Today I want to talk about breathing in conjunction with the fourth foundation of mindfulness, which is the observation of mind objects or dharmas, the mind objects in the mind objects. or the dharmas in the dharmas. In the Satipatthana Sutta, at the end of each exposition or the end of each exercise, if you want to call it that, the sutra says something like, the monk or practitioner raises awareness or observation just to the extent of bringing the object into view in order to examine it and is free of everything in the world.

[01:28]

or is not attached to anything in the world. And this bringing any object into view, mind object into view, is to examine it just to the extent of bringing it into view and seeing it as it is. It's not the kind of investigation in which you bring a psychological problem to mind, and then research it in your mind, or try to look for all the reasons why it arises, or try to figure it out. It's bare attention, and to see something just as it is right now, and see how it changes and how it disappears, and how some other mind object appears, is sustained, changes, and disappears.

[02:44]

It's not even necessary to name anything. Sometimes people do this in meditation. I don't know whether it's okay or not, But it's not necessary even to name anything, because you know something. Sometimes when you name something, you change its character. If we give something a name, then we say, oh, I know what that is. But if we don't name something and just see it, even though we may not know exactly what it is. We know, I don't know exactly what it is. But when you name it, you think, oh, I know what that is. Because you've given it a name. And each one of us has a name. And we say, oh, that's Jack, I know who he is.

[03:51]

Or that's Mary, I know who she is. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we know who Jack is or who Mary is. But we kind of can rest in the name. So I don't say that names are not important. They are important, but it's not necessary to name something to know it. We can observe. and just be with whatever it is that comes up. And this certainly goes, we certainly understand this when we sit zazen and we have some feeling that comes up.

[04:54]

And if we name it, then the next step is to conceptualize it in some way and carry it a little bit further. So first we have a feeling, then we name the feeling, like I feel hurt, and then I feel angry, I feel rage, I feel furious, when really all you have is there is just some feeling. So, to just allow a feeling to arise and be the feeling. Let it be, let it arise, let it transform, let it disappear.

[06:02]

This kind of observation is to not just look at something, but to be one with it. When the Sutra talks about mind objects in the mind objects, it doesn't say to observe objects. It says to observe objects of the mind in objects of the mind. Not observe objects, because to observe objects is to make objects. To observe the objects of the mind in the objects of the mind is to realize the objects of the mind as the mind. This is the realm of non-duality, which I was talking about previously. To just observe objects as objects creates a world of objects around a subject, which strengthens

[07:25]

the hold of the seventh consciousness that I was talking about yesterday, the ego. So, the purpose of zazen or Buddhist meditation is to remove the barrier between mind and the objects of mind. Let me read you a little bit from the sutra about the last four meditation, the last four methods concerning the fourth foundation, which is observing mind objects in the mind objects, in the objects of mind.

[08:35]

Objects of mind in the objects of mind. The 13th breathing method sheds light on the ever-changing impermanent nature of all that exists. So, this is to shed light on impermanence. To what? To see everything as impermanent. Everything that arises and be aware of the impermanence of everything that arises. All mind objects. the psychological, the physiological, and the physical. Breathing itself is also impermanent. The fact of impermanence is very important because it opens the way for us to see the interrelated, interconditioned nature, as well as the selfless nature. Nothing has a separate, independent self of all that exists. This is Thich Nhat Hanh's commentary. The 14th method allows us to see that every dharma is already in the process of disintegrating or fading, even as it's arising, so that we are no longer possessed by the idea of holding on to any dharma as a separate entity, even the physiological and psychological elements in ourselves.

[10:01]

The 15th allows us to arrive at the awareness of a great joy, the joy of emancipation, by freeing us from the intention to catch, hold, or grasp any dharma. The 16th method illuminates for us what it is to let go of ourselves. To give up all the burdens of our ignorance and our grasping, to be able to let go is already to have arrived at liberation. So, the 16 methods are kind of progressive, seemingly progressive, or put into a progressive order to establish the foundation and to finally arrive at complete liberation, freedom from everything, which includes everything.

[11:04]

Sometimes it's a little confusing because we feel that in order to be, that if we're free of everything, that we don't exist. But actually, To be free of everything means to have everything. Everything is already our own. In the precept of not stealing, the real deep meaning of not stealing means there's nothing you can steal because everything is already yours. but we have to steal because we think that something doesn't belong to us.

[12:08]

It's interesting to watch our life, when we watch our life go by, so to speak. Our life is always arising And at the same time, it's always disappearing. And when we look at or observe the feelings, the mind, and the objects of mind, we're observing how our life arises, how it abides, how it changes and disappears. Sometimes people say, what is the best period of your life? Sometimes we look at children and say, well, he was a good boy when he was four years old, or I liked it when she was seven or 11 or something like that.

[13:32]

That was the best period of time. But actually, there's no such thing as the best time or the worst time. Every period of our life, every moment of our life is a transformation. If we can really see our life, every moment of our life as a transformation of life itself, we can really enjoy our life. That's what the Sutra is telling us. Baby's life is wonderful. Adolescent's life is wonderful. Teenager's life is wonderful. Old person's life can be wonderful. Buddha tells us, or in Buddhism, one of the characteristics of suffering is old age.

[14:45]

But I'm sure that's true. We can also enjoy old age if we let go of everything and just give ourselves up to life. I think that's what we all want. We all want to just continue living. This problem of birth and death is a big problem for all of us. This is the fundamental problem. The problem of birth and death. We can study the problem of birth and death.

[15:52]

Actually, in meditation, or zazen, is studying the problem of birth and death. It's the fundamental problem of our life. So this is an investigation, studying the problem of birth and death. What is it? How did I get here? And what's going to happen when I'm not here? And how come I'm not going to be here sometime? And how am I going to handle that? It's a big problem. In zazen, we don't worry about it.

[16:58]

Did you ever notice that? We worry about a lot of things. But usually we don't worry about that. We're too busy living. We're too busy living and dying to worry about it. In zazen, we're just completely immersed. in birth and death, moment by moment. Who are we that is alive or dead? Who's alive and who's dead? And when? You know, we say the five skandhas, form, feelings, conceptions, mental formations, mental formations are all the dharmas, mind, objects of mind, and consciousness.

[18:12]

These five streams are all flowing together and someone says, this is me, but it's always changing. And if you look at the form, if you observe the form in the form, you can see how the form is constantly arising, constant abiding, changing, disappearing. Appearing, abiding, changing, disappearing. The feelings, rising, abiding, changing, disappearing. The mind, rising, abiding, changing, disappearing. Over and over, moment by moment, birth and death, birth and death. And who is it that dies and is born? When we realize who is it that dies and is born,

[19:23]

We can enjoy life as it changes. Change becomes enjoyment. We can settle on change rather than trying to make our life permanent in some strange way. This is necessary for us, especially when we get old. We don't think about it so much when we're younger. We do think about it, but it doesn't come up so much. But as we get older, as you know, up to about 50, you think it's going on forever. Then after 50, you realize it's starting to go the other way.

[20:25]

But, and you really have to figure it out. You really have to come to terms with what's really going on. So this meditation, or the fourth foundation of mindfulness, is very important. This is where we observe the rising and disappearing of all phenomena, of all the dharmas, and let go. Letting go is the purpose.

[21:36]

Sometimes we say, there's no purpose in sitting. Sazen has no special purpose. But that doesn't mean that there's no reason for it. Our purpose is to let go. Let go of everything and receive everything. So little by little, through our practice, we learn how to do that. Learn how to open, to let everything come and let everything go. And within that process, we can have a joyful life, which is not dependent on circumstances. not dependent on whether we're poor or wealthy, or sick or well, or have or don't have, old or young.

[22:56]

Every moment of our life is a good time. And good if we can live our life all the way up to the end. Completely. You know, there's an interesting subtlety in our practice. If you come into the zendo five minutes before the bell's going to ring to end zazen, you should take your seat just as if you were going to sit zazen, a period of zazen. Sometimes we come into the zendo, if you do, five minutes before the end of the bell, and maybe stand in front of your seat. I'll wait until the bell rings because, you know, it's only a minute until the bell rings.

[24:01]

No. Take your seat and adjust your robes. Take your posture and then the bell rings and you get up and stand up. This is like living something out completely to the end. Whatever you're doing, to see it through completely to the end. When this morning I said Zen practice is mostly just a strong spirit, and that's very true. It means there's no real technique in Zen practice.

[25:08]

We may think that cross-legged sitting is some kind of technique. Everything has a technique, or there's a way of doing everything. You know, there's a way of walking and a way of sitting and a way of eating. We don't call them techniques exactly. Sitting cross-legged has a certain procedure. But Zen practice is not any technique. It's just manifesting our spirit to live our life fully and completely, moment by moment. or living this life. I don't know about our life. We say our life, but our life is this life. Later, in a few hours,

[26:09]

will all be going in different directions. Some people will stay here. Some people will go across the country. Some people will go to Europe. And each one of us will have to do something. How do we extend this practice into that situation? Very If we can't do that, I don't know, but we should be able to do that. We really should be able to do that. The Sutra, this Sutra on the full awareness of breathing, gives us some very valuable not techniques, but procedures, a way to observe our life in reality and extend our practice.

[27:19]

You can, whatever we're doing, we should be able to come back to our breathing. It's very simple, very simple way to come back to know what we're doing. This part of our body right here is called the solar plexus. It's a kind of planetary plan, planetary design. The sun is right here, and all of the satellites revolve around it. So we say this is the center of our body, right here, the solar plexus. And it's also where our breathing is, where we feel our breathing. Our breathing is in our lungs, right? But we feel when our breathing is deep, we feel our breathing here. So our breath and our center is here at the same time.

[28:30]

So if we keep coming back to centering and breathing at the same time, we'll always know where we are. We always have that reminder of practice. when we're driving, or walking, or working, sitting down, to be aware of our posture, how our body parts take their place around this sun, around this center, is how we practice. When walking, if you keep your mind here, your attention, you can get some real sense of how the whole body works together with its objects, with its environment. And we keep coming back to that over and over again.

[29:32]

You have a sense of practicing zazen in your activity. There are many other ways to understand our practice, but this is the fundamental, simple way. You don't need any books. You don't even think very much. Just keep coming back. And it's a wonderful feeling to have awareness of the breath in all of your activities. You just feel grounded, and it also calms the mind. The mind settles. And you can observe the body and the body, the breath and the breath, the mind and the breath and the body, all as one, and the feelings and the mind and the mind objects.

[30:39]

And the way that it's expressed, when you have this settled feeling in body and mind, then it's expressed as metta. Metta is our desire for harmony and unity. And when we have harmony and unity within ourselves, then our desire is to extend that everywhere. And the extension is metta. So that's what we've been studying. That's been the subject of our practice period, metta. But we study it in many ways.

[31:51]

and we express it in many ways. But metta is the expression of no-self and the expression of letting go and freedom. We say wisdom and compassion are the two sides of Buddha. Wisdom is to be able to see everything clearly and completely with a non-conditioned eye, the eye of clarity. And compassion is its expression. Compassion or metta is the expression of prajna or wisdom.

[33:01]

It's just natural expression. So wisdom and compassion or wisdom and metta go together as the two sides of Buddha, Buddha nature. One is to see with Akam's razor. Akam's razor is the one that cuts with the completely unerring eye and sees truth as it is. And when we see that truth as it is, we express it as metta. So the two work together.

[34:06]

It's like wisdom and love have to balance each other. If there's too much wisdom, wisdom becomes overbearing. it can easily turn into conceit and cunning and power. So it needs love in order to temper it. And love is very innocent. and can just be led around by whatever comes along, attaches itself to any interesting fly, and just takes a ride, and we find ourselves in all kinds of trouble.

[35:16]

So it needs wisdom to guide it. Wisdom says, don't go that way, go this way. No, no, no, this way. No, not that way, this way. And wisdom, you know, wants to set itself up and loves to get off that pedestal. So always keeping this balance between these two sides of our nature. This is our contribution to the world. I don't know what time we're supposed to stop.

[36:36]

Do you have anything that you'd like to say or talk about or questions? If you want to say something again, yeah. that you want to be like, and you want to support that spiritual growth, support it in front of you in this present moment, in which you have so much spiritual abundance in your heart, in your mind, and you have to come to the right goal, the right action. Yeah. See, there are two things, another two sides.

[37:48]

One side is to see, now if you watch your breath, you really see that it's not your breath. This is just the universe working. When you see birth, it's not your birth, it's just the universe working. baby just comes out. But on the other hand, there's somebody here, and the somebody directs this body, thinks, and acts in some way. Somebody has to think correctly and has to act correctly in some way. We all want to act correctly, but we don't always know how to act correctly. How do we act?

[38:50]

You know, what are we supposed to do now that we're here? What is this person supposed to do now that it thinks it's a person in this place that is You know, even though I'm here, you know, and I feel like I'm a person, everything around me is going on and changing. And I'm changing too. And I'm appearing and disappearing. And everything is appearing and disappearing in this kind of magic show. And what am I supposed to do about it? Well, you know, maybe we have somebody, this somebody has to cooperate with what it is.

[39:54]

First we have to find out what it is, and then we know what to do with it, about it. Even though it's not me. It is me. It is me, it's not me. What is it? It's kind of me and yet it's kind of not me. Where is the division? Where is the division between me and not me? And where is the division between all this stuff that's happening and my ability to do anything? Master Rinzai is quoted as saying, I am the master of the world. Everything goes according to the way I want it to go.

[40:57]

The whole world does exactly what I want it to do. Why does everything go exactly the way he wants it to go? He said, I am the master of the world. Everything goes exactly the way I want it to go. Bad things happen to good people? Yeah.

[42:01]

Well, good things happen to bad people too. You know, good and bad are our idea. Good and bad are just an idea. And what's good one moment can be bad the next. You know, candy is really wonderful. You know, so I like it, so I eat it. And then I eat some more and some more, and it's so wonderful. And then a little bit later, God, it's just so terrible. You know, what's good and bad? I mean, there is good and bad, you know, and there is right and wrong. But at the same time, everything is just the way it is.

[43:17]

And it's really hard to accept that everything is just the way it is. If, you know, if we're really attached to good and bad, there is good and bad. And it changes all the time. And sometimes it doesn't change so much. But if we get very attached to good and bad, and then we start suffering, we don't have any freedom. So, You know, there's a word in Buddhism, tatata, or suchness. Tatata, suchness. Everything is just as it is.

[44:28]

And then superimposed over that is, this is good and this is bad, and this is right and this is wrong. And then we pit what we like against what we don't like, and then the wars start. I'm not saying that we shouldn't like it or dislike things, but underneath we have to be able to accept things as they are first. How does one approach things like hunger and depression and those kind of things where a lot of people are suffering?

[45:35]

Right. Okay. There is suffering, you know, through starvation, you know, through natural causes. There's a lot of suffering. What we're talking about is the suffering we cause ourself. Okay? When we say, we're talking about pain and suffering and so forth. In Buddhadharma, we're talking about how we create our own world and our own life. The suffering that we cause ourself through our own actions. If a brick falls on my head, of course I'm going to suffer because it hurts. But the suffering that we cause ourself through our own attachment and lack of understanding about our life, this is the main subject, okay? But it also extends to how you accept, how you understand yourself and the world, in connection with the world, as the world as yourself.

[46:57]

And suffering is also a part of our life. I mean, I'm not saying, you know, Buddha in the sutras, it says, that the purpose of Buddhism is to end suffering. But end suffering, what does that mean? It's how you be with suffering. The whole thing is suffering. This whole life, all the joy and happiness is suffering. This is understanding of Buddhism. Everything is suffering. This is called the world of suffering. But within that suffering, there's joy and happiness and you know, gaiety, music and song, art, happiness. But it's all within this world of suffering. So to get out of suffering,

[48:02]

You know, you can't get out of suffering. We're always in suffering. Everything is suffering. All the time. How you get out of it is to accept it. To be it, to realize it. As long as we're trying to get out of suffering, we never get out of suffering. It's like, how can I get out of my body? Everything's changing. There's nothing permanent. There's nothing to hold on to. And as soon as we start to hold on, it's called suffering. Suffering is just our holding on to what we can't hold on to.

[49:04]

It would be easier for me to understand what is suffering, if I could use instead the word undergo, because how you undergo is real. That's right, undergoing. That's a good word. Suffering is not necessarily the right word. It's one way, it's one expression, right? Yes, if it has so much pain attached to it. Yeah. So, undergoing, I think that's a good word. How we undergo life. Right. But, nevertheless, you see, I think we also have to be able to use that extreme expression.

[50:31]

Another expression is dis-ease, or the inability to settle, the inability to really be comfortable in this world. And one extreme expression of it is suffering. Another expression is undergoing. Yeah. But it's the dis-ease, right? Because there's no place to settle. And if you realize there's no place to settle, even when you're settled, you know that it's not settled. But if you know that, then you're always settled. If you can go with that, then you're always settled. But if you can't go with it, then you always feel unsettled. So, you know, to starve to death is terrible, and it's suffering, and I agree.

[51:45]

But what can you do? Well, what if you can't eat? You know, what is our life about? It's about, from this point of view, it's about how we live our life in a noble way. The Buddha's path is called the noble path, right? It means whatever happens to you, you live it in the noble way. That way, you're not expecting something, you're only living your life completely, no matter what the circumstances.

[52:50]

And this is our offering to life. So, life is living us. We say, I am living my life, but life is living us. Life is being lived through this person. Also, this person is living life. Both is right. So one is how things really are, and the other is the response. What is the response of this non-person person to this life that's living, that's being lived through us? How do we respond to that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[54:02]

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Suffering isn't necessarily what we think of as suffering.

[55:17]

And so, because we think suffering is bad, you know? Suffering is also nirvana. Nirvana is the complete acceptance of suffering. But I liked what you said, that it's our response that creates the suffering. How we respond is what creates the suffering. You know, it's a tricky area to talk about, you know. It's one thing to talk about suffering when we're sitting here, even though our legs may be hurting.

[56:24]

But it's another thing, you know, to be put in some position that's really horrifying. But all we have is our understanding and our way to respond. And one way or another, you know, we have to respond all the time. And some situations are more difficult than others. But the more we understand ourself, who we are, the bigger, the more opportunity we have to have freedom within the difficulties of this life.

[57:42]

So the path is endless. And our understanding and our learning is endless. And we have to understand all over again, moment by moment. Okay. Thank you.

[58:40]

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