I vow to taste the juice of the Tathagata's words. Our guest speaker this morning is Shosana Vicky Austin. She's been practicing for over 20 years, the last 18 of which have been at Tassajara and the San Francisco Zen Center where she is a practice leader. Good morning. It's nice to see you here at this beautiful Sendoh. It's really beautiful. Not just the space, but the feeling of this space and the feeling of what you've been doing here this morning. I haven't had nearly as concentrated a morning as you have.

[01:05]

Maybe I shouldn't say that, because I don't know how concentrated you've been. I went to a thought center this morning in San Francisco, and that was at 6.30, and I could hardly get up for it. I could hardly get up. I stayed up late last night, and when the alarm clock rang this morning, I just didn't feel like getting up. And then I lay there for a while deciding whether to get up or not. And then I thought, no, I'm giving lecture this morning. I won't be prepared for lecture if I don't get up. So I got up. And I went to the zenda where I proceeded to kind of be really tired and grumpy for 45 minutes. And then I came home. And my mother called. and we were talking about various family problems. Then I started coming here, but there was a big traffic jam.

[02:08]

Finally I got here, and I was kind of washing up, and there was a knock on the door, and somebody came to the door. So anyway, that was my morning. That's been my morning so far. And you've been in blissful samadhi, right? Well, I could say... All morning. All morning. Who said that? Yeah. So, Even though I've studied for this lecture today, because of my state this morning, I can't, I'm afraid that I can't present you with anything very special or particularly accomplished.

[03:23]

And it's just going to have to be the spectacle of a more or less normal untalented person in a normal untalented state doing their best to cope with the Buddha Dharma. And I asked Alan what he would like me to speak about this morning. He asked that I speak about Zen and Yoga. I don't know if Well, some of you I do know and some of you I don't, but I'm also a yoga teacher. And I teach yoga at the Iyengar Yoga Institute of San Francisco. And I do workshops at Zen Center too. I started doing that because I messed myself up with over-intents, over

[04:30]

over intense zazen practice when I was very young. When I first came to the Dharma, when I first came to study Buddhism, I thought that I had to do it all that day. You were right. Right. Yeah, in one sense I was right, and in another sense It wasn't, I wasn't thinking I had to do it that day in the right way. The way I was thinking that I had to do it was kind of unrealistic and didn't have anything to do with my own body and my own mind. So, I'll just give you an example so this isn't so abstract. I moved into Zen Center of San Francisco when I was about 23 years old.

[05:44]

And my roommate, Elaine Masner, had been practicing yoga since she was 12. So at Zen Center of San Francisco in those days, we had a very intense schedule. We would get up at 4.35. or 4.20. We would sit two periods and do service in the morning, work all day, and then do another period of Sazen in the afternoon, and then another one at night. And we would work pretty long hours. And our Sashin, we would get up at 3.40, 3.35, and start the whole day an hour earlier. And we would sit late into the night. Well, the first morning of the first Seshin, they had put me next to Elaine. And Elaine kind of sat like this, and then she flipped her legs up into full lotus without using her hands.

[06:54]

And, you know, and I'm sitting there like this. I said, all right, if Elaine can do it, And I thought, uh-oh. Well, actually, it was more colorful than that, what I thought. But I'm lecturing, so I can't tell you exactly what I thought. It was colorful. And at the end of the period, I couldn't get up. And that was that. I had done something to my knees. So that was the sort of way in which I thought I had to do it all that day. You're probably nothing like that. So I went through this machine and limping more and more, and I continued in that vein for some ten years, after which I was in a complete wreck.

[08:12]

Well, you know, I don't really have an excuse. I don't have an excuse for that. A 23-year-old is probably adult enough to take responsibility for body and mind as it is. And what I didn't realize at that time was that I had a very deep split between what I thought of as my body and what I thought of as my mind. And that I thought that zazen was about taming the mind and that the body was an instrument to be used to tame the mind. You know, if you'd asked me if I thought that, I would have said, no, I didn't think that. But actually, if you look at the way I voted with my feet, you know, my thoughts about what I thought and my actions were completely different.

[09:22]

So on about 1983, by about 1983 I was walking with a cane. And I had various sorts of problems, like I was always nervous as a result from running away from my personal reality. And I was in pain all the time. I had difficulty walking. But, you know, see how we go on with our delusions. I thought zazen was the most important thing in my life, and I had to just keep doing it no matter what the cost. So, at some point I came to my senses and said to myself, I have to go see what my actual body and mind capability for this practice is.

[10:28]

And I have to as Suzuki Roshi says, organize my life so that I can sit. Not organize sitting so that I can do it, but organize my life so that I can sit. My life includes my body and includes my mind. So I had started doing yoga in 1971 or so, but Bekaroshi asked me to give it up so that I could concentrate on my zazen practice. He didn't want me shopping around for spiritual practices. So I did. But in 1983 I decided to take it up again, which I did. And I went to the Iyengar Yoga Institute of San Francisco and did the teacher training program and studied with Mr. Iyengar. I have maintained a daily yoga practice for the last 10 or 11 years.

[11:38]

And what I found out was that my split between mind and body is at a very, very deep level. It's at a perceptual level, beneath the level of my actual consciousness. It's kind of built into my cells. It's so habitual a split, is it, that it's actually built into myself. So now I'm thinking that I want to be able to sit sasan for the rest of my life, and I want to be able to do it in a way that I would want other people to do it too. So that's why I'm practicing yoga. That's the source of my yoga practice, that intention. Is this grim? No. Yes. Yes. No. No. Yes. Yes. No. Okay, some people think it's grim and some people don't.

[12:45]

Actually, I think that we, this is the story of all of us in practice. if we sit zazen on our black cushion, what zazen, zazen has no use whatsoever, but what happens in zazen is that these deep dualities and deep places where we don't meet ourselves come up, and come up in a way that we can actually do something about. So I don't mean to... I'm not going to sit here for two years telling you about my life story. I'm not going to sit here telling you about then I did this and then I did that. But I did want to give you an idea of the delusion with which I entered practice. And I do want to give you an idea of the fruits of self-study, the fruits of studying the self in yoga.

[14:02]

So, just an example of how to approach the zazen posture yogically in a way that comes out of that study. So we've all been sitting here for 15, 20 minutes. You've been sitting a little bit longer, right? So just if you need to move your legs or something, please do. I won't look. And just if you could take an inventory of how your body is, and how your mental state is, concentration, rapport, whatever.

[15:08]

You don't have to say anything to yourself, but just notice. Let's see if we can enter Zazen now in a refreshed and accurate way. Has everybody fidgeted enough? If you haven't, now's your chance. And now if you would just notice your clothes and how they are on you. And if there's anything tight or binding, even if it's a watch or glasses or the way your pants are wrinkling underneath you, let's take a moment to just adjust that right now.

[16:26]

or if you, just for organization's sake, want to straighten something out. And now, if you'd be so kind as to put your legs into a position which will be comfortable for the next 30 minutes. Is that funny? So, you know, if you want to kneel, that's okay. If you want another cushion, there might be one underneath the tan. Some extra Sabatons over there. The Zazen postures that we traditionally do, you've all been through Zazen.

[17:36]

Is there anyone here who hasn't been through Zazen instruction? No. Okay, so you know as much as I do about the legs. And now, you just take your hands, one on either side of you, and just touch the cushion. I think the cushion, because it will give you more leverage. And just if you lift yourself up ever so slightly, but when you come down, come down equally on the two sitting bones, so that they really meet the bones themselves really meet the cushion. And if you need to do it again, go ahead. The bones, sitting bones are the feet of zazen posture.

[18:39]

And now bring your attention to those two feet. And adjust yourself equally on the north pole and the south pole of those two feet. So that you're stable. You know, from there, lift your spine all the way from the bottom. Draw a line from the sitting bones all the way up to the top of your head. And have that line be vertical. Okay? Can't be vertical if your head is down or up. If you want to check, a lot of us have difficulties in particular places in our body, understanding whether they're aligned.

[20:12]

So let's just check using our hands. So if you just put your hands on your hip bones, the hip bones The pelvic girdle, hip bones stick out from the pelvic girdle. The pelvic girdle is a bony girdle that goes around some very precious organs. The organs of digestion and reproduction, inflammation, reproduction are all there. So with your hands, you may adjust yourself forward and backwards until you feel that that receptacle is right over the two sitting bumps. You can use your hands as a way to check.

[21:16]

And if you bring your hands to the bottom of the floating ribs, the floating ribs hold some of the most important organs in our body, which are the lungs, and then between the lungs and the other organs are liver and stomach and very important stuff. So adjust yourself so that that receptacle is also over the sitting bones. Now Dogen Zenji didn't use his hands, he used his mind to do this. We're using our hands as part of our mind.

[22:28]

Just bring your hands to your shoulder, the points of the shoulders. And this, these two points, surround the place where we make speech and where we breathe in and out. These two shoulder points bring over, directly over, the sitting bones. And Dogen says this in the Bhutansa Sangha. And then, right behind your ears, you'll find two bony places. This is the hardest place of all for us to check. We carry a lot of tension that makes us do things with our heads. But can you bring this receptacle of the head, also over the cipher bones. And now with that, just let your gaze drop, put your hands into the mudra, and just sit for a moment.

[23:35]

the way your thumbs meet be very light but accurate. Okay, and now just notice for a clicker of a second what your mental state is and what your physical state is. Okay, so that's the yogic. aspect of sasana. The yogic aspect of sasana is the union of mental and physical, body and mind, form and emptiness, all the dualities that are part of our everyday life. And the posture part of yoga is how to make zazen stable and comfortable.

[24:53]

Not comfortable like lying down, but comfortable as in you can stay. With this stability, we can meet anything that comes up. Now to come out of zazen, posture, just bring your hands down and rock just slightly and slowly from one side to the other. Very slowly and then if you need to move and adjust yourself, that's the way to come out. So, you know, mostly people don't give this kind of instruction after a while.

[26:03]

Mostly you'll hear this instruction as a beginner. And then you don't hear it for a while, right? Because you've had it. You've done it. But actually, I do this every time I sit zazen. And I've probably sat a couple hundred thousand periods of zazen. So when I align my posture, my breathing is also much more accessible, just as a matter of course. I don't have to set up a mind that stands away from the posture and breathing in order to notice it. Posture notices posture, and breathing notices breathing. So that's yoga, that's the yoga part of zazen. So I should tell you that this way of doing zazen, I feel real confidence that I can continue to do zazen for my whole life.

[27:16]

And also, that I can be an example as a priest for other people when they come and sit in the Sendoh or walk in Kinhin, that I can know when I'm sitting and I can know when I'm walking, when I'm standing and lying down. So, it just sounds too obvious when I say it. It sounds too dumb in a way. I have to tell you that this, just this settling of the body on the body and the breath on the breath is the deepest happiness that I've ever known in my whole life. So, just be that, you know, I don't have words for the deep satisfaction that that settling gives me.

[28:22]

That brings me up to when I was walking into the hall to offer the incense and coming to meet you this morning. I walked in and I wasn't quite here. I don't know what I expected, whether I expected people or dragons or what. But I stood at the bowing mat and I almost fell over. I don't know if you noticed. Because something about me wasn't quite here yet. And then walked up and offered the incense, held the incense up. And that act of holding the incense up and aligning myself with the Buddhas and with the ancestors allowed me then to enter the space and be with you.

[29:40]

So that's a yoga practice too. The things that we do here in this room are yoga practices that allow us to meet as a Sangha, as a Buddhist Sangha, and help each other on fulfill our deepest request and our deepest satisfaction. I can fill this in with all sorts of Buddhist texts, but I'm not going to. And I can fill in with a lot more examples from my life or the life of students that I've worked with, but I'm not going to. Instead, what I'd like to do is just open this up for discussion after just giving you this very simple example or simple instruction.

[30:46]

And let's just pool our experience and talk about this topic for a few minutes, okay? Any questions? Yes? I think the last time you were here you talked about the breath. Yeah. Today you're talking about the posture. Yes. But I'd like to go back to the breath. You talked about your life in practice and I think you said A complete breath is a breath that we can take together with the whole universe. Which means that every cell of the body is included and nothing is left out.

[31:49]

So, just if you'd notice for a moment, just don't do anything with your breath, but just notice the breath. Aren't there some places that feel like they're left out? And even if you, like, try to take a deep breath, then it just feels worse, because it's more like forcing, right? So let me give you an example of a more complete breath. This is the example I used last time, but I'd like, I'd just like to point it out again. So just sit, sit appropriately so that you're not squished in any way. So that you don't squash your organs or your breathing. And just the next breath you take after the exhalation, notice the space.

[33:03]

before the inhalation begins. So when we breathe, are we already rushing to take the next breath before the last breath is done? Or is there a long space and then we're gasping for breath? That's what I'm talking about. Let's just notice it for a moment. just Let there be a very small space between exhalation and inhalation with the next few breaths Now don't force

[34:15]

If there isn't a space, don't make there be a space. But if there is kind of a deep desire to have there be a space, then let there be a space. I'm talking about the lungs' desire, not a mental desire. Okay, and now without doing anything, just notice your breath. Okay, is it more complete, less complete? Did you notice anything?

[35:29]

Right. But the hara isn't separate from the breath. That's the center where the breath comes from. It's kind of... Anybody else? More complete? Less complete? Any change at all? Yeah? Less complete. More restricted. Were you trying to make something happen or what was happening? Yeah. Did everybody hear that? No?

[36:44]

So, when I try to notice my breath and work with my breath, it usually gets more constricted, not less constricted. Okay, this is a problem with all of us, because breath is more subtle than posture. And when we try to notice the breath often, Oftentimes we do something to the breath without knowing that that's what we're doing. So there's some element of forcing. So for you I would say just work on posture and let the breath notice the breath. It's when we have to be able to stand out of the way. So that's a whole lecture all by itself. More than a lecture, it's about a year or two years of practice. Okay, how many people here have sat on a cushion?

[38:27]

How many people here have sat on a chair? Sat on both, right? So, there's a lot of depth of experience with this in the room. I'll tell you, I have a lot of experience sitting on a cushion, a lot of experience sitting on a chair, and there's a kind of party line answer to this. that I don't want to give. And there's also a, I don't want to give a non-party line answer to this question either. So, I say you can do lousy zazen on a chair or on a cushion and you can do great zazen on a chair or on a cushion. So, The moment at which I started practice, actually I was sitting in a car seat, which isn't great posture at all, but it's the greatest asana I've ever done in my life. So, what can I say?

[39:34]

Yeah? Okay, I have to tell you that most Asian people that I know have been brought up sitting on the floor don't find zazen very easy, either. But why to sit on a cushion is, just yogically speaking, the cushion posture develops a more stable posture and a more stable meditation arena.

[40:37]

But, and this is a very big but, this is a very big and yet. Don't mean to say that anybody here has a big but. If we're not physically ready to sit on a cushion, and some of us may never be physically ready to sit on a cushion, it makes no sense to break our bones and sit on a cushion. There's a whole Zen koan about this, about a Zen master who had a leg that would not go into lotus. Have you heard about that? He had a bad leg. And at the last moment of his life, he knew it was the last moment, he said, all my life I've been following your orders. Now you're going to follow my orders. And he died.

[41:44]

So I say save it for the last moment of your life. You know, you don't want to go through the suffering of what I did. I was stupid, I did that when I was 23. That created problems when I was 24, 25, 26, 27, and all the way up into my 30s and 40s. So if you're going to do an action like that, please let it be in the last week or two of your life, when you're not going to need your legs anymore. But I've seen a lot of people with systematic stretching and systematic work do things that they would never dream was possible. A couple weeks ago I went on a vacation with my mother and it was called Wellness Week.

[42:49]

It was a group of 60 to 90 year olds. in New York. They don't live in California. They think California is kind of outrageous. And they had holistic physicians and nutritionists and so on. Anyway, my mother really wanted me to go. We hadn't seen each other for about a year. She said, I'll pay for you. Please, anything, just come. So I said, okay. And two days before the event, the yoga teacher broke her arm. So they asked me to teach the yoga classes. There was one man who came to the class. He had a little bag and an oxygen thing, oxygen tube. He had to have oxygen to breathe, big barrel chest. So this man, his name was Roo. He has a heart condition and emphysema from being a three-pack a day smoker.

[43:56]

for 30 years or so. So when he came in he was really pale and his color and his breathing were not good. And I was a little concerned about yoga. We did a few little stretches and in the middle of the class he took his oxygen off and he said, you know, I just didn't know how to breathe. And he didn't wear his oxygen again. Then at the end of the class he came up to me and he said, that's the first time I lay down on my back in two years. Doctors told me I would never be able to lie down on my back again. Okay, so all we did the whole class was work the legs a little bit and raise our arms up over our head. This is not a heavy, intense exercise session. And this man is in his 80s and he was able to do something that he thought he would never be able to do again.

[45:06]

He came with an open mind and was ready to be surprised. So how many of us could just do various things with our arms and legs with that same open mind and then be willing to accept the change in our self-image that that wrought So doctors also told me that I would never be able to sit cross-legged again. They told me that I should just limit my activity. And I did. But then when I did yoga and started doing exercise, my body changed. And I was able to do things that I couldn't do before. But then the difficult part was in accepting how different my body and my mind were and just being able to do the other things without making a fuss, you know, a mental or emotional fuss. So, anyway, those are my thoughts on that.

[46:13]

and I'm getting to the half and I'm not ready to try the full yet. I've just got to begin. Is there something that could help me stretch my legs a little better? There definitely is, but I'm not going to recommend it in this room because I'm not dressed for it. Okay, but if you want to find some sort of stretching class or stretching book or something, I would actually recommend for everybody that we do our stretching stuff outside of the zendo, you know, and not just come into the zendo and pull our legs up into full lotus and hope for the best. Okay, so I recommend that we take a realistic approach, a very kind of stable and realistic approach, and just stretch for fifteen, twenty minutes a day. Now Mr. Iyengar, who is my yoga teacher, said that thirty minutes, three times a week, you'll see definite improvement. Do you have a stretching book to recommend?

[47:37]

Well, there's a few things. It depends on the level. So, in taking the path of Zen, Eiken Roshi has four stretching exercises that are very useful for zazen. So you can do those four exercises about six to eight minutes a day at the maximum. If those are too hard for you, then you can do them with your buttocks higher up on a cushion. One of them is having your legs out and bending forward. For people with back problems, that's going to be too hard unless you're sitting way high up. So that's a good series. That's just four exercises. And then if you want to be more deeply involved with stretching or with yoga, Just find a yoga class or a teacher and try it out. See whether it's really for you. If it isn't, then do something else.

[48:39]

Do you teach in the East Bay? No, I have a sitting group in the East Bay, but I don't teach classes in the East Bay. But I know some wonderful teachers who do. I can tell you about yoga studios a little bit later, after lecture, if you want. There's a book called Stretching. Have you seen that book? It's a good book and it's in bookstores all over the Bay Area. There's a book called Yoga the Iyengar Way, which gives you enough yoga poses with pictures that you could practice yoga for about three years very happily just with that book. The Bay Area is a mecca of training opportunities. You're not going to find another concentration of people to help you meditate anywhere else in the world. This is the best place. And the most supportive Sangha, the most supportive group of people.

[49:45]

I've taught all over America, not in every town along the way, but And, you know, I've been to a lot of different places teaching and studying and I've been all over the world. First of all, for women, you're not going to find a better place than America. For women to have Dharma opportunities like this. to actually practice together as a group is a very unusual situation for men and women to practice together. There are probably a higher concentration of Dharma teachers in this area than any place else except like Bodhgaya or Dharamsala or someplace like that. Anyway, Whatever you have the desire to do, stretching, yoga, zazen, martial arts, you know, like Shaolin style was, the legend is that it was developed by Bodhidharma to keep up the health of the monks.

[51:07]

That's available here. A lot of martial arts styles are available here. We're probably all too old we're not. You know? So, anyway, just do what you have to do. And, um, a simple possible lecture. Because I just wanted to talk about some very basic, down-to-earth pieces of my practice that I don't usually talk about in lectures. Usually I'll pick a topic or a koan and go into that. But when I thought about what's the most helpful thing to talk about, this is what I think it is.

[52:14]

Organizing our lives, developing the equipment and supporting each other to do that, I think is one of the richest gifts that we can give each other. So, you know, if you see someone who's having difficulty, or if you're having difficulty, we have a field of opportunities for sharing our experience and for helping each other to practice. So that's really all I have to say. And just let's take care of the field of Dharma that is us and each other. And if we can do that, I think not only will we be happier, but I think that it'll help everybody. Okay?

[53:19]

Thank you very much.

[53:21]

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