Good morning. It's a little loud, then maybe that's better. So welcome to Sashin. I'm going to, you know, we've all come to this Sashin from our busy lives and it takes a while before our body and mind adjust and breath, adjust to this activity. We've all been, most of us have been doing this for a pretty long time, a very long time. So we know what to do, you know, but even so, I want to

[01:05]

refresh our practice by talking about the very basic fundamentals of Zazen. So that we start out, oh yeah, I want to remind us all what we're really doing. Body, posture, breath, and consciousness. We say mind, we use the word mind. Citta is the Sanskrit word for mind, and citta covers a consciousness, basically. But when we talk about mind, we're really talking about consciousness, the various aspects of consciousness, which we loosely talk about as mind.

[02:19]

Mind has various, citta or mind has various aspects. Big mind, small mind, disturbed mind, happy mind, and so forth. I don't want to get into philosophy, and I just want, you know, when we come to practice, to sashin, we let go of our discursive thinking. In other words, we don't, there's no big subject to think about. So it's easy to get bored, because the mind, the thinking mind, consciousness, always needs something to feed on. The conscious mind is always feeding on something. The eyes need something to feed on,

[03:23]

the ears need something to feed on, the nose needs something to feed on, the tongue needs something to feed on, and the feelings need something to feel. So we're always, as has been expressed many times in the Dharma, these five sensual doorways are always looking for food and entertainment. So in zazen, we let go of that kind of food and entertainment. Entertainment is, our country is an entertainment factory. It is an entertainment factory, and so how does a zazen student live

[04:31]

in an entertainment factory satisfactorily? So we do this crazy thing, you know, called sashin, where we don't feed. And so we have to be able to put our attention someplace, because attention needs some direction. So our practice is called, in Japanese, shikantaza, which means, just this, just doing. Even though there is a past and a future

[05:34]

in our way of thinking, we focus on the present moment, which includes the past and the future, but we don't dwell on the past, and we don't speculate on the future. So just to be in time, not behind time, or not ahead of time, but in time, is our practice. How we exist in this moment, one moment at a time, that's what we're doing, that's shikantaza. This moment, this moment, this moment. And it looks like this moment is changing into the next moment, but that's not really so. So, in Dogen's Genjo Koan, he uses the metaphor of firewood or charcoal and ash.

[06:45]

He says, firewood does not become ash. I'm sorry, he says, firewood does become ash. We think that he's saying firewood does not become ash, but he says firewood does become ash. But don't think that the firewood is before, the ash is after. Firewood has its moment, and its history, and its future. Ash has its moment, and its past, and its future. So everything is independent. Even though everything is connected and interdependent, at the same time, each thing is independent. Each moment is independent from past and future. So we exist in this moment as just this moment, which has its past and its future.

[07:49]

The next moment is just this moment, and has its past and its future. So to exist, to practice on each moment as an independent moment in time and space is Shikantaza. So it's very hard to do that, because our mind is always wandering around our consciousness. It's always wandering around, seeking something of interest, which is natural and normal. We speak about big mind and small mind. Small mind is the mind which our usual everyday experience in a dualistic way.

[09:01]

Good, bad, right and wrong, like and dislike. But our bigger mind includes everything, whereas the small mind discriminates everything. But discriminating mind is important. But big mind is the source. So in Shikantaza, our effort is to allow big mind to take over. We give ourselves over to big mind so that our small discriminating mind is not operating in a discriminating way. So when Suzuki Roshi talks about breathing,

[10:07]

he, as you know, he talks about it as like a swinging door. Inhaling, it swings this way. Exhaling, it swings that way. Swinging this way, that way. It's not, I am breathing. But there is just breath. There is just breathing. Breathing is just breathing. Seeing is just seeing. Hearing is just hearing. Smelling is just smelling. Tasting is just tasting. Feeling is just feeling. There's no I at the center. Just, this is all-inclusive study because there's no discrimination, there's no inside or outside.

[11:10]

There's no right or wrong. Everything is just as it is. So Shikantaza is not so easy because we always, we are, each one of us is used to expressing preference. So to actually exist for a time without expressing preference or demanding preference not so easy. But it's Shikantaza. So we pay attention to our posture. What is the closest thing to us? Our posture, our body. So in many religious practices, people separate the body, the spirit from the body.

[12:27]

And even Buddhism did that for a while in certain schools. But to actually, spirit and body are not two different things. Spirit is like breath, actually. In some practices, spirit, what we call the spark of life, spirit is not separate from body practice. Spiritual practice is body practice. For us, washing the dishes, great spiritual practice. Sweeping the floor, wonderful spiritual practice. Thinking about the deity, poor spiritual practice.

[13:29]

So as Dogen says, we do not sit in order to become Buddha. Some practices visualize Buddha, but that's simply a visualization. It can be like adding a head on top of a head. And sometimes when people come into Dokusan, there's the altar and maybe a picture of Buddha or something. And people come in and practice and bow to the picture. That's okay, but that's not Buddha. It is Buddha, but it's not Buddha. We bow to each other.

[14:36]

When we bow to each other, Buddha bows to Buddha. And we make a connection. Because we have nothing in our mind at all. When somebody comes in for Dokusan, I'm not thinking about, oh, this person has this characteristic and I better watch out for that. I don't have any of those thoughts. I just open and to receive whatever's there. This is Shikantaza. We're just open to receive what is here. We don't have to think too much. Thinking is great, but it comes up spontaneously when we're open. We've had enough practice of thinking in our lives that we don't have to analyze everything so much if we're thinking.

[15:39]

Totally open, a response, right response comes forward. So, posture. Of course, when we think about the body, what do we do with it? There's always a posture. No matter what we're doing, there's posture. It can be slumping, it can be moving, it can be doing various things. But when we sit Zazen, we come back to our normal, natural posture. Normal, natural posture is sitting up straight if we're not thinking. Because thinking produces, everyday thinking produces

[16:39]

characteristics of our thinking which form our bodily postures. If I'm fearful, then my posture, my bodily posture assumes a fearful posture. If I'm happy, my bodily posture assumes a happy posture. So, the way we think influences the postures that we take. And when we look at how people operate in the world, we can tell a lot about people's postures, about what's going on in their psyche by how they hold themselves or how they hold their postures. So, in Zazen, we let go of all assumed postures and just resume our natural posture which is to sit up straight.

[17:47]

When you watch little kids, they stand up straight naturally because they're not yet, mostly, not yet burdened with mentally prepared postures. They quickly change postures because they'll cry for a while and then when that's over, they'll laugh. And then they play for a while, they do various things, but they're always letting go of the previous moment, more or less, unless they're very troubled. So, when we sit Zazen, we let go of conditioned postures and assume our natural posture. But we have to be taught how to do that because

[18:50]

it, for most people, we have to be taught how to do that. So, when we say you sit up straight, we don't really necessarily know what that means. I didn't know what it meant to sit up straight until I was taught how to do that. And my teacher would always come around, put one hand in the small of my back and one hand on my chin and go, that's all you have to do. Not manipulating, it's just putting your hands in just the right place, points, so that this lower back goes forward, the chin goes back, and everything lines up. And then you hold up your sternum. When you hold up your sternum, you feel the lower back pulling forward. This is very critical, lifting up your sternum. And then you're sitting up straight and your head falls into place,

[19:55]

your ears fall into line, your nose falls into line with your navel, and you're sitting up straight. And it takes some effort. But this is the only effort, the only effort that's necessary. All the rest of our body is at ease. This allows us to sit at ease. Problem is, we think we're sitting up straight, but that's not necessarily so. To sit up straight with one whole movement is sitting up straight. But sometimes we separate the parts of our body, and so we think, well, yeah, the back is straight, and maybe we think the head is straight, and so forth. But we're thinking in pieces,

[20:58]

instead of one whole piece. When we lift up our sternum, it allows everything to fall into one piece. So when we're thinking about, or when we're sitting, it allows us to maintain that posture the whole time, because everything's changing, posture is always changing. So this is what we can think about in Zazen. This is what we use our conscious mind to think about in Zazen. We have something that we can actually think about in Zazen. It's legitimate. It's the lifting of the sternum. You just think about that the whole time, and then your whole body sits up straight. Your head falls into place, your lower back falls

[21:59]

into place, and you just, and your mind wanders. Our consciousness wanders, you know, dreams, and then we wake up. And when we wake up, we come back. Oh, yes, posture. And then we dream about something, and then we wake up. Oh, posture. So Zazen is called waking up and dreaming. That's what our life is about, dreaming and waking up, dreaming, waking up, dreaming, waking up. So there's plenty to think about in Zazen. It's coming back to coming home. We go out in our imagination, and then we come home to waking up. That's how we exist in Zazen, one moment at a time. We let our shoulders fall.

[23:03]

We don't sit, oh, yeah. We don't sit rigidly. We just allow, and vertebrae is the most important part of Zazen, to just sit up straight. And it takes time before we can actually do that. But when you have mastered this posture, it's the most comfortable way of sitting, just the most comfortable way. Any other way is a strain on your body. And this is where people get into problems, because we have these strains on our body by not doing it really correctly. And the same goes with the roots, which are our legs and our knees.

[24:09]

So if we can really sit up well, straight, and let go of all the tenseness in our body, letting go of tenseness means opening up to it. It's counterintuitive, because when we have an intrusion in our body, like pain or discomfort, we tend to close in on it. We're like, protect ourself. But that's the counterintuitive way, is to open up. And when we open up, it's easy. We find some ease. What creates the problem is our attacking it. And I'll get through this. That's not, no. You have to do that until you find the way. You say, well, that doesn't work. What I suggest to people is, when we sit, there are always sensations in our legs,

[25:20]

some kind of sensation. And at first it's, you know, okay. And then the sensations change over a period. And then suddenly, there's pain. And then we close down on it. Uh-oh, I don't want this. As soon as that happens, you still have the opportunity to free yourself, but it's freeing your mind from opposing what's happening. So I don't know, I can't explain it, but it's like opening, opening, opening, being flexible. Flexibility is the most important thing, to open and be flexible. And we realize that the biggest problem is not the pain or the discomfort, but our attitude

[26:27]

toward it. And when we just continually open from the beginning of when you sit down, to open up to whatever sensation it is. And then when the sensation becomes what you call painful or discomfort, just keep opening up, not shut down, but keep opening up to it, opening up. And then sitting becomes very comfortable. So, um, Zazen is not a fight. It's how you actually maintain your comfortable way.

[27:32]

But, and this is, I don't want to call it a secret, but it's the secret, the secret or the art of, I don't like to call it the art either, but it's, it's, um, it's kind of like a secret of life, is to not fight the discomfort, open up to what's there, and have the space, spaciousness, to actually move around easily with problems. Not to get caught by problems, but how to move around easily and comfortably within the problem. Um, so it's what my old teacher used to say, not to get caught by anything,

[28:42]

because there will always be a problem. Within, with Zazen, there's always a problem. And that's not bad. I don't want to say it's good, but it is. It's good. Problems are good because they help us to find the way to not be dominated by the problem. And to open up. Um, so, um, does anybody have a question about posture or breathing? I just want, yes. So, um, what about following the breath? I find that, um, especially this morning, after a lot of thinking for months and years, that following the breath helps me tame

[29:46]

the discursive mind. Maybe it slows it down. And, um, then if I find myself thinking a lot, then I go back to the breath and it tames it down. Is that a crutch? Well, no. Um, you know, the problem is you think there's something wrong with thinking. Yeah. Yeah. Don't worry about thinking. Thinking will happen. The consciousness thinks and it has to think. You can't, you try to stop it, you know, but it pops up over here, you know. You can't stop your thinking. That's not the point. Um, this point is just like the pain in your legs. Don't let thinking be a pain, mental pain. Like, I shouldn't be thinking. You have to think. Thinking just goes on. It's like,

[30:49]

you know, the rushing torrent that goes, that's always going on. So you allow the thinking to be, your mind encompasses the thinking and your breath. And so you keep coming, it's the scenery, we call it the scenery of your life. You're riding in the train, the scenery goes by, but within the train, you know, it's just scenery. So just let it be. Just let it be. We don't try to cut it off. But come back to your breathing. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Isn't that, that's interesting. Then come back to your breath. Without judgment. No judgment. No judgment. But we are always judging. We're always judging ourselves. Stop judging. We're just letting everything freely flow. The mind flows, the breath flows, the body flows.

[31:51]

So, as soon as we start judging our mental activity, then we're caught by our mental activity. So, we just don't let it dominate. Then you'll say, well, geez, you know, I just, was just thinking the whole time through, and I didn't, wasn't doing zazen at all. That can happen if you're purposely doing thinking. But thinking happens whether we want it to happen or not. We can't, the way to control thinking is to just let it be. That's perfect control. If you try to control it, it's controlling you. I had an experience recently, I guess, I think it was judgment. I've been judging my sitting. Yes. And I was sitting and sitting and sit for the hour in the morning and don't move.

[33:05]

Well, I don't know what, I wasn't really thinking about it, but I was in pain. And then one day I thought, gee, I'm gonna move my legs. And I moved my legs and I realized that I had been judging that if I moved my legs, everything would be a disaster. And since then, I can sit for the hour without, it's just easy. It's become so much easier. Yeah, when you're not judging. Yes, but at the same time, when we do sit, we have time, we say, I'm gonna sit for this amount of time. And so the structure of the time limit allows you to function. You say, I'm not gonna move during this time, right? So you made a promise to yourself,

[34:09]

and then you just deal with whatever happens in that length of time. If you're sitting with unlimited time, you don't know when to do that. So it's kind of arbitrary. But I remember that Suzuki Roshi used to walk out of the zendo. He would always ring the bell. Everybody was sitting there and he'd walk out of the zendo. And people say, gee, when is he coming back? When is this going to be over? And then he'd stay out for quite a while. And everybody had to deal with what were we really doing? And it was understood that it's not a good idea to move during that time, because we made a promise that we would sit for whatever time. And now he's extending the time. So that's also good. Often he would say,

[35:18]

just because we were all beginners, and we didn't quite know how to sit still for a long time. And just as we knew the bell should be rung, he'd say, we'll sit 10 minutes more. And you have to deal with that. So that's life. You know, life is like that. Real life. It doesn't come out. Just because we say, Zazen is 40 minutes, doesn't mean it has to be that way. Right? It's like, what you're doing is offering yourself to this activity without thinking about when it's going to be over. So if you think about when it's going to be over, you're no longer present. If you have that idea that, well, maybe the person's going to ring the bell, you know,

[36:23]

I wish, how long is it going to be? I wish they could ring it. You're wandering. You know, you're not there. So how to be there, and sometimes just one breath at a time, you know. Mm. That's when you can really get concentrated on your breath. When you know that you're a little bit in trouble, in trouble, just go to your breath and silently, mm, one breath at a time, and there's nothing else in the world. And your breath covers the whole world. At one, each breath covers the whole universe. That's real practice. So the pain can actually force you to be present. So we don't judge it, but if you learn how to open up,

[37:24]

see, the problem is the dualistic thinking goes like this. I like it, I don't like it. So you have opposites, and not liking it brings forth liking it. Liking it brings forth not liking it. So by not liking it, you're creating a problem of like and dislike. When there's no problem of like and dislike, then everything can just be like it is. But we fall into like and dislike, want and not want. That's called greediness, basically. Peter. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the mudra and the mouth. I'm finding that the quality, that the way my, for instance, my thumbs are connected, is actually really emblematic of the quality of my attention. Yes, oh yeah. Well, first of all, I'll talk

[38:27]

about the mouth. The teeth are together, if you have any. Well, sometimes some of them are missing, you know. And so I have a hard time putting my teeth, keeping my teeth together, because some of them in the back are missing. They're not there. Anyway, for a person who has perfect teeth, put them together and your tongue is the roof of your mouth and breathes through your nose. That's simple. But the mudra, the cosmic mudra, left hand inside the right hand and the middle finger in the center of the palm of the right hand and then the thumbs are not like this, but they're facing each other. The tips of the thumbs are facing each other, not like that. And then your hands are up against your body,

[39:29]

around just below your navel, maybe, or someplace that's not too clear. But your thumb tips are touching like as if there was a piece of paper in between. And it's like a barometer. The mudra is like a barometer. If you have a lot of tenseness, then the thumbs tend to push against each other. And if you're too sleepy or lax, they tend to fall apart. So it tells you, the mudra tells you how you're doing, actually. And so if the thumbs are pressing together, it's an indication of you need to ease up. Because when we do have pain or discomfort, we tend to do this and push our thumbs together and then, oh yeah, relax. And then if they're too, keep falling apart, you have to kind of wake up.

[40:36]

That's when you call the person with the stick. We used to carry the stick a lot. We don't do it anymore much, but we did say that we would carry it during sasheen. I might do that. I think I will. As a matter of fact, if you're sleepy, you ask for the stick and bang, bang, bang, bang on your shoulder. Oh, Ross, can you speak a little bit about discomfort in the body and being open, open, open, and then discomfort in the mind, say, off the cushion. If we encounter something that we have some resistance to, is the quality of just open, open, open the same?

[41:38]

Yes, exactly. Exactly the same. It's like we're not ready to fight. We're ready to encounter whatever we're going to encounter. Mm-hmm. So in zazen, we have, say, a 40-minute period. We know, so to speak, there's an endpoint, open, open, open, and hopefully the bell will ring. In our relationships, I've found it important to be open and not judge and just rest to receive information that maybe is uncomfortable for me. But the tricky part is it has a more open-ended feel to it. Yeah, that's when the roshi walks out during zazen. Nothing's fixed, even though it looks like it's fixed. Somebody down there. Oh, James. It sounds to me, kind of distilling what I heard, that the most important point is to

[42:50]

lift your chest. No, your sternum. I didn't say lift your chest. That's different. That's different. It's not puffing out your chest. It's lifting your sternum. Mm-hmm. And then everything aligns. Yes, your posture aligns, if you do it correctly. Oh, Raj. Is the leg going to sleep in indication of needing to find a better posture? No. No, the leg goes to sleep. It's part of zazen. Everyone's leg goes to sleep at some point. Sometimes it'll do that for a year, and then it won't do it again for three years. It's not good for you, but it's not bad for you. I mean, it can be.

[43:58]

You know, it's like, but it's the most common thing in zazen, right? So I can't tell you whether you should continue or not. It's up to you. But it's very common, but it's what I call a occupational hazard. You know, if you're typing a lot, you get tunnel system. Yeah, so it's an occupational hazard. That's what I was wanting to say. Kind of, yeah, kind of an occupational hazard. But I don't know. I've been doing it for 50 years or something like that. My philosophy is that I don't get hung up on what happened

[45:02]

to me. That's in the past. I just keep going. And if you just keep going, somehow your body adjusts to what you're doing. Anyway, that's the way I do it. But I can't say you should do it that way. Yes, Christopher. Chris or Christian, thank you. Can you say something about breathing? Inhale and exhale. Is there a benefit to exhaling longer than you inhale? You're training your body to just naturally exhale longer than you inhale. Well, yeah, we don't control our breath. When we're breathing, we don't control our breath. Inhaling, actually breathing is something

[46:05]

that just, it's a, it doesn't, we don't control it. It just happens, fortunately. So we inhale, and then we exhale is usually longer. Some people say you should, you know, push down on your diaphragm. Pushing down on your diaphragm is like a silent hum, basically. It's not like trying to do something. It's just, if you sound, you'll find that your breath, the diaphragm pushes down. But we should always breathe in our, down here, what feels like our lower abdomen. That's, and I exhale. So the exhale's a little bit longer. It can be. But if you simply let your breath be what it is, you don't have to worry about whether it's long or short. Just let it be. We don't try to control the rhythm. As soon as you try to do that,

[47:09]

and even following your breath can be a problem, because then we start controlling it, right? So it's very subtle how you allow yourself to follow the breath without controlling it. Yeah. As a follow-up to that, during chanting, it's the same advice you give us, is don't try to chant from the bottom of your lungs or the top of your lungs. Just chant. Well, not from your throat, not from your chest, but always down here. Oh, always down here. Always breathe down there, without exception. When you find yourself breathing up here, you should get it down here. Same with chanting. Yes. Especially the person that's leading the chant should chant from here. If you chant from here, then everybody starts coughing, and I do. I can't follow it. This is where you breathe from,

[48:11]

all the time. I say always be aware of where your breath is, but of course you're doing other things, right? So you're not aware of where you are. But the more you are aware of your breath, the more it's always in the back of your head. It's always there, even whether you're conscious of it or not, as being deep. Deep breath, deep breathing is the secret of life. As are many other things. Yeah, you mentioned about how subtle it is not to interfere with the breath, and I do still find myself interfering with the breath. Is there anything that you can say a little bit more about that? Well, just don't pay too much attention to it. Don't pay enough, don't pay too much attention to it. So how do you count breath? Don't eat enough to count. Counting is a kind of handle on the cup, but

[49:19]

follow your breath, and then when you find that you're controlling it or whatever, just let go of it and come back to your posture. Posture is the first thing, regardless of whether you're breathing or not. Posture is the most important. That's the foundation. And then the breathing is, you know, when you're sitting up really straight, then it's easy for the breath to go down. So posture and breath are connected in that way that, you know, when we have tortured postures, our breath is tortured as well. And when we have open posture, our breath is open as well. So it really depends on the posture. If I'm doing zazen, like in a zazen period,

[50:25]

it's not as hard to respond to discomfort by straightening my spine or letting go of the tension, or start thinking about the United States, let go of that. But then if I'm sitting in the same way during meals or lectures, then I have to pay attention to what the servers are doing. Well, you mean during a meal? Yes, but I'm also sitting in the half-lotus position, trying to keep my back straight, assumedly, and it becomes, you know, rather than noticing all these discomforts and things, they just sort of accumulate while I'm paying attention to the server, or the food, or the oreo cookie. And it's the lecture, I'm paying attention to you, I'm not paying as much attention to what my body's doing. Yeah, yeah. I can't diffuse the discomfort as it arises as easily. Sip, you have to sip more. Do more zazen. You know, you have to get used to it. You've been sitting a long time,

[51:30]

but you only come mostly for Sashin. Do you sit in the daytime other times in Sashin? Yes, but I hear that, I hear that, I hear that, I kind of think that it has become easier over time, but still not as easy as zazen. Yeah, it becomes easier over time. I'd say zazen's easy, but yeah. It's about time to do something else. So, I would really welcome these kinds of questions in Dokusan. When I do Dokusan during Sashin, I welcome these kinds of questions that are just about zazen and about, yeah, the related. So, I think intuitively that it's time to stop, right? Okay.

[52:25]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ