I'm wondering how everybody is faring. I can't know. I would like to know, I'd like to bring forth any questions we have about Zazen or about Sashin that you find, you might want some suggestions about. How are your legs? How are your knees? How's your back? How's your mind? So I'll give you a moment to think about it.

[01:11]

But you have no problems. They hurt in descending order as you mentioned them. Or you can take care of it, right? I can take care of it with your help, so please say something. Okay. Well, first I'll talk about our knees. I know that a lot of people have knees that are really aching, even though you're not saying so. The way that I deal with my knees, the way I deal with my knees when I'm sitting Zazen is, I think of it this way.

[02:17]

The knees are the roots of the tree, and they're firmly established in the ground of the Zafu and the Zabuta. And then the trunk of the tree is, sitting up straight and the limbs are coming off of the trunk, they're called arms, and then the bushes that I have collarbones connected to. I may not be able to remember that song. By sinews.

[03:19]

And your knees have a lot of moving parts. Your knees have a lot of moving parts. And so when you sit down, the bones and the sinews and so forth have to be all in sync with each other. So how do we make that happen? At first, we don't even think about it. pain because they're stretching. So I don't want to get too technical, but it's important to realize what's really happening to get that feeling.

[04:24]

So how do you allow all the parts of the knees, which are complex, to harmonize with each other for seven days sitting down like this? And so, my answer is, you have to let that happen, because you can't make it happen. So what happens is, when we have pain, we want to make something happen. And it's hard to let go of wanting to make something happen, which is called resistance. As soon as we have, this is not everybody, problem, that when we have pain in the knees, we feel that it's an intrusion. You do. Uh-oh. When you say, uh-oh, there it is, that's an intrusion.

[05:29]

I don't want that. As soon as you say, I don't want it, you set up an opposition. And as soon as you set up an opposition, you set up a suffering. Zazen is just Buddhist Four Noble Truths. That's why we say we get the teaching through Zazen. Buddhist teaching is through Zazen. Everything we need to know. So what do we need to know? We need to know that desire is the cause of suffering. That there is suffering and the cause is desire. What does that mean, desire? As soon as you feel some intrusion or pain, the desire to have it another way comes up. And then we have a conflict. So, how we work with this is to let go.

[06:36]

And because when we feel an intrusion, we want to close down. It's natural. So this is counterintuitive. It's counterintuitive because intuitively we want to resist. As soon as we resist, we set up an opposition. And then suffering starts. Because we want to escape. As soon as we want to escape, even subtle, You know, we all know this, of course. I'm not telling you something new, I'm just explaining it. So when we set up a resistance like that, we want to escape. And as soon as we want to escape, we start to suffer. Because we don't want to be where we are. We don't want it to be the way it is. We want it to be different. That's the law of resistances and suffering, the way suffering comes about.

[07:48]

So how to stay with? This is what so many of the Zen stories are about. Two people meet on the path. How do they deal with each other? So we have this path and we want pleasure but we meet pain on the path. going to win? Well, the whole universe is pressing down on us. That's really true. We have this internal pressure which matches the pressures of the Earth, of the atmosphere. And then when that balance shifts, the whole universe collapses on us, and it's called pain. So how do we equalize that the feelings that we have. So we have a sensation and a sensation can escalate and our mind has a lot to do with it.

[08:51]

How we accept or how we deal with a sensation. So my advice for knees is as soon as you sit down whatever that is. So when you sit down, usually it's not painful in the beginning. So just to be aware of that sensation. And then as we said, of course, the sensations change or escalate or whatever. And then on each moment, to be aware and accepting of the sensation that's there. and for 40 minutes you are aware of each moment's sensation in your knees and you accept it. If you wait until it escalates, what happens is we start dreaming.

[09:55]

As soon as we thought, we sit down and say, okay, I'm going to be aware of the sensation in my knees, but then we start dreaming because it doesn't We haven't been keeping up with the sensations, so it surprises us, and because we don't have a foundation for acceptance, it overwhelms us. And then we focus on it. Oh my God, what is the belief? I can't stand this. And the more you say, I can't stand this, the less you can stand it. So we create a problem for ourselves. just the teaching of the Dharma, to accept things as they are.

[11:00]

So we start with accepting the good feeling or the neutral feeling or whatever it is, and each moment we open to it. We open to each sensation, each moment's sensation. And then by the end of the period, even though there are what we would call painful feelings, they're not overwhelming. because we've accepted them from the beginning. That's the way I sit Zazen. This is my experience. So when I get up on the air and I sit Zazen, that's what I do. And then when the period's over, But for the most part, I'm free of that. I see a head, but I see the back of the pillar.

[12:04]

That's just your branches and some digits. How does the ego figure into this in creating more or less pain? Well, I don't want to talk about the ego. But it's all ego. The ego, you know, is myself. The ego is As soon as we start judging, the ego appears. The self arises. Let's not talk about ego. Let's talk about the self. The self arises. When we are not judging, comparing, resisting, greedy, angry, or deluded, the ego is not, that the self is not permanent. It's only when those things appear that the self appears. The self appears with greed, the self appears with ill will, and the self appears with delusion.

[13:08]

So that's the creation of self and how it arises. When there's no greed, no ill will, no delusion, there's no self. So, try it. That's called our practice, to let go of greed. I'm a greed type, but I'm not an anger type. Even though I get anger, I don't usually hang on to it. But there's so much to be angry about. But it's the same thing. The anger that comes up in my mind is the same as the sensations that arise in my knees. Peter? to be aware on each moment of exactly what the feelings are.

[14:30]

This is basic Buddhist practice, to observe the feelings in the feeling. Before we sit down, perhaps. Well, all the time. In other words, that's the practice. That's the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness. to be aware of the sensations, and so forth, as what they are. And what comes up as suffering is the self. So it's the self that suffers. But pain is not necessarily suffering. Pain is when you don't want it. I mean, suffering is when you don't want it. pain comes up. But as long as you can accept the sensations, it's not suffering. But when you don't want to accept the sensations, and you want to escape, that's suffering.

[15:39]

So suffering comes when you can't escape. And like the suffering of the world, you can't escape from it. When you try to escape, it just causes suffering. who would try to escape, you know. So it's hard to be there. It's very hard to be there. Because we want to duck. It's hard to take the blows. This is like yesterday's talk. It went, Fa Yuan and his teacher, you know. Fa Yuan went through a lot of suffering, but he wasn't attached to it. I know a lot of you weren't here yesterday and the day before. And his teacher recognized that he was able to deal with all of his adversity without falling into suffering.

[16:43]

Troy? Yeah. Would you recommend that same awareness exercise in the dentist's office? In the what? In the dentist's office? Well, yes, I do, as a matter of fact. When I go to the dentist, whatever he does, I just fall asleep. I just let him do it. You skipped the Novocaine. Well, the Novocaine's in the tubes. It's not in my, you know, the rest of me. That's not what makes me sleep. I'm falling asleep before he puts it in. When I go to, when I have, I've had operations, you know, I just give myself over to the doctor, and he does whatever he wants to do, and I don't interfere or think about it.

[17:49]

I just head into it. And because I'm a kind of dreamer anyway, It wasn't really that flip of a question, because I was thinking about this in connection to the... Okay, I'll say it about the dentist, because there are times when I said, he said, do you want to use Novacaine? No, let's not use it. And it's fine. But that's okay. It's not like, oh, you're making me suffer, and I want to get out of here. This is just my experience. I'm allowing myself to have my experience instead of thinking I shouldn't be having this experience. There are some situations where you can mitigate pain easily. make me leave.

[18:54]

And I thought, well, if he had beaten you half to death, even once, he could have just gone on the phone and called my Izumi grocery or done something else. You had options. You didn't need to sit there and be beaten to death. We don't need to not have the NOVA game. manipulate what our feelings might be or not be. Sometimes it's too much. If it's too much, say, oh, that's too much. And do something else. Escape. So it's okay to escape if you have to. Yeah, if you have to escape, escape. Well, this is also the problem with zazen. When should I uncross my legs? Should I continue or should I just escape and start anew? That's okay. It's okay to do that.

[19:54]

Here's what I say to people. When you're able to do that, you realize it's not the right way. But you can't know it's the right way, it's not the right way, unless you experience it. So you should, well, resistance like, I'm going to grind my teeth and clench my fist, you know that doesn't work, because that works against you. So then you say, well, let's try the other way, which is letting go. But you can't know what letting go is until you know that resistance doesn't work.

[20:55]

So that's where you have to kind of go through that period. New students have to go through that period of finding out, well, how am I going to get through this? Nobody's telling you. How am I going to get through this? Because you have to figure it out yourself. Even though I'm telling you this, you have to figure it out yourself. But we need to know. The more you resist, the more you suffer. What I do is I feel my legs opening up. I don't know how to describe it other than that. Instead of, you know, I can feel sensations like contraction, but I just feel open and open. When I feel some kind of contraction, then I feel open, open, open.

[22:01]

I just say that silently. my toes start moving and everything starts becoming more loose and free and it's wonderful. This is the bliss of zazen is when you let go and just be weightless. Judy? What you just said opened a space in me to this whole thing of, in that moment, you're relating with yourself as not one and not two. I mean, there's a dialogue happening as that experience of open, open, to encourage, to support, to embrace, and yet not rescue.

[23:01]

Yes, well, it's just trusting yourself. And this is how you merge and harmonize with the universal energy, because it can boil you up or crush you. It can support you or it can crush you. It's just a great teacher. So it's much easier for me to sit. The older I get, the easier it is for me to sit. Well, sometimes people say, well, you know, old people don't feel pain as much.

[24:04]

It's just much easier, because I'm just always opening up. And so posture is the same thing, because all the parts of your body, it's not just your knees, all the parts of our body are, it's called total dynamic working, where all the parts of your body are involved and line up, harmonizing with each other, I mean, we'll work if we want. Then total harmony, body, mind, and the universe. Duh! Thank you, Sojin. So, thank you very much for your comments. I wonder if you would comment on this question, which is, some of us have had injuries. and have structural limitations in our body, and we may know that and modify our sitting posture.

[25:18]

But in a period of Zazen, there may come the sensation of the aggravation of an old injury or an exacerbation of it. And it's a tricky place for a mind that will habitually have a concern about that. But there's also a legitimacy about pushing When he gives us an instruction, it's like, this is the ideal, this is the model, this is the ideal. Not everybody fits into the model of the ideal. But we should know what that is. So then, when we enter into the actual setting, we have to modify according to our own constructions, I'll call them, what we're capable of and what we're not.

[26:21]

And so then we have to find our way, given the model, and create the model that works for us. So in a moment, I'm sitting and an old injury starts to be, that area starts to be aggravated or inflamed. And I know that that might just be in the moment and I can ride with it and I'll get up at the end of the period and it will be fairly perceptible. Or it can actually flare up so that I have several months of pain to work with. Yes. Because the mind is going to want to react to that so strongly. Oh, is it going to be terrible? Or is it going to be OK? How do you examine that? Well, the way I do it and the way I would tell you to do it may not be the same. So you have to do it according to what suits you. That's all I can say.

[27:24]

The way I do it, I've had You know, my body has been, 60 years of zazen or whatever it is, I've been through all of the pains and damages, not everything that everybody's had, but pretty much. My knees have been out. I used to sit for lotus all the time for years and years, which is actually the most comfortable way, believe it or not. And the most extreme position is the easiest. But I can't tell you that. I can tell you that, but it's because when your legs are all the way up here, there's no string. When you do things halfway, then there's string. But my knees have been out many times.

[28:28]

And my back has been out many times. But I just keep going. That's my way. I just keep going. So if my knees are out, then maybe I'll... I have so many different possibilities for crossing my legs. I can cross them all the ways that we need to, that we can't. So I have various positions to choose from. And if I feel that it's too much, So you should do that. When you feel that your knees are really, it's not good for you, you know, or you're getting some chronic feeling, do it in a simpler position. And then find a position that works. You shouldn't just kind of try to grind through it. Grinding through it is not good for you. What's good for us is letting go.

[29:35]

When we're scared, we look for something to hang on to. That's our human nature. When we get scared, we look for something to hang on to. And there's nothing to hang on to. So we hang on to ourself. And then we have a lot of problems. When we hang on, you have a problem in the need, right? Well, there's nothing I can do about it. So I worry it to the point where I'm Los Animas, about being in Mexico. And he said, I love being a Mexican. It was a Japanese word. And it's about this guy who was the village idiot. And in the village, once a year, the most prominent man in the wealthy would vie to see who would pay for this celebration to come up once a year.

[30:52]

And he wanted to do that. He had absolutely no way of doing that. But somehow, you know, I don't want to change the whole story, but he found a little bird that was kind of, you know, couldn't fly, so he picked it. Oh, he was so happy to pick up his little bird, the only thing that ever loved him, you know. The only thing that he really ever loved, and just this moment, he picked up his little bird, and he held this little bird, and held this little bird, and when he opened his hands, it was dead. You don't want to do that. You don't want to let the bird fly. Don't kill yourself. It's not that. James. I've been sort of... In response to your question, I think there's a temptation to view Zazen as a kind of sprint, where we're putting all our energy into this one area.

[32:02]

And I have come to see our practice more as a marathon that takes Because you can't sprint for an entire marathon. If you do, you just burn yourself out. But if you kind of look at your own limitations as to how much you can I always say that practice is for the long-distance runner, it's not for the sprinter. That's what I always say.

[33:06]

It's for the long-distance runner, not for the sprinter. And you have to pace yourself when you're doing that. So, Sashin is the same thing. How am I going to get through seven days? I only think, what am I doing now? Now what am I doing? Now what am I doing? One moment. You live a period of zazen one moment at a time. You don't race to get through it. You can't do that because time doesn't let you do that. what you want to accomplish. If you think ahead, you set up a problem for yourself. As soon as you start thinking ahead, the poor guy, the person who has to ring the bell after 40 minutes, has to keep track of time.

[34:11]

But that's the sacrifice. We sacrifice one person to be the timekeeper. It's not anything like that. It's just living your life one moment at a time. There's no marathon or race or anything to it. But it's still, it's a long distance runner. So it sounds like the question that's coming up is what's the relationship between letting go and the effort we bring to the machine? Yes, that's a great question. That's it. So how to balance is how to do something that works. The way to do something that works is doing is effort.

[35:16]

So, but if you're only, I'll just explain it in zazen. In zazen, these are the roots, this is the trunk, And you sit up straight like a tree. And a tree is not rigid. A tree is like this. The wind and the tree. The wind is always loose. So, effort and ease have to be a perfect sync. So while you're making the effort to sit up straight, lift up, open up, keep your head on top of your spine so they're like this.

[36:22]

Everybody sits like this. Because we're thinking. You have to keep your head on top of your spine so you're not, of course we all do that, we all fall, but then we have to remember to come back up. And flexibility. So ease is flexibility to Because a structure has to have form, but at the same time, flexibility. When they were building the Golden Gate Bridge, they built the pillars, the big pillars first, before they started the cables. And they sent a crew of carpenters up to the top to work. And the carpenters went, they climbed up inside the ladder a long way. They got up there and the columns were swaying 30 feet.

[37:22]

When you look at it, it doesn't look like anything's happening. They didn't have any reinforcements. It was swaying 30 feet to one side or the other. And they just got up there and they all sat down. And then they all went back down. That first day was just so awesome that they just had to climb down. So that's it. This strong pillar has to be able to have flexibility. And the problem that we have mostly is the problem of not being flexible. That's what causes the problems in our knees, is not being flexible. We lock on. And then, the only way to unlock is to sit Zazen again. You know, sometimes we'll sit a period of Zazen and you're kneeling just completely, oh my god, you know, and then you do Kinyin, then you sit down and you sit again, and nothing happens.

[38:26]

I mean, you may have experienced this. You don't have that anymore, because you're unlocking through Zazen again. You don't want to do that. You want to let your young mind locks us. When I go to adjust posture, I can't believe how stiff people are sitting there for days like this. steel column, zazen, you should be totally loose, totally flexible. Flexibility is the key to health. And mental health is the goal.

[39:26]

So when we have a tight body, we have a tight body. So everything follows mind. So I wanted to ask about sleepiness. Can you say something about that? Yes. That's all I have to say. You get a good night's sleep. You know, we all sleep during that time. And then we wake up and then we sleep and, you know, it's no fun.

[40:30]

So, you know, I'm sorry. That's all I can say. I just want to say one thing about knees before I forget. It's not funny. What is it? It's called claw meal. And you rub it on your knees and it gives you some relief. It's good. What's it do for your armpit? That was pretty sneaky. Temporary. Temporary is good.

[41:32]

I think that I'm a stick vest. That's my secret. I'd say no to a bunch of vans, but... I have a hard time, somebody raise their hand quick. Okay, oh James, you already had your turn. I was thinking of the larger question of the schedule itself and when Carol mentioned, you mentioned it with the Sashimi Guidelines that we always hear and something about the way you said it, I thought if only I could think of it as a kind of a vessel or a book to carry But, you know, I find my mind trying to find little ways, you know, just, you know, even on now it's not so bad on day five, but just like a little, like an extra 10 seconds here or I could go get some little thing there, like find an extra time and not find ease in the schedule.

[42:49]

I guess in a sense But struggling against the schedule is part of life in Zendo. And then, you know, what do you do when the schedule is there and it's not bending for you? So you have to ease yourself into it. Find the flexibility within yourself to ease yourself into it. Because we do have resistance to, oh my God, now, oh, it's time to cut ourselves in again, you know? That's part of it. You know, if we reduce all of the problems, you know, death will be the biggest problem.

[43:54]

It will turn out to be the biggest problem. So it's good for us to deal with these little problems. What we come up against is called the practice. I'm sorry. The stuff that we come up against as problems is the practice. And in some way, the schedule is unyielding and it's pretty strict. And it's a lot of Zazen, even though comparatively it's not so much. And so how we deal with this thing that we have to do without making it change. How do we conform? We don't like to conform. Conforming is like an un-American quality, but actually conforming is called ease. It's like It follows the laws of gravity.

[45:07]

And it just takes the shape of whatever it enters. And if you can do that, you can be happy. Water is happy. Yes, it hurts. What I do when I have back pain is sit up as straight as I can. Because back pain often, not necessarily, but often is caused by not sitting up straight. Here's how we do. We sit up, but then we lean this way, and we want to escape from something over here, so we start going this way. So, there are many reasons for back pain, but my solution is to just sit up as straight as I can, and then it hurts, it hurts, and then I think about something, and pretty soon it doesn't hurt anymore.

[46:23]

Because straightening yourself out you know, some kind of constriction. So you want to let go of the constrictions. This is why in Zazen, just always sit up straight. That's all you have to do. All you have to do is sit up straight, breathe. And let the thoughts, you know, do their thing. And pay attention to posture. Because posture will open all... It's like blowing up a balloon. you're not enjoying it.

[47:26]

So even though I may have pain or whatever, when I sit up straight and open up, I always enjoy it. It's always, you know, wonderful. And it overrides any kind of stuff. So, for back pain, but there are times when you can't do anything. I have sat through seven days as usual with my back aching every single time. And then I have sat with my back aching in a chair. If it's too much, sit in a chair. Or sit somewhere. But one thing that I highly recommend is that you stretch. The first thing I do when I get up in the morning after taking a leak and washing my face is to stretch.

[48:28]

I stretch all parts of my body. I have a routine, 15 minutes, and everything gets stretched. is that as we get to a certain age, we start to implode. And we need to explode. We need to stretch. Otherwise, you're just going to keep getting smaller and smaller. You notice all these old people, they just get shorter and shorter. And I haven't. I'm still 5'7". up all the time. And it's something you have to do continuously. So wonderful. That's what I do in Zazen.

[49:30]

I stretch myself in Zazen and harmonize all the parts of the body and mind. And in the morning, I do the stretching, 15 minutes. And I don't have aches and pains. I rarely have aches and pains. And I attribute it to stretching. And I keep saying, you should stretch. Oh, I do, I stretch. When do you stretch? Well, I think I did it last week once. That's what I hear. Yeah, I stretch a lot, yeah. But when? And what do you do? Well, I have some exercises that I do. But they don't. But you should. I don't do it during, We have a stretching here, but nobody's been doing dokusan, but it's okay because I do my own stretching. Tamara? Well, I think I've never had a pain-free period of zazen in almost 20 years.

[50:37]

Like, the first one hurts, and the one I'm doing right now hurts. And, you know, but I'm very stubborn, and I sat a lot. I don't need to list all my accomplishments, but I sat on Dario and then I was at Tassajara and I wouldn't sit up until midnight and beyond until finally I realized that Shuso was waiting for me to go to bed. But what I finally started asking myself is it seemed to me that in my case there was a gaining idea behind it. I wanted to do this because if I didn't do it I wouldn't you know, end my mental suffering, or I wouldn't belong here anymore, or whatever. And it seemed like, for me personally, it seemed to me like I had to step back and look at things differently, as to how I was, you know, how I was sitting and practicing. Yeah, well, we have to know why it is that we're practicing. Yes. Why am I doing this? So, that's it.

[51:38]

And it seemed to me that when I asked myself that why, the answer didn't mean that I should continue to sit, you know, I should take the time to explore whether there was some healing possibilities and whatever. I mean, that's just my story. I don't give that to everyone, but I feel like I want to put it out since we're having this conversation. I never think about why am I doing this. I think about how am I doing this. Because I just want to do it.

[52:34]

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