinking, and you're not not thinking, you're non-thinking, well, what kind of a mental activity is that non-thinking? As you say, it's very, it has a wide quality and it's very alert. Does that help or make it worse? I'm not sure. It will take time. Hello? My question is sort of similar to Jorge's. It's sort of unclear on the concept question in understanding the four bases and the four foundations.

[32:33]

Is it better to kind of keep them going or is it kind of the point of it Well, you should be allowed, whatever comes, you're not trying to control it, but you are, whatever comes, you meet it, without controlling it. So, you're aware of whatever it is, and maybe you're really focused on the body, the body sensation, for a while. and the other foundations, the contents of mind, the state of mind and the feelings are not particularly present. You're just in the body sensation. And then a thought comes.

[33:35]

So you meet the thought, you greet it. And then what does the experience of the thought bring? Does it bring a feeling? Does it bring a body sensation? Does it bring a state of mind? So, there's always a lot going on. And yes, there's always dispersions. There's always something coming up, and there's always something moving away. In Zazen instructions, I didn't talk about counting your breath and counting breath is very important. That's true. Thank you for bringing it up. Sometimes mind is just, you know, you're just scattered. You're just really in a scattered condition. And counting breaths is a good way to come into focus.

[34:44]

Now you can say that counting breaths is a certain There is a certain amount, there's a certain degree of control in it, but you also discover, it's certainly my discovery, that after a while I can think with great freedom at the same time that I'm counting my breaths. So at that point I stop counting my breaths because, you know, The mind is really hard to control, so we don't have to worry too much about that. But counting breaths is a good idea. And when I'm rattled, when I know that I'm rattled on the cushion or off the cushions, I find it very consoling to count breaths. When I began sitting Zazen years ago, counting breaths was a must. And I did it for so much that When I am discomfited, the numbers will begin to come.

[35:49]

And that's really nice. Well, it doesn't hurt, does it? There is a tendency, there is a tendency for this practice, I think, to want to make us take better care of our bodies. We sit with who we are. And if there's some thought about, well, when I get into better shape, then I can sit better.

[36:52]

Zazen. Then that's going on. Maria? I have a question about boredom. which you touched upon, and I can really identify with what you said, that if I could become interested in boredom, then that would transform, and I wouldn't be bored anymore. My question is, once you're in boredom, once I'm in boredom, what suggestions do you have to get to the point interested in more than because what the movement of the mind there is, I want out. I want to go do something else. I can't stand it. It's always the movement of moving away from it rather than coming to it.

[37:55]

And actually, I was thinking about it. I realized it's the same with anger or with some of the other movements of the mind. you intend that you want to act from it rather than be with it. Right. Do you have suggestions? Well, see that's where the second foundation, feeling the feeling, in the feeling, is a good place to go. So, you're bored. Well, when you begin to realize that you're bored, as you say, this irritation or impatience or wanting out begins to arrive. Now there's some energy there. So you allow yourself to be in touch with that energy, the boredom, the wanting, the wanting to be elsewhere energy.

[38:57]

Where do I want to be? Where, where? And without putting words on it, just feel that. It's a grasping energy and the qualities of it. The boredom is, you know, we have so many agendas of what we want, who I am and what I need. That's just built in in such a deep way. And what I need to be a better person, what I need to sit Zazen better, all that stuff. So when boredom arises, it's the negation of the things that we think we need and want to make us happy. And that's quite valuable. It's our self-habit pushing at pushing. So coming, just staying with the feeling, really investigating the feeling.

[40:00]

And having compassion for this self-habit that always thinks it knows what it wants. Ah, you know, so much suffering. I don't experience boredom so much as wanting out, as simply a lack of interest in whatever it is that I'm doing. And it brings with it a lot of fatigue, a strong feeling of fatigue. It's very hard for me to bring mindfulness to bear on fatigue. Right. Right. Fatigue is a very powerful state. Now actually fatigue also, Zen practice courts fatigue in a certain way. If we do a seven day Sashin and sit from five in the morning till nine at night, we are asking for fatigue.

[41:04]

And fatigue also is an assault to the self habit. When you're tired enough, there's nothing you can do. except sit there moment after moment. There's just nothing else you can do and sit through the fatigue. Until what else arises? Until what else? Now there are different levels of fatigue. If you're sitting along Sashin, you're pretty bound, probably by this afternoon even, a certain amount of fatigue will have set in, and all of the good intentions of how you're going to sit with the four foundations of mindfulness will gradually be leveled, and there will be fatigue. So you just sit there. There's a real stability.

[42:07]

in sitting through breath after breath fatigue. Just as there is great stability in sitting through breath after breath pain in the knee, pain in the back. Unless you've got some injury, and this always needs to be said, it's a good thing to just allow the pain to be there if you know that your body is okay. If you've got some problem in knees or legs or back, then your question is, how much pain is okay for me to tolerate and when do I need to move and when do I sit in a chair and when do I lie down? People certainly have injured them during Zazen and themselves in Zazen and that's not what we're about to do. But finding one's stability in adverse circumstances such as pain, fatigue, is very good. Now, if this kind of, and there are many shades of fatigue and boredom, and sometimes, you know, you just have to be skillful in how you handle this whole scene that's arising, falling away.

[43:26]

Sometimes you need to find, you need to encourage the devotional part. Why are you sitting? Why did you come? What does, how do you sit with, sit, how do you sit in your aspiration? There's a nice little picture in Mel's office of two funny, bald, Bodhisattva beings with their heads together and little waves going. And it says, when the mind settles, the heart listens. What's your heart listening to? So sometimes if there's a kind, that kind of deadness, you have to encourage. You have to ask your heart what it's doing.

[44:29]

Sometimes in the musical world, there are aspects to playing a violin, I'll speak of that, that are intrinsically perhaps not interesting. And yet, I wouldn't say boring, but one could find it so. And yet, if you truly go into it, and truly immerse yourself in it, that self-concept that's bored disappears and the task itself in the present becomes totally absorbing and what seemed like a rather boring business of trying to train your fingers, which is violin is very yogic also for that matter, if you're truly in the presence of the immediate task, boredom cannot arise. That's true, because you're in samadhi. And Samadhi is this no-gap experience.

[45:40]

Yeah. That term you use, no-gap, is to forget it. If you have a gap between yourself and the instrument or your practice, forget it. You can't do anything. Yeah. Dolly? I think it might be said, something that Mel said some time ago that really impressed me. And it was that If you're sure that you want to move in this direction, it's boring. Nothing's happening. Is this what you want? Right. Right. That's why boredom is a somewhat auspicious state. Could one say that boredom disappears with the dropping of self? Say that again, a little louder.

[46:41]

I'm sorry. Could one say that boredom disappears with dropping itself? Who's bored? I'm a little confused with the difference. Yeah. It appears that contents of mind, it's just basically just contents, and state of mind has more of a body feeling, mind-body connection to it. Yeah, I think so. I'm confused. I've given this talk over the years, and I always have to go back and think, now what is the difference? What is the difference? In the Theraboden teaching, states of mind are always wholesome, unwholesome or morally neutral.

[47:43]

And there are lists and the states of mind are listed under wholesome, unwholesome and morally neutral. So the monks would know these lists and be entirely trained and a state of mind would come up and they'd know that it was unwholesome and they would drop it or vice versa. So it's not so clear. And yet the states of mind are really the mental formations are so much part of our experience and so much have our own signature that it's useful to note them. So they're like little, as you say, little body-mind moods, as opposed to thought, which is moving, considering.

[48:50]

But there is a real, they meld. Okay, yes. I'm more confused after you, I think you explained that, But it confuses me more, because if I go back to, you know, the body and the body and the mind and the mind, and then the feeling and the feelings, but then when I get to the object of the mind, in the object of the mind, in the object of the mind, the object of the mind is the sunshine and the light. How do I bring those two together?

[49:55]

Well, I think getting too hung up about that is not, I can't, I don't know, I don't know. I mean, if you want to just, if it's useful to you to distinguish between thinking and mental formations that do so. And if it's not useful, don't do it. But I think it's always useful to keep aware of the relation between the thought and the body-mind feeling. And what's the body-mind feeling? What's the thought's context in the body-mind feeling? Just note that. You said something very nice about going off into fantasy, and somebody once said to me that thoughts usually rest on set-asikas, but we don't see that. That's right. That's right. That's where the fantasy comes from.

[50:57]

That's right. Pretty soon you're thinking about something that never existed. That's right. That's right. Do you hear what David's saying? That we think that our thoughts are sort of independent of everything else. And I can sit and suddenly I can notice that three successive thoughts have been irritated. The first was about so-and-so, the second was about something that I think might happen, and the third is about some other irritating feature. Well then I have to become aware that there's a certain background here, right? It's just not these things, it's just not that the external world is irritating, A, B, and C. There's some program in here that's making the external world irritating. And we tend to ignore that.

[52:00]

and just make all sorts of pronouncements and responses about the external world to truth. What do you think? See, if you'd like a thought like that, use it.

[53:02]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, some of us tend to be more head-oriented than others. And so when these thoughts come, we have a very able internal teacher, each of us. And when a thought, when we notice something like that, it's very likely that it's our internal teacher saying, you think too much, just stop. Now, which might not be the right instruction for someone else, but I definitely notice, you know, I read a lot, and now and then a sentence will jump out. And when the sentence jumps, I pay attention because it's something I'm ready for. So I think we should stop, and this afternoon there'll be, and in fact from next period on, there'll be Eternatus.

[54:00]

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