I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Evening. I have my notes on paper. And I was thinking, I'm talking about something that we all know, but when I read it, it just felt good to read it again and to just go through the same feelings that I had the times before. So I understand the form is we read the paragraph and I'll give you some comments on the paragraph,

[01:04]

and then we discuss the paragraph, and then we just go as far as we can go. So I'll read the first paragraph. And this is calmness of mind, I don't know when the lecture was given, and I don't think I attended this particular lecture, but it's just a wonderful lecture. So, shikantaza, or zazen, is just to be ourselves. When we do not expect anything, we can be ourselves. That is our way to live fully in each moment of time. This practice continues forever. So, if we get through the first paragraph, we'll have done enough for the night. The first time I remember hearing the term shikantaza was when Mei Li went back and sat

[02:15]

with Kategori Roshi and his group, and she came back and was talking about shikantaza and how wonderful it was. And I thought, gee, what are they doing back there that we're not doing here, you know? And then I found out it was the same thing. And Suzuki Roshi would always just say, especially in the beginning, when anybody would bother him or they'd ask him questions, he'd say, just sit. And sometimes he'd whack them with a stick, go sit. But when we do this, this calmness that we get from this practice, it just goes out and fills your life, and it also, you're giving it to other people, so it's not just

[03:19]

something that you've done for your own benefit. We affect each other. So that's what I have to say about that paragraph. Does anybody want to make comments or ask questions? Russ. What do you think he means by this practice continues forever? I think that this calmness is the natural state of whatever we're living in, and that we're actually just experiencing, becoming consciousness, conscious of our experiencing of it. So it's not like we're going to carry on forever doing something necessarily, but experiencing something that's a constant throughout space and time? It's like we're recognizing our connection with this whole dance that will go on forever.

[04:24]

That's the way I see it. Thanks. Go. The one thing I thought was an extraordinary paragraph in that, within the same breath, it talks about the moment of time, and then it's talking about forever in the next sentence. That's kind of weird. Yeah, that's pretty weird. Yeah. And, you know, do not, don't expect anything. There's so many arguments about how ridiculous that is, but it seems like, in this paragraph, I get the feeling that what he means by that is sort of along the line of, if you're living fully in this instant, then expectation is where you're kind of like holding back and waiting for something to happen in the future, and it's the opposite of the Shikantaza practice. Yeah.

[05:25]

I think he gets into that in the next paragraph, but that is really, that is, the thing behind expectations is time, and the connecting of the moments of time to an output, to a result. And if you really did live in just, fully in one moment of time, you wouldn't be worrying about the other moments, so you wouldn't have expectations. And sometimes you go there. Yes? I really, I love the double-edged sword with that last sentence, and this practice goes on forever.

[06:27]

I had simultaneously responses of both, oh, that sounds like a lot of work, but simultaneously, but I like it to be completely myself. Yeah. Yeah. You don't really have any choice. No. Another paragraph? Oh. Sue? The same Dogen phrase, this no trace continues forever. Yeah. No trace of enlightenment. There's no trace of enlightenment, and it continues forever. Yeah. You know, just sort of connected up with this first moment. I think so. I think it's the same thing. I think it's the actual thing that's going on. When you finally calm down enough to be in it and feel it, is that no trace of enlightenment.

[07:40]

Enlightenment goes away. And it's always there, even though you may not be in it. Yeah. And it's really clear sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes. So, the next paragraph is, we say each moment, but in our actual practice, a moment is too long, because in that moment, your mind is already involved in following the breath. So we say, even in a snap of your fingers, there are millions of instants of time. This way we can emphasize the feeling of existing in each instant of time. Then your mind is very quiet. Yeah. Well, I just started thinking about the way we measure time, and we measure time.

[08:45]

He says there's millions of instants in the time it takes to snap your fingers, and that's about a tenth of a second. And so then he's talking about something down around ten to the minus eighth of a second. So then, chemical, electrical processes occur in our brains, in our synapses, at around a thousandth of a second. So, if you're sitting in a moment that is ten to the fourth, ten to the fifth times shorter than the amount of time it takes your brain to do anything, then it's going to be pretty calm. So technically, he's correct. The timing between doing it. Right. The equation. But somehow you have to slip into this instant. And I think really what is behind all of this is dropping attachments, because really what

[10:00]

keeps you from being in this instant, unconnected, which is actually the way time is. But there's this strange connection between instances that we've noticed and we think that certain things are going to happen. So I think the only way you can get close to that is to drop your attachments to what comes next. And I think that as we go on, and he talks about breathing, I think that's a way of approaching that state. Yes? I just had a, it being what he said, don't have expectations. I've heard that many times before and I've always thought about it in kind of an abstract sense. Yeah. Expectation.

[11:02]

But this time I heard it more in the sense of none of us can know what's going to happen in the next instant. It's true. And that makes you very curious and attentive to what is happening, to pay attention to what happens in the next instant. And in that sense, not having any expectation allows you to be very connected to this moment. Yeah. Yeah, and also he talks about, later he'll talk about anger, and it's also related to the arising of anger. But it's a very, if you have this feeling, then you're very relaxed, you know, you're just like alert. And actually they've done these studies of people when they're doing zazen.

[12:03]

They put a bunch of electrodes on their heads and then they'll like do something that'll irritate them, you know, like flash a light or say boo or something. And when someone's doing zazen, someone who's experienced doing zazen, they get the same response every time inside the brain. They see the same things shooting off. Whereas when they do it with people that aren't doing zazen or are just sitting there, they experience rather quickly just stops having an effect. So something is more alert inside the brain, although it's still a relaxed state, and the brain uses less energy. Yes? I don't know if it's further along in this talk or if it's another talk in this book,

[13:07]

but one of his talks he mentions along the lines of what we share about expectations. Don't even assume that after you finish exhaling you're going to inhale. Yeah, it's in here, it's in here, yeah, yeah. That's a good one. This next paragraph, just pretend like I'm holding a jewel and swinging it in front of your face, okay, and I'm telling you in a very calm voice what you should do. So, for a period of time each day, try to sit in shikantaza, without moving, without expecting anything, as if you were in your last moment. Moment after moment, you will feel your last instant. In each inhalation and in each exhalation, there are countless instants of time. Your intention is to live in each instant. So, he's just kind of like, he's like a Pied Piper, you know, he's like,

[14:14]

come, come to emptiness, you know, let everything go. And he was, the words wouldn't have been delivered that way. It would have just been like a casual talk, you know, but when I read the words written down, I got this feeling of how magnetic it was. So, and this is our practice, and we do it every day, and, but I think if we had this in mind every day, it might be even more effective, you know. It's a good, it's a good little, it's a good paragraph.

[15:15]

Does someone want to say something? Yeah. So, for a period of, how would he say it? Let me see. So, for a period of time each day, try to sit in Shikantansa without moving, without expecting anything, as if you were in your last moment. Moment after moment, you feel your last instant. In each inhalation and each exhalation, there are countless instants of time. Your intention is to live in each instant. Yes, go. It's so easy to say, but what does it feel like to, quote, feel your last instant, unquote?

[16:17]

So, we just kind of read through, all right, but then I start to think, what does that feel like? Feel your last instant. I'm not sure I even have the foggiest idea what that feels like. What does that feel like? I probably think that's 20 people, maybe it's 20 different instants. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Because you'd be kind of anticipating if you said, okay, this is my last instant. And I'm really disappointed. Yeah. I had a whole lot of things I wanted. Wait a minute. What about my new grandson? Yes. Go ahead. When I was young, I put my car over, and it was sort of a weird situation. I was driving down a great highway in San Francisco,

[17:18]

and somehow I got on the ice plant, and I tried to steer back onto the highway, and I came to a sand dune. And so I was kind of going along the side of the sand dune, and then I flipped, and the car landed on its roof. And at that moment that I realized that was happening, I just, I had this feeling. I said, oh, so this is it. And I just felt this incredible calm. And I wasn't wearing a seat belt. Wow. As it turned out, though, because of that, as the car flipped, I kind of lay on the adjoining seat, and I ended up being completely unheard. But I always remembered that,

[18:20]

just, oh, this is it. Yeah. Yeah. Just calm, total calm. I had that similar experience in an undertow in Hawaii. Oh my. That was it. I was not in charge. Wow. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you did it. Huh? Yeah, yeah.

[19:21]

And it really had a big effect on me then. And, you know, I practiced this, especially on the exhale. Yeah. And I would find myself, it was a process of exhaling, which was sort of jumping ahead. Instead of just fully letting go of the breath, there was sort of a psychological process of kind of like anticipation in a way. But, you know, getting ahead. And towards the end, it's like getting to the inhale. And, yes, it was sad to me. What the heck is going on here? You know, it's sort of, you know,

[20:23]

it's like there's terror. You don't want to be dead. Well, it's not necessarily, you know, you know, a great sort of way, yeah. But just even it's like, you know, the letting go, the moment to moment, just sort of dropping into the moment, dropping into just right now. And that's it. It was a thing that just, you know, just was like, you know, it's like, whoo! Or maybe it's like getting my toe in the pool or up to my knee or something. But, so I'm in sort of like, you know, there's the terror of my family here. Yes. Well, the water's fine. Yeah. So. So, the next paragraph is,

[21:27]

first practice smoothly exhaling, then inhaling. Calmness of mind is beyond the end of your exhalation. If you exhale smoothly without even trying to inhale, you are entering into the complete calmness of your mind. Or if you exhale smoothly without even trying to exhale, you are entering into this complete calmness of your mind. You do not exist anymore. When you exhale this way, then naturally your inhalation will start from there. And all the fresh blood bringing everything from the outside will pervade your body. You are completely refreshed. Then you start to exhale to extend that fresh feeling into emptiness. So moment after moment, without trying to do anything, you will continue shikantaza. When I exhale, I exhale sort of slowly

[22:38]

and then it becomes a little faster until it ends. And when it ends, I just sit in this emptiness until my body wants to have some more air. And so I start to inhale. And I think it's dealing with the self. There's something about this exhale, at the end of this exhale, it's kind of like you're just putting all of your personality out through your breath. And when you finish, there's nothing left. There's just you. Or this, not the ego you, but just the new you. So it's just,

[23:40]

like Sojin always says, it's like you breathe in, it's life. You breathe out, it's death. And then you just keep doing it. And so, that's all I have to say about that paragraph. Yeah. Well, this is offering us like different skillful means to do shikantaza. I mean, we do it most perhaps just counting your breaths. But you can also use this, almost like a visualization of this fresh, you're in here, fresh blood coming in that's made contact with everything beyond your ego or whatever. It's like a visualization. It can be helpful.

[24:43]

Yeah, I like that feeling. Being a contrarian, I've always resisted this description of breathing because I don't, I think it's not, I don't want to target the inhale as meaning something and the exhale as meaning something. And I want to give some credit to the inhale. Let's hear it for the inhale. The exhale is supposed to be more profound, you know. I want to be fair to the inhale. Inhale is birth. Well, you know, it's like making one mean one thing and one thing the other. That's what I resist. I want them to be whatever they happen to be. And it could be equal, or it could be just like what he's saying. Yeah. But I resist seeing it like he's describing it as the way it's supposed to be. But I would accept the way he's describing it

[25:48]

as his experience. Oh. I'll comment and then... We're all made out of the same stuff. And it could be that there's a real, no difference between inhales and exhales. On the other hand, because of the way we're built and the way our blood pumps and the way our wastes get removed, there may be a difference. And I've found, just personally, without having read this lecture, that that's the way the exhale feels to me. But if it feels differently to you, that's telling us something about the range of human sensitivities.

[26:53]

Right. Which I think is good to learn. Yeah. Okay. Alan. I understand what Goen is saying. You sort of want to be an equal opportunity reader. That's right. This is just a traditional reading method, sort of yogic reading method in Zen. So there may be something to it. I mean, that's why I think it's worth exploring. But it's also, you have to remember, I think, I always remember this thing in Su Mu's Tofuroshi book, one of the stories in Tofuroshi, where she's talking about the practice of breathing. You're supposed to count your breaths and if at the end of the period,

[27:53]

you have more inhalations and exhalations, then you take some time and you catch up. Which is to say, they're inseparable. So just like there's a certain effort on the exhalation, which is a traditional Zen breathing approach, but to separate them is problematic. Yes? Right, well that's what I was thinking was, you can't have an inhalation and not an exhalation. Right. So they're just two sides of the same thing. Here and then here. For me, there's something special about the exhale. And I teach dance, and teaching people, who haven't danced before, there's something very special about exhale and letting go,

[28:54]

and something very relaxing and calming. And actually letting go of certain muscles. Think of sitting in a certain, think of the skeleton, structurally very, when aligned in reference to gravity, it can be very, very relaxed. Muscles aren't really needed to hold the body in a certain way. If you're using too much muscle, you're going to end up feeling it after a while. And there's something very special about exhalation is helpful, calming the body, letting out a certain energy. At the end of the day, laying down and relaxing, I can feel tension. So I do have a special thing for it. I think you have a question. I was going to say that exhale, for me, is really great.

[29:56]

In my home, I have lots of plants. I always think about the cycle that goes on between us. There's vegetation, it's everywhere. Just when it's in my house, I think that my exhalation is life also. Yeah, it's feeding your plants. Yeah, I like that. I like that the acknowledgment is that inhalation brings oxygen, which brings a feeling of freshness or life or vitality to the body, which I experience in my reading also. But I love at the end that he says, bring this feeling with you into emptiness. Whatever he calls it. For me, it kind of solves the riddle of birth and death.

[30:59]

We all want to be alive, of course, and we all love that vital feeling that we get from breathing and moving and hiking and all those things make us feel alive. And he says, yeah, that's true, that's real. Now, when you exhale, bring that with you into emptiness. I like that another analogy he uses is the swinging door, which is more equal. Yeah, yeah. Well, I've never known a Zen master that was consistent. Saskara says consistency is a hot goblet of small life. It's also interesting to me the different effects on your states of mind that a different breathing can have. I've recently been doing master's swimming

[32:04]

and they have a training technique that they call hypoxic swimming where you actually reduce the number of breaths that you take while you're doing your workout. And so you breathe every third stroke, then every fifth stroke, then every seventh stroke. At first, that was incredibly difficult for me and I found myself gasping for the next breath. And I've had to learn how to sort of relax into just, okay, this is the rhythm and just try not to anticipate the breath. And the relaxation actually helps you extend it and then you're not anticipating the next breath. Huh. So that's been a very interesting thing and it is getting a lot easier.

[33:06]

And also in kind of a similar way, pranayama, which is a breathing meditative technique from yoga, works with different kinds of breath constrictions or breath breathing rhythms. And they do bring up these kind of panicked feelings in you about, you know, I think it's that terror that maybe Colleen was referring to about your life, your mortality. And it's interesting to watch how your mind does, what it does with that, when it's faced with that. Yeah. When you're in competition, what is your breathing scheme? In training you do these different methods, but what is it when you go into competition?

[34:08]

So supposedly that prepares you for making a better result in competition. And in competition, how do you breathe? I think, well, I don't compete, but I think that the idea of it is to be able to work hard with less, you know, needing to breathe less. So it's going to make you stronger at the end of the race. Right. And the other thing that I noticed was that I like to go to the mountains and do things. And recently I went, you know, I drove to the mountains one morning and was up at elevation by midday doing something physically active. And I actually had pretty good conditioning. And I went back and I asked the swim coach and he goes, oh yeah, it's just, you know, it's altitude training. Wow, that's interesting. Yeah.

[35:09]

Just getting less breath for... You're doing more work with less air. Right. Wow. So... Do we do breaks? Typically a quarter after. Okay. If you'd like to break now. The next paragraph's pretty long. So why don't we break now and come back then. If you haven't paid, would you pay me now? See, everybody came back. So far, so good. Yeah. I've been impressed. Complete. Shinkantaza may be difficult

[36:13]

because of the pain in your legs when you're sitting cross-legged. Even though you have pain in your legs, you can do it. Even though your practice is not good enough, you can do it. Your breathing will gradually vanish. You will gradually vanish, fading into emptiness, inhaling without effort. You naturally come back to yourself with some color or form. Exhaling, you gradually slide into emptiness, empty white paper. This is Shinkantaza. The important point is your exhalation. Instead of trying... With apologies to Ron. Instead of trying to feel yourself as you inhale, fade into emptiness as you exhale. So, of course, he's placing emphasis on that. And that may have been just because he had a bunch of these young hippies

[37:15]

that were just really filled with life. And he wanted to get a little bit of that out of them so that things would go a little more smoothly. Right, under 30. Only exhale if you're under 30. Well, I have a digression. I have a digression. Because I was reading this at the same time as the Scientific American came. And I thought, gee, this calmness of mind and this lessening of the ego self might be useful in a very real way. So there was this article in Scientific American called The Neurobiology of the Self. And what they were doing was they were asking people questions directed towards themselves. You know, like memories and showing them pictures of their faces and things like that.

[38:18]

Little tricky things that they hoped would initiate responses in their brain related to their concept of self or their actual self, which is the same thing. And they found there were three areas, and they're rather symmetric. There's some down, like down under here in the reptile brain, which are mainly identifying your face. And there's some back up in here that are for memories, autobiographical memories. Those light up. But what lights up the most is this part right here behind your eyeballs where your third eye comes in. And that's called the medial prefrontal medulla. It's a part of the cortex. And it's big in human beings. It's bigger than it is in a lot of animals.

[39:20]

So these guys are speculating that since the cell in this front part, it seems to knit all this concept of self together and it makes use of these other areas. And so the idea of who a person, the person's idea of who they are seems to be put together in this area and kind of coordinated in this area. And that just happens to be the area where there's been a lot of stuff on the radio lately about lobotomies. And that just happens to be the area where they stick the ice pick when they stare out for lobotomies. So it's kind of like resetting, it's wiping, it's resetting that area of the brain. Pretty gruesome stuff. I have a friend who had a lobotomy. Anyway, so also these areas have a tendency

[40:26]

to be always turned on because if you think about it, once your concept of self is created, you're always yourself. I mean, that's the great advantage of self. It's this thing that goes on and on. So those parts of the brains are processing a lot of fuel and when you process a lot of fuel, you intake a lot more toxins than other areas. And it also turns out that those parts of the brain are the areas where Alzheimer's and dementia seem to occur first. So... The first one there? Yeah, right in here. And then these parts right here, yeah. And they don't see this sort of, these sorts of diseases in other animals, they tell me. I mean, I haven't checked all of this, but it's a pretty good publication.

[41:27]

So what occurred to me is that if you get rid of the self, you might benefit from it. You might live longer, right? Whatever you are. So that's just what occurred to me when I read this paragraph. You gradually vanish, fading into emptiness. You gradually fade into emptiness. Empty white paper. I think it could be beneficial and it certainly doesn't seem to hurt. And I think that this type of breathing in meditation does create that feeling of...

[42:30]

And it's so... Just peaceful and liberating and... I mean, as far as I can tell. Anybody want to say anything about that? There's a church on Park Boulevard that always puts out little sayings and this morning, as I drove by, there was a saying there by... I guess it was Leon Trotsky. He said, The most unexpected thing in life is old age. It strikes me as relevant to this discussion. Yeah. Could you repeat that? Yeah. I'm not sure I have it perfect, but the most unexpected thing, or the only unexpected thing in life is old age.

[43:32]

The biggest surprise in life is old age. Yeah. Most of us think we'll get there in a week. Not a chance. I haven't grown up yet. Yes. You were saying about this concept of the self being this thing that stays with you, it's kind of always there. I heard Joan Didion talking recently about this book that she has written called The Year of Magical Thinking. She said this really striking thing on a radio interview about how when her husband died, she realized she basically still saw herself as the 29-year-old woman she was when they first met. Because as long as she was with him, it's like she never aged. There was this little container, that the self that she was when they met was the self that she thought she still was. And when he died, it was a real shock to her. Suddenly she was like, Whoa, I'm not 29 anymore.

[44:36]

I'm not that person anymore. But it struck me as a testament to how solid we think of the self being. And they spent so much time together, and he reinforced her. Because I still think of my wife as 22 or something. The article you mentioned, and the idea that you may think of, I think it's Joseph Goldstein, had one turn to say, whatever it is that happens when we breathe and meditate, it seems that it's the moment when we return to awareness, when we suddenly realize we're up in those areas, and that instant of dropping out of there,

[45:38]

coming back, is the thing that, and what you said reminds me that it's sort of like literally dropping down from those three zones, that's my impression, into what's right in front of me. Yeah. That's what I'm experiencing. It's a sudden, almost a fall out of those regions there. It's... Let's see. And I was talking with Sojin, and he describes it as, there's a sixth consciousness. I mean, there's a bunch of consciousnesses. I'm sure there are people that know this better than me, but the sixth consciousness in Buddhist terminology is all of the sense, all of the sense information. And then there's, I think the eighth is where

[46:41]

all of this information is stored, and the seventh is the one that puts it back and forth. But the seventh is the one that has decided that it's very important because it has all of the information flowing through it and access to all of it, and that's what becomes the self. So that part must be right there. So... That's from when I used to sit down all the time. That's a dope slap, you know. Yeah. Just reset, you know. Don't let that personality reset it. I'm not. I like that. So, I'll read down then.

[47:45]

When you practice this in your last moment, you will have nothing to be afraid of. You are actually aiming at emptiness. You become one with everything after you completely exhale with this feeling. If you are still alive, naturally you will inhale again. Oh, I'm still alive, fortunately or unfortunately. Then you will start to exhale and fade into emptiness. Maybe you don't know what kind of feeling it is, but some of you know it. By the same chance, you might have felt this kind of feeling. By some chance, you might have felt this kind of feeling. He used to always say things like that. I remember once at the end of a session, he said, somebody was enlightened today. He didn't tell us who.

[48:50]

I was thinking about this, you know. Just before I started studying Zen, I used to be just like a regular juvenile delinquent and we would smoke dope. This was like 50 years ago. We didn't call it dope, we called it marijuana. It came in little teeny thin cigarettes because it was very valuable and very rare and very costly and a felony. But the method was to inhale it as deeply as you could and hold it as long as you could and then you would exhale, this long, deep exhale. And then you really felt good. Well, you know, I noticed that when I started studying Zazen, I noticed that I felt the same way. So, it's a lot cheaper and you don't go to jail for it.

[50:00]

So that emptiness is a nice place. Although, you know, I'm a little bit worried by him saying you're actually aiming at emptiness. I mean, this smacks of anticipation and you're just breathing out. Sometimes it doesn't happen. Sometimes it does. But the idea that you go into emptiness and then you arise from emptiness kind of makes you used to all of this change going on. And since we can't escape change, it's good to get used to it. Well, maybe he's saying, you know, to aim for emptiness because, you know, we generally have a bias or we're always aiming for form. And he says, aim for emptiness. The teaching can be just counterbalancing

[51:09]

our bias in the other direction. Aim for emptiness and you get more in the middle. Well, and he always said, another thing he would say is he'd say, form is emptiness. Emptiness is emptiness. Form is form. Well, you can just think about that for weeks. I mean, it's just where you're headed. You know, because he uses the word intention that really opens up a point for me. And you can get a little crazy about, well, I'm supposed to do this, you know. And I have a, there's a woman who teaches yoga when I'm in the Adirondacks. A wonderful way of doing it

[52:10]

because a wonderful thing she said that just I think really speaks to this point of not clinging, not having expectations, but having an intention to be fully present. And she said ask, it's more like asking your body to explore this posture. Not forcing it or demanding it or competing with somebody. Just ask, just ask that this intention be fulfilled and just discover what that looks like. Yeah, without a lot of tension about it. Yeah. Yeah. He would kind of let us off the hook. He would say, you should always make a little effort. Yeah. Invite your body to do this. But it's not force.

[53:11]

Invite your, invite this, I don't know how you would say it for our practice, but an invitation to explore emptiness or no attachment. When you do this practice you cannot easily become angry. So get with it. When you were more interested in inhaling than exhaling you easily became quite angry. Doesn't bother me. You always,

[54:12]

you are always trying to be alive. The other day my friend had a heart attack and all he could do was exhale. He couldn't inhale. It was a terrible feeling, he said. At that moment, if he could have practiced exhaling as we do, aiming for emptiness, then I think he would not have felt so bad. This great joy for us is exhaling. The great joy for us is exhaling rather than inhaling. Boy, he's pushing it hard, isn't he? Then my friend kept trying to inhale. He thought he couldn't inhale anymore. If he could have exhaled smoothly and completely then I think another inhalation would have come more easily. So, these dying breaths are hard.

[55:13]

It's hard to, some people it's hard to let go at that time. But, this, when you do this practice you cannot easily become angry. I don't quite understand it. I know it's true because I'm getting along a lot better with my wife than I used to. But, I don't know why, exactly why it's true. But, does anybody, can anybody enlighten us on that point? Yes. And, when you don't get what you're grasping for

[56:20]

you're going to get angry. So, not grasping or not desiring leads you where you're not disappointed, or frustrated that you don't get it. It's connected to attachment and desire. Alan. Well, you know, I think a lot in this lecture, go back to what Sean was saying, when he was talking about dancing, I was thinking about singing. I don't know anybody who can sing on an inhalation. It can't be done, that I could think of, unless somebody could show me. But, you know, you sing on an exhalation, and I think what he's talking about, by emphasizing... It's really hard. But you can play a flute with your nose, right?

[57:21]

Circular breathing. Yeah. Which means you're playing a flute, you can play a flute, you know, you learn circular breathing, which means you learn a technique to inhale with one side of your physiognomy, but the tone is only produced by the exhalation. So, I think what this whole lecture is getting at, maybe, is that this is about physiologically training yourself to let go. And when we physiologically do something with our body, it's not separate from our minds. So, it's like if we learn how to let go, physically, again and again, then the reason we don't get angry, though of course we do, is because we're literally training ourselves, as literally as we can get, in the human act of letting go. If you let go, how can you get angry? Yeah, that's the physical...

[58:24]

The ability to train your mind with your body is what makes all of this work. You know, I think. Yes? I get angry. I can get really angry. And when I'm really angry, in order to calm down what I need to do is close my eyes and take three breaths and focus on the exhale. And my whole body, biochemically or whatever... It just calms down? Calms down, yeah. And so I'm able to let a lot of anger out of me. Yeah. Andrea? Since you've been such a biologist, to put it in very simple physiologic terms, on the inhale, there's a decrease in blood volume that gets to the heart. The heart then speeds up in response, which is the same kind of sympathetic response that happens when we're under stress, when we're angry, when we want to respond quickly. On the exhale, the amount of blood to the heart increases,

[59:26]

the heart slows down, and you have just the opposite kind of reaction. And you probably dump little chemicals in all over the place during all of this. Yeah. So we really can... So we're altering our chemistry, and we're altering our brain chemistry during this cycle. And we're learning, it's kind of like a kind of biofeedback, we're learning how to alter our physiology and exaggerate or really put attention to the relaxation phase, which is the exhale. It changes the catecholamine levels, the sympathomimetic nervous system calms down in that state. So you don't get angry. You must have a tendency to be... that conditioning to go to that place is dampened down. Yeah, you don't get so angry. I don't get so angry. Right. We're going to all climb on Ron

[60:46]

and make him exhale. We're just busy exhaling. Okay. I was just going to add, maybe Steve Farfetch, and maybe not quite as physiological, but my experience a little bit with anger and the letting go of it in or as a result of meditation is maybe a little bit what I talked about before, when I release that self, dropping out of that. I think, at least for me, anger is a learned response. It's very much imitating what I saw. By releasing that self, at least I do, I don't... It's not the only option sometimes. It's just... Yeah. And if... He says,

[61:47]

you become one with everything after you completely exhale with this feeling. So, it's hard to get mad at yourself. So, yeah. Okay, I'll go to the next paragraph, if that's okay. We don't have... We've got a few more, but it doesn't matter. When you do this practice, you cannot easily become... Oh, we've read that. Great. We're on the last page. To take care of the exhalation is very important. To die is more important than trying to be alive. We are always... When we always try to be alive, we have trouble. Rather than trying to be alive or active, if we can be calm and die, so it looks like active and calm are synonyms for alive and die,

[62:49]

or fade away into emptiness, then naturally we will be all right. Buddha will take care of us. Because we have lost our mother's bosom, we do not feel like her child anymore. Yet fading away into emptiness can feel like being at your mother's bosom, and we will feel as though she will take care of us moment after moment. Do not lose this practice of shinkantasa. He's really pleading with us. The first thing that came to my mind was there's a line... I think there's a line in a Beatles song that says, Relax your mind, surrender to the void. Yeah. Yeah. And... Yeah. Yeah. Tomorrow never knows. Does anyone know the name of the song? Tomorrow never knows. Tomorrow never knows. It's a George Harrison song.

[63:50]

Oh, yeah. It's gotta be a George Harrison song. Right. And so now we're going to hear it. I wish I had it. I wish I had it. Anyway, it's good. So this state lingers. And when you walk out of here in the morning... I've noticed when I walk out of here in the morning, I'm just like this... I think in the end of samurai movies, the samurai walks off into the sunset. He's got his swords. He's ready for anything. That's the way I feel when I walk out of here. I just feel, Okay, what's next? Send those 50 guys at me. There's more. And also...

[64:56]

I thought you weren't angry anymore. It's just a job. Also, this practice of shinkansen, you can do it in a minute. I remember once I was really grumpy, and it was Christmas time, and I was waiting for a package to be wrapped at Penny's. There used to be a Penny's in Berkeley back in maybe the early 60s, something like that. And I just had to wait. I sat down on the bench there, and I said, I'm just going to breathe. And it turned into this wonderful experience in just a couple of breaths. And I've noticed that that works. So the practice sticks with you,

[65:56]

and you can do it at any time. You should do it all the time. Always be in the practice of shinkansen and in the moment. So... So let's discuss this paragraph. Well... It's like we should just start a session right now. Oh, yeah. It's like, why are we waiting? There's nothing else to say. There's nothing else to do. Yeah. So when I'm programming a computer, this is kind of interesting. You know, we have a lot of concentration practice, so I've learned how to concentrate pretty well. So I can sit down, I can spend five or six hours in front of the computer

[66:57]

and really walk away exhausted. I talked to Mel about that, and he said, well, you should... Well, what I interpreted him saying was, you should reserve a little bit of yourself for your breathing. Not just put all your attention to the computer, but a little bit of breathing. Which I find very difficult to do. Yeah. Because I just want to get focused right in on that, on that side of the computer. So I just wanted... When you were doing physics, were you reserving some breathing? Same problem. Same problem. But I tried. And it did... And it was better when I tried. When I... Like, a lot of times I rigged up my chair so I could sit in a lotus, or half lotus or whatever, when I was working. And I would try and keep breathing. But, you know, usually the problems are so intense and have so much information

[67:58]

that you get sucked into them. But it's a good practice to try to do it that way. You know. Yeah. But I'd say it's hard. Yes. So, I read this early this morning, and then I worked all day ripping out walls and stapling and insulation. And then at the end of the day, before I came here to write it again, it was like, oh my goodness, was I fully aware every instant for the last seven, eight hours? And it's like, I don't think so. Or maybe you're only supposed to do that during Shikantaza, but in the middle of doing a job, that kind of awareness is... is like totally gone.

[68:58]

It comes... It's higher. It's almost like come and go. Well, you know, who knows. But if you encourage it, maybe it will... I mean, it seems like... it seems like if this is the natural state and it's achieved by kind of relaxing into it, that it would be long-lasting. But also, we're extremely complicated and fickle creatures, so, you know, you can't count on it. So... Various kinds of religious practice are included in this point.

[70:00]

When people say Nama Amida Butsu, Nama Amida Butsu, they want to be Amida Butsu's children, Buddha's children. That is why they practice repeating Amida Buddha's name. The same is true of our Zazen practice. If you know how to practice Shikantaza and if you know how to repeat Amida Buddha's name, it cannot be different. So... How does... I'll ask Andrea. How does chanting Amida... Nama Amida Butsu or Nama Kiya Butsu make your heart get more oxygen? I guess the whole universe is breathing with me. There are things we don't understand in science, but...

[71:08]

This paragraph made me think of our sewing practice, which... When I came back to it recently, it gave me that... the same feeling as doing Zazen. Sitting and saying Nama Kiya Butsu and making stitches did the same thing. I don't know why, but it did the same thing. So I think this paragraph is correct. I don't know why. But... So... Peter. Let me go back to Koro's comment about working all day. I think we should be careful. First of all, I'm pretty sure at the beginning of this talk he's talking about setting aside a certain period of time each day to do this. He uses that word, so... He's talking specifically about formal Zazen practice, what we do with Zendo on our cushion. And our practice is not to seek any special state of mind. So I don't think...

[72:12]

If we're trying to feel emptiness into emptiness and dying on each breath while we're tearing down a roof, it's going to fall on our head. And we're supposed to just be tearing down the wall when we're tearing down the wall and sitting, Shikantaza and Shikantaza. It's just to be careful not to... I mean, it's really easy to think, Oh, I wasn't... I wasn't paying attention to my breath while I was fixing that. But maybe we weren't supposed to be. Hmm. Yeah, I knew I would get some response on that. Alan? Well, I remember this line. It's from the... I forget, it's a sonnet by the jubilerous mari. If you can achieve continuity, this is called the host within the host. Yeah. So it doesn't necessarily mean paying attention to every breath. It means how you stay present in each moment. And the... You know, this is very... This is very subtle. You know, I can't say,

[73:12]

not being in Ko's brain, I can't say whether he was or was not aware of each moment. And I can tell you for damn sure that even when I'm really awake, sitting here, at the end of this period, you know, I can't give you a synopsis of what my zazen was, you know, thought by thought. It's momentary awareness and then letting go of it. So what is continuity? That's the big problem I think. Yeah. It doesn't necessarily mean not being in your activity. But the question is, when you're tearing down the wall, are you really tearing down the wall? Are you thinking about lunch? Or are you, you know, humming a song to yourself? You know, that's taking away... So what's continuity? That's a goal. And I think that's what he's talking about here. It's not a matter of sitting beside for a special time.

[74:13]

We do... We have this practice which is like a laboratory for working at our minds. Yeah. Said in a different kind of way, I've been working with something at work which sometimes can be very hectic. There's a lot of multitasking going on. I was talking about that with Richard at one point and he asked me if I was aware of where my breath was at work. And I've been working with that and I find it's rather like the ocean. You know, when you're out at the ocean, sometimes you're aware of the waves coming in and coming out and the sound of those waves and the feel there. And sometimes you're not, but it's still going on. When there's an awareness of the breath, even if I'm not consciously aware of my exhalation or my inhalation, it's still going on once I'm kind of tapped into that. And it actually remarkably helps me be more present at what I'm doing at work and better respond to each thing as it happens.

[75:14]

Go ahead. Yeah, I... This talk about work has come up. I spent about 10 or 12 years as a painter. And so I thought a lot about some of the jobs that I would work on where there was very monotonous things that I did. And it just came natural that I was aware of my breath and then my actions or strokes or movements were governed by my breath. And it just was a really great film. Ended up doing a lot better work. But that just translated, I thought, into a lot of activities that I can really get into. And I think that those work well, like physically, but multitasking and stuff like physics, I know that would be difficult. Yeah. I think the idea of continuity of this practice

[76:22]

when we're working is a really good koan to work with. Working is good in that it kind of limits the... It kind of... Well, it's a single task, usually. And so it kind of gives you a direction and then you can go down that path with calmness until everything turns bad. Come to think of it. So... Well, we'll read the last paragraph. Do we have time to read the last paragraph? We do? No, but yes. Okay. Oh. Okay. I'll just read it. So we have enjoyment. We are free. We feel free to express ourselves because we are ready to fade into emptiness.

[77:24]

When we are trying to be active and special and to accomplish something, we cannot express ourselves. Small self will be expressed, but big self will not appear from emptiness. From the emptiness, only the great self appears. That is shinkantaza, okay? It is not difficult if you really try. And then like Elvis always says, he says, thank you very much. We're out of time, but time... time is behind all of this. It's behind the attachment and it's behind the peace. And... it's a topic in itself. So... Next time. Beings are numberless.

[78:31]

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