So, Suzuki Roshi always adjusted my posture. He talked about Zazen a lot. And, you know, at this time, a lot of people were having, by the time 65 rolled around, there were a lot of people sitting, started to come to Zen Center. And Sugoroshi talked about zazen a lot. And people had trouble sitting. You had a lot of pain in the legs and in the back. And learning how to sit zazen, it's different than it is today. There weren't so many people then who could sit well and could stay seated for a long period of time. So nowadays, because there's so many people who sit so well, when somebody comes to the Zen Dojo, it's easier for them to sit.

[01:08]

Because it's the happening thing. The critical mass. Sorry? Critical mass. Right. But in those days, it was much harder for everybody. And I had a terribly hard time sitting. My knees wouldn't go down for a long time. And then, but I was always pushing ahead, you know, I was always pushing myself through the pain and everything. And you were trying to sit full lotus? Well, not yet. Not yet? That's a little later. Okay, so you were sitting, how were you, what was your posture initially? Well, posture initially was, you know, cowboy. Just like... Campfire. Campfire, knees crossed. Like a tailor's. Your ankles are crossed. and your knees are up. And then little by little, my knees would go down. By the end of Zazen, my knees would, you know, go down.

[02:11]

And so that was progress. But it was very painful. And I remember going through excruciating periods of Zazen. And then little by little, I would, you know, increase my position of my legs. And then I started sitting in a half lotus. And every position was painful. At first, if we weren't sitting on the tatami mat, if the tatamis were all filled with, all the cushions were filled, then you sit on the floor on a Goza mat, which is just a little, not much different than sitting on the floor. And if you're sitting in the half lotus, then one ankle bone is on the floor. So we learned to sit through all that, and Suzuki Roshi would, you know, ask it not to move, you know.

[03:18]

And so we all knew there was a lot of pressure to sit still. if there wasn't enough room on the tatami. Right, and on the tatami there were no zabatons either. Right. But it was better than the floor. Your bone would get that mat. Better than the floor. Right. So, we learned how to, you know, accept the problems. That's what he was teaching us. To accept whatever pain that we had. So, and we you know, either you accepted the challenge or you left. And so I really picked up on the challenge. And Suzuki Roshi, I can tell Suzuki Roshi was very much pleased with my effort, you know, even though I was having a really hard time. But he would never

[04:29]

um, let me sit in a slumped position or, you know, he was always going around checking people's mudra to make sure the mudras were just right and checking the posture, you know, to see the posture was just right. And, uh, you know, moving people back left or right, you know, or pulling them back or, uh, adjusting their chin and the mudras or whatever. And, um, And then he would walk around with his stick. And he'd use the stick if he wanted some encouragement. Later we started using the kiyosaka more. But he would just walk around with his stick. And give us two taps on each shoulder. Everybody really liked that a lot. Why did they like it? because it was, it felt like he was, it just felt like he was transferring his spirit to us.

[05:35]

Does it hurt when you're hit with kids soccer? No, it felt firm, you know, it felt like something very firm and positive, but it's not like some painful thing. It's stimulating. Stimulating, yeah, very stimulating. That's a good word. Nobody objected to it. As a matter of fact, everybody wanted to be hit. That I remember. So zazen instruction, well I was taught to sit on the first third of the cushion so that the knees go down more easily and it's easier to hold your back straight.

[06:42]

and to put your hands on your knees and sway back and forth before you... When you're first taking... Yeah, you start with a narrow swing and gradually make it wider from side to side. Really? We did the reverse. We started with a wide swing and make it narrower and narrower. I'm scared now. I thought I taught it wrong all these years. Make it until you're sitting up straight. It brings you to a point of balance. That's right. But I do my own version now which is different than that. I lean over as far as I can to one side for 30 seconds. Then I lean over to the other side and just keep stretching out that side. For 30 seconds. Just your head in there? No, the whole body. Your whole body? Whole upper body. Until my head's almost touching the floor. Oh, okay. That kind of stretch. Side stretch.

[07:45]

And then I stretch to my knee across for 30 seconds, and then across to the other one for 30 seconds. stretch my back and my head up and my neck that way for 30 seconds. So it takes about two and a half minutes. I do that whenever I sit now, rather than the other way, because it really stretches you out. Sounds good. I could try that. Yeah. And so then you push your lower back forward. And so that you're not sitting on your tailbone, but sitting under your thighs, actually. You're sitting bones. Yeah. What? Right here.

[08:48]

Yeah. Yeah. Sitting bones like this. It's quite difficult. Yeah. And then you hold your back straight. put your head on top of your spine and take a deep breath through your mouth and let the breath go all the way down to your lower abdomen and then that means your abdomen is expanding and then you let all the breath out totally until your feel your abdomen contracting. And then you take another breath like that, right? And then exhale. And then, this is priming your breath. And then you just let your breathing come naturally through your nose without trying to control it. But you know where the breath is.

[09:49]

I always often say to people, where's your breath? They don't know. In matter of fact, rarely do they say, it's here. Or they usually point to their chest. So they're usually not aware. And I think people should be aware of where their breathing is all the time. Not just sometimes. But they're never aware. It's really hard to get people to focus on where their breath is all the time. And having sat through many sashins, and had a lot of pain and problems. The only thing I could count on was my breath. It's the only thing I could go to, which is common, right? So just one breath after another, and deep. And when you do that, then you just kind of get tuned into your breathing. And you never forget it.

[10:52]

I never forget my breath. that I'm breathing deeply all the time, just always aware of that. So then, I put my hands into the mudra, the left hand on top of the right hand, and with the thumb tips facing each other. So I tell people that they have to give up their thumbnails in order to practice sadhana. You see these people there with a long thumbnail and they can't put their thumbs together. That's the circumcision, the circumcision equivalent. It's the Brisa thumbnail. So, and then the head stays on top of the spine, not falling forward.

[12:02]

That's one of the biggest... It's hard, yeah. Hardest thing. Right? Then the eyes are open. And the eyes see, but there's... I'm not seeing. Just seeing sees. Just relaxed. Well, it's not just relaxed. It's just letting go of self. Seeing sees, but there's no one that's seeing. Hearing hears, but there's no one that's hearing. Smelling smells, but there's no one smelling. And feeling feels, but there's no one feeling. And thinking thinks, but there's no one thinking. So, and then you relax. I tell people to relax the upper part of their back.

[13:06]

But relax means don't hold tenseness. Everything is held in tension. The body is held in tension, but it's not tense. Tenseness is something, the tension is extra. It's not necessary. And then all the parts of the body are independent. The fingers, all the bones and joints of the fingers are independent. And the forearm is independent. The upper arm is independent. The waist is independent. The head is independent. All these parts are independent. And the one thought of Zazen is what unifies them to do this one act. So if somebody comes along and pushes your elbow forward, just the elbow, just the arm moves. If you're not holding, if you're not allowing the parts to be independent, then if someone pushes your elbow, the whole body falls over because it's not, you're making it into a statue.

[14:18]

You make it into one solid piece, which is not... It's made up of all these parts, and all these parts are independent. And then, there's flexibility. Unless you allow all the parts to be independent, you have no flexibility. So, Zazen is keeping the body-mind in this form without, and at the same time, having total flexibility. So that the form looks rigid, but it's totally flexible. Looks like a statue, but it's not. But, you know, people, when they sit, A lot of people are so rigid, you know.

[15:24]

If you go to adjust their posture, it's like, I don't know how they do it, it's like they're glued together, you know. Cemented. Yeah, cemented together. And it's like trying to move a block of concrete. It's amazing. So, as I said, it depends on balance. and effort, but the effort is to find the minimal means to do the most work. So it's a conservation of energy. It's total body and mind in dynamic working, with the least amount of effort to do the most work. And if you find the right place to put your effort, then you can put your total effort into that place without tiring yourself.

[16:37]

And as a matter of fact, it induces energy. So whenever I sit zazen, I always give myself zazen instruction. And this is what I say to people. I say, every time you sit, give yourself zazen instruction. It's my back fade, my leaning to the right, my leaning to the left, my teeth, my tongue, my head, my mudra. And you go around giving zazen instruction all the time. And that way, you'll know how to give zazen instruction. you're always aware of what you're doing. Sometimes I tell people to let the tenseness drain out of your upper arms. Feel the tenseness draining out of your

[17:41]

uh... back feel the tenseness draining out of your neck just feel that whole upper body uh... draining the tenseness draining out and also open your legs up in the same way to not hold on to anything in your legs just keep opening them up to whatever feeling is present if you open if you uh... open yourself up to whatever feeling is present from the very beginning when you sit down, then every moment you're opening up. And then you won't get caught by some sudden intrusion. But if you don't do that, if you're kind of lazy, And you think, well, everything's OK. And then suddenly something intrudes. It's very difficult. And it becomes a problem. And you can't handle it, or it's difficult to handle.

[18:42]

Because it's jumping on you from a tree, like a panther. So you should invite all the spirits in, in the beginning. And you can handle them. Because, oh, that's this feeling. feeling and you just keep opening up to whatever feeling is there and then the feelings just kind of come and go. They don't stay there and otherwise we attach to a sudden feeling and when we attach to a sudden feeling it's like the whole universe is coming down on us, which it is, and it always wins. So we just have to always be opening, and opening, and opening, and letting go, and letting go, and letting go. So those are my Zazen thoughts.

[19:51]

And then, of course, there's the thinking in Zazen. So the thoughts are always coming up, bubbling up, and we let them come. And as the Ziggurat uses to say, you invite them in, but don't serve them tea. You let everything come up, and when a thought comes up, you actually focus on it. And then you just let it go. You never chase anything away. You never judge what comes up. You don't judge your thoughts, and you don't judge your feelings, and you don't build fantasy. I mean, we do that all the time. We do build a fantasy and a thought, but when we recognize that we're building a fantasy based on a thought, then we just let it go and keep coming back. And when we have some feeling, you know, some anger or some lust or some jealousy or some hunger, I don't know, whatever it is, whatever feeling comes up, we just let it come up and then we come back to Zazen.

[21:18]

So we're always recollecting, returning to Zazen. meditation lingo is called the practice of recollection. Always remembering what we're doing and returning. So, and this is also called waking up. So, zazen is the practice of continuously waking up, continually waking up. Falling, you know, dreaming and then waking up, dreaming, waking up, dreaming, waking up. And so we just do that continuously. So basically letting go of our discriminating mind, judgmental mind, dualistic mind. not trying to grasp something and not trying to reject something.

[22:29]

Someone told me this morning that Rem had recently said that concentration without insight It's just concentration. It's not meditation. How do you hear that? What does that mean? Well, it depends on what he means by insight. What would you mean by insight, if you were using the word? Well, concentration is one of the factors. If you look at the seven factors of enlightenment, which are meditation practices. They're very good at describing meditation, or zazen, and concentration is one of them. But it's not the only one. And so, it's not just insight that's necessary, but it's calmness that's necessary, and effort that's necessary.

[23:40]

I'm trying to remember the seventh. What is this? Investigation. So investigation is akin to insight. But in Zazen, we don't... think. We don't have a... It's not discursive thought. It's not discursive thought. So investigation is more like awareness. Awareness of the various aspects of the body and the breath, and the mind, what is actually happening. And then it's equanimity and all those other factors.

[24:45]

And concentration is a factor in all of those. But all of the others are also a factor in each one. So there's actually 48, 7 times 7 is 49. 7 times 7? Yeah, 7 times 7 is 49. And what are these, this collection of 7? Oh, 7 factors of enlightenment. Oh, okay. Have I ever studied these? No. I talk about them quite, from time to time, because they're a really, really good way to look at it. What's the scriptural source? Well, it's Apodama. It's one of the 37 limbs of enlightenment. Just your name, equanimity, concentration, the recurring and boost practice, I understand what you mean.

[25:58]

So Rev has been studying Samatha and Vipassana. So that's why he's talking about that. So he says Samatha is concentration, Samadhi, and Vipassana is insight. Right, or knowledge, wisdom. But when Samadhi is present, then Vipassana arises out of Samadhi. Right, it dawns in. That's right. So, one, you can't separate them. And one, it's like the lamp and it's light. How? Well, Samadhi is like the lamp and Prajna is the light.

[27:05]

And you can't have the light without the lamp and you can't have the lamp without the light. And that's according to the Platform Sutra. That image of the lamp? That image, yeah. Because it would seem like the stillness of concentration, the stillness of Samadhi, establishes clarity of mind, and wisdom is that clarity. Wisdom is that clarity. Right, it is. It is that clarity. What would be the difference, the way that you teach and practice zazen today, compared to the way it was taught to you by Suzuki Roshi?

[28:14]

It's exactly the same. The only thing different that I talk about is letting go of tenseness. I don't remember him talking about that. I think that's the only thing that's different. He also taught us to count our breath from one to ten at some point. He did that. And so we were all doing that. And counting breath is considered a kind of beginner's practice, you know. But beginner's practice was what Suzuki Roshi felt we needed. But I remember kind of hearing her saying, counting breath, you know, not so good. Were you counting on the, do you remember this detail? Do you remember if you were counting one on the in-breath or one on the out-breath? Yeah, everything on the exhale. One, two, ten, turn around.

[29:16]

Both in-hand, counting is both. counting the way down on the exhale. Up to ten. Other teachers do it sometimes in and out. One, two. Right. But he thought of one breath as being coming to life and expiring. Birth and death on one breath. So if you count one on the inhale and two on the exhale, It creates a duality. Yeah, it creates a duality. Interesting. I'll never do it again. So I will, sometimes when I first sit down, very often, not sometimes, but usually when I get started in sitting, unless it's during sashi, and I'm very concentrated, then I will usually count a little while just to get steady.

[30:20]

Yes, so counting, is I always have people learn to count and then do that for a while so that when they need it, it just comes back automatically. You find yourself counting when there's a need for it. So it's not necessary, but he said it's not It's not a basic practice, but it's kind of like the handle of a teacup. And then he talked about breathing as exhaling long. Inhale is short and exhale is long. And you kind of go with the exhale.

[31:27]

You can lean into the exhale. It's not like you control your breath. But it's like leaning into the exhale is like allowing yourself to expire. And allowing yourself to expire is a kind of wonderful feeling. you come to the end, and then you come back to life again. So each breath is, you know, you let go of your life, and then you renew it. So that's the cycle. And I'm paying attention to breath. Now, Sugiyoshi was very much talked about aware of breathing. Some teachers don't talk about breathing. Some teachers don't mention it.

[32:30]

They just say, just breathe naturally, which of course is what we do. We just breathe naturally without trying to control it. But he put more emphasis on paying attention to breath. In your lower abdomen, like a saw, when you saw a piece of wood, Maybe this is my interpretation. I can't remember. When you saw a piece of wood, you don't watch the end of the saw as it goes back and forth. You simply watch where the saw and the wood meet. So you don't watch your breath coming all the way up through your nose and down and all that. You just watch it as the rising and falling of your abdomen. But some teachers, Don't put it, it was like Okamura, you know, Uchiyama Roshi. They didn't put any emphasis on observing breath.

[33:33]

And I think some people don't because I don't think that Dogen mentioned it. So because Dogen didn't mention it, they don't do it, which seems a little strange to me. and putting too much reliance on what Dogen said. Maybe he did pay attention, but he didn't say anything about it. I don't know. But I think some people in Zen center also feel that way. But I always talk about breath, and I always emphasize it. Body, mind, and breath in harmony. What about then the difference between counting breath and breath following? Well, following breath. It's different, right? Yeah, it's different.

[34:37]

What's breath following? Following breath, it means that you allow the mind to be subtle enough to follow the breath without controlling it. And that's very difficult. Because as soon as you start following it, then you don't know whether you're following the rhythm or controlling the rhythm. So I myself don't make a big effort to follow the breath all the time. But when I'm sitting, I investigate the various parts of my posture. When I'm investigating the mudra, the rest of the posture is there, but the mudra covers the whole posture. And then when I go to the lower back, the lower back is in the foreground, and the rest of the posture is there, but it's in the background.

[35:46]

And that goes for all the other parts. And then sometimes I just concentrate on the whole body at once. And then sometimes, and then I'll go to the breath. And when I'm concentrating on the breath, the rest of the body is in the background, the breath's in the foreground, but it's all there. And then I'll move to something else. So I don't, sometimes I make an effort to follow the breath all the time, if I really feel I need to concentrate. And then sometimes I just concentrate on the small of my back for the whole period of Zazen as a focus, because that way it really makes posture strong. And when posture is strong, then the whole body becomes refreshed.

[36:48]

and alert, and time passes very quickly. Concentrate on the small of your back. Yes, like I'm stretching, you know, I'm holding myself up, holding my back up. Because zazen is not just passive. A lot of people sit zazen in a very passive way. But there's also the active element. And the active element is how you present yourself. to hold your back straight and keep your body rising and stretching. That way you're putting a lot of positive energy into Zazen. And the passive side is to let everything come and go. So it's the meeting or the harmony of the active side and the passive side together. which creates true zazen.

[37:55]

And I think of it as, you know, the legs are the roots and the upper body is the trunk of this tree, you know. And sometimes I think of it like a tree, you know, it's kind of gently creaking in the wind. You know, tall and and upright, but flexible. And I also think of gravity as pulling everything down, and what I call spirit is pulling everything up. So this balance, this tension of everything being pulled to the earth and this spirit pulling everything upright, away from the earth. So these two forces have to be in balance. Interesting.

[39:00]

What do you call spirit? Well, spirit is like life force, you know. life energy. That's the momentum. It's like the sun and the earth. And the earth owns everything. But the sun pulls everything up. All the plants stand up, things stand up on the earth, right? So we have both qualities. So maybe it's like earth spirit and sun spirit.

[40:06]

Earth spirit pulls everything down and sun spirit pulls everything up. It makes me think of the image that comes to mind. I'm seeing actually a Manga David, a Jewish star, because you have a triangle going up, right, a spiral triangle, and then you have the triangle with a point coming down, and then they're interlocked in an interesting way. Right. Well, that's why the two triangles balance each other. If it's only one triangle, it's called the devil. Is it? But these two forces have always been recognized by all religions, right? And they're dealt with in different ways by the various religions. Right. We don't think of the earth force as evil. Yeah, right. It's just the earth force.

[41:10]

Mundane and like good and evil, right? God and the devil, and so forth. But they're very primal forces, which we all recognize. So to be stuck with the earth and not get off of it, not rise up above it, right, is considered being lost. And Buddhism is also a religion of salvation. How so? Well, we vow to save all sentient beings. Right? From what? From the confusion and ignorance.

[42:19]

delusion and confusion. Shakyamuni Buddha said, this is my last rebirth. And I'm no longer subject to this world. So that's his salvation. I'm no longer stuck in this world. And this is the same thing with Christianity. Those people who believe will rise up to heaven. And heaven is the place which is opposite of the earth. But it's also opposite of hell. So earth is not considered hell. There's a place called heaven and a place called hell, which is not the earth in Christianity.

[43:23]

Earth is kind of like the middle world. Earth is kind of like the middle world, where things get worked out. This is the place where things get worked out. And I think that's true in Buddhism. This is the realm where things get worked out. And everything is testing us to see what our But that's our idea, you know, Buddhist idea. That's a Buddhist idea? Well, I mean, it's a religious idea. It's a religious idea? It's not necessarily a Buddhist idea? No. No, it's not Buddhist. It's a religious idea. Yeah. Do you actually subscribe to that? Is that a view that you carry? Everything is testing us? Well, I think that everything is a test, at least for our character. It definitely seems that development and refinement of character is a process that goes on.

[44:28]

Yeah. With regard to the notion of saving all beings. Yeah. Who's that about? What do you mean when you say that? When you recite that vow, what are you talking about? Well, in the Platform Sutra, the Sixth Patriarch talks about saving all beings. He says, you shouldn't think that I, Huineng, am personally going to save every person in the world in some way. But saving all sentient beings means saving the sentient beings of my own mind. Great. There's quite a lot to that.

[45:34]

The sentient beings of my own mind, the avaricious mind, the angry mind, the delusive mind, these are all sentient beings. I understand that. It's interesting. No. Because there are no beings. Right. They're only dharmas. Right. In Buddhism, there's only dharmas. They're mind created. They're self created. So, what we save ourselves from is self. Right. Right? Is the notion of a self. Right. So if the notion of self doesn't arise, the sentient beings do not arise. They all arise with the self. So the sentient beings don't arise when there's no self. That's right. So that's why the emphasis is on no self. When there's no self, there's no suffering.

[46:39]

Or there may be suffering. but it's not the same as the suffering of a self. Right. So, you know, self is the big problem in Buddhism. Self-centeredness, egotism, you know, delusive thinking. Have you ever got back to Judaism, for instance, and do you think Judaism presents the same problem? What do you mean by the same problem? We're saying in Buddhism, you're dealing with really is the self, the investigation of the self, the problem of the self.

[47:43]

or the idea, the basic, the root delusion, the root delusion in Buddhism is delusion of self. Is it delusion of self? Right. I don't know if Judaism has gotten there yet. In that, I mean, yes, but in a specific way. Because Buddhism is a, basically, a practice of self For my self-liberation. You're liberated from the false idea of self. Right. Whereas most other religions are interested in a parental deity that will love you no matter, as long as you love the deity, the deity will love you. which is very appealing.

[48:50]

It's like, you know, our mom, you know. But that's like the lowest, most anthropomorphic concept. Well, but that's where it is. I don't know, I kind of like it. It's one form, just like in Hinduism. Hinduism, for instance, presents you know, parent, or friend, or whatever. And many different forms of deity, including formless form. Brahma, right? Right, so people think of deity in various different ways. And the old man with the beard, I always kind of like the idea of the old man with the beard, because it's not intellectual. It's totally fake. I'm a kind of faith type.

[49:52]

It's the opposite. It's the other side of being a greed type, right? Is faith the other side of greed? Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So I'm a faith type. So when people have a lot of faith, I don't criticize them at all. Whatever it is they have faith in, I feel, and they really have that, I feel, great. Even if they're deluded, what we might consider deluded, I don't know if it is or not. Because if you really have faith in something, like an old man with a beard in the sky, that's a kind of projection of the formless into a form. And we have imagination, right? So we have an imaginative form that we can focus on. It's the old man with the beard. It gives you some place to put your faith.

[51:02]

So then you feel comforted. You feel like connection. That's why the word God is so charged. When you say Buddha, it's not so charged. When you say God, you have this feeling. Yeah, it's like, because in the West, it's where people put their faith. In the East, a lot of people put their faith in Buddha. And so they have that feeling about Buddha. I once asked you on a formal sermon, what should a Zen student have faith in? And I remember your reply was breathing. Breathing is still the same answer. Breathing is like, you know, as long as, you know, this life is this life, right?

[52:05]

And so when we put our effort into this life, then whatever happens next depends on what happens here, right? So this is where we need to put our attention. Whether there's a God out there or not, this is where we have to put our attention. Because this is what's present for us. And the thing that's most present for us, that we really depend on, that is the universal breath. The Ruach. And in Buddhism, in Zen, it's Shin. breath, which means more than just breathing. It means, you know, the fundamental life breath. Like, you know, there are images... The fundamental life impulse.

[53:10]

Yeah, that's right. That thing which is the most steady, rhythmic pulse besides your blood. And it's the connection between inside and outside. And it's the sustaining factor of our life. On the one hand, it creates evolution. of inside and outside. But it's also the connection and the bringing together, the reconciliation of that parentuality. It's also the rhythm of birth and death. If you want to study birth and death, I tell people this, if you want to study birth and death, study the breath as inhaling and exhaling. Until you get to a point in Zazen where You can't tell the difference, breathing in and breathing out. They do at a certain point, occasionally.

[54:13]

I don't know if I've ever done that, but... I mean, with Suzuki, she's saying that he couldn't tell the difference between his right leg and his left leg. But when you sit in the full lotus, that's what's common. That's what happens, right. I mean, because like, it's, like when you first start sitting, there's a definite feeling of, for me, there's a definite feeling of like, I am breathing, or like, I'm breathing. I don't say this, but I mean, I feel like I'm breathing. But as it gets deeper and deeper, and by the fifth or sixth day or night of Sashin, you do more feel like you're being breathed. Well, that's right. That's what I always say to people. It changes. It flips over to the other side. I am breathing, but we're not. We're being breathed. Yeah, I feel something. Because it's not something that you do. Right, right.

[55:15]

You have nothing to do with it, really. No. All you can do, you can't even stop it. It's just simply, it's the universal activity which is breathing you. And it's happening to everybody. This is what we pay attention to. But in Buddhism there is no little man in the sky. Except for some Buddhists there are. Like Amitabha is the little man in the sky. In the western paradise. And all you have to do is believe. It's a devotional form. Yes, devotional practice. Devotional practice. So, I don't know, it's fine. But to have devotional practice, you need to have an object of devotion.

[56:17]

That's right. And so, then through that devotional practice, a unity, you come to a unity. That's how it's achieved. So in Zen, Zen is also devotional practice. Really? Yes. How's that? It's devotion to practice. And devotional practice means when you finally take everything away, everything is empty. Right? And empty is the source. So when you sit in Zazen, your offering, what your body-mind is an offering, to emptiness. What could be more devotional than that? I always think of Zazen as devotional practice. That's what it is.

[57:19]

You're offering up your whole body and mind. You're letting go of everything and trusting, putting your whole trust and faith in emptiness. which is just a word. You're putting your whole trust and faith in it. You're totally defenseless and open and egoless, selfless. And you just, it's merging with it. So it's totally devotional. Totally devotional. It's the most devotional practice I've ever done. And I used to be very devoted to God, you know. I said, I'll never desert you. That was my vow. Did you keep your vow? Yeah. Only not in the way that I thought I would.

[58:23]

So it's almost 4.30.

[58:40]

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