Good morning, everybody. So I'll begin by referencing the chant which we just did not chant, the Dogen's Vow, Ehei Koso Hotsugonmon, which I like a lot and I find very inspiring, I think, and encouraging, especially the last part about confession and repentance, for some reason that has a tremendous appeal to me, and then all the part about never failing to receive profound help, and what is the part about the root of transgressions, all of that, you know, I find very encouraging. But for now, it's the part just before that, that mysterious character Chan Master Lung-Ya and what he had to say, which is also pretty encouraging about Buddhas,

[01:05]

you know, we're the same as Buddhas and all of that. But there's that one line in there, the second part about, in this life save the body which is the fruit of many lives, well, what the hell does that mean? And the temptation is to take it to me, literally, you know, it's talking about this body, this wonderful body, you know, just take care of my physical body in this life, save the body which is the fruit of many lives, and well, the fruit of many lives, is that karma? Well, maybe, or it could be, you know, this is just my body is the result of everything that's gone before me, right? My parents and grandparents and so forth, you know, all the way back to the beginning, to the beginning of everything. This is, with this body, your body is, we're sort of the culmination of everything, the fruit of everything, and here we are, so take care of it, take care of the body. But I'm not totally sure that that's what he's talking about, you know,

[02:07]

it could be some other body, one of the bodies of Buddha or, I'm not sure. But this talk is about the body, this body, and particularly in Zazen. I have been thinking about a talk about Zazen, but it was getting to be too long, so, or too involved, so I think there'll be two, so the next talk will also be about Zazen, but it'll be more of the head part. And this is, you know, like the Satipatthana Sutta, except from slightly different angles, same thing, but different angles. But this one is about our body, kind of like Zazen instruction, but what I have in mind is really advanced Zazen instruction, what I would consider advanced Zazen instruction.

[03:07]

Basically, the blissful repose part that we keep hearing about, of basically how to sit there, sit here, still and quiet in reasonable comfort, instead of, in blissful repose, instead of sitting here waiting for the bell to ring, waiting for it to be over. And I don't see why that's not possible, or even a desirable thing, you know, all the thing about pain, concentrating the mind, and all that. I don't have much confidence in that. So, this is, so I seem to have come pretty close to that, and like this Zazen, I had very little pain, this Zazen, I rarely do. So, I thought I would try to share that with you, offer you my experience of how I came to that, and maybe it would be helpful.

[04:10]

Plus, it has the benefit of, it's basically from my own experience, so there's not much danger of hurting you, or giving you wrong information, and risking 500 more lifetimes as a fox. But, it's by nature, it's very subjective, you know, it's very subjective, what I'm going to talk about. So, it may not work out. So, if it's not working, if it's just tedious, or if it's just, you know, aggravating you, let me know, and we can switch to something else. I can talk about my other passion, opera. It comes much easier. Or maybe, maybe I could sing for you, maybe I could sing you the song I didn't sing on Skit Night. So, there are options, there are options. It's always good to have options. Okay.

[05:15]

Okay. So, how... This business about pain, well, my first few years, first lot of years, really, I hated the machines, and so much pain, and so much resistance, and I can remember various things happened. Paul was very patient with me at City Center, and I remember whining to Mel one time about sciatica, and he had a terrific response. He said, Well, what are you saving your body for? Which, I mean, that stopped me cold. That was an unanswerable question, you know. I still don't have an answer to that. Well, what am I saving my body for? Why, you know, do I back away from that? What am I saving it for? For more misery in old age, or, you know? So... It's a terrific question. Very typically Mel, I thought.

[06:16]

So, that was one thing, and then I remember on another occasion, another session, you know, sniveling to Norman about the same thing, pain, and he said, which didn't really register at the time, he said, Well, basically, John, I deal with pain at a very low level when it first comes up. Well, I had raging pain, you know, so that didn't make much sense to me, but at least somehow I remembered it. And on another occasion, I remember Paul asking me about sitting posture, and he said, Do you build, I think it was the verb, do you build your posture from the bottom up or from the top down? So, I didn't have an answer to that question. I was nowhere even, you know, near that point. But my answer now is from the bottom up.

[07:20]

So, that was one thing, and then more recently, a couple of years ago maybe, I was talking to him about breath and breathing, and he made the remark about, he said, Well, the koan, John, the koan is how to support upright body, upright posture, sitting with a soft belly for the breathing. You know, how do you do that? So, I think that's a very critical question. And then more recently, just the other day, he made, which kind of pushed me into wanting to do this, he made the remark, remember, about conceptualizing your posture from the inside, from the inside out instead of imposing something from the outside. So, I think that's also very pertinent. So, with all that introduction,

[08:22]

we'll get underway. So, this, what I'm going to say, presupposes really that you've solved already the big problem of sitting, which is your legs, of what to do with your legs. This is more about back, pelvis, neck, and maybe some knee pain. But assuming that you've already, you've solved, which I think is the basic problem of what to do with your legs while you're sitting there, that you've figured out some way that you can sit for a period without your legs going to sleep. And don't let your legs go to sleep, boys and girls. It's not a good idea. You know, figure out what it is that you're doing that's causing your body to respond that way and change it so that you can sit for a period of time without your legs going to sleep. This is heartfelt advice to do that. But supposing that you've already done that and you can sit there still without moving,

[09:24]

gross movements, but when you sit there for a long time, it starts to hurt. Pain starts to come up and over a session it gets worse and worse. So this is about that, how to deal with that. Okay. So my basic experience is that it's really a matter of relaxing and balance, of relying on balance and relaxation with the body that you have now, whatever it is. So our body, just how our body works is kind of interesting. So we've got our pelvis, it's kind of a central thing, you know, with our legs off of it and our spine coming up. And it's fairly intricate

[10:27]

and it has all these muscles, lots of muscles attached to the pelvis coming from all different directions to allow us to do all these things, you know, move our legs in different directions and to bend over and bend backwards to the side and all that, not to mention to stand up and walk. So all of these muscles for movement and we use them, especially the big ones, in habitual patterns just to do habitual things, you know, of how we walk, just exactly how we walk, how you cross your legs when you sit down and all that kind of stuff, you know, habitual patterns of usage which get in those muscles and kind of live there and they really, which can even make, you know, one leg more developed than the other or one muscle larger or the balance can be off, you know, because of these patterns. And so when you sit down, when you sit still for a while, these patterns don't go away. They're there.

[11:29]

And I think that's a big part of what causes the problem. So it's discovering all of that, you know, these imbalances that can torque, like in my case, torque your pelvis so that it's not balanced anymore which causes all kinds of problems, difficulties. And my experience is that it's not the large muscles that hurt. It isn't, you know, the quads or the hamstring or even the large muscles in your back. It's the little muscles, the little muscles that hurt. The big muscles just do their thing and the little muscles suffer and they hurt because of it. So I learned this up here with a shoulder with a rotator cuff injury and found out that it's, you know, like your rotator cuff is just these four little teeny muscles up here

[12:29]

that basically all they're supposed to do is hold your arm in the socket here. They're not supposed to do anything else, you know, do all your activity. These other large muscles, your delts and biceps and all of that are supposed to do the work. But through poor body mechanics and ignorance, I stress these little muscles like with swimming, overhead stuff, and you can damage them and they start to hurt. You know, it's not the big muscles that hurt, it's the little ones. So there's that. Now, a good way to explore your situation in your own body and start to get a feel for that, in my opinion, is the basic yoga position, which is just standing. It's called Tadasana, I think, Tree Pose, where you just stand there. You just stand on your feet. You put your feet... on the ground

[13:30]

to determine your... or to think about your alignment with Iyengar yoga. So you put your feet down. You can do it anytime, just standing. It's nice to have a nice, flat, hard surface. And... balance and just see what it's like just to stand there, to see how you experience gravity, for example, you know, this inexorable, constant force that's pulling on our body, gravity. How do you deal with it? How do you experience it? I think I experience it as weight, really, the weight. But how do you deal with it in your body? And balance. And so we've got this internal support system, our skeleton, which is really quite marvelous.

[14:32]

And you can use it to overcome the gravity, to stand up and to be upright. Anyway, so you can explore that with Tadasana, just standing there, and of how it all works, you know, how the muscles combined with balancing can keep you standing there and what's going on, and try relaxing. And as far as your pelvis is concerned, if you flex your leg muscles, the sensation of pulling up, pulling up all the way, it has an effect on your pelvis, especially if you do first the outside, the outside of your legs, and then the inside. And it can reveal, the muscles will kind of even out, and it can show you any habitual lopsidedness

[15:34]

or torquing there. You can feel it. So you get an idea of your can. And then, so Kenhen is just kind of an advance over that. You can try from standing in Tadasana, try just putting one foot, you know, half a step forward, and just experience how you actually do that. You know, what are the mechanics of doing that without falling down? We do it unconsciously most of the time, all the time, but just bring it into consciousness when we're doing Kenhen. How do I actually do that? Maintain my balance and being as relaxed as possible, and so on. You can experiment with that, which I think is revealing and useful, and it's also very concentrating, keeps me, anyway, in the moment. But we're talking about sitting, so with those notions,

[16:38]

you just sit down in your preferred leg position and settle into a position that you can commit to for an hour, whatever that is. And it's important to have your sitting bones in contact with something, to be sitting in such a way that your sitting bones are perceivable, so that means that they're in contact with something, you know, a support cushion or something, which is not always the case. So that means really, you know, that you should be back a little bit, if that helps. So you sit on your sitting bones, and then, so you just sit down, so you find your position,

[17:39]

and then relax. First, just relax. And then, see if you can, this is the beginning of the period, the very beginning of the period, right? See if you can assess the situation, you know, what is the situation with my body right now, if you can feel. Where is the tension? When I sit down, one side of my body is always noticeably tighter than the other side. It's not always the same side, interestingly. But I can tell, like right now, this side is tighter than this side, and this hip in particular. So just notice that. See what the situation is. And then, the next thing, I think, for me, is very useful to think about a vertical. So, of course, there's Dogen's, and so if you're always just thinking about your nose in line with your navel. But I find an external reference very, very helpful.

[18:40]

So just something in my field of vision, just find something that's vertical. There's always something to look at as a reference point from time to time. Or horizontal is okay, too, if you can't find anything. And you can infer vertical from that. But it's important that you be square to it. But your knees, not your upper body, because your upper body, we'll find out in a minute, is often not in alignment with the lower part. Am I making sense? Is anybody still with me? So some external visual reference point, a vertical, that you can just check without any effort. You know, just open your eyes, and there it is. So, okay, there we are. So we're sitting there, and at this point, we're sitting there in these, what I think of as isometric tensions.

[19:41]

I don't know if that's the right word or not, but of, or holding us up, you know, of our kind of leaning on the tensions in our body. Does that make any sense? Or basically, it was holding me up. Like, if your quads are really tight, you can kind of lean against them, and it'll hold you up, and so forth, that kind of thing. It's hard to articulate, experiment with it. You're basically leaning on your own resistance somehow. But, as I mentioned before, the problem with that is it's so uneven, and it also changes. As we sit here for a few minutes, it all changes. You know, muscles start to relax or stretch a little bit, or the opposite happens. You know, you think of something, and something tightens up, and so this changes. And pretty soon, you know,

[20:44]

it's like this, you know, but you open your eyes, you look and say, whoa, you know. So, we're sitting there with that. So, this reliance on the habitual way of holding our muscles. So, to help that, the breathing is really wonderful. Breathing. So, I recommend, which Paul recommended to me, was at this point, which you're maybe a couple of minutes, you know, into the period, breathe five times, beginning with out. Breathe out all the way, and down. Try to let the breath,

[21:46]

perception of breath go low. Very subjective, hard to, difficult to talk about, because your diaphragm is like here, right? So, clearly your breath does not go down here, but the feeling does. It's amazing. Out, breathe out, and it's not so easy, in my experience, especially at the beginning. There's a lot of resistance. There's blocks. It's curious. So, like sometimes, especially at the beginning, I had sort of the image of stages or something like an elevator going down. You know, I breathe out, and it's not, it wouldn't be smooth at all. There would be like little bumps going down. But, so then you do it again. Breathe in, and it's probably kind of jerky, but then out, and so on.

[22:48]

Try to breathe it all out, which is very difficult. I learned this basically in swimming years ago. I learned to swim when I was 28, and I mean, I could paddle around in a lake, but I wanted to swim, you know, with some ease and some grace. So, I took lessons, and I found out that the breathing was the whole thing. The breathing is the hard part, and once you get that down, there's really nothing to it. You can swim for a long time with ease and joy. And the big problem with the breathing was breathing out, of letting go of it. You know, I would never, I was afraid of the water, and I didn't want to, I was afraid somehow, and they kept telling me this, let go of it. Breathe out. But you would get this feeling that I can't get enough air in because I haven't breathed out enough beforehand,

[23:52]

you know. So, the whole thing is trying to breathe out, and the sensation going down the soft belly, soften the belly, so that it goes lower. The relaxation, I think, down here, enables your diaphragm to fall a little lower. I don't understand the physiology exactly, but I can know the feeling very much. And it's getting the sensation of breathing lowered. So, down in the hara area is okay, but it's not really low enough to keep at it until you can get the sensation all the way down into your pelvis, into kind of the bowl of your pelvis. And then even lower than that, with some practice, all the way down to the bottom, to your perineum. Does everybody know what your perineum is? It's the very bottom, it's your sitting bone. It's the sensation of the breath

[25:00]

going all the way to the bottom, and then you inhale from there. And you can check, you can figure it with your clothes. When you're doing that, you feel in your body, the movement is down here. There's no movement up here at all. You're not using your intercostals to breathe like we do habitually most of the time. You know what I mean? You don't feel it, it's all down here. Then, at this point to me, like Dogen's little things make a lot more sense to me. Eat and drink moderately. It's a lot easier to do that if you don't need to pee, for one thing, and if you haven't just eaten, if your stomach is not full. And also, having your robes, was it loosely, robes and belts, you know, loosely bound, that makes a lot more sense then. It's a whole lot easier

[26:00]

to do that relaxation then. So, the breathing, then we go, you practice with that and then we go back to your assessment of a few minutes earlier, where there's tension or resistance and just breathe to it, just mentally. And it's amazing. In a couple of breaths, in my experience, it loosens. If this hip is very tight, if I could just breathe to that, it will loosen and my pelvis will straighten out. It's pretty interesting. It doesn't stay that way. Like it's just a constant

[27:01]

movement in the body. So you need to keep checking, keep checking the visual. Then another thing, so if all this is going on, if say, if you start a pain in your back, something starts to hurt in your back, almost always, if that happens to me, if I look, I'll see I'm leaning, I'm leaning and just starting, just the painful sensation, just starting, just see why I'm leaning. Is there some tension holding, creating an imbalance that's causing me to lean, either from tilting or that the base, the base is out of balance, the pelvis. I'm not sure where to go from there.

[28:06]

So by noticing the tension down here, gradually we can get our pelvis to be even, the sitting bones even on whatever it is that they're in contact with and then relaxing these muscles so you don't need your leg muscles at all, really relaxing the leg muscles, which has a very beneficial effect on your knees, the pain in them. And then think about your spine. So your spine sits in this socket, you call it, I suppose, of the pelvis where the sacroiliac is and just comes out of it. And it's just so much, the way it's supposed to be if your pelvis is flat and straight, which for most of us it isn't, it's torqued around. But we've solved that, right?

[29:20]

After a long effort of it being even. So now you can think more of going back or relying on balance of just the natural, the wonderful, beautiful, natural structure of the spine and how it fits into your pelvis, which is now a good base for it. And of the balance and how actually little effort it takes to hold yourself up. So just to think about balancing, check your vertical, forward and backward, and it's a relaxed balance, relaxed muscles that are no longer necessary to hold you up because they're not countering these other forces. You can relax.

[30:22]

The natural curve of your spine basically will hold you up all the way to the top. So then our head. My experience is that most of the pain in the shoulders up here and from my head, of holding my head incorrectly, of not taking advantage of the cervical curve here, of holding on my head, of basically my head being too far forward. And to have it back allows most of this really to relax. I feel it's awkward at first. Your head weighs about 16 pounds, I think,

[31:32]

which is quite a lot for these muscles to have to deal with, especially, you know, hanging out here. I think the physics of it weighs a lot more when it's out here. To hold up. Anyway, so then there's... And then further, I learned from Alexander technique that your spine goes up quite a ways into your head, right? I think it sits on this kind of a pivot and there are these little, and more, little teeny muscles that basically enable us to, you know, to do these muscles, these movements, subtle movements, and to just, I don't know, try to contact that, you know, and relax your head and allow it to be up there freely. It's not easy. It takes some effort. However, you know, doing this has the beneficial effect

[32:33]

of concentrating our attention, of actually being present in our body in the moment on the cushion. Doing this, you can do this period, many periods, many periods, days, the whole session, and I think it's fine. And then other stuff comes up, you know, crap comes up and distracts you and something starts to hurt, which will bring you back, and so on, you know, the great cycle goes on and on. But there's a lot less pain to deal with, which I think is a wonderful thing. Relaxing, relaxing, relaxing, and balancing. Now, the best part, once you've gotten this far, which who knows, it may take, it took me years, but the best part is, now, okay, so there you are, and at some point, it isn't really a matter of doing it,

[33:35]

it's kind of letting it happen, is having the sensation or the thought of the pelvis, the sacrum tilting forward a little bit, just a little. Maybe it's not even really tilting, maybe it's just the thought of it. And maybe if I'm lucky and everything is lined up, that I've settled everything and my spine is straight and pretty relaxed, the energy will come and up my spine, and it just goes up and everything lifts. It goes up to a point, some vertebra, thoracic vertebra, just below my shoulder blades. There, it goes up to there, and it's quite wonderful. It's like there's no effort. It just comes up, and my chest opens, the shoulders can go back. Maybe, in fact, nothing happens.

[34:37]

Maybe it's just an internal experience, but it's terrific. Shoulders go like this, shoulder blades go in, kind of down and in, which kind of helps to support the whole thing. It's like, what, I don't know, like an umbrella opening or a flower blooming or something. You just go, there you are. You're just sitting there with no effort for a moment. Well, then, you know, gravity reasserts itself, our habitual patterns, so you just have to keep paying attention to what is pulling at this wonderful experience of being upright.

[35:38]

Check the pelvis. So, one thing is the tendency of the pelvis to want to come up with it. No, no, no, no. Keep that down, all down. Make sure those seat bones are back down. Stay down. Relax. Keep the legs relaxed and so on. It's kind of a very dynamic situation, but it's great. And to me, that's it. You know, that's the repose and bliss that Master Dokin is talking about. And with attention, I can sit for quite a while that way. And then, of course, sex or opera or something comes up and drags me away into another realm and relax and, you know, back into the mess again. So, just start over. For this to happen,

[36:40]

you can't, I can't impose it. For this to happen, my breath has to be all the way to the bottom, all the way to the bottom, sitting bottom, kind of habitually having been done that for a while, a period. So, that's close to everything. So, to me, this whole process is kind of a metaphor for our practice in general or for Zazen in general of just noticing what's going on, noticing my body, allowing that to go on, first of all, and then being willing to let it go, to let go, let go of all the tensions and patterns and habits and so on, sort of, yeah, I don't know how else to put it. So, the last thing I wanted to add

[37:44]

was, in terms of posture adjustment, which I hope will be happening some, especially when this issue comes, that what you could expect from me is, first of all, that if I come to you to let you know of any leaning that I see, gross leaning, which is not very much for most people, but just to bring that to your attention physically somehow, then you can do with what you want. And then your shoulders, probably, just to try to drop the shoulders, and especially the drop in a falling back this way, shoulder blades down, not forward, not leaning in. And then maybe touching the lumbar area just to remind you of this arch down here,

[38:46]

to take care of that arch, just to touch that area of your body. And then to, what's the word, remind you of this spot just below the shoulder blade, that thoracic vertebra, just to touch that. And when that happens, if I do that, see if you can just relax, just relax there. If not, okay, maybe next time. But just in some subtle way, it's all so subtle, respond, respond to that just to get a feeling for it. And then maybe your head, touch your head, but that's so subtle, it's a little bit scary, but so probably not. So that's what you could expect,

[39:48]

I think, as far as posture adjustments. I think that's all. I hope it made some sense. Does anybody have a question or comment? Yes, Raven? Mudra. Oh, that's the same thing, right? Well, to be honest, that's the hardest part to me. The mudra is the hardest part of Zazen. And I haven't solved that koan, so I don't really have anything to say. No. I just, no, I don't know. Yes. Yes. Welcome.

[40:48]

Ah. Play. Play. Well, let's play with this a little, okay? You know, I want, selfishly, want to practice with questions. Because this is going to be coming up, you know. Particularly, particularly, to practice the ability to hear your question. To listen to hear your question. No. I have a lot of work in my left, and a lot of stuff on my right side. So, I have to focus right on that. And, it is important to know that. And that's it. I'm just wondering, maybe,

[42:01]

how important it is to work on that. And, maybe, if there's any particular thing I could do to, you know, sometimes I'll switch between right up and left up. So, sometimes I'll switch between right up and left up. But I'm pretty comfortable right now. Okay, so those are, that kind of thing, comes before all of this. I think, and you just need to work on it. And, I would, my recommendation is that you find something that works, and pretty much stick with it, and then make very conservative forays into, you know, trying to do something else. I mean, I have, I have to be pretty conservative. I cannot, certainly can't sit full lotus for more than five minutes,

[43:03]

or I don't, my body does not like to sit half lotus even. And every time I try it, which I do every couple of years as I try it, I regret it, you know, because I, I get my sac, one of the sacroiliacs gets out of whack and really hurts, and, you know, it just isn't worth it. So, I think maybe, but now, I've learned to say, okay, just give it up, you know, just do what your body wants to do. I guess, it's a question of balance, the way I like to do it, unbalancing, doing it one way, like if you said for me, you always put your right leg in front of your, in front of your left, if you switch it up. I'm strong-intensively to put my right leg in front, because that's just what my body wants to do, and sometimes I'll try to force it to do the other way, and it, it makes me pay for it. So, I think, I think I finally accepted that, and, I don't think that it necessarily,

[44:10]

you know, creates an imbalance, but I'm not totally positive about that, but, anyway, so yoga, anything you can do to loosen up the hip joints, you know, is terrific, but it's a very long-term proposition, certainly not a quick fix, not for this practice period, or anything like that, you know, because the muscles are so big, these muscles are so big, and so powerful, and the joint is so big, that it doesn't want to change, and the punishment just gets sent to the weaker joints, the knees and their sacroiliac, that's where it, yeah. Well, yes, that's why it's good to have an external reference point. Right,

[45:10]

these are, you're just lining yourself up with one of these, you know, that, yeah, and then, you know, try to see, well, what is, what's causing that? Yeah. Okay. All right,

[46:27]

well, I think that's what Paul meant with these, the koan is how to maintain upright posture with a soft belly. So, my answer is, that it's really a matter of balance, of taking advantage of the natural structure of your skeleton, and solving the problems that pull against that, so that you don't need all your abdominal muscles to sit upright, you can, then you can relax them. Am I making any sense? No, and then, and then it's the back muscles, not the stomach muscles.

[47:28]

Uh-huh. Especially that, what I was trying to verbalize, that sensation of the, you know, it's going up, it's the back muscles, it's not, it actually, any tension in the front would inhibit that. It needs to be, yeah, totally, especially down here, pubic area, and it ain't, muscle tension there, would inhibit, the ability to come up. I don't know, that's an alien concept to me. I realize that's a fairly strong term, but it's not part of my personal experience. So what I was talking, what I'm talking about is just my experience. So, very subjective terms are weird, and so I'm sorry.

[48:32]

Okay. [...] Oh,

[50:03]

I completely agree. I make the same distinction, and I, personally, I don't see why I should tolerate either one. Especially when it's so easy, and beneficial, to take care of it. I don't think it's avoiding pain. I mean, it isn't like running, running home and taking six ibuprofen or something. It's just the, it's just from misusing my body, I think. It's just from misusing my body, and in normal daily activity, we're moving around, so your muscle, you know, we're moving around, so it keeps changing, and so the pain is not so obvious, or doesn't come. It's just when we sit still, that the poor body mechanics become so obvious, and register as pain. So you just take care of that, and the pain doesn't happen. I don't think that's avoiding pain. I do.

[51:09]

Well, I mean, unless you're sitting on a nail or something. Yes. Do you feel pain in your shoulders, or in your shoulders, or do you feel pain in your back? So I was thinking, not a breathing, it's before pain,

[52:11]

not a breathing into the pain down here, but into the tension, the holding, before the pain. So you don't feel pain, but do you feel pain in your shoulders, or do you feel pain in your back? Well, I just think about it. I just try to keep my breathing as low, as low as possible, which is not that easy, for some reason, you know, it always wants to be shallow. Shallow breathing. And then just somehow, you know, just think about the hip, or what, knee, or whatever, and it lets go. It just lets go. It's kind of amazing. You just feel the physical sensation of dropping, of just letting go, actually letting go. Of course it doesn't, because you're already in contact, right? But it's the sensation of, it just lets go. Shoulder, I don't know,

[53:13]

I don't have so much problem there, except that, like I said, to me, it seems to be mainly the head, you know, the way of taking care of the head problem. Right. Well, is it real? Yeah, it's just an attempt to articulate a concept, so it couldn't be misleading just because of the word, you know. But all of that, and my shoulder,

[54:13]

when I was having problems with my shoulder, you know, I gradually discovered that it was poor biomechanics. I just wasn't using my arms properly. That was basically the problem, and sitting, the same thing. So if you can kind of examine that. Experiment. Familiarity with one's own body. Last week, you mean? Ah, okay. Okay.

[55:27]

Okay, so we're going to do three things, and we're going to do five steps, and then we're going to do three things. Okay. No, so that's like with breathing out through your mouth. This was just Paul's instruction to me, and he mentioned it, I think, last week, just breathing out through your mouth, and just do that five times, or nine, he said, whatever, and then at some point, it's just to make the contact, right, from mind to breath, just at the beginning, just to make that, establish that contact, and then, then you can be more natural about it, but still, you know, with the,

[56:28]

what's the word, intention of lower, lower, and with definitely the emphasis on the out-breath, the emphasis on the out-breath. How much do you like to do it, right now, with just your left hand, or do you have a problem with that? Uh, I just don't like to do it, I just have resistance to, that mudra for some reason, I don't really know why, I don't want to do it, sometimes I actually cannot will my hands to come up out of, like they are right now, in my lap, up to here, they just won't move. Laughter. Laughter. Laughter.

[57:47]

Oh, yeah, oh, I certainly don't, uh, denigrate it, I mean, I think it's important, and, I just haven't solved that problem, I think it's the same kind of thing, you know, of just learning how to do it, learning how to do it with the body that I have, and, in a way that's, that's sustainable, and do it, and I think it's important, you know, for Suzuki Roshi, and, um, what Ed Brown talks about, there's such a relationship between, uh, one's heart and one's hands, that's not wasted on me, you know, that I have trouble with my hands, and also this other item. Laughter. So, we have plenty of time. Laughter. It's not fair,

[58:54]

right? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Laughter. Besides the cosmic mood, John? Laughter. It has great appeal. Laughter. Laughter. Uh-huh. Uh, you know, some guidance, time-wise, so, what does that mean? To start? No, I think we've, uh, yeah. Uh, okay, so let's stop. Okay. Laughter.

[59:56]

Who? Trevor? Speak. Laughter. Laughter. Laughter. Right. Right. Uh-huh. Point. Uh, Laughter. Well, uh, Darlene, I think, taught me, uh, that sometimes just the smallest little adjustment, uh, is just like a millimeter, you know, makes a tremendous difference, and, um, that,

[61:02]

and I do myself, when I first sit down, that's very important, you know, that, and just the flesh, or whatever, around the sitting bones, those points, is really important, where they are, it feels like, cords, or tendons, or something, and I often, you know, would just physically move, uh, the, flesh, uh, until, you can tell, you know, of what's going to work, and what isn't going to work, you know, so I know that in about ten minutes, that's going to start to really hurt, and so you just move a little, and, then it's okay. So, yeah, just experimenting with that, and find out what works. Of course, uh, the, your sciatic nerve runs by there, too, but, I, most of the time, in my experience, the problem, the sciatic problem, comes from the, sacroiliac joint, it's not from down here, from sitting on it, the irritation's up here,

[62:03]

but you perceive it down here. I saw, do I want to sing that? Yeah, yeah. You're not responding to the question. What? You weren't responding to the question. Which one? Greg's question, you're supposed to respond. Oh. You weren't responding, you wanted to respond. Alright, so it is related, this one, so this is, gee, turn it off. Okay, I'll turn it off. Turn it off now. Turn it off. It's not turn it off.

[63:06]

Turn it off. What's not turn it off? Okay, great. I'll skip the little lecture. So this is a kind of, an adaptation of a, song from an opera called, The Picture of Love, I think you're familiar with that, I highly recommend you go and see it, if you ever get a chance. And it ends, with this guy, his name is Ukumara, Ukumara, is a sort of, quack doctor, who was, a survivor, of the picture of love. it's a great thing, this little song, at the end. It's a bar tour. I know that, Ukumara, Ukumara means, bitter sweet, bitter sweet, Ukumara means, sweet sweet, kind of like, golden diamond, or treasure, or whatever, bitter sweet, sweet sweet, sweet sweet,

[64:07]

something like that. So, this, the ballad of, ballad of Bodhidharma, emerged, so, you have to imagine, you have to create, the orchestra, and the, you know, Bodhidharma, which is, in the, in the, and, and it's a, a chorus, a theme to somebody, and of, Chinese, we'll say, peasants, and they were tagged peasants, so it's the four of us. But the other is, this little, little part. So, four verses, and most of it is, Bodhidharma's, blossom instruction, in the commentary. So, first of all, so there they are,

[65:07]

this is the culmination, there they are, so the orchestra, as often the case, the orchestra gets out, the tune first. So it goes, da [...] da, dee da [...] da, da da, and then it goes, Bodhidharma, went to China, just to see, what he could see, when he got there, all he said is, what will be, is what will be, but, division, modification, of what is, and what has been. So, just, sit right down, and turn around, and start to practice, and, then of course, it happens, because, oh, how he loves fireflies, and we're gonna give him, a big kiss, and give him a little, sudden death. So Bodhidharma goes on, and once,

[66:07]

you're seated, and you're settled, then you focus, on your breath, and this time, it will be obvious, that from now, till certain death, there's no, you, no I, no me, no he, he, she, her, it, no him, there's just, us, right here, and us, right now, there is no, they, no them, before it becomes, no them, there is no them, do, [...] So Bodhidharma goes on, all of piranhas is illusion, there is nothing there at all,

[67:11]

Come to call, in the mind of God. Cry when you hate, and when you pray. There's no gain or loss, don't laugh or cry. Just come join me in my case. Put the... Put the... ...ja-ma-ba-na-narl... ...bristles in your face. Yes, love, justice, and cuddle. Anytime, most anyplace.

[68:24]

He's a puzzle, is our foe. As we struggle to receive. That's the only dharma, karma, if we get what we receive. That's the part that... Oh, yes, we love our foes. We want to kiss them, I'll take care. And everybody drinks up to hot tea. And the curtain comes down. Yeah. In our intention, equally, and togetherly.

[69:26]

Oh, no.

[69:27]

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