Lately, I've been putting a lot of emphasis on watching our breathing, how we pay attention to our breathing in zazen. And sometimes, because we talk about many things, it's easy to neglect the area of zazen because we come and sit pretty regularly and sangha feeling is good and so forth. We don't talk about zazen or breathing so much. But this is very fundamental and I want to really put some emphasis on it and I want us to really pay attention First thing, of course, is posture.

[01:28]

That's always the fundamental in zazen. And then next is breathing. Once we have our posture established, then we can watch our breath. Our mind follows our breath, as we say. and we count our breath. Counting breath is a very fundamental way of watching breath. And you can watch your breath without counting. That's possible. But counting breath is a more positive way of attention, of keeping our attention focused. And in order to keep our breath in the foreground, it's pretty hard to do without some kind of device, some kind of help.

[02:44]

So the point is how we are focused on our breath in zazen without that focus or attention or counting becoming mechanical. If our focus becomes mechanical or if our breathing starts to feel too controlled We're off, already off. So when we breathe, after inhaling and we exhale, then on the exhale we say one, and that one and the breath are exactly the same. abdomen expands, we take in breath.

[04:00]

And then when our abdomen goes in, the breath goes out. So our breathing, of course, is in our lower abdomen. The deeper, the better. Then when the breath goes out, we count. One. Like that. All the way to the end of the breath. And then the breath ends. And then inhaling. Inhaling is shorter than exhaling. Because we want to come back to life, we take a quick breath. But when we exhale, life goes out. And when we inhale, life comes in. So inhaling is quick, and exhaling is more slow and has some strength in it from your lower abdomen.

[05:03]

So the point of concentrating on breathing is to keep our attention on the breath. And to keep that attention in the foreground so that you merge your attention, your mind, merges with the breath. And mind is breath. and breath is mind, just in the same way as mind is posture and posture is mind. So this is how we say no non-thinking in zazen. It's not thinking or not thinking. It's just complete oneness. And when we make the effort to realize this complete oneness, moment after moment. That's our practice within the realm of enlightenment.

[06:08]

When we count one and the next number is two, the next number is three, We like to achieve something. We like to get from one to ten. We consider that quite an achievement if we can count consecutively from one to ten without stopping. But it's very difficult because the thoughts in our mind interrupt our intentions. Even though we have the best intentions, to count from one to ten on the exhale, a thought will come up and unask inadvertently and take over your attention. And this is natural because it's natural for the mind to want something interesting to hold on to.

[07:17]

But to keep bringing our attention back, to bringing the breath, the concentration and the breath into the foreground, is the effort of zazen. So over and over again, we bring our attention back to one. After we get to three, and then we start, we find ourselves in a dream. And when we find ourselves in a dream, we start to come back to one again. So we may not get past two or three. The point is not to count. The point is not to add up the counting. You may find some satisfaction in getting to ten, but it doesn't make so much difference. The point is to be concentrated on the breath. So, When you're counting one, one is the breath.

[08:34]

It has no two after it. Then, when you're finished with one, then comes two. Don't anticipate two. If you anticipate two, then you're no longer in a concentrated realm. If you anticipate anything, you're no longer in the right realm. So without any kind of desire or anticipation, one is just one. is just two. Three is just three. It's just mu. Same thing, it's just mu.

[09:36]

So counting the breath is your koan in zazen. Just to be completely concentrated on your koan. Or two. And when you find yourself in a dream, it's not so good to criticize yourself. When you find yourself in a dream, oh, this is this dream. This is my life at this moment. It's this dream. And when you find yourself having some feeling, maybe painful feeling in your legs, oh, this is some painful feeling.

[10:44]

That's all. Just like one is just one. Two is just two. Painful feeling is just this painful feeling. Dream is just this dream. And over and over, coming back to one in the foreground. It's easy to have counting going on underneath our dreams. We have a dream. And then underneath it's 1, 2, 25, 26. This is a mechanical counting. So when you find yourself counting mechanically, you can just say, this is just mechanical counting. And then you come back to 1 in the foreground.

[11:48]

So It's not easy to remain concentrated on one or the breath. But that should be our effort, and constantly keeping our effort going. So the effort to have the best posture that you can do, to have all of your energy concentrated on your posture, and to have When you're concentrated on posture, there's just the body. And when you're concentrated on breathing, there's just the breathing. And the effort to continue that is enlightenment. The problem that we have with enlightenment, the idea of enlightenment, is that we think that enlightenment is a result.

[13:01]

So we're always looking for the result. That's why we have trouble realizing what enlightenment is, because we think it's a result. But what we need to look to is our effort. Enlightenment is in the effort. Don't look for it as a result. Because I did this, I got enlightenment. If I do that, I'll get enlightenment. If our effort is there, if our effort is pure and constant, then no matter what state of mind we have in zazen, we have enlightened practice.

[14:21]

You may think that if you count from one to ten perfectly, over and over again, without any interruptions, that that's enlightenment. or perfect practice. But that's not necessarily so. Perfect practice, or our enlightened activity, takes into account all of our delusions, includes all of our deluded states of mind, includes our dreaming and our forgetting, and our wandering and our tears and our pain and our ignorance. In order to really continue and to have real

[15:35]

practice. We have to have the attitude that whether I get enlightened or not, I practice. If you don't have that attitude, you will never have enlightenment. It only becomes manifest through our activity, through our effort.

[16:37]

Suzuki Roshi says, if you stand up where you are, when you don't know who you are or where you are, that is enlightenment. Standing up means being one with your situation without knowing who you are or where you are. We think that When we get enlightened, we'll know who we are and where we are. But to be able to stand up without knowing who you are or where you are is very important.

[18:23]

So, just when we sit zazen, without worrying about enlightenment or being Buddha or anything at all, just to completely Put yourself into zazen. Merge with body and mind so that there's no distinction between thinking and not thinking, or thinking and body, or thinking and breath, or thinking and mind. As long as we think that enlightenment is the most important thing, we don't pay enough attention to our effort.

[19:55]

Enlightenment is important, but the most important thing is our effort. So in our today, in this sitting, let's make a strong effort to maintain good posture and maintain good attention. on our breath over and over. Make the effort. That's zazen. Over and over we bring back our attention. Don't allow yourself to go on too long in a mechanical way.

[21:07]

Why we get tired of zazen is because we allow it to become mechanical. As long as you're really concentrated, as long as your mind is really one with your breath in the foreground and posture, there's nothing to compare it to. There's no way to compare yourself to anything. If you have boredom, you're just comparing yourself to pleasure. This is not zazen. Each moment's breath is a completely different breath than you've ever breathed before.

[22:17]

Some of you haven't sat sashimi before, or not so often. So I want to talk just a little bit about the pain in your legs. Just let the pain in your legs be where it is. And if you say, this is my pain, you're making some comparison. Pain is just pain someplace. It's not good or bad. It's just some feeling that we have. We may not like it, but if you can accept it and just let it be where it is, Zazen becomes easier.

[23:42]

If you fight it, or don't make some judgment about it, like, I don't want this, then Zazen becomes much more difficult, proportionally, because you don't like it. So, in order to continue, You have to suspend judgment and open yourself moment after moment to just accept completely. So in the same way that you become one with your breathing, you allow the pain to be in your legs. It's not a trick. It's a matter of being one with reality.

[24:43]

So we all have difficulty with Even someone that's been sitting a long time has some difficulty with pain. But the pain also helps us. When we have pain in our legs, that pain brings us right down to reality and helps us to concentrate And the most important thing, concentration is important, but the most important thing is to have a calm mind. Most important thing in zazen is to have a calm mind, which means that nothing will throw us. Even though we have some pain in our legs, we can concentrate on our breath.

[26:03]

And the calmness of our mind becomes, our mind becomes steadier and steadier, calmer and calmer, and steadier and steadier. If you allow your mind to become agitated due to some uncomfortable feeling, then you will lose it. So there are two ways to go. One is to run, but that won't help. And the other is to let your mind become steadier, steadier, and calmer and calmer. So you go deeper and deeper. And this is how we do zazen. No matter what's happening, your mind becomes calmer and steadier.

[27:06]

And when your mind is calmer and steadier, you can accept whatever is there. And you can open yourself more and more. So instead of closing yourself, you can open yourself. So moment after moment, accepting and opening, and your mind is becoming calmer and more steady. Do you have a question?

[28:30]

And you suggested among the things that go on, as things come up in the past, what's the past? What is the past? What is that? When the past comes up in your mind, that's the present. So, really, the past is not coming up. What's coming up is the present, which looks like the past. There's only the present. we can talk about the past, we can talk about the future. And the past has some determination on the present. But the past at that time was the present. So, whatever comes up, you know, is our imagination about what was present beforehand, which we call the past.

[29:35]

But whatever you want to think about the past is just your idea about it. So the past becomes very distorted. As we look back in history, if you've ever done something and it appeared in the newspaper, I didn't do that. That's not the way it happened. So it's almost never the way it happened. And as we recall things from the past more and more, it becomes more and more distorted. And so we have some idea about the past. We have to be careful, you know. I'm expanding on what you said a little bit from my own agenda. When we talk about Zen practice and Buddhism and so forth, and we look in the past, you know, it's easy for that to become very distorted.

[30:36]

And we have to be very careful to know what we're doing now. That's really, that's important. To know what we're doing now. Why did you say that? Well, it seems like I'm going through a lot now where in the past things seem to have been locked in my body and they come through. It's like my body has locked all of this stuff which I wasn't aware of. But yet I question it. What is it? How can there be such a thing? Because it's only the present. That's right. So what is that? It's an idea of the past. But we are connected to the events of the past. We're connected to the events of the past. That's why psychology is good, but the path in Buddhism or Zen is a little different.

[31:50]

In psychology, you look at all the past, in order to get some idea of where you are in the present. And in our practice, we just turn to the present. And it's not to criticize another way, but it is a different way. And You know, what we call repentance isn't just, I did something bad and I'm repenting for it, you know, being sorry for it. That's part of repentance. But real repentance is constantly turning toward the path. It's like Maybe we did bad things, maybe we did good things, and our life in the present is so based on so many events of the past, which we don't even know about, that there's no end to looking in the past for how we came to be in the present.

[33:22]

So, rather than do that, we just turn to the present, turn to the past, so that we have a way to walk. We don't have to look back. We should look back so that we don't make the same mistakes that we made in the past and so forth. But if we just stick to the path, we don't have to look back so much. But things will always be coming up because of karma. And there'll be things that we can't do because we're stuck in the karma actions from the past. But little by little we work that out and if we continue looking forward we find ourselves more and more manifesting the forward going path. Going back to what you were saying about common grasp, since 1 to 10 implies a sequence, since we're told not to think sequentially,

[34:31]

on each number. Would it not be helpful just to say zero? Well, the thing is that even though, it's not that we shouldn't think sequentially. We think from, you know, we have from one to ten, but when we're on one, one is just one. So we do both. There's a sequence, but when we're on one, So it doesn't imply that there shouldn't be a sequence. It's just that we shouldn't anticipate. It's like when you play music. When you're on one note, you're just on that one note. If you anticipate the next note, the next note is going to be there. You're going to play that next note, but if you anticipate it, you're no longer here. I was thinking if you're just in zero, then there'd be no danger of anticipation.

[35:37]

Aha, but since we live in a sequential world, we have to be able to move in a sequential world without anticipation. So we're not just in zero, we're in zero and in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, both. That's what our zazen is about. It's about zero and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. If it's just zero, that's what people call enlightenment. Zero. And 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 is activity or delusion. So if you say zero, then you're anticipating enlightenment. Well, you're stuck in enlightenment. So, you know, we don't get stuck in enlightenment. We walk off the pole into complications.

[36:38]

So, the complications are what is important. Complications and problems are very important. So, it's necessary for us to have all these complications. That's our realm, the realm of complications and problems. And if you sit here long enough, you know that pretty well. It's nothing but complications and problems. Where's the zero? I don't see any zero, I only see these complications and problems. So although there's zero, there's also 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. And how we manifest zero is through the complications and problems. Just when you're on one, just be on one.

[37:41]

Now sometimes the Doan When we do service, I walk around and offer the incense and bow and so forth, and a well-trained Doan will wait, and at exactly the right moment will pick up the bell and go, boom, and have a nice, beautiful sound that flows through the Zen door, without any anticipation or even thinking. but someone new who doesn't have the kind of confidence or weight there that's the leader all the way through, you know, and then at the last moment we go, boom, but at the wrong time because of all that anticipation and nervousness. So to train yourself in that way is

[38:46]

to just be there. To be able to wait is not waiting for something. Patience is to be concentrated on just this moment, without having to do anything, and the next moment without having to do anything, and the next moment, but concentrated and ready. And at just the right time, you pick up And we should have that same kind of feeling in our zazen. You don't anticipate the bell. If you anticipate the bell, you're already lost. So patience is just to be up to the very last moment, the very last moment, without anxiety or anticipation. Yes?

[39:58]

Is there any event like enlightenment, like we've heard about from patriarchs, buddhists in the past? Sure. It's brought about through completely merging with your activity. When you hear the word enlightenment, you laugh at it. When we have enlightenment, we see ourself just in a very humble way.

[41:05]

You may think, now I know the answer to the universe. But if you're 54 years old, you see yourself as a 54-year-old person who has some good qualities and some bad qualities. The first glance that you have in the mirror is the true one. Usually, when we look in the mirror, we have a first glance and then a second glance. The first glance is the one that reveals ourself, and then the second glance is the one where our mind improves on the image. So, to be able to believe the first glance, to believe what you see at the first glance, is a kind of enlightenment experience.

[42:19]

And we can say, that's me. Thank you for watching.

[43:14]

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