Good morning. Good morning. Today's speaker is longtime Berkley Zen Center practitioner, Ron Nestor, whose Dharma name is Son Sodo, which means something like simple, kindly, ancestral way. He has been practicing here for many years. Ron has had virtually every position that we have here at Berkeley Science Center, he's fulfilled those positions at least once. He said he was born in Denver, enlightened in Berkeley, and has not attained paraneurona, which we're very glad about. Alan asked me if I was sure about the last We end at about 11, right?

[01:00]

11 o'clock. 11 o'clock. As other people, when preparing a talk, you usually have a whole list of things to talk about, and then you realize that you need to get through about a third of it. But that's the way it is. Can you speak a little louder, please? Just play with it. So I'd like to talk about breathing this morning. something that we all have in common, and that we're all doing right now. It's a really good subject. And maybe we take breathing practice in Zen, maybe take it for granted, because it's so fundamental. But I just wanted to look at it and discuss it somewhat. What prompted me to want to do this particular subject is that maybe a month or two ago, Richard Hafele left the Sangha after many years of being here.

[02:08]

And he gave us a number of his Buddhist books. He laid them out on the community room porch. And I picked up a wind bell, which is a magazine from San Francisco Zen Center. And in it was a talk from Suzuki Roshi called, Be Kind with Yourself. And I read it, and this talk just stuck with me. And you've probably had that experience, if not with Buddhism, with something else, where you may read a lot about a certain subject, but every once in a while something just stays with you. And the rest of it is sort of in the background. So this talk was like that for me, and I thought just by focusing on that talk, I would find out why this talk was important to me more deeply. And it turns out this talk is in the second book of Suzuki Roshi's talks, not on the cell. So I think I'll just read a small portion of this talk to you.

[03:17]

It's called, Be Kind with Yourself. And there's a few, there's one, there's a word for it, epa, something or other, the first few words that they say up at the top. Anyway, it says, we put emphasis on warm heart, warm zazen. The warm feeling we have in our practice is, in other words, enlightenment or Buddha's mind. So, I want you to have the actual feeling, true practice, because even though I practiced zazen when I was young, I didn't know exactly what it was. Sometimes I was very impressed by our practice at the A.G. and other monasteries. When I saw great teachers or listened to their lectures, I was deeply moved. But it was difficult to understand those experiences. Our aim is to have complete experience or full feeling in each moment of practice. What we teach is that enlightenment and practice are one. But my practice was what we call stepladder Zen. I understand this much now, and next year I thought I will understand a little bit more.

[04:37]

That kind of practice doesn't make much sense. I could never be satisfied. If you try step ladder practice, maybe you too will realize that it is a mistake. If we do not have some warm, big satisfaction in our practice, that is not true practice. Even though you sit, trying to have the right posture, counting your breaths, it may still be lifeless zazen, because you are just following instructions. You are not kind enough with yourself. You think that if you follow the instruction given by some teacher, then you will have good zazen. But the purpose of instruction is to encourage you to be kind with yourself. Do not count your breaths just to avoid your thinking mind, but to take the best care of your breathing. If you are very kind with your breathing, one breath after another, you will have a refreshed, warm feeling in your zazen.

[05:39]

When you have a warm feeling for your body and your breath, then you can take care of your practice, and you will be fully satisfied. When you are very kind with yourself, naturally, you will feel like this." And he goes on to describe it as something like a mother taking care of her child. Just naturally, you don't know quite what to do, but she always finds a way. So breathing is a practice which crosses all the different schools that are meditation schools of Buddhism. Tibetan, Vipassana, Theravada, Zen. And there's a different emphasis given in each school on breathing, but breathing is always included as one aspect of meditation practice.

[06:49]

In our practice, it's not step ladder practice, it's not so-called meditation practice. Our practice is just sitting, or Shikantaza. But Shikantaza can include breathing. So I'd say, strictly speaking, Shikantaza includes breathing and body, and just being aware of what's happening as we're sitting, and hopefully in the rest of our activities as well. just to sit not to aim at something in particular other than just being aware of what's arising in our mind and our bodies and then letting it go not holding on to it but we also put more emphasis on that we can focus on breathing in particular so you can kind of there's a kind of a little bit of variation there within what she can posit is.

[07:55]

So, I think we should all be aware of what during Zazen, and also during our lives, what is our breathing and what is our breathing expressing? And what is the quality of our breathing? Not necessarily analytically, not so that we can evaluate it necessarily, but just to feel it. To feel our breathing is like to feel our life, actually. Because as you know, when you're upset, or nervous, or frightened, or anxious, breathing changes, becomes shallow. When you relax, your breathing generally becomes more easy-going. And all the variations and colors in between It's a way of actually being in touch. The first teacher that I ever encountered in Buddhism or meditation was Chogyam Trungpa, a Tibetan teacher back in the early 70s.

[09:07]

And when he first came to Berkeley, it was a wonderful time because everything was kind of blossoming, both in Zen and Tibetan Buddhism. And everything was kind of new and fresh. And he was new and fresh in this country. And so I went to a, it was the first time that I'd actually sat with other people, because I'd been sitting alone for maybe six months or so, just because I was curious. And he gave a seminar at, I guess it's called Washington School at Martin Luther King. And afterwards, we could have interviews with him. So I had a little short interview with him. And I said, you know, this thing about following breathing, why should I follow my breathing? I didn't say it, but what I was feeling was, this is kind of like cult-like. Oh, we're going to do this kind of cult-like practice of following our breath. And I don't see the reason for doing it. And what I really wanted was some security.

[10:12]

I wanted some justification for it. He said, the fewer whys, the better. So this is the problem with breathing, as a practice, is that when we don't have a why, and we just focus on our breathing, it can feel like, well, where am I? If you just purely focus on breathing, it's just breathing. And all the evaluations and drama and interpretation is just simply not necessary. It's simply necessary to just breathe. But, I'll say we, but I, feel insecure in that situation because I don't have my reference points, my dramas that make me know who I am.

[11:12]

So that's why it's such a good practice. So what does Suzuki Roshi mean by having a warm feeling? That's a question. And he's here talking about having a warm feeling in Zazen. And I'll just say that he gave this talk in 1971, the year that he died. He died in December. And this was in February, I believe, that he gave this talk. And so, now excuse me. That's not true. This talk was actually, let's see, which one is this? Yeah, that's true. This was probably done in Tassajara.

[12:13]

This was like just towards the end of his life. And to me it seems that the students at Tassajara at that time were probably trying really hard to be really good Zen students. and maybe feeling frustrated that he weren't making progress, like they wanted to make progress. And he could feel that, that kind of intensity, but intensity of being frustrated of not accomplishing something. So he was telling him to lighten up, you know, to just, you know, rather than worry about where you're going, why not simply enjoy where you are, right now?" is what he was saying. So warm feeling, you know, I said, does that mean that we always have to have a particular feeling, you know, in reading practice? No, I don't think so. You can have all kinds of feelings, that's the whole point, is that there's no special feeling we're supposed to have.

[13:17]

So he's talking in a kind of broad way, suggesting, as I understand it, suggesting taking care of, actually. Later on in this talk he talks about taking care of. So it's not just a kind of a warm, fuzzy, kind of hugging myself type feeling. It's like taking care of breathing. So does that make sense to you, taking care of your breathing? Does that sound odd? Take care of your breathing? Or does it sound just like, yeah, I know exactly what that means. Taking care of our breathing is like, that's what we are. It's simply, whatever we're doing, it's like, here comes the why again. Does it need to be a why? Well, it kind of is a why, but the why is so intrinsic to just being alive.

[14:21]

if if we're not open-minded if we're closed minded and We're aiming at something in particular Then I don't know if we're really taking care of it if we're really taking care of our breathing if we're aiming at something in other words like if we want perfect concentration or we want to Get rid of all the static that's in our mind because it's just too irritating and we want to get to a really nice place or a pure place then are we really taking care of what's happening now? So you think about when you take, you know, everybody in this room takes care of a multitude of aspects of our lives. So we all do it. But we all, we tend to pick subjects which we care about, to take care of. He's just emphasizing this quality that we all have, which is that when we feel...

[15:33]

When we value our life and we value the lives of others, including objects, not just people, but we just value existence, then naturally what we value we take care of. And it's when we don't value or we lose track of what we value and get caught up in our ego, basically, does get caught up in trying to make everything comfortable for ourselves, that we lose the value of things. So, he's talking about valuing our breathing, taking care of our breathing, just means to actually let our breathing be, rather than trying to make it into something, or have a set idea of what it's supposed to be. Taking care of our breathing means what is like letting our breathing exist without doing something to it.

[16:57]

And so that lesson, whatever we learn from that, that extends to our whole life. In a sense, you could call it mindfulness. It is mindfulness, but it's mindfulness with heart. And usually when we talk about mindfulness, there's something missing in the way we talk about it, which is that there's some warmth, there's some care, there's some passion, actually. It's not just a kind of clinical noting of everything. based on our personalities there's all kinds of varieties of how to be mindful but still to truly be mindful in a kind of way that has real vitality means we have to care that we're interested that we feel some connection

[18:00]

He talks about stair-step practice when he was at Eheiji Suzuki Roshi and that way of thinking, well, I'm going to learn this much this year and then I'll learn more next year and I'll be increasing my Zen maturity. I don't think there's a person in this room that hasn't had some shadow of that kind of thought. which is perfectly natural. So he's suggesting, if he went through this, certainly we're going to go through this. On the other hand, I was thinking, stair-step practice is okay. If we think that we're superior to traditions that practice a stair-step, or a progressive type of practice, if we think that we're superior because we don't do that, theoretically, I think that's a big mistake. It's just that that's not our practice to do that.

[19:18]

But there are Tibetan practices that are exquisitely deep, that are stair-step practices, progressive practices. There are Zen practices, especially Linzai with Kalan practice has that aspect to it. You progress through There's Kensho experience where you have a kind of a blossoming of seeing everything as being one. There's Satori experiences. You know, there's kind of an apparent progression. My niece is in her mid-twenties right now. She's a very strong and wonderful young woman. She is at Alan, what's the teacher who you saw up in the Northwest? Harada Roshi? Yeah, Harada Roshi. She's at Sogenji? Yeah. Or rather, it's a home?

[20:21]

Is she in Japan? Yeah, she's in Japan. Oh, at Sogenji. Yeah. So she's at this very strict Rinzai monastery with a wonderful teacher in Japan. And she'll be there maybe three years. And so it's very Rinzai practice, and a very Soto practice. And so we write letters back and forth, and basically, were challenging each other and teasing each other and enjoying a mutual practice. But she said, why don't you just cut your chains? Get rid of those chains and jump in. And I'm saying, well, why don't we just accept things as they are and just appreciate our life and just one step at a time. Well, you really need to get to it and I think that you're just I think you're too cautious and you're too worried about things and you really need to push it up a notch. And it's a perfect difference between Soto and Rinzai practice, but I very much admire their practice.

[21:29]

And I think that if a progressive practice has a really good teacher, the teacher knows how to keep it from being ego-driven. I don't think we should see that this is the only way, but it just happens to be our way. There's an interesting excerpt from a talk that I heard. This is by Rev. Anderson. Some of you probably have heard him or know him. He's a senior teacher at the Tennessee's Gazette Center. In my opinion, a wonderful model and teacher of practice.

[22:34]

And in this talk, I think he was talking to his group that meets monthly out in Marin. He says something like, well, you pay attention to your breathing, and you're mindful of your breath, all day long maybe, and you feel like you're cleaning up your life. That's nice. And then he goes on to more or less suggest that unless they're really able to renounce or just let go, just let go, that following breathing and being kind of concentrated, precise and kind of cleaning up our life by not being sloppy is a kind of a power but doesn't really have the depth that we're capable of and when I heard him say that it was irritating to me because I felt like he was

[23:41]

kind of dismissing the effort of a lot of people that they were making as being inconsequential. And in a way, he was. There was something in his tone that was like that. But, as I thought about it, I realized that really what he was doing is pushing them, pushing them to go beyond just breathing as a kind of a technique or as a kind of a method but to actually bring it to life and go beyond just breathing as a method or as a concentration technique or as a method. But basically leading to just letting go. There is one sutra There's one sutra that focuses on breathing.

[24:49]

It's called the Mindfulness of Breathing Sutra, Anapanasati Sutra. Very short. This is really a stair-step sutra. This is a progressive sutra where you go through following breathing. You go through 16 different aspects of your body and mind with just your breath. and then you go through the four foundations of mindfulness and then after you've gone through that then you go through the seven aspects of awakening so there's like 35 different steps you go through starting with breathing so Buddha knew what he was doing but the very last step in the seventh factor of awakening is at least the way that Thich Nhat Hanh translates it is letting go So after all these various steps we go through, it's just letting go. You know the esoteric wisdom of the ages.

[25:49]

No, you just let go. But in this particular sutra, which is worth taking a look at, the end point, the culmination of the sutra is just letting go. So I just wanted to also show you the other side of Suzuki Roshi's take on reading and how to communicate it to the students. And this one came, this was earlier, three or four years earlier. This was from Zen Mind Beginner's Line, and those talks were given out, I believe, in maybe three or four or five years before the talk that I just read to you. And this is a pretty well-known excerpt called The Swinging Door.

[26:54]

I had a whole Shosan wrangle with Sojin once over this quote. So I'll just read you the first paragraph of this This is from the Breathing chapter in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. When we practice Zazen, our mind always follows our breathing. When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world. The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless. We say inner world or outer world, but actually there is just one whole world. In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door. The air comes in and goes out, like someone passing through a swinging door. If you think, I breathe, the I is extra.

[27:55]

There is no you to say I. What we call I is just the swinging door, which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. It just moves, that is all. When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing, no I, no world, no mind, nor body, no eyes, no ears, no lips, just a swinging door. So this is the other side of be kind with yourself and have a warm feeling about your practice. And maybe this is a little bit too clever, but it seems to me like this is more the emptiness side, and the previous talk was more the form side. So the form side is here we are with all of our drama, all of our feelings and thoughts and experiences and the empty in this side is who are we? Where is the core of this we?

[28:57]

And in actuality it's just the breath, it's not my breath, it's not being warm with breath, it's just like the breath. The breath is just the breath. So the two sides go together and form an emptiness. Rather than just being on one side or the other, they go together. I'll stop, because it's time. If you'd like to say something, have some thought, please go ahead. Ann? I like what you said, that mindfulness is not really just the mind, it's just the heart. And, I mean, in a sense, maybe making the whole body receptive. And I wonder if you could say something more about that.

[30:00]

I'm not sure what you... I think you're getting at something, but I'm not quite sure what. Well, I think part of... We talk about mindfulness as being aware, like you said, being aware and observing, but it's not always with the mind. It's with the body, in a sense, it's acquiring body memory, or that kind of knowledge as well. But then thinking about it in terms of the heart and opening the heart. It's not just opening the hand of thought, it's opening the heart of something. And I just wondered if you could pursue that. Well, I think that's mindfulness, that's mindfulness intimacy of mindfulness. That's the difference between a stair-step kind of practice where we're using mindfulness as a method to get someplace.

[31:16]

If we're just value and care about what we're involved with, which includes everybody and everything, then we can't help but feel that the similarity, the connection at the same time, and you still might be noting on various qualities and so forth, and how they come and go, but there's this feeling, there's got to be a feeling of connection there, which is... And the connection doesn't come through the mind? No, I wouldn't... I just, not only through the mind. And mind is, the whole thing goes all together, so I wouldn't want to separate it, but no, it's not just... His more is not just an idea. That's what I would emphatically say. It's not just an idea. And that's what he's saying. Just experience what you're doing. Experience it.

[32:20]

Open. Yeah. With an open mind. Catherine? I'm really resonating to Anne's question and I appreciate the emphasis on body because there is so much body awareness that can be involved. But the words that came to me when you were talking about that were compassion and tenderness. And I think it's sort of like value added. We are aware, and then also a feeling arises of tenderness and compassion. And I know that there are two ways I look at things. When I become aware of things, I can feel very clinical. It's sort of like a cool blue light, and I really see what's happening. And if I see that, and there's a feeling that arises of warmth, then I'm missing something. So I hear Suzuki Roshi's word of warmth, and I recognize that tender feeling that I can bring to things that I see, or that I become aware of.

[33:22]

So I guess that word's kind of come up for me. I would just add, though, that if you feel cool, where you don't feel warm. It's not that you're doing something wrong, it's that that's who you are right then. But the admonition or whatever, the guideline to take care evokes for me a bringing up of other qualities. That's what he's suggesting. He's laying that out for us to suggest that to us. Kate? Thank you very much for your talk. I originally raised my hand before Catherine's comment. I mention it because when I heard the word work, I was going to say, ask you what you thought of this. When I hear the word work in that context, I'm thinking that he specifically does not mean sentiment or sentimentality, that it has more to do

[34:32]

with this ineffable but very powerful sense of connection. It's so powerful that it doesn't really have time to think about itself enough to become a tenderness, is sort of the feeling I have about it. And I just wanted to ask you what you thought. I think that's a really good way to describe it. I can't do it. I can't improve on that at all. I'd like to ask you to expand upon taking care of your breath in ordinary life. Sometimes that can be taken very literally, as in when you're having a conversation, you're also focused on your breathing. But I'm also hearing that it can mean take care of whatever it is you're doing, and not necessarily literally taking care of your breath. And I find that the latter can seem to be a distraction from really focusing on what I'm doing.

[35:35]

But then I can get short of breath. I take too much care of the thing. So I'd like you to talk about that balance if you could. Just expand on that, please. I'm not very good at it. So I can't give you a good informed opinion. Very difficult, what you described is a good point. Where I really notice that, you know, versus driving, I can do it easily. I can easily drive and really pay attention to my breathing because I'm sitting still and, you know, it's not a lot, you know, there's something kind of consistent about me going in a straight line every deal of time. But at work, where things are happening, I work in a very busy workplace, a lot of people in a very small space, and there's lots of sensory stuff happening every minute, every second. And I have a lot of tasks that I feel I should get done. To actually focus on breathing in the middle of the drama of how all these get done is very difficult.

[36:40]

And I can't say that I can really do it. I always defer to getting the tasks done. And I'm aware of the the feeling of the tasks and so forth and you know the various conflicts and ease or difficulty but actually being able to be relaxed enough to physically really feel breathing in the middle of that is a challenge that I haven't really been able to meet very well but I think it's a really good practice and a really good challenge and I think you just have to practice it you just have to do it you find out how to do that. We'll make this the last one, Ken. Well, perhaps the instruction we get in Zazen is good there, that just keep coming back. It doesn't mean that you have to be there every instant, but when you're doing something and then you sort of realize you're getting a little

[37:42]

That's right, that's good, but even that I find difficult. Because when you're in the middle of a lot of tasks and you're challenged, at least for me, there's a kind of momentum that gets going, almost an adrenaline momentum, and you just don't want to let go of that. You just want to stay on that focus, and this is going to do this, and do this, and this is going to keep track of that. And you don't want to really relax and stop. because you're afraid, well, I'll sort of lose that momentum. That's a very, it's actually kind of a fearful attitude and a kind of egocentric attitude as well. But that's the way it is so far. But anyway, it's something that you work on. All right. Okay, this last one, Michelle. I just think when I'm really focused on something, my whole body is is involved with what I'm working on and to actually stop and observe my breath is not relevant.

[39:00]

I mean, if I'm engaged. And so, isn't that better? I mean, when I do kind of think about that, I think this is a good thing. I'm breathing with my whole body working on this. Well, just try it. Okay. We can tell by the way you're working, by the way, that you're putting your whole body into it. No, no, it's just that's what you're doing. It's very clear. Thank you.

[39:37]

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