no matter what happens, to not lose composure. So it's important when we assume our zazen position to make ourselves as balanced which makes it easier to maintain composure. It's very difficult to maintain composure if we're unbalanced. So our effort in zazen is first to find our balance, find our center, and balance all parts of our body and mind. around that center.

[01:03]

And Japanese call it Hara or Tanden. I talked about it yesterday and we already know about it, so I'm not telling you something new. We need to always refresh our understanding So it's important when we get into our position to establish ourself on the center. And of course, everyone's body is a little different. And so when we say, do it this way and do it that way, someone may say, well, my body is different, or I can't quite do it that way.

[02:05]

Generally, our bodies are built somewhat the same. And then, whatever we say about how to sit, then you have to find the variant which suits you, according to your body's disposition. but it's usually not so radically different. One body's not that radically different than another. So I always ask people to move the lower abdomen, push your back, lower back forward so that your abdomen is pushed forward, and then you lift your sternum. and keep your head on top of the spine.

[03:09]

To maintain this kind of balance throughout zazen is very important because we get certain tensions in our body. The legs start to hurt, or the back starts to hurt, and then we compensate by moving one way or another in order to relieve the tension. then we have a posture which is built on compensation. So it's important to maintain, if you can, a balanced posture even if it hurts. I hate to say this. People will give me various arguments against this, Whenever we take up a physical endeavor, it puts some strain on our body.

[04:16]

The body is like one piece of cloth. If you pull on one corner, all the other corners in the middle are affected. If we sit up straight and pay attention to the posture of keeping the head on top of the spine, the sternum lifted and the lower back stretched forward, it will put a strain on some other parts of your body until your body gets used to sitting balanced, in a balanced way. And if we give up before we can do that, then we're always sitting in a way that is compensating. So you don't last as long. It's harder. We can sit for long periods of time without too much difficulty when we really, all the parts of our body are well balanced and harmonized.

[05:24]

So in the beginning, it may be more difficult, but in the long run, it's easier. And if you give up before you achieve a well-balanced posture, then you don't feel so good about zazen. And it's easy to take a different way out. So I urge you, to see your way through the difficulties, but to keep the well-balanced body in mind as the goal, so that you're not leaning forward or back or from side to side. And you're always thinking about this balance, always thinking about how to, is this right?

[06:33]

Is this right? Is this right? Moment after moment, what is the right balance? How do you balance this collection of bones perfectly? How do you keep it perfectly poised and composed so that the energy is running effortlessly? It takes effort to get to this point. But when this point is reached, it's effortless. It's a matter of using the least amount of energy to do the most work. But before you get to that point, it takes a lot of effort, a lot of work. But it's worth it. You have to work really hard

[07:34]

to get to the point where it doesn't take so much effort to do so much because you're not working against yourself. All the parts are working together, supporting each other. And this is how we apply zazen to our daily life. The thing that makes us happiest is harmonizing all the parts of our surroundings until it becomes effortless. Even though there may be some pain here and there. If you have any questions about Zazen, please, I'd like to discuss any questions you might have.

[08:50]

Is there any feeling of feeling also up to here? No. No, you don't even know that this exists. You don't feel. anything here at all. Just the abdomen rises and falls, but you don't feel that breath is coming or going. Being a nurse and knowing that the lungs are actually here. Yeah, the lungs, right. That's right. So the lungs actually are here, right? But the feeling is here. Yeah, but they also go out. They do. It's not that they're not working. I'm not saying that your lungs are not working when you're breathing.

[09:52]

But you don't feel the breath in your lungs. That's not where you feel it. What happens is your lungs do expand and your diaphragm goes down and it spreads out here. So deep breathing is through the lungs. But the feeling is here. So actually you're filling out the bottom of the lungs and it's extending the pressure through your body. And the way you experience it is from here. So yesterday I mentioned that during Zazen, your work is to investigate each part of your body, to make the rounds of your body and check each part of your posture.

[11:06]

Your tongue should be clinging to the roof of your mouth. Teeth together naturally. head on top of the spine. Most people sit with their head a little bit forward. Not everyone, but a lot of people, if I say, put your head on top of your spine, they don't know what I'm talking about. Of course, during lecture, you have to look up to see me. In zazen, even though your head is on top of your spine, you're not looking up. Sort of down, so that you rotate your head down.

[12:13]

Otherwise, you go like this, not like this. So I said, feel the collar on the back of your neck. If you feel the collar on the back of your neck, that's an indication that your head is on top of your spine. If you don't feel a collar, it means that your head is forward. So, if you feel a collar on the back of your neck, you know that your head is on top of your spine. So you feel that you're stretching. The spine is stretching. Last night I was reading Uchiyama Roshi's little talk on Zazen and he was saying that moment by moment we keep coming back 84 billion times to the fact of waking up to Zazen, waking up to reality.

[13:43]

Our mind is continually excreting mental juices. And our mind is overly active and constantly excreting juices. It's natural for the mind to do that. And it comes out in the form of random thoughts. And we take the random thoughts sometimes rather seriously. We get caught by them. And we let go, come back to waking up to reality, which is just seeing the wall, just our being, our pure existence. I didn't think of a lot to say today because I thought that you might have some questions.

[15:01]

Yes? In the mudra, do you physically hold the hands up or do they actually rest? Well, with the mudra, there are variations on how to hold the hands. Some people say that to hold the hands up like this, up here by your abdomen. But I was always taught to let the hands rest on your heel. If your heel is up here, you let your hand not rest, but just touch the heel of your foot or your thighs. but not to lean on it. It's not resting. It's just at this place. It's not like leaning on it or taking it as a convenient resting place, but just at this spot.

[16:14]

Then your shoulders, it's easier to let your shoulders relax. If you're holding your hands up like this, you can learn to relax your shoulders, but it's more tension, because you're actually lifting something. I think that holding your hands down here allows tenseness in your upper back and shoulders to drop. There's something, too, when you hold it up here, as soon as you lift your hands, then it puts some pressure on your lower back. If you're holding your hands like this, and you lift them up, you just feel that subtle pressure on your lower back. It shifts the energy to, or it shifts some subtle pressure to your lower back. It actually helps you to hold your back straight. But anyway, there's some variation from here to there.

[17:21]

But you should keep your elbows free from your body. When you're holding your hands down here, then your elbows tend to come in closer to your body. And we should be careful not to clutch. This is a kind of way of tensing, just to clutch your body with your elbows. So you should leave your elbows free from your body, so you don't get stuck with tenseness. There's nothing to hold on to. But when we get in a difficult position, difficult place, we want something to hang on to. So what we hang on to is ourself. And we can start clutching ourself with our elbows, or we can start clutching the muscles up here. We start tensing up the muscles of our shoulders as a way of hanging on to something. Because you know when you get into difficulty, you start grinding your teeth, or your shoulders start going like this.

[18:31]

So this is probably the major symptom we have. So during Zazen, you should keep making this conscious effort to let go of that tenseness. That should be one of the major things that that you're aware of is this tenseness that gets up into your shoulders and back. And just say, let go. Let go. And just feel the tenseness draining out. And as the tenseness drains out, you feel that your shoulders are becoming puffy or formless. You don't know where the boundaries of your shoulders are. And the same with your legs. When you start getting a lot of pain in your legs, the reaction is to tense. You know, if somebody hits you in the stomach, you want to go like this.

[19:39]

So, the reaction when you have some pain is to tense around the area where you get the pain. So, zazen is just the opposite. You have to have the opposite conscious response, which is instead of tensing up or hanging on, to open up. So, if something hits you, you catch it, you open up and let it go through, rather than rejecting it. And this takes some conscious doing, consciously opening and letting whatever it is pass or be there. Yes? You said you don't feel your breathing in your chest, but at the same time,

[20:45]

You're not trying to control your breathing. You're trying to let go. So sometimes you do feel. Well, you know, I'm not telling you how you should feel something. If you feel something, feel it. But when your breath is natural, which means deep and uncontrolled, then you usually don't feel it up here. I find sometimes it takes a while before it gets down there. So first I feel it in the chest and then... For me it's always there. So I don't know how it is for you, you know, it's like that. For me, my breath is always here. And controlling your breath, actually, is to breathe up here. This is actually controlled breathing. is when you're breathing in your chest, because that means that your breath is under the control of something.

[21:51]

It's under the control of your mind or under the control of some emotion or fear or something. But if you just let your breath be free and uncontrolled by anything, then it's just going to come down to here. I'm not saying that you shouldn't feel what you feel, but When your breath is free, you really don't feel it in your chest, unless you're running. If you're running, then of course it's quite different, because the breath is coming more quickly. But when quiet breathing, zazen, it's when your breath is at its most quiet. It might be nice now or sometime to hear more about posture for other activities.

[22:56]

Like when we do prostrations. Good idea. Yeah. Well, when we do prostrations, if you know, It looks like we're going this way when we do prostrations. And if you just go that way, it's very hard to keep your balance. So in order to keep your balance, you should go straight down. The Doans really don't know when I'm going to bow. The Doans said, we never know when you're going to bow, because you just kind of sink into the floor. You just kind of disappear into the floor. If you just go straight down until you get to your knees, then you keep your balance. If you lean forward, then you throw yourself off balance.

[23:59]

So you come down, and then you bow, and then you sit up, and then you stand up. The Muslims do something like this too. They have a certain, when they bow, they have a certain Every position has a name. For instance, I can't remember the various positions they have, and they also equate that with good health. It's not on mine, but I wonder about that. Do you touch one knee before the other? Well, it says in the book that you're supposed to touch one knee first. You go straight down, and then one knee, I can't remember whether it's your right knee or your left knee, touches first.

[25:00]

But I think that's the rather technicality. I sometimes touch both knees and then sometimes it's one knee, which is just a little bit ahead of the other. I don't think it makes any difference. The main thing is to go down and touch your knees. It's like landing an airplane. You try to do it without going... If you can land this airplane without making any noise, any sound, If I was an airplane pilot, whenever I landed in my airplane, I would always try to, whenever I landed, to see if I could do it without making any sound. I think for some of us we have a lot of difficulty in the lower back. Well, it would seem to me that if you did have a problem with your back, the easiest way is to go down straight because you're not using your back.

[26:31]

You're not putting strain on your back. You see, it's just like dropping. You're not putting a strain on your body at all. But you see what I'm saying is that it seems as if the curvature being this way. During Zazen? during Zazen is perhaps closing the vertebrae, which might be aggravating the patient. Could be, yeah. So in that case, if you have that kind of problem, then you should sit with your back more straight. Right. So that's the variant. The variant is that this is not right for me, so I'll do it this way. Yeah. So in Zazen, You know, ideally, you sit this way, but for some people, you sit this way. It's all right.

[27:35]

It's also when you sit cross-legged, it's easier for the back than when you sit... It stays up. What is it called? It stays up. It's part of your lower back. It stays up. Probably so. What about the neck? For instance, in trying to accomplish the lifting up, you're using the neck muscles. Well, yeah, you're stretching the neck. actually. But it's not necessary to sit in that extreme of posture. Ideally, you can attach a string to your head, from your head to the ceiling, and you're hanging from your head. And if you do that, then you can feel what that feels like. except that you're really doing stretching, but you know, if you have a puppet and you put a string to the crown of the head and hold it, then all the parts fall in a certain way, straight down, and the neck is stretched.

[28:51]

Maybe you could call this the hang man. But you can see what that feels like, just as if you were hanging. And that's a very tricky area around the neck and the chin and that whole thing because you can get... I never ask people to actually do that because they get in all kinds of funny postures around the chin, you know, trying to go... People get choked and give up. So I usually say, keep your head on top of your spine. That's hard enough to do. The conception of that is really difficult for people. Keep your head on top of your spine. If you can do that, that's pretty good.

[29:54]

Very good. Then once your head is on top of your spine, balanced on top of your spine, your head is like a big stone, 16 pounds or something, I don't know what it weighs. It's heavy. And so if it's over here, then it's going to put a strain on your body to hold it up. And if it's over here, it's going to put a strain some other place. And if it's like this, which is the way people tend to sit a lot, and it puts this big strain on your shoulders, back, your legs, your toes, it goes all the way through your body, compensating. So if you keep your head on top of your spine and balance it, then no strain. Take the strain off your body. Do yourself a favor. Keep your head on top, and how do you do that, you know? How do I keep my head balanced on top of the spine? And if you can do that, all the rest of your posture will come together.

[30:56]

And then you start to get sleepy, and you start thinking. But you know where to put the hand. You know where it goes. And lift up the sternum. Yes, wake up, wake up. Sit up straight. Balance, balance, balance. Lightness, lightness, lightness. We get heavier and heavier. But we should be getting lighter. And the way to get lighter is by balancing. If you're feeling really heavy, the way to get light is to balance. Take the strain off yourself. Because heaviness usually comes from compensation. Something is out of line.

[32:07]

So then we start feeling heavy because the rest of our body is trying to compensate. So, If you keep balancing all parts of your body and harmonizing them, then you're doing yourself a favor. Be kind to yourself. And then you just let the breath come and go. This part down here, where your breathing is, is called rice paddies. Japanese call it rice paddies. We have a lot of rice in Japan. I think it's because it's

[33:11]

Warm feeling. Familiar feeling of the Earth. Yeah. Yesterday you said that you would say something today more about being breathed. About what? Being breathed. Being breathed. Right. I know that I ended up saying tomorrow I'll do something. I couldn't remember what it was. Being breathed. Well, as I said, we always look at things from the point of view of ourself. And it's really hard to tell what we are about as long as we're always viewing everything from the point of view of ourself. So from the point of view of ourself, I eat, I breathe, I move. I see, I hear, and so forth.

[34:20]

So in zazen, we take away, or we get out of the personal point of view, and we can realize that I am breathed, hearing, hears. In Zazen you don't say, I hear sounds. You just let hearing hear sounds. You just let seeing see. We say, keep your eyes open during Zazen. Your eyes should be open during Zazen, but you don't see. Something is seen. Whatever is in front of the eyes is seen through the eyes. But you don't say, I see the wall. You don't say, I hear the airplane.

[35:23]

Something is heard. Something is seen. Something is felt. If you say, my legs hurt, then you've acquired something. So there are just painful legs sitting on a black cushion. Then, whatever it is, you can accept without judgment. But as soon as you say, my painful legs, then you have to judge from the point of view of my or me. So in zazen we have to get beyond me and mine. Otherwise we miss the point. So it's quite logical to realize that life is lived through this form.

[36:32]

It also feels logical to say, this is my form. But actually, we can't claim it. We can only cooperate with it. So there's the ability to think and move and act. As I said yesterday, breathing is not a voluntary act, although it can be affected by thought and feeling and emotion. Breathing is definitely affected by thought, feeling and emotion. But fundamentally, it comes and goes involuntarily.

[37:43]

And if you think about breathing, it does, even though we watch the lower abdomen when we breathe in zazen, the fact is that it does come in through the nose. From where? If you just think about all of us for a moment, and think about all of us breathing. Kind of like a cartoon, you know, where the words are encased in a little envelope and then goes into the mouth. Here we have the breath. Each one of us is breathing this same breath. the same atmosphere, the same air. There's one big volume of air, and it's delineated by the walls of this room at the moment.

[38:50]

And each one of us is, I say, breathing. Actually, the lungs are breathing the air. We are not breathing, but we think. I am breathing because we're always thinking from the point of view of ourself. We're always thinking from the point of view of me and mine. So we say, I'm breathing. But actually, lungs are breathing. You really have very little to do with it. You have something to do with how it happens. Or not how it happens. It has something to do with the temperament of your of the body. We co-operate. So I said yesterday that life is lived through us. Breathing breathes us. But that's a little bit dualistic.

[39:56]

One side of the duality is I am breathing. That's one side of the duality. The other side of the duality is breath or life is breathing me. That's a good way to look at it, but it's also the other side of the duality. Actually, further and say, there is no life and no I. That's another point of view. So there are many points of view. You can say, I am breathing. You can say, life is breathing me. You can say, life is breathing itself. You can say, there is no I, there's only life. You can say, there's no life, there's only I. You can say, there's neither life nor I. And you can say, there's both life and I. And any one of those points of view is correct point of view.

[41:04]

And all of them are wrong. Yes? Still, it seems that there is a request to become conscious. A what? A request to become conscious, so that maybe I can say I experience life through this form. Where does this request come from? Yes, where does this request come from? That's what it is. Where does this request come from? That's a koan. That is a koan. Where does this request come from? What is this request? Or who requests? But if you uncover, you take off the skin, you take off the covering, you can see how everything works together.

[42:25]

Also, when you stop thinking about it, then you can just experience it. You can just be it. But it's pretty hard to think it and be it at the same time. That's why in Zazen, you let go of your thinking mind and just be it. Yes. It seems related to what I was just thinking about when you said there's no I in breathing, yet at the same time Suzuki says that the big mind recognizes that everything is within itself, so that's just a different I that we're talking about. No. This little mind is the expression of big mind. Each one of our little minds is an expression of a big mind.

[43:44]

But a little mind tends to see itself independently. This is the seventh consciousness, where a little mind tends to see itself independent, too independent, too much independence. So in Zazen, are we basically trying to connect with the Big Mind? Yes. And then Little Mind is included in it? Right, Little Mind is included in Big Mind. But we're trying to more be connected with Big Mind. Yeah. Not connected, because connected means that they're two things, right? Right. So, maybe avoid the word connected. Just resume, or be. Yeah. When I'm in the middle of pain, it's still very hard for me to say that this is not my pain.

[44:51]

Right. What did you mean when you said that they're saying you are? Would you ever judge them? Weren't you? pain because how could it be anybody else's pain? No. It's not anybody else's pain. It's just this pain. It's just this pain. going beyond pain, or experiences of breaking through pain? Say something about going through that. Well, one thing that Buddha said, supposed to have said, is life is suffering.

[46:01]

And he said, I can show you the way to deal with suffering. He didn't say, I will show you the way to get out of pain. Pain is a fact of life. Pain is a necessary element in life. So pleasure is another necessary element in life. But all the elements in life are life itself. And we prefer some over others. And pleasure is one of the elements And pain is one of the elements.

[47:06]

But our preference runs toward pleasure. In order to have pleasure, we run away from pain, because we don't like it. But no matter how much we run away from it, we always have it. And when we run away from it, it's called suffering. This is the judgment. my pain is suffering. So there are two things that arise. One is a sense of self, and another is a sense of suffering. And self and suffering are two sides of one word. Self and suffering are two meanings of one word. So the pain is just pain.

[48:10]

It's often associated with suffering, but not necessarily. Because we associate it with suffering, we say pain is suffering. But you have to be careful that we don't just lump everything together, which is our tendency. Pain is pain, and suffering is suffering, and they're not necessarily the same. But pain is associated with suffering. And in order to disassociate pain from suffering, we don't say, this is my pain. We can say that, and we do say it. And even in zazen, we say, oh, my legs hurt. But if you want to go beyond this self, you just have to let pain be pain, without it being suffering. As soon as we say, I don't like this, then we've created a self which doesn't like it.

[49:24]

So self is self-created. You don't have to create one. You don't have to create a self like that. But we do. We say, I don't like it. I can't bear it. That's creating a self, which makes a duality out of pain. The way it makes a duality out of pain is that you desire pleasure. You cut pain in half. You cut the cat in half. And one side is pain, the other side is pleasure. Which one do you want? You have to, as Dogen says, cut the cat in one.

[50:29]

Can you cut the cat in one? piece are, there's some painful legs sitting in the cushion. As soon as I say, I don't like it, I cut the cat in two. So when you have an experience of breaking through the pain, wanting yourself into a pleasurable psychedelic experience. No. When you have a breakthrough in Zazen, it's when you stop cutting the cat in two. That's the breakthrough. That's enlightenment. You just stop cutting the cat in two. And then you can be with whatever is there.

[51:32]

But as soon as you create an opposite, then you've cut the cat in two. And it's very easy to create an opposite. It's not easy to maintain your center. The center is whole. When I'm talking about being centered, I mean to be one. Yes? I had an interesting experience this morning. Sometimes my eyebrows start to itch very strongly. And this morning, I started to feel that way. But maybe because I'm more centered than I usually am, they didn't itch. And I could feel, I could feel where they would start to itch, and then they would stop itching. And I'd start itching and stop itching. You could tell at that moment? Huh?

[52:34]

You could tell the moment when that started? Oh, yeah. You didn't have to do something about it. It's just something that happened. Right? Yeah. You said yesterday we're a dead body being lived for life. Way of talking. Yes. Could you say something about how you Dead body means not much personal desire, right? And when you don't have a lot of personal desire, then you have a lot of freedom.

[53:35]

We have to have some desire. We have to be careful not to be attached to words. Most of the words that I say, you should forget. The words point to something, right? And the less personal desire you have, the more free you are to do whatever is in front of you. And to harmonize with what's around you. And open your eyes. The more desire we have, the more we want, the more we close down to what's around us. And the more we ignore the subtlety of life around us, because we get, our mind becomes fixed on something. So, if you come to Tassajara, and your mind becomes fixed on something, but you fall in love, or you

[54:50]

something too much or you have some big desire, everything changes and you start to close down to what's around you. But if you have no desire, you know, just open, then the whole world opens up to you because you're not attached to it. And you just, everything comes your way. The reason why everything comes your way is because you're not expecting anything and everything in life has the same quality. When you're not expecting anything, everything in life has the same quality. It's all equal. But when you're expecting something, this has tremendous quality. Everything else is dead, meaningless, hierarchically evaluated. As soon as we have an object of desire, then everything else takes its place hierarchically around that object.

[55:58]

But when we don't have a special focus, everything's equal. Whatever we do, we can enter into. And the reason is that, of course, everything is myself. No problem. And then whatever comes along, we can enjoy. It doesn't matter what it is. But if we have a special desire or a special focus, some parts of the world look good to us and other parts don't look so good. So the main thing in this practice is to keep yourself open and don't get attached to anything. Don't get focused on something. Don't get some idea. Just stay open and ready to do anything. Just a minute. When we used to come to Tassajara in the old days, nobody knew what their position was going to be.

[57:10]

After Tangharaya, we would read all the positions, and everybody would find out what they were doing. But nobody knew beforehand what they were going to do. It was very nice, because whatever was handed to you, you had to do something with. You didn't know what it was going to be. You just had to be open, receptive, without any special idea. You also said yesterday It's kind of easy for me to get confused between just completely sensitive and getting carried away with everything. Well, I kind of know what you mean. Carried away with everything? Yeah, the pain. Well, yeah. Just getting carried away rather than staying open all the time. It's sort of like getting trapped. Getting carried away and trapped in one thing. Yeah, don't do that. That's the teaching of everything.

[58:22]

That's what everything is teaching you. Don't get trapped in this. Our pain is turning into suffering.

[58:32]

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