Good morning. Good morning again. We said the same thing yesterday. Every day we say good morning. And we divide the world into times. But actually it's all one time. As Suzuki Roshi used to say, we just do things one after another. but we sit well at 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock we wake up, at 7 o'clock we eat breakfast, and 10, 15 we give a talk, and so forth. Those are just made up times, you know, in order to delineate our activities. But actually it's just one thing after another. We just do one thing after another, which is his way of having us actually look at the reality and not just the made up, which is also real, but it's not.

[01:17]

Fundamental reality is without divisions, undivided time. undivided time and divided time. In Sazen, we actually have undivided time until the bell rings. It's just one breath after another. One breath, breath, breath. Inhale, exhale. And then we also divide our time as time and space into birth and death. Stages of life and birth and death. And this stage of life is called birth.

[02:22]

And the next stage of life is called death. The final stage, so-called final stage of life is called death. But actually, it's just one moment at a time, one moment after the next at a time. And those moments are called now. Now, now, now. But when we're actually somewhere. Everything is just now. It's only just now. But later we say, well, that was then. And we look and say, well, next. But it's just, we can only be now. So everything is just now. So what I wanted to talk about was breathing. Zazen and breath, how we understand our breath, our breathing during Zazen.

[03:33]

And what came to me was how the universe breathes me and how I breathe the universe. the symbiotic relationship between myself and a tree. A tree, I wouldn't say a tree is me, but yes, that's what we actually are doing. We are actually breathing, the tree is breathing me and I'm breathing the tree. The tree inhales oxygen and breathes out carbon, no, breathe in carbon monoxide, dioxide, monoxide, and breathe out oxygen. And then I breathe in that oxygen. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah, and the tree keeps me alive and we should be keeping the trees alive, but we've got a big problem.

[04:42]

People do not understand, so many people do not, they would rather kill the earth, kill up the earth and make money than live. They'd rather kill us off. That's just, you know, it boggles the mind. But if you understand that everything has an opposite, it helps. It does help. It does help. Because we're always concerned with the fundamental thing. which is birth and death. The question of birth and death is the great matter, as it's called, the great matter.

[05:47]

The great matter is, how do you understand birth and death? So, you know, Zazen is Buddha's, we understand, or Buddha is teaching us through Zazen. When I say Buddha, I don't mean some, you know, nice guy in the sky, born in India. I mean, of Buddha nature is teaching us, and so we sit still in Zazen and let the universe teach us the reality. When we're moving around a lot, that's normal and natural, but when we just stay still and receive feel the pain of the universe, feel the wonder of the universe, find out how to balance ourself, how to balance our life and each moment so that we actually

[07:06]

find peace within, I don't like to use the word peace because it has various connotations, within the How to find the balance between birth and death, good and bad, right and wrong, this and that. How to be right in the center of the dualities. How to be right in the center of the dualities. You know, if we want to escape from pain, We have to go right to the center of pain. The more you run away, the harder it is.

[08:12]

The only way to escape from pain is to be one with it. That's called the oneness of duality. That's what we discover in Zazen. It's a wonderful teaching. It's a basic teaching. That's why we sit Zazen, is to be able to get the message of how to escape from suffering. Buddha said, the only thing I really teach you is suffering and how to deal with it. So today I want to talk about breath. Inspiration and expiration. So it's so easy to understand how it all works by studying breath.

[09:26]

It's the thing that is closest to us. So if we want to study reality, we just study what's really closest to us all the time. The movement of the lungs. If we want to study trees, it's simple, too. The tree's breath. You know, they elected a dictator in Brazil Did you know that? They elected a dictator in Brazil who wants to cut down all the forests, the lungs of the earth. It's like, well, anyway, that's what's hard to understand, except that we can understand it if we realize the dualistic nature of the world. Well, yes.

[10:35]

Yes. Yes. That's the nature of our life is the two extremes. How do you find the middle between two extremes? So, Buddhadharma is how to find the middle between two extremes, the Madhyamaka, the middle way. And it's the same thing in your body. Our body is a model of the earth. It's a model of the universe. How we study the universe is to study ourself. To study ourself is to let go and let things be so that you can actually observe them. So breathing, each breath, you know, is, Suzuki Roshi described it as a swinging door.

[11:46]

Breath is just a swinging door. We say my breath, but my breath, you can say that, and we always do, because we always relate everything to ourself. But if we don't relate, if we don't use ourself as a measure, then we can see how things actually work. We kind of set ourself aside and see how things work. So breath in, the universe is breathing through its instrument called this person. It's not, I am breathing. I talk about this all the time. You probably get bored, but the universe is breathing me. I have nothing at all to do with it. If I want to stop it, I can't.

[12:48]

So when it fits us in, it's simply letting things be, letting breath be. We don't try to control our breath. We don't try to control stuff. We just let go with the rhythm of our life. If the rhythm of our life is creating a fast breath, we just let it be fast. If it's creating a slow breath, we just let it be slow. But we're simply aware of the breath. flowing with the breath. And as we, of course, as our metabolism slows down, our breath slows down. And we call that peaceful breathing. So, but breath is a model for birth and death.

[13:51]

Inhaling is an inspiration. Exhaling is expiration. So it's birth and death on each cycle of inspiration and expiration. That's how we understand and learn about birth and death. Inspiration is great, expiration is fine too. Inspiration is to quicken and expiration is to let go. So we come back to birth, life. Life is in the middle. Birth is one side, death is the other. So birth and death are sort of opposites, but life is not the opposite of death. Life includes both birth and death. That is according to my understanding.

[14:56]

So we need to inhale, and we also need to exhale. We need to come to be born, and we need to die. No problem. If we know how to flow with reality of birth and death, we don't suffer. But if we resist and have some idea that things should not be the way that they are, that's suffering. As long as we don't like it, it's suffering. And it goes with pain and pleasure and so forth. So all these opposites, the world is divided into opposites because it's a dualistic world. But the dualistic world is not everything. because the dualistic world is also the non-dualistic world. But our activity takes place in the dualistic world.

[16:03]

That's why Zazen is so important, because we take time out, take time out from the dualistic world to actually experience basic reality of the non-duality of basic life. There it is. It's so simple. And so it's going moment by moment. Birth and death is going moment by moment. That's how we study it. So when we sit zazen, we allow our conscious mind to follow our breath. Just follow the breath, which is very difficult.

[17:06]

It's not easy to follow our breath. It's very subtle, because at some point we say, well, I'm actually controlling my breath. When you really get into watching it, am I following it or am I controlling it? There's that kind of little doubt there. And if you think, well, I'm controlling it because I'm thinking about it. As soon as you start thinking about it, you feel like you're controlling it. So, it's okay to stop thinking about it. And, you know, just let it be and put your attention on the rest of your body. So, in Zazen, we actually do a body scan. If you're aware and alert and not dreaming, you do a body scan. which means that you're aware of your mudra.

[18:15]

When you're aware of your mudra, your attention is on your mudra. So there are two kinds of concentration. There's the concentration which is one-pointed. When we talk about concentration, usually We're talking about one point in concentration, laser concentration, you know, really zoning in on something. And so the other kind of concentration is wide concentration, where there's no thinking. Conscious thinking is arrested, put in jail. You're not applying conscious thinking in wide concentration. Simply total concentration on nothing in particular. So that when something moves over here, you're aware of it without trying to see it.

[19:17]

So just seeing sees. Hearing hears. Touch feels. The nose smells. But there's no body that experiences these things. It's just seeing, hearing, so forth. There's no seer or listener or feeler. This is wide concentration, just vast openness, and there is no judgment. This is basic zazen. But there's also the particular concentration. So we experience both of those in Zazen. So when we do a scan, we're aware of the mudra. It's the mudra.

[20:20]

My sams, za sams, these sams, barely touching, very lightly touching, like a piece of very thin paper in between. Just barely feel it. And it's hard to maintain that, but this is the barometer of our zazen. It tells us, is there tenseness in the body? Is there laxness in the body? So if there's too much tenseness in the body, we can adjust, like feeling all the tenseness draining out of our body, opening up so that instead of feeling tenseness, we feel openness. This is the secret of sitting Zazen comfortably. Instead, tenseness will always defeat us. Openness is the key.

[21:25]

I always like to tell the story of the wind and the sun having a competition to see if they can get the shepherd to take off his coat. You know that story? No, good, you forgot all about it. So the wind and the sun got together and said, maybe, who can make that shepherd take off his coat? So they said, okay, let's see. And the sun said, well, you go first. And so the wind goes. And the more it blows, the more the shepherd you know, puts on more clothes and holds real tight to it so his clothes don't blow off. And well, now it's your turn. And so the sun goes and shines his nice warmth on the shepherds getting warmer out here and takes off his coat.

[22:34]

That's the principle of Zazen. That The warmth loosens everything up. So in Zazen, you don't want to get tighter and tighter because that just defeats you. So you want to get warmer and warmer and open up, open up, open up, just opening up. The principle of Zazen is just keep opening up constantly, moment by moment. The breath becomes easy and flows easily. The blood flows easily. The lymph flows easily. Your skin opens up. But it's difficult because of the opposite. So when we feel the difficulty, we start closing down. So Zazen is counterintuitive. The more we feel the difficulty, the pain or discomfort, the more we have to open up.

[23:46]

So instead of closing down, which will defeat us, we become one with the feeling. And then the feeling opens up and our body becomes open and warm. But it's difficult because we get caught by our dualistic way of approaching our life. That's really difficult. And so we complain about the problem with Zazen. There's no problem with Zazen. Anyway, I'm trying to get right back to where I was before I diverged. So if we can actually study the rhythm of our breath without trying to control it, sometimes a little control is okay.

[25:03]

If you're really having a hard time, then you can push down on your diaphragm on the exhale, like silently. And that stimulates the oxygen to flow through your, because it pushes down here. This is the place where, this is Grand Central Station. the solar plexus, the grand central station. And when you put some effort and some push down here, it distributes your vital organs and juices and oxygen to flow through your body. And it's a good way to stay healthy. pushing down on your diaphragm.

[26:08]

If you play music using your diaphragm all the time, you're just doing that all the time and it keeps you healthy. The solar plexus, I like to think it's here. It's the hara, right? And it's the distribution center in the Grand Central Station. All the trains run out through there and go where they need to go. So it's important to keep your blood flowing and keep your breath flowing and the oxygen flowing. So when you do that, it gives you a little lift. And it makes, it's a kind of, well, like when you run, you know, the oxygen's flowing and same thing.

[27:17]

But this is like doing it when you're sitting still. So, if we, experience over and over again the ease of breathing, we can actually enjoy our life and experience our death more easily. Because birth and death, exhaling and inhaling, are just two sides of one thing. Suzuki really liked to say, they are the same thing. So in a sense, they are the same thing. And each one is necessary. You cannot have one without the other. So our dualistic mind says, well, birth is good and death is sorrowful.

[28:20]

Which is so, no problem. Nevertheless, Birth is just birth and death is just death. And if we know how to treat them equally, just like our breath, which is truth, we don't have such a hard time, even though we have a hard time. I think when, you know, everybody's getting older, believe it or not. And we're experiencing more demises at this point, from now on. Yes, getting ready.

[29:24]

It makes us, you know, when we're younger, I remember when we were much younger, 50 years ago, 60 years ago, when nobody died. You know, we had a sangha where almost nobody ever died for a long, long time, you know. Zen students pretty much stay healthy. That's been my experience. Well, then they're no longer Zen students. What's that again? Yeah, that's inevitable, but I mean it's not like a lot of people. I think because of our practice. I'm not saying they didn't die. I don't want to get into that. Yes, you're right.

[30:30]

We have to think about that more and more because of the fact of life and death. So, to me, it's wonderful to think that birth and death, we can see them in a realistic way. There are our feelings and our sorrows and so forth, which should be expressed, have to be expressed. And at the same time, it's important to have a good death, a good birth and a good death. We're being born, constantly being born.

[31:30]

This is rebirth, right? Exhaling is dying. Inhaling is coming back to, is actually birth. So we're constantly dying and being reborn, moment by moment. Each moment is a rebirth, even though it's so incremental that we don't notice it, until we see ourself in the mirror unexpectedly. You're walking down the street and you say, who's that old man? Oh my God, that's me. So, but because we live incrementally, we don't think that we're on the way, you know, dying. But we're dying and we're being born at the same time. So tomorrow we can really explore this

[32:34]

understanding, the easier it gets to accept ourself and accept what life is really about. Our emotional life creates a picture. But it's important. It's important to have our emotional life paint a picture, because if you don't, then it becomes, if you simply see it in a mechanical way, then it's easy to just shove it off when people die. But on the other hand, I find that I've been with a good number of dying people and not creating a, by helping them to die easily with some good feeling, I think is really important.

[33:43]

And I've always found that that's the case. You were speaking about our Sangha dying, and it reminded me of your talk about ants, where another ant has to go for the balance to be maintained. I'm not saying that's what happens in our Sangha, but here we are as a group, a leaf falling off, another branch falling off. When you were talking about the ultimate question, I thought to myself, well wait, isn't the ultimate question posing life and death to realize the in-between? Birth and death, yes. Thank you. Birth and death to realize the in-between. Posing, positioning here and there or now and past to realize something new. Well, let me say something about that. The birth and death of our Sangha. You know, for many, many years, the Sangha has always remained exactly, oh, I don't say exactly, pretty much the same composition of people.

[34:56]

In other words, just enough people to fill the Zendo, and some people leave and new people come. And it's always maintained that balance. It's pretty interesting. And without trying, we've never tried to maintain any kind of balance. But it's just our advertising. And it just happens. So that it's, it's like a person in a way. So it's, it's, it's like, there's a critical mass. And then there's incoming and outgoing. And that incoming and outgoing has always been there, but the critical mass stays the same. Isn't that our being? Yeah, yeah. Used to describe it as the Chinese restaurant. I say it a lot, the Chinese restaurant syndrome, which is, you know, there's a small Chinese restaurant and the cook is really good, you know, and people really like the food.

[36:17]

And so there's a big line outside around the block waiting to get in because the place is so small. And then the cooks, the owners say, you know, people like us so much, we should expand. You know, we can get rich. And so they buy a big place and remodel it, nobody comes. They didn't know the secret, what the secret of their place was. One of the secrets was that it was so small. And the food was so good. that everybody was willing to stand in line. But once you remodel it, it loses its flavor. It loses its uniqueness. It doesn't always, but I've often found that to be the truth. Yes, just be totally sorrowful.

[37:19]

When it's sorrow, just be totally sorrowful so that there's nothing outside of your sorrow. Then you can then, because there's nothing outside of your sorrow, it's no longer sorrow. It's only sorrow when this opposite is there. I wish that it wasn't like this. I wish it wasn't like this. This creates more and more sorrow. The more you escape from your sorrow, want to escape from your sorrow, the more sorrowful you get. That's the way it works. Just go completely into your sorrow and then there's no sorrow. It's the opposites that create the problem. That's the basic message of Buddhism.

[38:23]

The duality is what creates the suffering. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. Well, that creates the suffering. Of course, we suffer. I mean, who wants not to die, right? We all want to live. But dying is a form of living. You know, here's what... Yes, yes. So there's a saying, die now while still alive and you will totally live. Yes. Also, we say, just die on the cushion.

[39:24]

What does that mean? When you sit thoughts in, just die on the cushion. It means the death of your ego. Right? Just let go of your ego. Just let go of self-centeredness. There's just a painful leg sitting on a cushion. As soon as you say, me and mine, you're creating a self. Although the self is there, you're not exaggerating it. So no identification with self and no judgment about it? Somebody had her hand up over there. Yeah. So, as I understand it, this space of equanimity, this space of equanimity, afforded impermanence, are welcoming everything, push nothing away.

[40:37]

I understand that this is what is the prajna of shodhi, birth-death, and from that, Well, it does arise there, yes. Well, I'm not going to give a long talk about it. You know, it means that compassion means to suffer with others. suffer the suffering of others. So when you find the reality and can actually exist in there, then you feel this wonderful compassion for everyone. And then you want to help them. That's called teaching. When you have that realization of the reconciliation of opposites, you want to teach it to everybody.

[41:47]

That's compassion. You want to share with everyone. Shakyamuni, you know, wanted to share with everyone after he became enlightened, but he hesitated because people are not going to understand this. So, I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to share this with people. And then somebody came along and I think it was Indra said, you can do that, you know, kind of helped him. Anyway, it's time to stretch your legs.

[42:27]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ