I'm amplified. I thought I'd give a somewhat different talk than I usually give. I don't know if it's that different, but somehow I got to thinking about ... I wanted to talk tonight about the practice of form. This week we're having a Zen and yoga workshop. So in Zen we practice cross-legged sitting and other forms, and in yoga there's a variety of forms. We also in Zen practice bowing, and then there are other forms like things like marriage. That's a form. And we have jobs and various things that involve form, or it looks like there's some way it

[01:05]

should be done, or at least we believe there's a way it should be done. So, I decided finally to talk about this tonight in more or less in my own experience regarding a kind of difficulty I had for many years, because I think it kind of exemplifies something to do with how I think about form and how to practice form, or what would be the use of it. So about two years after I started sitting, I was doing a session and I found I couldn't sit still. I started having involuntary movements. I started shaking. And I thought, one shouldn't do this in Zen.

[02:10]

So I did what in retrospect I think is exactly the thing that would make you shake more, which is you try to stop it. You try to sit even more still. That was my strategy. I'll sit even more still. And the more still I sat, the more I moved. One day was particularly striking. And then even though the session stopped, you know, this went on. And I did this for, I don't remember, years. And, you know, for a while I had a seat, you know, like, you know, why don't you sit outside or outside the main part of the Zen, or that sort of thing. And people were, various people were kind of angry with me. Why do you keep doing that? What's wrong with you anyway? And you could stop that if you wanted to, but, you know, that sure is a good way to

[03:13]

get attention for yourself, isn't it? You could say various things. But my idea about sitting had been, and I was talking about this a little bit the other night, my idea had been you get an idea in your mind of how it should be, or how you'd like it to be, whatever it is, and then you try to make that appear in the world according to your mind model, according to the model, the image you have in your head. You try to make that reality come true. So if you have an idea what Zen is, and then you can make your body do that idea, you would have it. Makes sense, doesn't it? Is there some other way to do things? This is our idea of happiness, too. You dream up something and you see if you can make it come true. And then, of course, you don't always like what happens, but, hey. One day in particular I was sitting, and I was sitting up quite straight, and I thought

[04:20]

I was, you know, practicing well, because I had heard that's the way to sit. Sit straight. So I was sitting up straight, and all of a sudden I wasn't, you know, I had been sitting, and then all of a sudden I was sitting like this. And I thought, wait a minute, that's not how to sit, this is how to sit. And then something in me said, no, it's not, and I said, yes, it is, no, it's not, but this is Zen, I don't care, but here's how to do it, so what? This is right, doesn't matter, so then I was just sitting there going like this. And finally I had to admit, all right, have it your way. And I was sitting there with my pelvis slumped back like that, and then after a while there was a little sort of lack of voice saying, do we have to sit like this? Couldn't we sit up a little bit?

[05:20]

And so I started sitting up, and then it occurred to me, you know, that maybe my back had some idea about how to sit, that some actual knowledge, you know, maybe my back had knowledge about how to sit that my head didn't. So I started, I asked my back, where would you like to sit? Is that comfortable? No. And is this comfortable? Not quite. And, you know, how about here? That's too straight. And so I studied where to position my pelvis, forward or back, until finally, you know, it felt like this is really nice. Thank you. Well, in spite of this wonderful, simple discovery, which isn't, you can see what I set out to

[06:25]

discover, and in order to come to that understanding, I had to have some problem, there was some problem about the way I was doing it, and the way I was doing it didn't work. But there's, you know, I don't know any other way exactly to find out what you're doing that doesn't work, except to do something and it doesn't work, and now you know. And then we think at that time, I'm a failure because it doesn't work, but actually we've just found out something doesn't work. There's apparently a story about Edison in his laboratories, and his engineers at some point got upset and discouraged, and they said, we've tried hundreds of things that don't work for the filament in the light bulb. We're not getting anywhere. And he said, nonsense, now we know hundreds of things that don't work. Well, in spite of that anyway, I still had, you know, many ideas about the way to do it,

[07:30]

the way to sit. I was going to quiet my mind, I was going to sit still. Well, my first doksan with Suzuki Roshi, you know, I said, he said, how's your meditation? I said, not so good. And he said, so what's the problem? And I said, well, I'm thinking a lot. And he said, is there some problem about thinking? And I thought, wait a minute, do I have to tell you? You've been telling us not to think. But I couldn't find the problem, you know, when he said, what's the problem about thinking? I couldn't find it. So I just said, well, you know, you're not supposed to think in zazen. Like he said, it's pretty normal to think, don't you think? But I didn't, at the time I said, I agreed, but actually I thought, no, you're supposed

[08:35]

to stop thinking. It's hard to believe these people when they say these things. The ideas we have about whether it's sitting or a marriage or, you know, a good life or whatever, you know, are very gnarly. They're very sticky, the way it should be. So I went on sitting and I went on moving and not been able to sit still day after day. And in those days, of course, we used to hit each other with the big stick. Usually you would get hit if you were sleeping. So if I ever stopped shaking, I would fall asleep and then I'd get hit. So then I'd wake up. And in order to stay awake, I'd have to keep moving. And if I relaxed at all, I'd fall asleep. And then, so sometimes I'd get hit three, four times a period.

[09:35]

And then sometimes they'd hit me if I was moving. So this is very difficult. You know, if you move your head, if you relax and fall asleep, you're hit. So whether you, whatever you do, you get hit. This is very Zen. It's like all the stories, you know, 30 blows, you know, whether you say something or not. And different people would try to give me advice. Sometimes it helped a little bit. You know, somebody said to me, where do you think you are? Where do you think you're going when you go to the meditation hall? You're not shaking while we're standing outside here talking. So what happens when you, as you walk to the meditation hall, where do you go? Why isn't it like walking on the beach?

[10:39]

What happens? So I discovered that on my way to the meditation hall, somewhere along that walk, I was deciding this is really important. This is a matter of life and death. Just like they say, you know, birth and death is of the utmost importance. Don't waste your time. So I thought, okay, this is birth and death. I better not waste my time. I better make every second count. Do you think that helps you sit still? That just helps you, like, birth and death is a matter of... And then you have to try to figure out what you could do that would, you know, warrant your even existing here. How could you prove that it was all right for you, that you weren't wasting your time? What could you do? Oh, I'm really going to do zazen. Because you know, it turns out the more ideas you have about the way it should be, what

[11:48]

you need to do, how it's got to be, what is the way to do it, that makes your body stiffer and stiffer. Any... The idea you have about how it should be, that your body will freeze. You know, if you're just walking along and you say, this is very important. Watch your step. Oh, I've watched my step. Then how can... You can't relax if you tell yourself all the time, watch your step, watch your step. I didn't know I needed to watch. I... Oh, it's dangerous. And then pretty soon you're tiptoeing, you know, watching your step rather than just walking along. So the idea we have, as soon as we have the idea, your body literally, you know, as soon as you say, watch it, be careful, you're doing great. Who was it? Who said that? So I found over and over again, my body can be very stiff.

[12:51]

And then if you're trying to do all those things and sitting and make sure it counts and it's all, you're not going to waste any time and you're going to sit perfectly still and your mind is going to be perfectly quiet. This is like putting yourself in this grip. Now, isn't it nice that there's something in us that just says, screw you, you know, like, let me out of here. Where can I get out? You know, the vitality, the big energy of our life, it knows, it knows this isn't the thing to be doing. It says, let me out of here. And then you keep saying, no, no, here's how to sit. You must be completely still. Don't wiggle, don't move. Those were the days.

[13:53]

I was such a good student. And but when they told, so when I discovered I was doing that on the way to the meditation hall, I thought, okay, why don't I just, we'll just, it'll just be like the beach. So I can just relax. I'll take it easy now. So it was a little easier to sit still, but I kept moving and I kept trying to stop it. So I could get my head to stop and then my body would move. And then if I could get my body to stop, my head would move. And if I get my head and body to stop, my arms would move. And I couldn't grip my whole body all over all at once, something, some place, you know, the real vitality of our life keeps looking for some way to go, some freedom, you know,

[14:54]

some way to express itself. So the big energy, the big vitality of our life, it won't sit still for some stupid practice like that, some misdirected kind of practice. It says, I'm out of here. So and then one day, you know, it was a little helpful. I thought, huh, I'm sitting here. I've got my back completely straight and my breath is in the front of my body here. And I thought, this is funny. Why wouldn't the breath also be in the back of my body? Well, I just heard Sasan is sitting up straight and follow your breath. They didn't say, nobody said breathe in your back. So I was doing it right. But I thought, well, why wouldn't my back also be breathing? So then I started breathing in my back and that made it a little easier to sit.

[15:55]

And one day, after many, many months of this, I decided, I thought, well, why don't I see what will happen if I don't try to stop the movement? What would that be like? Similar to asking my back, well, suppose I don't try to tell you how to sit. Suppose you tell me how you'd like to sit. You know, if you're always telling yourself what to do because you know that's the form, that's the correct form, the correct way to do it. You have no chance to, you know, in a sense, realize yourself. What would it be like to realize, make yourself real or to have the information from your body, from your being about what's going on? If you're busy telling your body, do this, get over there, sit up like this, do this with your head, do that with your arms, do this, do that, do this, do that.

[16:59]

How will you experience anything, you know, coming from the other direction? How will you feel what your back is feeling or what your hands are feeling? And of course, if you spend very much of your time like that, you'll want to find some place in your life where you could actually feel things. So it's nice to fall in love or have affairs or, you know, eat or there's some place where your life goes where you get out of, you have to get out of the bind you put yourself in. Anyway, the day I decided, the day I decided to find out about how the movement goes and I was sitting there and after a while it turns out, you know, it's this big sort of spiral. And then Suzuki Rishi came up to me and he said, do Kinhin, the walking or walking meditation.

[18:03]

I said, what? You know, I thought, hey, wait a minute, this is Zazen, during Zazen you do Zazen, you don't do Kinhin during Zazen, you do Zazen when people are doing Zazen. So I said, what? He said, get up and do Kinhin. Okay. I was mad. And then I thought I'd done the wrong thing. It was the wrong thing to do to see what happened to the movement if I didn't try to stop it. Because as soon as I tried that, he said, get up and do Kinhin. So I got up and I was really annoyed. And everybody else is sitting there and I'm doing Kinhin and then in about 10 or 15 minutes the bell rings and do some more Kinhin and then I sit down. So later in the day I went to see him and I said, you know, this was the first period. I'm wondering, you know, why you asked me to do Kinhin because this is the first period I thought I would just see what this movement was like when I didn't try to stop it.

[19:08]

And then you told me to do Kinhin. So is that not a good idea, just to see what happens if I don't try to stop the movement? And he said, no, that's a very good idea. Why don't you do that? And then he used to come, oh, and then he told me one time, he said, if I had any idea you were going to do this for so long, I would have stopped it right at the beginning. I don't know how he would have stopped it right at the beginning. But then he used to come by sometimes and put his hands on my shoulders. And I found it very relaxing, very refreshing. And I would settle down and I'd stop shaking and then just breathe. And then after a while, he'd walk away. And I asked him, what are you doing? Why do you do that?

[20:10]

He said, we're breathing together. It's a way for us to meditate together. So then I used to just move and then after a while, I would sort of run out. And I'd sit there and then after I would start up again. I'm kind of leaving out a certain part of this, you know, which is sort of like emotional release. I think I've always been a fairly difficult person to be around very closely. For a while, I was very angry during that time and, you know, it felt like people were coming up to me like they're looking around the corner of a building. Nobody would just come up and say hi to me, they'd kind of come up to check and see what

[21:13]

kind of mood I was in. And Kadagiri Roshi told me one day, well, he called me, you know, in for dōsan and he said, which is very unusual, you know, usually you ask the teacher for dōsan interview. So he called me in and he said, Ed, you have to do something about your anger because this is a monastery, you have to live in peace and harmony with everyone. I said, well, why don't they live in peace and harmony with me? He said, you know, this is a monastery, so you have to live in peace and harmony with everyone. And I said, but I'm just being sincere and true to myself. He said, and finally he said, Ed, I'm giving you a piece of advice. I said, oh, okay.

[22:14]

But I don't know how to stop being angry. And he said, why don't you try chanting? This was as bad as the ziggurats are saying, why don't you do kinyin? Because you don't chant during zazen, you do zazen during zazen. He said, why don't you try chanting? And I said, like what? And he said, why don't you chant the heart sutra? And he said, I said, I don't know the heart sutra. He said, how about the mantra at the end of the heart sutra? You know that, don't you? I said, okay, I know that. So I started chanting. And a day later, the anger just, my body just, one moment I was enraged, and then the next moment it just dropped away. And I get angry since then, but not where it's sort of like I'm feeling the same way

[23:17]

in the grip. It's interesting. But anyway, and then another day, I was sitting there, and it was during session again, and I was sitting there shaking, and I'd get hit, and falling asleep, and I'd get hit. And after a while, my legs were just in terrible pain, and then no matter what I did, I got hit. And then so finally, I gave up. You know, I just put my knees up, I bent over my knees, put my arms around my knees, and within a minute, Covincino was off the altar, and he was right next to me, and he said, let's go outside. So I got up, and I went outside. And as soon as I got out the door, the tears just started pouring down my face. And he took me by the hand and led me back to my cabin, and I was just sobbing. And I was, and then he'd lay me down on the bed, and I was sobbing and sobbing for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, for about half an hour. My arms and legs were just in, I don't know, what do you call that, you know, where they're

[24:18]

just spasming, they're just going like this. And Covincino's sort of rubbing me down and saying, it's okay, don't worry, it's just fine, keep going. I don't know how they do it in Japan, folks. I don't know how they do it in America, because, you know, we don't do that sort of thing in public. And you sort of have to luck out. I didn't say to Covincino, come and get me. I got saved, sort of. And when I went back to sit, it was kind of easier, but I was still shaking. It's a lot easier to sit after that. One of the reasons to do something the way it should be done is so that you get it right, so you don't have to cry, so you're a success, so you're, I mean, for guys, you know, I should

[25:19]

be a competent person, you know, a competent, stable, capable, productive kind of person, kind of guy, you know. I mean, I wasn't trained for, or I didn't grow up thinking, you know, I ought to feel my feelings. I thought I'd get it right. And then I was up in the city at some point, and I did a session up there, and it was around the third day. I just got fed up with the whole thing, and I wasn't able to sit still, and I was shaking. And I thought, I'm out of here. So I just got up, and I took off my robes, and I got dressed, and I walked across San Francisco from Page and Laguna, the Zen Center. I walked over Laguna to Lombard, and I got the Greyhound bus, and I went out to, I got

[26:25]

off in Tam Valley. I walked out Tam Valley. I walked up Mount Tamalpais. I started walking back down. I hitchhiked. I got back to the Sashin about 7 p.m. The Eno, the head of the meditation hall, caught me on my way back, and he said, where have you been? I said, I went for a walk. And he said, well, you didn't tell anybody where you were going. I said, no, I didn't, did I? He said, well, you should tell the Eno if you're going to go away like that. I said, okay. And I went back to sit. And I was, I had noticed that the very end of the exhalation, I wasn't exhaling completely.

[27:32]

I wasn't finishing the exhalation. And before my exhalation could finish, I'd start the inhalation. And then actually, right that moment when I didn't finish the exhalation, I started to inhale, that's when the shaking started. And it just seemed like it would be the scariest thing to finish an exhalation. I couldn't imagine it. I had no mental model for finishing an exhalation. The bottom of the exhalation for me was the base of the spine, the base of the pelvis. It's the, you know, anal area. And I felt like if I finished the exhalation, I would just disappear into emptiness. I would just fall into this immense chasm.

[28:36]

I'd just disappear. I'd just, it would just all, I would just go right through. And I couldn't, I couldn't imagine. It was so scary. And after I'd been walking all day, I sat down and I decided to finish an exhalation. And I did. And nothing happened. And I did it again. And I hadn't realized that it felt like if I didn't keep the base of the pelvis, the base of the spine and the bottom of the torso solid, it felt like I wouldn't have anything to sit on. But it turns out when you, when you breathe completely and you let go of that holding,

[29:43]

that you're sitting on the cushion. You don't have to sit on yourself. You could actually be supported by the cushion, by the chair, by the ground. You don't need to make your body do the work of the ground or the chair. Anyway, that pretty much stopped the shaking. Since then, I sometimes move. And I have, you know, various versions of that that aren't as massive, aren't such massive constructions of, you know, how to be. And then, but, you know, it's still for me, you know, part of the story is I went on sitting.

[30:51]

I still had the idea that, you know, I thought now I've gotten it. Now I know something about sitting. You could listen to your body. You could actually feel what your feet are feeling or what your hands are feeling or what your back is feeling. And you could ask your back, what is actually comfortable? Where would you like to be? How about your chest? How about your arms? Where would they like to be? What would they like to be doing? You could, you could receive information from your being. And receiving that information, then you could realize it. You realize yourself. And one day in 1984, I was, I was leading the spring practice period here. I was sitting in the Zen Do. And one day it occurred to me, I've been sitting for, you know, 19 years. And one day I thought, why don't I just touch what's inside with warmth and compassion?

[31:57]

Why don't I just touch what's here with warmth and compassion? Right away the tears just started pouring down my face. It's like, what took you so long? You know, you've spent all this time, you know, doing some spiritual practice. What took you so long just to touch me? You know, the part that has never been touched and has been waiting to be touched with your awareness. You know, the wounded part, the painful part, the part that it seems important in some way to reject, because if you don't reject it, others won't accept you or love you or approve. And what about just touching it? And so now I have more of that kind of feeling, you know, why don't I just touch?

[33:16]

So I said, it seems to me, and, you know, even though there's a form, you know, I asked my body, how shall we do this? What is some good way to sit? What is some way that's where you can feel yourself? And the posture of sitting has something to do with being, you know, right in the middle of your life and you're not, you're not taking any attitude. You know, you're not, and we actually all have, you know, our natural, our habitual attitude. So we actually, if you practice being right in the middle, can you find your body, can you position your body right in the middle without your usual attitude?

[34:20]

And is it possible to see what that's like? And whether you might, you know, let go in that way, let go at least briefly, your habitual attitude. And actually, when you try to do that, of course, where you end up is in your habitual attitude. One shoulder or another will be up or down or forward or back and your head will be someplace. And actually, we find out that we have an habitual attitude by practicing the form. And it's not necessarily that we ever get rid of our habitual attitude, but we don't stick to it. We don't have to stick to it anymore because we have a reference point, the right in the middle posture of zazen. If you try to just do right in the middle and stick to that, you will shake or, you know,

[35:24]

in some way you won't, it won't be much use. So I'm convinced, you know, that the energy of our life is basically seeking the way, you know, it's a way-seeking energy. If you do any, whatever you do in your life, whether you're sitting or, you know, your work or your marriage, relationships, we're, you know, we're seeking the way. And our energy is looking and studying, you know, finding out how to be, how to manifest, how to experience. And various forms will help us notice, you know, how we have some idea that limits us.

[36:32]

If you're in relationship, then, you know, right away there's some idea, this isn't what a relationship should be, this isn't my idea of a marriage. And, you know, within that context, we learn something and we grow. So, it's interesting to me that, you know, you might think that, why would you need a form in order to do that? And yet, if we go through our life, you know, not being limited by any form, we don't get that information about what we're sticking to. Then you're sticking to, you know, some kind of formless freedom or something. You'll end up sticking to that, and then you won't even know, I'm sticking to this formless

[37:38]

thing and I'm not going to let anybody catch me or anything stick to me, but it will just be doing the same thing. It's still a kind of sticking to something. So I guess what I'm trying to say, you know, is to encourage you to study, you know, we say sometimes in Zen, we get enlightened through the body, that you can trust your body, trust your being, you know, and ask your back, your hips, your breath, you know, how it would like to go, rather than thinking you know better in your head and telling yourself how to be, telling your body how to be. This is Zen, this is, you know, good. Do what I tell you, rather than coercing yourself, you could actually free yourself from that

[38:41]

kind of coercion, and bring, you know, the life of your being into the world, and you could find your real freedom or, you know, the recent translation that Kaz and I did of the Fukunzu Zen gate, it says, it is simply the Dharma gate of enjoyment. Who would have thought Zen was about enjoyment? I certainly didn't. It used to say, it is the Dharma gate of repose and bliss. That sounded a little more high, you know. Kaz said, no, this is just enjoyment. Anyway. Our bodies, our beings are, you know, remarkable, and mostly we are busy, you know, telling

[39:44]

our remarkable bodies, our remarkable beings how to be, rather than letting them realize themselves. So, I wish you well with this endeavor. Thank you.

[39:57]

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