This morning, since we're sitting most of the day, I want to talk just about our harmonizing body, breath, and mind. The first thing that I want to talk about is posture, to take the correct posture.

[01:12]

When we are sitting zazen, the most important thing is to have the correct posture. Even though we say to follow the breath, Following the breath, allowing the mind to follow the breath is important. But first is posture. To be concentrated on posture and to continuously keep asserting our posture is most important. Harmonizing body, breath and mind means to be body, breath, and mind. To not think about something, but just to let consciousness be posture.

[02:16]

For newer people, it's more difficult to sit for a long period of time because your body is not so accustomed to zazen. So you have to make more of an effort. A new person, a person who has not been sitting so long, has to make a big effort just to be able to maintain the posture. and to accept the difficulties of the posture. So that's your main effort, I think, for a new person. Just to be able to accept the difficulties of the posture and make a very wide effort, strong effort to sit still. discover the posture.

[03:37]

It takes maybe, well, you know, six months to two years of consistent sitting to really find your posture for most people. To have the posture be your own posture. And practitioner, once we find our posture in zazen, then we let the mind follow the breath. And for a new person, we always say, you should count your breaths on the exhale. Every time you exhale, you count one, And exhale is always longer than the inhale.

[04:49]

Inhale is very short, actually. Inhaling is the will to live, which is somewhat automatic. So no problem about inhaling. Exhaling is letting everything go. The other side. And exhaling is much longer and more drawn out. So, when we exhale, we count. One. Two. And it's not just counting numbers. The sound of the counting, the silent sound of the counting, should be the sound of the breath. So that it's not just, when you say one, there's no two, or no zero.

[05:56]

There's only one, and one covers the whole universe. That kind of concentration. And when you count two, two covers the whole universe. So the counting and the breath are one thing, one piece. Not standing outside counting like counting sheep jumping over a fence. But the sound of the breath is the number. So when you're counting four, there's no three and there's no five. It's just like saying Mu. Mu covers the whole universe. So when you count the number, it's just like Kuan Mu, actually.

[07:02]

You don't have to figure anything out. Just be the breath. Just be the count. That way you can be fully absorbed with the breath. The point is to be whatever your activity is. To be posture. To be breath. The reason why it's important to establish posture first is because posture is the base, the basis. And it's the basis for the breath. So, when you know how to count,

[08:13]

then you can sit Zazen without counting. But it shouldn't make any difference to you whether you count or not. In other words, you shouldn't think of counting as being some kind of preliminary or first step to Zazen. If you learn how to count, counting is a kind of handle on our breath. The reason we count is this kind of handle on the breath. But more than that, it's a way of absorption. So, not only should it be a way of absorption, but also it should not be mechanical. So what happens when we count our breath is it easily becomes mechanical.

[09:22]

1, 2, 100, 101. So we count it to 10. And then when you get to 10, you start with 1 again. So as to keep your attention, when you go past 10, And you find it, you're at 25. And you know that you're not paying attention. You're not awake. So you have this, it's a kind of guide to help you to wake up. And often we say, well, I don't want to count because I just want to have the pure feeling of my breath. But it really means I don't want to have to keep awake I don't want to monitor myself so that I can stay awake. So the most difficult thing actually in Zazen is to stay awake.

[10:26]

That's the hardest thing. Not only awake from falling asleep like this, but awake to what's happening. Because we may not be falling asleep, but our mind wanders. To get up to ten, you can do it when you begin. You can count to ten at the beginning and say, I'm doing well. But then to actually maintain that kind of awareness for a length of time is very difficult. So in Zazen, our attention is constantly The mind is being... the attention is being carried off by extraneous thinking, which is not purposeful thinking.

[11:33]

It's inadvertent, actually. Thoughts just come into the mind, because it's the nature of the mind to produce thoughts. whether we are purposefully thinking or not, the nature of the mind is to produce thoughts. And it's very hard to control. Very hard to control our mind. When we have something to do that's interesting, then the mind stays focused. But when we're doing something that's not so interesting, then the mind tends to look for something more interesting all by itself. posture, and breathe it pretty hard. So we have to continually keep waking up.

[12:37]

Our mind drifts, and then we wake up, and then it drifts. Drifting, waking up, drifting, waking up. This is Sazen. The mind wanders and then we bring it back and wake up. And this waking up is the most important thing. Over and over and over again. That's why counting breath is not just a first step practice. You may feel, well, there are people who are very advanced and they can keep their mind concentrated for a long, long period of time. And that should be our model.

[13:44]

But that's not true either. There are some people who have a great power of concentration and they can keep their mind focused much longer than others. But that's not necessarily a great virtue. The great virtue is being willing to keep waking up when your mind wanders. So, you notice, after you've been practicing for 20 or 30 years, that you haven't made any progress at all.

[14:50]

that you still have pain in your legs and your mind still wanders, just like it did in the beginning. Because the nature of the mind is to look for something interesting. And zazen is not interesting. But in our life, And in Zazen, the point is to keep waking up, not to try to push away the delusions so that you have clarity. It looks like we start from delusion and work toward clarity or enlightenment. And then when we have that kind of attitude, then we're making a judgment on what is delusion and what is enlightenment.

[16:11]

It's like, an example is like a persimmon. A persimmon starts out very astringent, but when it's ripe, it becomes very sweet. But if you try to extract the astringency out of the persimmon in order to make it sweet, it will never become sweet. You'll ruin the persimmon if you try to take out the astringency with any kind of fruit, you know, like pears, right? So, It's necessary to have the delusion in order for the mind to become sweet, so to speak. The enlightenment comes along with the delusion.

[17:18]

It's not separate from the delusion. Clarity is not something outside of the confusion. But we keep racing around, you know, trying to get rid of something and have something else. So in Zazen, we just accept cluttered mind, extraneous thoughts, painful legs, strong emotions, whatever feeling comes up. See, we really get easily fooled.

[18:30]

Because when we start doing zazen well, we have a nice feeling. We may have some fine, clear mind for a little while, with no thoughts. And we say, well, this is it. This is wonderful. This is what I've been hoping for all along. And then, as soon as you say that, It starts to change. The same thing goes with feelings, emotions, pain in the legs. So, the only thing to do is to accept everything equally. When we have thoughts, just this thought. When we have no thought,

[19:33]

just this no-thought. But it doesn't mean that we don't make an effort. The effort is not to make the mind clean, because the mind is already clean. Even though there are all kinds of confused thoughts or unnecessary thoughts, thoughts that we don't want. The mind is always clean. There's a saying that in Zazen, the mind is like a blank sheet of paper.

[20:35]

Blank sheet of paper, but something's always being written on the blank sheet of paper. It doesn't stay blank very long. And some people think, well, we should keep the mind like a blank piece of paper and not let anything happen on it. Something's always happening with a blank sheet of paper. Or on the screen, on the movie screen. Something's always happening on the movie screen, but when the projector's turned off, it's just a screen. The screen is always clean, even though the movie's going on. And we get very involved in the movie. But in Zazen, we realize there's the screen and the movie.

[21:41]

And the screen and the movie are not the same. Not different, but not the same. And so we can stop the movie. Oh, wait, but this movie There's nothing wrong with the movie. The movie is more interesting than just the screen. But in Zazen, we promise ourselves something. We have an intention when we sit Zazen. The intention is not to get caught up in the screen, in the movie. So when the movie starts going, we say, I'm doing zazen, not watching movies. That's what you do. You don't say that to yourself, of course, but you just wake up, you know, and bring your attention back just to what I'm doing.

[22:45]

What are we doing? We're sitting with posture, sitting with breath, sitting with attention, and harmonizing these three aspects. That's all we're doing. So if something else comes in, what do you do? Goodbye. Alone and goodbye. No anger. No frustration. No anxiety. No covetousness. No ill will. Just alone and goodbye. Without judging anything that comes up. And without judging ourself. You may be having thoughts for 40 minutes. That's OK. If you say, oh, I was a bad boy for 40 minutes, or my zazen was awful for 40 minutes, or I didn't have any clear thought for 40 minutes,

[23:54]

That's worse than all the stuff that happened in those 40 minutes. But all the stuff happened is just what happened. That's all. But the fact that you're sitting there judging it is delusion. There's no way you can judge us on that. On the other hand, We make a big effort to wake up, big effort to sit up straight, to put our attention and our energy into posture. You know, when we sit with posture, you put all your energy into your posture so that there's nothing left out. Fully, fully present. Nothing left out.

[24:57]

But even though we make that effort, we can't be there continuously. Very hard to be present, moment by moment. Almost impossible to be continuously present. But that's the effort. But if you don't come up to the effort, there's no judgment on it. But you know that you're sitting Zazen if you know that you're making your best effort, even though it's not perfect. Even though your mind wanders and your attention lags and you get caught by the pain in your legs. As long as you're making a wholehearted effort,

[26:08]

So just to let the thoughts come and go. When a thought comes, it's just there. Then you wake up and you bring your attention back to posture and breathing. You don't try to chase the thought away. You don't get caught up in judgment or chasing things. Just let go and bring your attention back. Continually bring your attention back to posture of breathing. So that the mind, the function of the mind is to be the posture and the breath. So there's no separation between the subject, which is our mind, and the object, which is our body and breathing. Subject and object are no gap.

[27:29]

So this is harmonization, so-called harmonization, body, breath and mind. No separation. And then we just treat everything equally. Pleasure, pain, wandering mind, clear mind, One point that I want to bring out, especially for people who haven't been sitting too long, although we make an effort, a big effort to posture, too much effort makes us stiff.

[28:32]

and will cause us to become tired out very quickly if you make too much effort. Too much effort tends toward stiffness and rigidity. So even though we have very good posture, we should not be rigid. good form of posture, even though it looks like a statue, should be very flexible. And the other side is, if you don't make enough effort, then your posture always feels lax. There's not enough presence. and you get tired very easily that way.

[29:35]

It leads to a kind of slothfulness, or too easygoing, and the energy doesn't rise in your sitting. So, to find the balance between energetic rising between high energy and relaxation is where you should be looking all the time, to find the point, moment by moment, where you're fully present with energy, your energy is fully permeating your body. and yet you're not stiff or tense. In the beginning, we have to put a lot of energy into our body, and so we put it all in the wrong place.

[30:41]

You don't have to be tense in your arms. You don't have to be tense In order to hold your mudra, you don't have to flex your muscles. Not necessary. But yet, if you don't put energy in, you can't keep the form. So how do you find the right form, and at the same time, you have complete flexibility? That's what we should be looking for. That keeps you interested in Tzadzik. That will keep your attention interested in zazen. Because also, when you find that place, it also feels good. You feel like you're using the least amount of effort to do the most amount of work. So conservation of energy is really important. And yet, you're fully functioning.

[31:46]

Body, mind, and breath, fully functioning. using the least amount of effort. When I say least amount of effort, it means just enough to do what you have to do. And yet, your energy is completely flowing and you feel energetic because you're completely open and the energy is flowing through your body. But it takes a while to find that place, but It's never completely found because we have to keep looking for it all the time. So in Zazen, we take the same posture over and over again. But to refine that posture takes forever. And every time we sit, we have to make that effort

[32:50]

to find the right posture. Each time, we sit. I don't care how long you've been sitting. And during zazen, it changes all the time. Posture's always changing. Even though you get the right posture, five minutes later, it's not the same. So you have to keep making subtle adjustments and subtle assertions constantly through zazen, through the period of zazen. You know, we say, when you sit, don't move. But it doesn't mean don't move. Don't move means don't change your posture, or don't wiggle around, but it may be very still.

[34:01]

At the same time, it's necessary to keep a certain posture and make subtle adjustments. No one will ever notice your subtle adjustments, even though to you it may seem like you're moving all over the place. better to make subtle adjustments that you need to make than to think that you have to sit still with some posture that isn't working. Because it will change. During a period of zazen, your posture will change, and you have to reassert pushing your lower back forward because it will start to collapse. To actually sit with a straight spine takes effort and you have to keep asserting that during zazen.

[35:04]

So if you look for the balance point, where is that place that's really the center of my body in this position? And if you find the center of your body, then how do you balance all this tree that's growing out of the center of your body? How do you make it work? So even though you have all these body parts, and the body parts are lined up in one posture, each one is independent. And if you fuse them, they won't work. You confuse them, but that confuses them, actually, because body parts are meant to be flexible.

[36:23]

They're not meant to be rigid, held together in a rigid way. They're meant to be flexible. That's why we have our joints. They're meant to move. So, when you sit still in Zazen posture, it's actually even though it's completely still. It's movement. Subtle movement. So, all the joints in your body should be loose and ready to move at any moment. Not stiff and tight and tense. Then it feels quite natural. We have some time left today in our tazen.

[37:30]

Please work on these points. How to find the balance. You know, right here, where we call the hara, is kind of midpoint. And to sit up straight, aligning your vertebrae, one on top of the other, lifting up your sternum so that you don't collapse. keeping your head on top of your spine. These are balance points. One, two, three. And when you look at a tree, the tree looks still. But if you hang on to the tree, you'll find the tree is going like this. Subtle movement. It's got all these branches, but they're waving, you know, subtly, even though there's no wind. They're loose and flexible. Otherwise, they break off.

[38:33]

You don't want to break off your limbs. Keep yourself subtle, supple, loose, but with good form. You know, you look at a wonderful tree. You say, that's a beautiful tree, because it has wonderful form, balance, Freshness. Flexibility. So you can think of yourself as a tree, actually. Think of yourself as a tree. Let go of all the tenseness in your body. Just think about letting go of the tenseness in your body as a positive Thought and Zazen. How do you maintain this posture and let go of all the tenseness, especially in your upper body, because you don't need it? It doesn't do you any good.

[39:35]

What can you let go of and still maintain the posture? That's the point. You can let go of all the tenseness in your upper back. You can let go of the tenseness in your shoulders. You can let go of the tenseness in your upper arms. and let go of the tenseness of your lower arms, and let go of the tenseness of your mudra. Mudra is not like this. If you go to adjust somebody's posture, you'll know what I'm talking about. Sometimes you come up behind somebody, you want to adjust their arms, but their arms are locked. It shouldn't be necessary. So when you sit, if someone comes and pushes on your elbow, your whole body shouldn't fall over, just the elbow bones.

[40:39]

Because it's flexible. Someone comes and pushes your back, just like that. People have so much resistance. So you have to let go of this resistance and inflexibility. Just be open and loose. So that's what we should strive for in the posture. And if you really do that, you'll be, sadhana will become very interesting. But boring means I'm standing outside of what I'm doing. If your attention is completely one with what you're doing, there's no room for boredom, because there's no separation.

[41:43]

And if you are having trouble in Zazen, come and see me. So there's no special state of mind in zazen. This is the most important thing. The state of mind in zazen is everything is changing. So there's one state of mind after another. The ability to let, allow everything to come up and go, to come as it comes and go as it goes, is the natural mind.

[43:04]

Sometimes confused mind, sometimes clear mind, sometimes diluted mind, sometimes enlightened mind. These are just states of mind that come and go. And no special state of mind is the mind that allows everything to come and go. without making a judgment. And yet, there's something to do. Do you have a question? It seems like we emphasize posture I'm wondering where the balance point is.

[44:23]

How do I find the balance point when I see myself lying and slandering and being angry and greedy and other people doing the same? How do I find the balance point? You mean, should you judge yourself for those thoughts? Well, I know that's what I'm doing, but it seems to be a problem. It's not so easy to get here, but we come here, and we sit down, and we say, oh, I said sausage.

[45:29]

That's because you think that Zazen should change you. That's the kind of problem. Well, because it's Zazen, it should change me, it should make me into this other person. But actually, what it allows you to do is to see who you are. You know that I'm lying, I'm slandering, right? And then what you do about that is up to you. How do you not do things like that? Zazen is just clearly seeing. Seeing as it is. Seeing everything just as it is. So if it enables you to see, if your zazen enables you to see yourself just as you are, that's pretty good. Not everyone can do that so easily.

[46:41]

a little bit related question, but sitting in zazen and then having some kind of a thought, a judgment about others or self, and then getting caught up in that judgment, that loop, what do you do when you get caught there? When you realize that I've, that mine is caught there, you let it go and come back to zazen. The problem is not that we have these thoughts or these feelings. The problem is that we allow them to pull us around. So I can have an angry thought, but if I let go of it, not a problem. It's only a problem when I'm turned by or get caught by these thoughts. When we're talking about... I fall into such despair so easily over what's happening here.

[48:12]

I mean, it's not just my lying and my slandering, but the destructive direction that we're all going in seems so overwhelming. But what direction are we all going in? What do you mean? Yesterday, I ran into this birthday parade. This is an example. Oh, you mean all of us. You don't mean the people in this room, you mean? No, I don't mean the birthday parades. I'm talking about the world, right? There was this wonderful float thing that somebody had made out of, it said, Berkeley you know, each individual lunch is this aluminum plate and then the paper, it used to be styrofoam, I'm sure, now it's paper. And they've done this wonderful monster when someone had this little sign that said, you know, what's for lunch today, teacher?

[49:18]

Oh, just trash. You know, and I thought of just the way we're taught that what we do doesn't make a difference. We don't have kids preparing their own lunch and people cleaning up the way we do here in Sasheen because we have to do the curriculum. I mean, how we make our lunch and how we eat and how we clean up isn't important. What's important is getting through this curriculum. And so it was wonderful to see these parents and kids making the statement. But then immediately afterwards, I thought, all the schoolrooms all over the country and how we're continually taught that what we do doesn't make a difference. And it seems so overwhelming to try and, here is this wonderful quote trying to counter this. And I know there are people who, well you talk

[50:21]

that joy? I mean, there seemed to be, when you were talking about sending zazen, there seemed to be some, some relationship. Well, that's because, you know, the joy doesn't come from whether things are good or bad. That's, you know, zazen is called ji ju yu samadhi. It means self-joyous samadhi. It has nothing to do with whether things are good or bad. Because we think that joy comes when everything is good. And unhappiness comes when everything is bad. That's very simplistic thinking. Things are always good and bad, you know? Even though you get everything good over here, everything's bad over there. It's just the way it is. And if you get caught up in that, then you can never be joyful.

[51:29]

Joy has not so much to do with whether things are good or bad or right or wrong. If you do, you know, when you get caught up in that, then you just get pulled around this way and that way, and you have this roller coaster of good feelings and bad feelings, you know. When things are good, you're feeling good. When they're bad, you're feeling bad. It's okay to feel those ways, but you just get caught by that. This world will always be the way it is now. It's just the circumstances will change. But it will always be the way it is now. Painful, happy, you know, all the stuff. It's not going to change, no matter what you do. Joy comes from allowing things to be as they are and still making an effort to change them.

[52:38]

It's just that you have to do something, right? You have to do something. You don't work for the good things because it's going to change things. You do it because you like the good things. It's not going to change anything. It'll change something circumstantially for a while, but the force that makes that thing appear, that's not going to change. It's always going to be there. So, instead of being involved in the outcome of good and bad, We have to be able to accept things as they are.

[53:43]

And when you can really accept things as they are, then you have some joy. Deep joy that accepts everything the way it goes. Doesn't mean you don't make an effort to change things, but if you get too attached to your effort, to the fruits of your effort, then you have despair. in the posture of harmony. Mind, posture, and breath. Observing myself, I can see maybe the mind and the breath becoming harmonious, but the hard part for me is connecting up the body with it. Connecting up the body with it?

[54:43]

I don't feel connected. I can feel like there's some type of harmony between my mind and my breath as I breathe and as I count. But I noticed that I didn't feel connected to my body. What effort would I make to feel more connected? Posture, for one thing. Posture. Putting all of your effort into posture. Making a continual effort in posture. Continuous effort. And when you put your effort in posture, you investigate all the points of your posture over and over again. The mudra, the vertebrae, your back, the teeth, the way your tongue is, and the way your head is on top of your spine. And you're not leaning forward, you're not leaning backward, you're not leaning from side to side.

[55:46]

All of these points. Mudra is my mudra. Okay? Are my thumbs collapsing? Am I putting my thumbs like this? This is not, this is not right. So, like this. Lightly, lightly, very lightly. In order to, it sits us and you have to sacrifice your thumbnails. So, you know, all those points. And if you keep your attention there, you can't miss. I have a tendency to drop. Yeah, that's right. So the mudra is a barometer. It tells us what the weather's like. And this means I'm losing my attention and falling asleep. Like this. This means my mind is collapsing.

[56:48]

And this means too much tension. So to be able to hold a feeling of a circle and keep the thumb tips lightly touching, just barely touching. And if you keep that barely touching and have that attention, that will tell you the state of mind you're having. In the Wizard of Oz, you know, when they went to sleep, they'd be walking through the poppies, and they just got so sleepy, it was just overwhelming, they couldn't not sleep, right? I mean, I have that feeling sometimes, but at that time... What do you do? What do I do? Ask for the stick. Pardon me? Ask for the stick. Oh! That's a help, you know. That's the reason why we carry it. To help us out. Not, you know, not something mean. But, you know, when the person doesn't say goodbye, please help me.

[57:53]

It will give you a little whack. Two whacks. Getting back to body, breath, and mind, I remember a long time ago I asked friend tried a version of this question. And basically it was, what's going on when your body seems to have a mind of its own? That's kind of following up on that. Think about the physical part, the body part. During Sashin, sometimes my body, all I have to do is just stay with whatever the pain is, but the pain moves around. And sometimes it just stays in one place. And that's, I think, what I call the body having its own mind. There's just no way I can seem to deal with it. Well, right, the pain stays in one place, but we have to remember it is the mind that's dealing with it.

[58:54]

And we, you know, you can focus on When something happens, our mind focuses. When there's some noise over here, the mind focuses on that. Oh, God, that's interesting. So that becomes the most interesting thing. But it doesn't have to be the most interesting thing. That's why paying attention to posture as a mode, and breath, allows you to focus on posture and breath And the whole realm of body-mind, instead of just focusing on that one thing, because that one thing will draw your attention. And then it gets worse and worse and worse, as you become more and more focused on it. So, we tend to do that, you know, and forget the rest. As soon as it gets to be more than ordinary, you know, then we tend to latch on to it.

[60:00]

So this is called being attached to the pain in your legs, or whatever. It's an attachment. And we don't have to be attached to that. You can pay more attention as soon as that starts to happen. Pay more attention to your breath. Pay more attention to your posture. Focus. Don't let the focus... It's still there, you know, it's not going to go away. But, you know, that painful place is sitting Zazen. Let it sit Zazen. That's the way it's doing it. That's not the only thing in the world. That's just something. And when there is a problem, you know, if the rest of the body-mind comes to aid of that problem, to let it come to aid of that problem, by balancing out the whole thing, that's just one thing that's happening. But it seems like the only thing that's happening becomes the only thing that's happening. If you allow that to happen, then you get lost.

[61:12]

You desert the rest of your body-mind in order to take care of the fascination of that problem. So don't be too fascinated by it. Easy thing to say. Yes. Last question. Yeah, that's the stage you go through, and it gets better. In other words, if you continue to practice, you go through that stage. And no one can tell you exactly how to get through it, you know.

[62:13]

You have to get through it, and then little by little, you learn how to deal with it. So, that's common to everyone. Different people have different threshold, but there is a way to deal with pain for everybody.

[62:41]

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