The first thing I want to say today is that if ever there is a day when you're feeling really strong and really clear and your body's feeling really loose and you feel like you can do anything, if such a day should arise, which I'm sure it does, take it easy. Don't do very much. Don't extend yourself too much. There are three of us now who have suffered knee injuries or back injuries in exactly those circumstances and it takes about a minute, 30 seconds to hear something go pop, feel something go off, and then it may take six months or a year or four months or something to get back to where you were in the first place. But fortunately, this is a wisdom tradition that we're practicing and so, of course,

[01:05]

I am just where I need to be and should be and I'm very grateful to be in the situation of having a knee I have to be very careful of because there's something I need to learn about how this hip does or does not open out or rotate, how I use this knee, and how to attend to the movements of my body, how to attend to my mind which sometimes goes off and is thinking about, oh, what a beautiful feeling this is, and to go deeper into this particular stretch. I'm just doing yoga. Suzuki Roshi used to talk about the most important thing all the time, and it was always a somewhat different most important thing, so if you were trying in the early days to learn the language of Buddhism, it was easy to try to grab onto this and grab onto this,

[02:11]

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

[03:19]

and own them. At some point you realize, gee, your mind is quite able to make all kinds of decisions and all kinds of judgments, but in fact you have to wait for your body to catch up, because your mind may decide to get married or change jobs or go on a trip, but you can also be undermined by your body. If we stay current with our bodies, we're less likely to be knocked off center. Was it Descartes who said, I think because I am? Therefore I am. I think, therefore I am. Around Buddhism we say, I think not thinking, therefore I am. There's a koan, which some of you may know. The monk asked the teacher, what do you think of when you're doing this steady, mobile sitting?

[04:28]

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

[05:30]

What is this think not thinking? How do you think not thinking in this posture? This posture is not our posture. This is Buddha's posture. This body with the legs crossed, even with the soreness, the legs crossed, the mudra, the spine erect, the chest open, the neck extended, the chin tucked in, head lifted to the sky. This is Buddha's posture. When we take this posture, we are sitting in Buddha's seat. And as soon as I say that, I realize that those of you who are sitting in chairs may feel left out. But actually, this posture is also sitting in a chair. And sometimes, this posture, I think, therefore I am, is also Buddha's posture.

[06:37]

However, usually we don't know that. We don't think of this as Buddha. We don't know ourselves as Buddha when we sit on this. When we slump our body, we don't know ourselves as Buddha. So usually we have to sit in this posture and settle ourselves into our hips, our pelvis, our abdomen, our knees, connect with our sitting bones. Try to drop the chakras. Try to lift the chakras. Before we can feel not thinking, call Buddha's body. That dimension in our life that is deeper than the normal dimension that we conduct our lives in, running around, thinking, doing, acting. The great mystery, Paul Keller lectured a couple of weeks ago and talked about that quality of mystery, the mysterious aspect of our life.

[07:53]

And I'm calling it not thinking or not knowing today. And this posture helps us come back to that dimension of our experience that is absolutely simultaneous, co-existent with, glued on to, interconnected with, not one, not two, part of, everything. Can you speak a little bit louder please? Oh, yeah, I've had a cold this week so I'm having trouble with my voice. Who missed that last pronouncement? We missed it. You can close the door if you'd like. Thank you. I'll try. This dimension of not knowing or the mysterious quality of our lives, that depth, that richness, that sense of wonder, sense of not knowing,

[09:01]

is absolutely, totally integrated, totally simultaneous with, totally not separated from, every breath, every thought, every gesture, every activity. Wisdom or emptiness or mystery or not knowing is not the background of our lives. It's not something that is just two feet away from our body. It is absolutely, totally, inescapably part of it. It's right there. In each thought there is not thinking, there is emptiness, there is wisdom. To meet this dimension, to trust it, to trust our life to this posture, is not so easy to do.

[10:13]

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

[11:19]

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

[12:28]

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

[13:31]

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

[14:41]

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

[15:48]

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

[16:52]

There is bits and pieces of straightforward mind, the mind of the ancient Buddhas, everyday mind, the triple world which is one mind. Sometimes you study the way by casting off the mind, and sometimes you study the way by taking up the mind. Either way, study the way with thinking, and study the way not thinking. My experience over the years is that Buddhism offers us many practices for studying this posture, studying this body, studying this mind. And they're very helpful to get us started. The first foundation of mindfulness is following the breath, being in touch with the body and the breath, the physical experience. After a while, it's important to take these practices and make them very intimately your own.

[18:03]

So they're no longer practices that you're doing outside of your life. And I feel that's one of the problems that some of us have run into over the years. We start doing zazen as an adjunct to our lives, as a form or a technique or a tool that will help our lives. But our life is a little to the side of it. And these practices, these practices of following the breath, following sensation, feeling, following thought, somehow are outside of our actual life. We have to create Buddhist practice, these specific practices which the tradition offers us, right on the point of our life, right to the point where we're hurting, where there is some disease or some desperation or some real pain.

[19:07]

If zazen is separate, something you do to get points or to get merit or something, it won't work in our lives. The classical Zazen Chin, which Dogen has written, has been translated by Kadagiri Roshi as Acupuncture Needleness of Zazen. Pretty weird, isn't it? By that he means that zazen is the needle by which we apply, which we apply to that point, the exact point in our body and mind that we need it. It's not grounded, it's not just off of a couple of centimeters, it's right on the point. And to me that's the crucial thing that maybe some of us have missed. We think if we just keep doing this activity over and over, and many of us have loyally been doing it over and over for 20 years or so,

[20:12]

there's 25, Ananda's been doing it for 35, at some point you have to bring it exactly to the place in your life, bring your life to zazen so they become one. So zazen, your pain, your confusion, merge. When we talk about studying our life intimately, we don't mean studying it from a distance, we don't mean looking at it. If you're like me, I sort of like to get a perspective on things, so I very easily detach myself and take a look at something. Out there. We have to bring it inside in order to really know it, know it without the intervention of the conceptualizing, describing, discriminating mind.

[21:19]

One of the definitions of the perfection of wisdom is the knowledge of all modes, which is meant the intimate knowledge from the inside of every person, every piece of life, all of nature, trees, plants, insects, birds, to know intimately what it's like from the inside to be Ronald Reagan. I love these examples because they're so hard for me, or Comey, or Gorbachev, Jimmy Swaggart. What's it like to be in that person's mind and body? No gap, no judgment. When we know our life in this way, even a moment of it, even a few seconds of it,

[22:23]

we can understand. When we know someone else's life in this way, when we're not separated, that's the pace of wisdom, of insight. From that place of not knowing, compassion, deep understanding, non-judgment comes forth. From that place, we can live our lives in accord with things as they are. Wisdom, another way of talking about it is something like suchness. Such a wonderful word. What is suchness? It's that which you can't add anything to. The way it is, is just as it is. Things just as they are in their isness, in their suchness. And that's so hard to do, because we would love to... We're always appropriating life to our preferences, to become comfortable.

[23:27]

We're adjusting ourselves to what we think is expected of us. I thought of... Somebody came to Tassajara a year or so ago, and gave a talk, a painter. And he did some calligraphy for us. And before he started, he said, I have no idea what I'm going to say. And you felt in his body, he didn't have any idea. He didn't come to meet us with any prepared talk, prepared teaching. Okay, folks, this is the Buddhist teaching.

[24:29]

It's straight from Japan. And it was in Japanese. There was that feeling of just meeting this person. The immediacy and presence of his breath. And his heartbeat. And I realized that if I came in here, in the immediacy of my breath, and heartbeat, and muscles, abdomen, and had nothing to say that I had thought about, it would be quite a different message to all of you, quite a different teaching. And I thought, what a much deeper teaching that would be, of Buddha's way. Just what is. Here I am, I'm going to sit with you, and be up here. And I don't have anything special to say.

[25:33]

And I can't even say it that loudly. Okay. I have this thing about leaving you with a teaching. Leaving you with a little gem. Something that I've learned. And you probably have just as much to leave with me. And maybe you don't want to. Maybe you already have enough to deal with sitting cross-legged, or sitting here on this day, or wherever your minds are at, you know. But, here goes.

[26:40]

I've been reading a book my sister sent me, called Between Women. This is really important, because my sister and I have been working on our relationship for years. And she sent this to me, and it's about women's lives together. It starts with the loving support that women give each other, just naturally, in the genes, in the blood. And how they identify with, very easily, and merge with each other. Very easily. And at some point, when one of the two women, usually we're talking about close best friends, when something happens in the life of one of them, gets a better job, has a new lover, goes back to school to change her situation, when something happens, the other one, instead of joyfully supporting it and appreciating it,

[27:49]

feels anger, and envy, and competition, and having been abandoned. And for women, this is very hard, to accept the coexistence of these angry feelings with the other deep love and support and nurturance that's been around for many, many years. And what's interesting about this book, that these two women are therapists who are writing it, that the projection of anger onto the other person for having abandoned or died here, is a way of avoiding looking at what's really going on in your own heart, which is that you never dreamed for yourself that you might have the possibility of differentiating as much as the person who's just taken that step.

[28:50]

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

[29:52]

Not in the sense I mentioned originally, but whoever lets you see yourself that clearly is doing you a big favor. Please pay attention. So the person that you harmonize with and there's never any problem when you go bouncing off to the movies or off to the beach or whatever all the time, that's wonderful, we need friends like that, and partners like that. But the person who brings out your raw, she can't bear to be with, or whatever, that's the person who's your real friend. That's the person who will help you see into your life, into this mind and body, in a way that can give you some liberation. Our pain, our difficulties are our liberation, are our gates to liberation. This posture is to bring forth

[30:54]

what we already know, to bring forth our wholeness, our oneness. I feel like that would be taking the talk off in another way, so I'll just end now. I wish you all Happy Buddha's Birthday. We had a little circumambulation here this morning. We'll have a picnic at Green Gulch tomorrow, to which you are welcome. Thank you for being here, so that I could think about all this stuff, and try to not say it.

[31:44]

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