Well good afternoon everyone. I guess summer is over. That was quick. Actually, the weather is really nice today and it's brisk and it keeps us awake. So this afternoon, thank you for coming, we're going to have a Zazen refresher, which is something that Sochin always did during practice period and it's important for us to do it on a regular basis. So I'm going to give some instruction and we'll leave time for discussions and questions. And I would like to point you to the website. On the Berkeley Sentinel website, there is about a 45-minute Zazen instruction by Sochin Roshi

[01:12]

that he did in September of 2020 and it's really good and it covers all the points and more than I will doubtless cover here today. And it's grounded in his more than 50 years of Zazen practice. So, when he structured his practice, he relied on the teaching that he received from his teacher, Suzuki Roshi. And Suzuki Roshi, in turn, relied on the instruction that was passed down to him from Dogen Zenji. And we're studying, we studied last week and also we'll continue tomorrow to be studying Dogen Zenji's Fukan Zazen-gi, which is his instructions for Zazen.

[02:20]

So, the fundamental distinction of Suzuki Roshi's Zazen is that it is the manifestation of practice enlightenment. Practice enlightenment means that we practice not to attain enlightenment, which is the usual way that people have thought about Buddhist practice. We practice to become Buddhas and I'm going to speak about that more tomorrow. Rather, practice enlightenment means we practice because we are Buddhas already. And the practice of our sitting cross-legged, or however it is that we sit, is to express our already enlightened nature.

[03:28]

It's to practice not towards our enlightenment, but from our enlightenment and sharing it with all beings. In the Fukan Zazen-gi, Dogen says, the way is basically perfect and all-pervading, yet if there is a hair's breadth deviation, this is like a gap between heaven and earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion. Therefore, put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases and learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward. If you want to realize just this, get to work

[04:35]

on just this right now. So this backward step, we step away from when we enter the Zen-do or we enter our own meditation place in this pandemic world. We're taking this backward step that shines the light inward. At the same time, we're not excluding the world that comes through our senses. We're not excluding what we see, what we hear, or even what we think. It's just that we are not stuck on that. We are free in that space. The basis for this is our Zazen, and the three elements of Zazen are essentially our body, our breath, and our mind.

[05:46]

And that's what we'll talk about, how to establish them, how to settle in them, during our Zazen practice. I want to say, you know, right now, you may have gathered I'm actually sitting in the Zen-do. It just feels wonderful. It's quiet. It's peaceful. And I really look forward to the time when together we can practice in here again, as we've done for so many years. We've done so well during the pandemic in maintaining our Zazen practice, and in maintaining the principles that we're going to elucidate today. And there's something wonderful about being right here in this room,

[06:48]

looking around at this really well-used room that is imbued with the energies of hundreds of thousands of hours of Zazen. So, we don't necessarily need to have a place like this, or we have a place like this, and we treasure it. So, as I said, the basis of Zazen is body, speech, and mind. So, we begin by establishing our body. We find a place and put a Zavaton, a thick mat down, and put our Zafu, or a bench, or a chair

[07:50]

on top of it, and we sit facing the world, facing the wall, facing ourselves. And the way we sit, first, we establish our posture. And so, there are a number of postures that you can try. And if your body is not ready for them, it's good to try them anyway, and let your body relax into these postures and see if they work for you, rather than immediately going to the next easier posture. So, if you can sit full lotus, that's great. My son, a surgeon always said that full lotus was the most comfortable way to sit,

[08:53]

and he's sat that way for much of his life. And lately, our son Alex, who is at a Zen monastery in Japan, has been sitting full lotus, and he says the same thing. It's the most comfortable. I wish that I could. I've tried to do it, and it doesn't work for me. But if you can do it, if you're young and flexible, please try to do it. Don't force your body into any of these postures. But many of us can sit in half lotus. So, in half lotus, you rest the base of your spine on the front of your zafu, and you sit with your left foot resting on your right thigh. It's also fine if the way your body works is to place your right foot on your left thigh.

[10:02]

And when you cross your legs, you've created a triangle between the knees and the base of the spine. And the triangle, as we know, is one of the most stable geometric forms. And I've sat like this for many years. It took me some years to be able to allow my hips and my knees to open to be able to sit half lotus. But once they did, I found it a very relaxed and comfortable way to sit. Right now, in my 70s, the MRIs say that I have no cartilage left in my knees.

[11:05]

And so, there's some pain in my left knee. And I've been sitting in what we call Burmese posture. Burmese posture is to sit with one leg, your left leg in front of your right, or your right leg in front of your left. And those are both resting on the zavitan. That's also a very stable posture. It also creates a triangle. Another posture to do on the cushion is to sit in seiza, a Japanese way of sitting, or some variant of it. Sitting seiza means essentially

[12:08]

resting on your ankles and your knees, but upright. And in Japan, you would sit seiza without a cushion. And if you like, you can sit seiza by supporting your behind, either with a cushion underneath your seat, so raising you a little bit to take some of the stress off of the ankles, or using a seiza bench of varying heights. Does one of you have a seiza bench that you're sitting on? If you can hold it up and we can spotlight it. I should have had one. I'm not seeing because... There we go.

[13:13]

If you spotlight Ellen, can you see Ellen Webb down there? Or Cricket? Those are seiza benches. And they are... Thank you. They're very convenient ways to take some of the strain off of your ankles. And that's another effective... So effectively, that's also creating a triangle, but it's true that your center of gravity is a little higher. So it's perhaps a little less vertically stable than sitting cross-legged, but it's fine. And if you can't do that, as some of us may not be able to as we age, sit in a chair. And when you sit in a chair, you want to sit, again, upright.

[14:19]

You want your feet to be touching the ground. Use a good, straight, armless chair. Sit upright, not leaning back. And you can use a support cushion behind the base of your back to support you. And if you want a cushion under your feet, so that your feet can actually rest flat on the floor. So that's the first way of establishing your posture. The second thing we do to establish our posture is we sway. So we sit down, put our hands on our knees, and sway from the left to the right or the right to the left. And gradually decrease the arcs so that you come to a place that is centered.

[15:27]

This is not preparation for zazen. This actually is zazen itself. So we sway the upper half of the body, if we can. And you can also, if you like, go forward and backward to find your center in that axis. And finally, you reach an upright posture. And when you find this upright posture, you move your hands into what's called the cosmic mudra. And let's see if I can show that. Yeah. So the cosmic mudra is like this. Your left hand is backwards. Your left hand is resting in your right palm. And your thumb tips are just touching very lightly,

[16:34]

as if you could slip a sheet of paper between your thumbs. And you're creating sort of half circle. It's as if you're cupping something precious in your hand. This is called the cosmic mudra. You rest this, you can rest this in your lap or against your body. And there's some space underneath your arms. So your arms are a little open. The usual metaphor or descriptor that's used is, it's as if you're holding a raw egg underneath your arm. So be careful. You know, if you're too loose, the egg will drop and it'll make a mess. And if you're too tight, the egg will crack and it'll make a mess.

[17:35]

So we find a stable upright posture and then we align ourselves. You can think of your posture as rising from the base as a tree would rise from the earth or as a blade of grass. Those growing things are flexible and upright. They are rooted in the ground and they're reaching towards the sky. So the crown of your head is reaching straight up. It's as if there's a string from here up into the heavens that's holding you up. And this lift is coming from the base of your spine.

[18:38]

It's not being hung from your shoulders. Sojin talked about this again and again. He talked about the lift coming from the base of the spine or he talked about extending your upper body or extending your midriff. And I understood it. And for years, I couldn't do it. Because I came to Zazen in my late 30s, I already had a lot of bad physical habits. So instead of lifting from the middle, I was kind of collapsed. Try to lift yourself. So your posture is open. Open chest, open belly, open to the world. Exposed, vulnerable, and strong.

[19:44]

You can think of that posture as if you've ever seen a baby when it learns to walk. It kind of walks with its belly forward. Or the other image I like is if you are familiar with samurai movies, to think of Toshiro Mifune walking through the world striding, you know, belly first. So we lead with an open, exposed front of our body. I really like the expression, and it's not rigid. I like the expression that I learned from Roshi Joan Halifax at Upaya, where she says, Zazen posture is strong back, soft front.

[20:47]

Strong back, soft front. So we establish this posture, and this is the basis. And in the course of a period of practice, come back and check these points of posture. It's to think about your nose in line with your navel. And think about your ears in line with your shoulders. Your head is tilted down slightly. Your eyes are slightly open. Your mouth is closed, with the tongue resting against the back of your teeth. And you're just naturally breathing in and out. So having established the posture, then we establish the breath.

[21:53]

I would like to suggest something that I've absorbed over the years that wasn't in the first Zazen instruction that I had. It's actually in... I thought it was here, but evidently not. Yes, here it is. From the Zuo Changyi, which is the Zazengi that Dogen borrowed extensively from when he wrote Fukan Zazengi, by Master Changlu Zongzhi. He says, the bodhisattva who studies prajna should first arouse the thought of great

[23:00]

compassion, make the extensive vows, and then carefully cultivate samadhi. Vowing to save sentient beings, one should not seek liberation for oneself alone. So what I would like to suggest to you is that when you sit down, you raise your intention. You raise bodhicitta, the intention to be awake for the sake of all beings. And what I do, having established my posture, I say silently to myself, may I be awake that others may awaken. And this is just my expression. You can choose anything you want, or you can move directly to your breathing.

[24:03]

But I really like doing this. I say it silently three times as if I'm dropping a stone into a pond. And pretty lightly, not with a lot of effort, not a lot of energy, but just to let that thought of enlightenment flow through this period of Zazengi, to set an intention for my Zazengi. So as I said, I do that three times. And then you can take a few breaths to really establish your breath. Breathe in deeply through your nose, and breathe out in a long and slow manner.

[25:06]

Try that. Just as long an exhale as you can do, as if you're spinning out a stream, a thread of breath. And when we reach the end of that, just breathe in again naturally. And take four or five breaths like this. As you're breathing out that stream, what you find is in order to breathe like that, you actually have to have some control of your diaphragm. And as you take a mindful control of your diaphragm, as you do this long, mindful breathing,

[26:12]

you may find yourself changing gears from whatever activity you had previously been in during the day. And that's the point of it, to really establish yourself in your body. And once you've done that, just allow your breath to be natural. See if you can allow it to reach down to your hara, to your belly. And you can feel the hara as you inhale, you can feel it expand. And as you exhale, you can feel it contract. But it's no special breath. It's not long. It's not deep. It's not shallow. It's just a natural, open, receptive breathing.

[27:22]

And if you like, to put your attention on your breath, you can count each exhalation. Give each exhalation a count, and go from one to 10. And start again. Very often, we get to two, or three, or four. And then we're thinking about dinner, or work, or something someone said. And when you notice that, just set those thoughts aside, start again at one. Without any judgment, or evaluation of success or failure. This is just natural. Our minds, which we're about to get to, are constantly secreting thoughts. So you can count your breaths.

[28:31]

You can just simply follow them, by putting the attention on the rise and fall of your abdomen. A practice that I've been doing for some years is breathing in on the word just, and breathing out on the word this. Just this. Just this. And I find those rest really naturally and easily on my breath. So we move from breath to mind. And often, we think of the mind as the problem.

[29:34]

But it's not a problem. The mind is just being the mind. We are thinking beings, and we exude thoughts. Yaoshan said, advised, think not thinking. This is in Fukunza Zenki. And he was asked, how do you think not thinking? He said, non-thinking. So what is non-thinking? Non-thinking is complete receptivity. It's as if one were sitting by the stream of life and watching the river flow.

[30:43]

That river is thoughts, memories, sensations, all of those things. We recognize that it's flowing. And as we sit by a stream, we may try to keep our mind on a particular point in that stream, where, say, a small rivulet of the stream cascades over a small outfall of rock. And we can see that, and it's like we're right there, we're really in that. And then there's a bubble that comes by, or there's a branch or a stick that's flowing by, and it catches our attention, and it draws your mind just naturally down the stream.

[31:48]

And that's the way our minds work. It's so easy for us to get, shall I say, caught by these thoughts or these perceptions. But there's nothing wrong with that. The challenge is just as when your breath is distracted, if you notice it, just return to one. The same thing, that applies. That's actually the activity of mind, that, oh, and then you come back to that place in the stream, and we're continuously pulled away, pulled downstream, and continuously returning. What I was told years and years ago was that the essential act of zazen was the act of return.

[33:00]

And it's really important for us to know, I was not told this when I started practicing. I wished I had understood it earlier. This is not a practice of concentration. This is what Dogen says in Fukan Zazenki, when he says, the zazen I'm speaking of is not learning meditation. It's simply the dharma gate of repose and bliss. So meditation often means concentration, intense focus, a kind of blotting out of everything that is extraneous to the single-pointedness of one's concentration. That's not what we're doing. What we're doing is in a, maybe a contradictory way of expressing it,

[34:03]

is we're concentrating on everything. So it's if, it's as if the top of your head were lifted off, and you were open to all sensations and all perceptions, not just external, but also from within your body. So as we establish all these things, something may interfere with our zazen, a sound, a thought, a bodily sensation. Please don't think of that. Please think of that as an opportunity to return, to come back to the beginning, to give yourself very quickly, to scan your body and your mind and give yourself the zazen instruction that something like what we just did,

[35:05]

and begin again. When I asked Sogen Roshi what he did in zazen, he said, I give myself zazen instruction. So he went through all of these points, the points of body, points of breath, the points of mind, to align himself. And then he might fall asleep, and he would wake up, and he would realign himself. This is our task. This is actually our practice. And the practice is one of complete receptivity, of including everything in our zazen. Everyone, every being of our own mind. So I'm not going to speak of other forms today. I think I'll stop there and leave about five minutes,

[36:11]

want to leave a little time for questions. So thank you for listening. I hope this was useful. And let's see what questions you have. Please, you can raise your hands digitally if you like, or actually, raise them digitally, or maybe Lori can look at them, because I can't quite see everyone. If it would be great if people could use the raising hands function, because I can actually fit all the participants in the participant window on my screen. But I would have to keep scrolling through the top bar to see all of you. And if somehow you can't find the raised hands, and you get frustrated, you just unmute and talk to us.

[37:13]

There's only, there's a small amount here, so still not seeing any hands. You all got this, right? You could also just have a comment. Yeah, I, I'm speechless. It was so clear and so helpful. I don't really have a question. Maybe others are feeling that way too. Who was it that's speaking? That was Hannah. Thank you. Why is that funny? I don't know. It's true. This is Helen.

[38:16]

Hi. Hi. I think it was yesterday in class, you said a two syllable phrase in Chinese, and I don't remember what the phrase was, or what it meant. But I think it was, did you say anything? Yeah, yeah. It was, um, gui yi. And it was, the way, I guess it was Chinese for take refuge. Ah, that's right. Okay. I was trying to think it might use a two word phrase for just this, but that meaning doesn't quite work. Right, right. Maybe I'll just stick with just this. Just this is, um, I find that very useful. Just, it sits on my breath. So easily. And then I don't have to count.

[39:21]

Joe? Yeah, thanks. Maybe this is better in person, but I figure I'd ask, do you have anything to say about kind of what to do with like your lower back? Is it coming up straight from your bottom, you know, or is it kind of curved? You know, I've heard different things. Your lower back is coming up straight from the base of your spine. Now, often the question that, or the experiment that's useful is to find how high your Zavaton should be. How firm, how high, what support do you need under the base of your spine? Your Zafu. Your Zafu, yeah. Also, it was astonishing. I mean, Sojin sat on this completely

[40:38]

mushy cushion, and that was, you know, that was fine. That worked totally for him. I sit, for years I've been sitting on one of these inflatable cushions that, you know, I found just the right inflation. But sometimes you need, you know, and sometimes you may need to put a support cushion. It depends. This is, it's all a matter of angle, angles and torque, you know, so you have to find what's comfortable for your skeletal alignment. So it's good to experiment. So pretty much just look for that comfort, right? Like look for, look for the place, you know, what I will say again for myself, I think I said, I think it took me 10 years. I kept hearing the instruction to lift from the base of my spine, and I kept trying to do it,

[41:42]

and it kept collapsing. Uh, and then one day, again, it was in Zazen instruction, and Sojin said it, and I did it, and it was like, everything clicked in, and I was able to do that. So, it's a lot of what we do with our posture depends on all the work that we have done for a long time. Same thing with sitting, we're sitting loaded, full Lotus or half Lotus. So give yourself that space. Don't push too hard, but keep trying to move towards a stable, upright posture. Karen? I want to echo what Hannah said. I appreciated how clear this was. It felt really helpful. And one question I have is,

[42:43]

I'm recently experiencing a lot more of the tendency towards falling asleep, where I find myself, my eyes are getting heavy, and I'm rocking over forward, both in the morning and in the afternoon, and I'm wondering if you have any particular advice for when that happens. Wake up. That's what I tell myself, and it feels like the more that I say that, the more my eyes are like, we're going to close harder now. The harder you try. I have this device that someone gave me to use these in Chinese monasteries, chin rests. They'd prop the chin rest on their Zabaton, and they'd place it on their chin rest, and so you couldn't nod out. Although then I wonder if I'd wake up. I think what wakes me up is the falling forward. All of us have had this experience, and every now and then in the zendo,

[43:43]

you'll hear somebody go against the wall. It's sleepy zazen. If there's something you can do to keep yourself awake, fine. But if what's happening is this period is a period of sleep, this is just one of the, this is just a stage. It might be a moment that you're going through. It might be a stage that you're going through. But don't reject it as not zazen. Okay. Don't judge it. Thank you, that's helpful. Thank you. One more, and then we have to end. Yeah, thank you. One thing that was very helpful years ago, you put, I think the kiyosaku against the base, where I was sitting on the zafu, and I could sit up and put the back of my head

[44:46]

against the top, because I'm short. If they have a broomstick for taller people. And it just helped with that alignment. It was a lot lifting, because you're not losing your lumbar curve. I don't know, there was an alignment thing that really helped. Well, I learned that from Sojin, and from Reb, and from other teachers. It's a very common technique to use. I can't reach the kiyosaku. To use it to move it against the base of somebody's spine, up their back, and then they can move back against it and find the right alignment. Just to say to people who maybe, we haven't carried the kiyosaku as to strike people with it for years now. And I regret that, but I don't think it's coming back.

[45:51]

But we can use it for adjusting postures. And we'll do that when we come back to the zendo. When we come back to the zendo, I'd like to be adjusting postures. I'll try to do that more during periods of Sojin. And there are other people who are trained who are really good at that. So, thank you. I think we need to end. Let's end by chanting the four vows.

[46:25]

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