Today, we're talking about, Hozan asked me to talk about the four foundations or establishments of mindfulness. And while I was waiting to give the talk, I thought, well, why don't I start practicing the moment-to-moment mindfulness techniques? A very interesting kind of feeling First, a sort of uneasiness in the solar plexus. Then saying judgmentally, anxiety, fear, ooh. Then saying, where are my feet? Oh, I feel my feet. Oh, I can feel the cloth. of my robes all over my body.

[01:01]

I can hear some crows, crows, so my mind goes to crows, crows, starts to go to a story, no, feet, feet. Then pictures, oh, family, no, feet. So I've been having an interesting time of it, doing what the Foundation of Mindfulness Sutras advise us to do. So that I've been kind of recognizing how essential and how core they are to what we do every day and what we do in our sitting. But before talking about them, sutra directly, I just wanted to, I had to, for me, go back and kind of look at the evolution of somehow our practice and how our practice came to be out of those early texts and how they evolved a little bit and some of the definitions so that I could feel more comfortable thinking about it

[02:25]

myself. So in the oldest Buddhist texts, Jhana, D-H-Y-A-N-A in Sanskrit, or Jhana, J-H-A-N-A in Pali is the training of the mind, commonly translated as meditation. In Mahayana Buddhism, meditation was brought to China, at least in our school, by the Bodhidharma, who was considered the founder of the Chan School and taught the wall-sitting practice that we do today. Interesting, the word Chan is actually an abbreviation of another Chinese word, Chana, which is in fact transliteration of the Sanskrit word Jana. So Chan Buddhism is meditation. And in Japan, of course, Chan became Zen, meaning meditation, with the Japanese pronunciation.

[03:30]

So what was this meditation? What was the meditation, how was the meditation described by the Buddha in the Buddhist time? Because this is about, this is where this sutra comes from. So there are a lot of ways that meditation is described in Indian texts. Some of it is calming the mind. Some of it is withdrawing the mind from automatic responses to sense impressions, leading to a state of perfect equanimity and awareness. Another translation of meditation that's preferred by some of our Vipassana teachers is mental cultivation. which implies making an effort to bring in to being certain wholesome qualities of mind through some kind of systemic training. And that's where there's kind of this tension a little bit with how does our practice and the Buddha's practice and the practice the Buddha's recommending, how does that fit with the differences in meditation currently?

[04:49]

So over time, different schools of meditation developed in both India and in other countries where all of these same texts were shared. But in the process, there was a split between some of the Mahayana schools in the northern Asiatic countries and the Theravadan school in Southeast Asia. So I don't want to oversimplify, but basically the... The northern countries, particularly Korea, Japan, and China, focused on the Mahayana Sutras more, and the Theravadan schools focused on the earlier Pali Sutras. And over time, the Chan and Zen schools emphasized Samatha practice, or tranquility practice, and the Theravadans focused on Vipassana, or insight practice. So I wondered, you know, what did the Buddha say?

[05:52]

So in the Pali Canon, the Buddha mentions shamatha and Vipassana meditation practice, but not as separate. The Buddha considered them to be two qualities of mind that both would be developed during meditation, with shamatha being more calm, abiding, which steadies composes, settles the mind, concentrates the mind. And vipassana is insight, which enables us to see or explore or discern more the workings of the skandhas, to look beyond the awareness and the naming to the mechanisms underneath. So a monk, Tanisario Bhikkhu, writes, when the Pali suttas depict the Buddha telling his disciples to go meditate, they never quote him as saying, go do vipassana, but always go do jhana.

[07:05]

And they never equate the word vipassana with any mindfulness techniques. In the few instances where they do mention vipassana, they almost always pair it with shamatha. not as two alternative methods, but as two qualities of mind that a person may gain or be endowed with that should be developed together. In our Japanese tradition, we say that the heart of our practice is Zazen. In Japanese, ZA means seat and Zen means meditation. So Zazen is simply seated meditation. It doesn't say anything about the kind of meditation. In the Fukun Zazengi, Dogen calls our practice, and we've studied this, this practice period, Shikantaza, which is defined variously as just sitting, single pointed concentration, resting in a state of brightly alert attention that is free of thoughts,

[08:14]

directed to no object and attached to no particular content. Suzuki Roshi, and not always so, just simply says Shikantaza is just being yourself, sitting without expectation, without moving in each instant, concentrating on each inhalation, each exhalation. Calmness of mind is beyond the end of your exhalation. but in a recent commentary by Uchiyama Roshi, on Dogen's fascicle on the Makahanyaparamita Sutra, which is called the Manifestation of Great Pranya, he writes that the actual translation of the Japanese word shi kantaze is that shi, means shamatha, or single-pointed concentration or tranquility.

[09:16]

And khan means vipassana or insight. And again, za means sit. He defines tranquility practice as letting go of thought or opening the hand of thought, stopping greed, hate, and an idea of self. And in shi, we see that our thoughts come and go, are impermanent, And our secretions of the brain that we cannot let go and we cannot let go of them. He says to see that these secretions are nothing but secretions are empty of self is con or insight. So. What I'm seeing is that. When the Buddha talked about meditation in his early talks, he talked about both of these, not as separate, but as complementary practices, this shamatha practice of abiding and concentration, and vipassana practice of observing the way that things work.

[10:35]

There's another old sutra that I came across, the sutra of the four ways to arhatship, where Ananda says, using calm abiding insight in one of three ways people attain arhatship. They develop calm abiding mind and then insight. That's one way. The second way is they develop insight and then they evolve. calm abiding mind. And the third way is they developed calm abiding mind and insight in tandem. So the best compromise I found in modern discourse was basically if we practice tranquility meditation, we can develop a strong foundation for the experience of insight. a stable mind can stop thinking, can stop going on.

[11:46]

It can abide in stillness and clarity and it enables us to stay with the breath, to stay with bare awareness and be fully awake. And the more that we do that, the more that we see. We see phenomenon and we see them as objects that can stay and pass away. And if we continue to practice, we begin to see what conditioned existence and the coming and how things arise and cease. And this reforms the basis of right view. So even though there's a lot of If you look through discussions of practicing Vipassana, practicing Samatha practice, it's more a matter of where you start, not a matter of what you include.

[12:52]

And I'm saying this because in this four foundations of four foundations are established in mindfulness. It gives us a lot of instructions, some of which. feel like they're the kind of instructions we're familiar with, that we use all the time in our zazen practice. And some of them feel different. They're asking us to maybe look a little differently or practice a little differently with some of the phenomena that we encounter. So I say this to say that there's no, you can approach it either way. You can approach it from one end or the other. And where we practice our shamatha practice, we focus on the calm, abiding mind, single-pointed concentration. But as Uchiyama pointed out, our shikantaza also includes the insight that comes from this practice.

[14:02]

That brings me to the discussion of the Satipatthana Sutta. So the Satipatthana Sutta is one of the oldest suttas. And the Sanskrit name combines sati, which means mindfulness or remembering, which upathana, which means place of abiding. So. mindfulness and remembering in a place of abiding. And in Chinese, the name is called Nian Chu, where Nian means mindful and Chu means dwelling place or act of establishing oneself or being. For our Vipassana colleagues, this sutra is considered rooted in this particular discourse.

[15:10]

This is a central text. And it's interesting, I was surprised in looking at the book, The Heart of Buddhist Teaching, and finding that it took up 11 pages of his book. And that's in real contrast to, say, a book on Vipassana training. So it shows that where you place this sutta depends on kind of how you view these practices. And it's just very interesting to me. Thich Nhat Hanh has also written a separate book called Transforming and Healing on the Sutra of the Four Establishments of Mindfulness. as well, but in our book it was really not treated in any kind of way that you could really get the feel of it.

[16:10]

So what I want to do now is to kind of move to the sutra itself and give you a sense of what it feels like. So I'm first going to read the first part of the sutra. I heard these words of the Buddha one time and he was living at Kamasadharma, a market town of the Kuru people. Buddha addressed the bhikkhus, oh bhikkhus. And the bhikkhus replied, venerable Lord. The Buddha said bhikkhus. There is a most wonderful way to help living beings realize purification.

[17:13]

Overcome direct grief and sorrow. End pain and anxiety. Travel the right path and realize nirvana. This way is the four establishments of mindfulness. What are the four establishments of mindfulness? Bhikkhus. A practitioner remains established in the observation of the body in the body. diligent, with clear understanding, mindful, having abandoned every craving, every distaste for this life. He remains established in the observation of feelings, in the feelings, diligent, with clear understanding, mindful, having abandoned every craving and every distaste for this life. He remains established in the observation of mind, in the mind, diligent, with clear understanding, mindful, having abandoned every craving, every distaste for life.

[18:15]

He remains established in the observation of the objects of mind, diligent, with clear understanding, mindful, having abandoned every craving and every distaste for this life. Well, this is one of the characteristics of this text. It's repetitious. There's a lot of repetition. It's almost like these are things that you can memorize. They're kind of like mantras. But the other thing about the repetition in this first section is that he's saying that we treat all of the aspects of ourselves in the same way. We don't give any special treatment to any aspect of ourselves. Whether we're thinking about mindfulness of the body, of the feelings, of the mind, of the object of mind, all of these are treated in the same way. And this is really important because you'll also notice as the sutra goes on, he spends a tremendous amount of detail in the first discussion of...

[19:34]

observing the body within the body. There's a tremendous amount of detail, and he doesn't spend the same amount of detail when he starts talking about feelings or the mind, because he's telling us these are the methods that we're going to use. This is the way we approach these things. So in each of the next chapters in this chapter, Sutra, he asked the same question. How does a practitioner remain established in each of these four areas? So in discussing mindfulness of body, he starts by the practice of focusing on breath to promote awareness and stability. And he gives two examples. He goes to the forest, to the foot of the tree, to an empty room, sits down cross-legged in the lotus position, holds his body straight, and establishes mindfulness in front of him.

[20:43]

He breathes in, aware that he is breathing in. He breathes out, aware that he's breathing out. When he breathes in long breath, he knows I'm breathing a long breath. When he breathes out a long breath, he knows I'm breathing out a long breath. When he breathes in a short breath, he knows I am breathing a short breath. When he breathes out a short breath, he knows I'm breathing out a short breath. Then he has a refrain. He uses the following practice. Breathing in, I'm aware of my whole body. Breathing out, I'm aware of my whole body. And then breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I calm my body. So the first part of this, he gives us the instruction of how we use breath with our body. And after that first part, he has a paragraph that he repeats 19 times in this sutra.

[21:58]

So it must be important to pay attention to. So after he talks about breathing in, I calm my body, breathing out, I calm my body, he says, this is how a practitioner observes the body in the body. He observes the body from within or from without, or from both within and without. He observes the process of coming to be in the body with a process of dissolution in the body or both. the process of coming to be and the process of dissolution. Or he is mindful of the fact there is a body here until understanding and full awareness come about. He maintains the observation, free, not caught up in worldly affairs. This is how to practice observation of the body and the body wholly begus. So that particular sentence that particular paragraph that he repeats 19 times has four aspects in it that are worth looking at.

[23:09]

The first one is contemplating our experience internally and externally and both. So what does that mean? Part of it means not only watching the breath or what's inside the body, but watching the body in space. For example, he says, when a practitioner walks, he's aware I'm walking. When he's standing, he's aware I'm standing. When he's sitting, he's aware I'm sitting. If he's going backward or forward, he knows which way. He has full awareness of each action. So there the body is looked at as a form in the world, acting in the world, and needs to be paid attention to.

[24:15]

And we need to watch the body in motion as well as the body in meditation. So he's really talking more, he's talking about the body in this Meditation on the body, instruction of meditating on the body, in the body, internally or externally. He's really talking about taking this practice, making this really a practice, this body awareness practice. The other thing he brings up in this same way of internal and external is is the matter of detail. And this first section of the Sutra is really filled with detail that maybe you don't want to read. It's not necessarily pleasant detail, but it's detail.

[25:16]

He's kind of giving us the whole picture. So he starts with a paragraph just introducing what we know many of us know as a practice of body scan. Body scan is often used as a separate practice. It's used in mindfulness-based stress reduction, and it's a very popular practice in Vipassana tradition. We actually don't use this as a practice in Zen, although some of us... When we talk to people about meditating, we talk about noticing parts of your body, but not in this systematic way. So this is what the Buddha says. Further, the practitioner meditates on his very own body from the soles of the feet upwards and then from the hair to the top of the head downwards. A body contained inside the skin and full of all the impurities which belong to their body. Here's the hair of the head and hairs on the body. the nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestines, bowels, excrement, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat,

[26:45]

Fat, tears, grease, saliva, mucus, synovial fluid. He says, without seeing the body in this way, we can't know the body. And he repeats this. He repeats his phrase, this is how a practitioner remains established in the observation of the body with the body. And then he says again, in whatever position the body happens to be, notice the elements that constitute the body. And this body is earth element, water element, fire element, air element. Always there is a body here. So he's not talking the niceties anymore.

[27:48]

He's letting us know that this is hard practice. This is not easy practice. This is not just looking at the surface or a feel good, oh, I feel so good when I feel the breath go in and out. He's saying, no, that's not including everything. Include everything. Systematically, suggesting systematically include everything. And then I have to say I have to do this because. Because I was a doctor and doctors do this. I just can't resist reading about his comparisons that he wants us to see everything. He wants us to know every, everything, the good, the bad and the ugly about everything. So further, the practitioner compares his own body with a corpse. which he imagines he sees thrown into a charnel ground, pecked at by crows, eaten by hawks, vultures, and jackals, and infested with maggots and worms.

[28:55]

This body of mine is of the same nature. It will end up the same way. There is no way I can avoid that state. And later on he says, Compare your body with a corpse. It's just a skeleton with a little flesh and blood sticking to it. The bones are held together by ligaments, he observes. This body of mine is the same nature. And he says again, further, compare your body with a corpse. It is just a skeleton now. There's no flesh, but it's smeared by a little blood and bones and held together by ligaments. So he takes us to this place of observation of this isn't just some feel-good thing, this stuff. This is hard work. You sit down there and you do this hard meditation, and to free yourself, to free yourself from attachment, to understand impermanence, to understand no self, you've got to get to the bottom of it.

[30:12]

You can't be afraid, even that. It was interesting. I really, when I first read this years ago, I couldn't imagine people being sent to the charnel grounds to observe. And I had this idea that he wanted everybody to go to the charnel grounds. And interestingly, as a medical student, we all had a cadaver in those days. People don't do that anymore. Some people, you can... I understand you can request a cadaver, but when I went to medical school, a cadaver was a rite of passage. And we had a number of us assigned to a body, and we dissected that body for a semester. And the feeling was that if we were going to be doctors, and isn't the Buddha a doctor after all? Isn't a Buddha a doctor, a medicine giver? You have to understand. the nitty gritty of how it works. And when I was in India a few years, a number of years ago, I thought charnel grounds were some foreign thing and you had to go get it.

[31:20]

But in India, there are a lot of charnel grounds. And because they cremate everyone and they have ceremonies and they have these charnel grounds. And I remember seeing one on the banks of the Ganges and There were piles of wood and bodies which shrouded, and then some of them had people around them, and some of them were having ceremonies. And I thought, well, this is not some foreign thing. So when the Buddha was talking about the charnel grounds, he was talking about something that was an experience that actually people had. But the point to me of this is that he really is saying, this is hard work, right? And in this, if you want to learn about impermanence, which is our core of our teaching, you have to really be able to look at impermanence.

[32:21]

You have to look it in the eye, even when it's not pleasant. You have to just be and use the same mindfulness, the same breathing out and breathing in, the same sentence that he repeats over and over again. This is how a practitioner remains established in the observation of the body and the body. Observation of the body from within and from without. From both within and without, he remains established in the observation of the process of the coming to be in the body, or the process of dissolution of the body, or both the process of coming to be and the process of dissolution. Or he is mindful of the fact there is a body here. So this is, he's kind of repeating this and saying, I really mean this, folks. I'm not giving you a lightweight version of it. So the other thing that comes from the way he keeps on repeating this same phrase is the idea of moment to moment.

[33:32]

Moment to moment. So when he talks of things, he's talking moment to moment. So when he says, for example, moreover, when a practitioner walks, he's aware of I am walking. When he's standing, he's aware I'm standing. When he's sitting, I'm sitting. When he's going forward, I'm going forward. When I bend, he knows he bends. He just says bends. Or he says forward, backward, full awareness in each moment. So that's the third aspect of working with mindfulness of the body. And there's a kind of phenomena that he does that is done a lot in mupassana. which has a name for it, which is called a technique of mental noting. It uses a word or short phrase to acknowledge what is arising.

[34:41]

And so a mental note can be a label like happy, sad, or in, out, thinking, heaviness, restlessness. It's just noting what's going on in that moment. And noting it actually gives it some way that it makes an impact. Just by noting it in your mind means you've got it. You've got it. You've got each moment by noting each moment. This isn't something you can walk around doing, obviously, but you can do it. You know, when I was... sitting here wondering, you know, before the lecture, I was doing that. I was saying, funny feeling stomach, feet on floor, feet, pictures, thought, naming these things. And it kept me in my body and it kept my body rooted.

[35:46]

So the fourth aspect of that paragraph that he keeps on repeating over and over again, is not clinging. It says there is a body here until understanding and full awareness come about. He maintains the observation free, not caught up in worldly consideration. So he's telling us that that we cannot cling when we, these moment to moment notings, this awareness of impermanence, we don't get caught up in any of the things that come up with us. We just let them go, which is what our instruction is for Zazen, right? Thoughts come, let them go. Feelings come, let them go. So then he goes on to talk about feelings.

[36:53]

And The two sections on feelings are pretty much, you know, have the same form and the same way that he deals with both, which is really interesting, thoughts and feelings. So he says, for example, when talking about feelings, whenever the practitioner has a pleasant feeling, he's aware I'm experiencing a pleasant feeling. Whenever he has a painful feeling, he's aware I'm experiencing a painful feeling. Whenever he experiences a feeling that is neither pleasant nor painful, he's aware. I'm feeling a neutral feeling. I'm experiencing a neutral feeling. When he experienced a pleasant feeling based in the body, he's aware. I'm experiencing a pleasant feeling based in the body. Same thing. When I'm experiencing a pleasant feeling based in the mind, he's aware. I'm experiencing a pleasant feeling based in the mind. When he experiences painful feeling based in the body, I'm experiencing, he's in the body.

[38:01]

I'm experiencing painful feeling based in the mind. When he experiences a neutral feeling based in the body, he's aware. I'm experiencing a neutral feeling based in the body. When he experiences a neutral feeling based in the mind, he's aware. I'm experiencing neutral feeling. And then he repeats the paragraph again. And with regarding observations of the mind and the mind, he does the same thing. When his mind is desiring, the practitioner is aware my mind is desiring. When his mind is not desiring, he's aware my mind is not desiring. When he's hating, he's aware he's hating. And so forth. And then he repeats his paragraph. This is how our practitioner remains established in the observation of the mind, observation of the mind from within and from without.

[39:03]

He remains established in the observation of the process of coming to be in the mind, or the process of dissolution in the mind, or both the process of coming to be and dissolution. Or he's mindful of the fact. There. There, mind there, until understanding the full awareness come about. He remains established in the observation, free, not caught up in any world views. So he's basically talking about in one of these is that feelings can be positive, negative or neutral, which we have all been listening about during this practice period. And he's saying, treat them all the same. That's the work. Treat them all the same. And don't abide in them. Recognize them.

[40:04]

Recognize their coming and going. Recognizing their impermanence. Noting the moment to moment. Letting them go moment to moment. So section five. is a little bit different, and I don't have a lot of time, so I will not talk about it a lot, mainly because this is the one that's different and a little bit foreign to us. Because when he talks about mindfulness of objects of the minds, it really includes... everything, form, feelings, perceptions, and how we process them. And the section is different because we're instructed to focus on specific factors like the five hindrances or the seven factors of enlightenment and the four noble truths.

[41:08]

This is how the practitioner remains established in the observation of the objects of the mind, in the mind, with regard to the five aggregates of clinging. Observation of the objects of mind from within or without, or observation of the objects of the mind from both within and without. He says the same paragraph regarding all of these, repeats that same paragraph over and over again. But what's a little bit different is he then says he is aware of the eyes, aware of the form, and he is aware of the internal formations which are produced in dependence on these two things. He's aware of the birth of a new internal formation and is aware of abandoning an already produced internal formation. And he is aware when an already abandoned internal formation will not rise again. So this is where it's a little bit different. For us, it's a little bit different.

[42:21]

Generally, we instruct people to just pay attention to whatever arises, notice associations, but not look for particular objects or circumstances. And I feel a certain tension here. There's a tension here between simply being aware of how an object impacts the mind or mind consciousness. and why it is so. Because it takes us a little bit from awareness of association to possibly attributing cause and effect. And then there's the danger that we might believe it. So as then-students, how do we practice this? And in a way, he's suggesting that if I see If I begin to see that anything that comes to my mind, any formation that arises in my mind, comes through my consciousness.

[43:30]

It comes through my senses, my feelings, my perceptions. It comes from my information from my ego consciousness. It comes from my storehouse consciousness. And all of that helps to form then a mental formation of what's going on. So he's telling us that we need to be doing that, that we need to be seeing that, that that's also part of what we're seeing, which means it's a challenge to hold that. It's a challenge to hold all of those moments that we're working so hard to have and let go of all of those observations of non-self and impermanence that we see if we pay attention. And also to see what's underneath, to see this whole world that we create is a world that we create and how we create it, how we create our moment or how we create our points of view moment to moment.

[44:44]

And then when we do see the how underneath, then we have some insight. We have insight. We know how it happened, and we can work with it in that way. So I think that's what this last chapter is asking, but it's a little bit different from what we ordinarily talk about, so I'm interested what people think about that. So just to finish, One of the things that Thich Nhat Hanh says, and he says it very much in this new book that he wrote, he thinks these are so important. And he thinks that his monks should keep this sutra under their pillows and read. Sometimes he tells them to read it every day. Sometimes he says they should read it three times a day. So he sees this really as a really the very heart of the practice that he shares in his in his sangha. The other point I wanted to make, the last one, is just that when we use this kind of repetition, when we look at this, even though, for example, I thought maybe I shouldn't read so much, but getting the sense of the repetition, getting the sense of the language, it comes into us.

[46:05]

It becomes part of our bodies. We embody it. So it builds a kind of momentum in ourselves. We remember. We remember, remember, pay attention. Remember, breathe. Remember, wear my feet. Remember, remember. And notice, notice. It kind of does that, practice does that with us, and it supports our practice. So I'm interested to see what other people have to say about that. Okay, so it's time for Q&A. Please raise your digital hand. You'll find it in the reactions box or in the participants box. Or you can send me a message in the chat. John, would you like to unmute yourself and ask your question? Thank you so much for your talk. I haven't participated in the practice period, so maybe

[47:09]

off base a little bit but I'm comparing what you're saying with I think it's done more on the attention Roshi side where they talk a lot about the Abhidharma and the Buddhist psychology and I'm thinking about that thing where it says there's sort of that box and the joining in terms of the phenomenon of psychic stuff and I'm thinking all of this naming and noting is a little bit like doing manually what the mind must be doing automatically in the name and form coming together. I wonder what you might think about that. I think that's true. I think the naming is secondary because our consciousness is picking up all of our experience. That's how we lay these seeds. So it's happening. This is about paying attention to that it's happening. If you miss something, your body isn't going to miss it. Your body is going to feel it. Your mind will be, you know, it'll get in the back of your mind and it'll come to haunt you if it's disturbing.

[48:14]

So if you don't pick it up in real time, it'll be something that might show up again that you'll have to deal with. So better pick it up in real time. Shalema, would you like to ask your question, please? Good morning. Good morning. I want to thank you for the fire. This information is, for me, right on time, because today has been, like, horrible day kind of I've been like I've been breathing and you know I aspire to be present when I meditate and I tend to want to drop off to sleep and so to be present for me

[49:32]

It's really not to close my eyes, but to keep my eyes wide open. But all the information about awareness and naming parts of the body, it seems like a lot to do when I've been told not to have a purpose. when we sit. Don't go to the mat with objectives and outcomes. And so I'm not hearing that this morning. So I'm just wondering, I guess my question is, at what point do I get to meditate? And then another question is, what is meditation? And I think I'm going to get the book because, you know, I really want to delve or dive into meditation. Your talk this morning, and I want to thank you. I don't feel so bad now.

[50:34]

I feel like it's like this morning has been right on time based on the information that you've given. So I totally appreciate that. And hopefully the name of the book is in the chat so I can write that down. I will give it up. Mary Beth, it's Transformation and Healing. Transformation and healing. Thank you so very much. That landed squarely. I think that you can, you know, we are told, we are told to, you know, in our meditation instruction as if it's going to be easy. You know, sit down, just take a breath, just pay attention to your breath. That's great. You know, And, oh, a feeling comes, anything comes, just let it go. That can be the way we're instructed. But that isn't really particularly, that isn't Sojin Roshi's way.

[51:44]

Sojin Roshi would say, note it or acknowledge the feeling. It's not, you don't throw the feeling away before you get it. In other words, what is this? Okay, feeling. You know, what is this pleasant feeling? Then it goes. Then you say next feeling because there's always another feeling, right? So one of the things we do or we were instructed by our teacher here, Sojin Roshi, would be, you know, if you feel unsettled in meditation, he said, which was kind of a body scan, mini body scan, right? Give yourself sasana instruction, you know, or where are your feet? How are your knees? Is your back straight? Is your curvature of your spine the way it's supposed to be? How is your mudra? How are your hands? Do you feel your hands? And you don't say it. You don't necessarily have to say those words. You can say hands, feet, back.

[52:44]

You know, that puts you in your back so you can feel it. When my experience was when I was feeling unsettled, getting ready. I was I really wasn't in my body. And so the minute I said, where are my feet? I started a process of getting myself totally present. And that's and it works. You know, it's amazing. I remember doing body scan. Body scan is used often in. In stress, stress reduction programs or pain management programs, because. If, for example, when you're sitting, you have a terrible problem in your knee, then your whole sitting becomes your knee. But if you're mindful of your whole body, there's a lot more space for your knee. And so when you do a body scan, it's amazing how you can actually feel these parts of your body you didn't even know, you know, I can feel, I actually learned, I can feel all my, each toe, you know, I can actually feel each toe on each foot.

[53:48]

You know, you can, you can actually get your awareness to the fact that you're paying attention and you're in body. I can feel how are my fingers doing? It doesn't really matter what part of the body you choose. You don't have to go to the phlegm and the bile. Like he was really suggesting a pretty gritty practice, which I think maybe if you're, you know, if you're so inclined, but yeah, I think we usually use it the way we can use it. But the main thing is it keeps us right in our bodies, right in this moment. Thank you. Ozan would like to ask a question. Well, I should ask a question, but I actually want to comment on something. I think that there's another way that we can look at and use the fourth foundation of mindfulness, which is sometimes framed as mindfulness of the dharmas or mindfulness of the mental objects.

[55:03]

Dharmas are mental objects. Actually, in the text, it's outlining these dharma systems. Yes. And those are... This is in contradiction, I think, to what has become our contemporary understanding of mindfulness as bare awareness or just seeing. And what Thich Nhat Hanh says is that mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what is the use of seeing? The fourth foundation, I look at them as lenses through which we look at things. That we're literally, we are actively placing lenses in front of our eyes so we can see things differently. So we can see things not necessarily in our habitual way, but as according to our vow.

[56:09]

And all of those systems, the Dharma systems that he... that the Buddha names are, they're not just ways of looking at things, they're also, they point us towards changing ourselves, just changing our minds. And that's the part of mindfulness that seems to have gone missing, I think, in the contemporary world. But does that fit it all with? Yeah, no, that was what I was talking about, trying to say something like that with the last one. It is asking us to go beyond the formula that he laid out for all the others. He said this formula, this is the formula. But he doesn't want us to apply the same formula to the fifth. He wants us to actually get something out of it that we use. Yeah, so you really need to go through the whole cycle. It's far into the way that most of us have been necessarily taught.

[57:15]

Yeah, I mean, it's a whole cycle. And the end, that fourth foundation is very important. And the other three give you a grounding for being able to do the fourth. I mean, that's really where the insight comes. Yeah. And I think we shortchange the insight. sometimes. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to ask a question. Yeah. Thanks for your talk, Jerry. Well, I find this kind of practice to be challenging while I'm meditating on the cushion. I'm wondering what you have to say about when you're not on the cushion and we're in the rest of our lives doing busy things, working, conversing, making decisions.

[58:18]

And maybe that's a good follow-up to what Alan was just talking about in terms of action. Well, when he talks about these practices, he talks about them as if we're in motion, too. He says internal and external. So he's saying that basically that we be mindful. And this is a big thing for Sojin, that we actually treat everything mindfully, everything in our life mindfully. If you ever watch Sojin kind of handle a teacup or pour tea or anything, right? He was just meticulous about taking the way he took off his robe, the way he folded it. So he's encouraged us to kind of bring this mind of paying attention and being present every moment to whatever. And in this he says, you know, if you're walking, note you're walking.

[59:21]

If you're bending, note you're bending. I mean, if you note you're having an experience or a feeling because of something that's been said to you, you pay attention, you know, you say, Pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. Not necessarily that, but you do note it. And you don't clutch it and do some, you know, you hold it the way you would hold anything else rather than get caught in the kind of things that we might have a tendency to get caught in. But I was finding that it was easier for me to be mindful. I found myself very comforted during the pandemic with doing simple chores repeatedly every morning in a certain way. So I would take the dog, walk down, turn the alarm off, go over, turn a certain light switch on, switch on the coffee, go in another room and put the heat up.

[60:27]

You know, I had this like a ritual. And it was very comforting. And I was very aware, you know, turn the light on, alarm off, coffee on. And it actually, it meant that I didn't spill as many things. You know, I kind of forget as many things, you know, if I had to bring the sweetener to the coffee or the milk or whatever, I was just saying, okay, milk for coffee. And it was amazing. I just can't live like that all the time. But it was a very interesting practice, which I did during the pandemic, which I found very useful. So I think they are useful in our daily life, especially if you notice yourself being torn around and getting caught unprepared or, you know, being sideswiped or whatever they call it. You know, all of a sudden, if you don't pay attention to things that are... Getting to you during the day, they'll get to you another way.

[61:29]

That's what somebody was talking about. It's going to get you. If you don't pay attention to it, you will pay attention to it at some point. Thank you. This will be the final question. Blake asks, Jerry, wonderful talk. Could you explain the refrain, the body within the body? It's going, what it is, it's going into the body and knowing the body and naming the body and paying attention to the body every moment. So there's a body floating about.

[62:30]

And inside it are all kinds of parts, all kinds of feelings, all kinds of thoughts. But if we were just paying attention to the body within the body, we're paying attention to what the body does, how the body moves, how the body works inside. That's what he's talking about. We really have to pay attention to what's going on here. We have to know this body inside out. Thank you. We'll now chant the bodhisattva vows, which I have placed in the chant. Please stay muted for this.

[63:12]

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