And I always feel for one day sittings that it would be nice to just sit all day and it's not necessary to hear any lecture or words, but I also know it's helpful sometimes to hear something. So I offer this talk. I asked, it's been a very busy week in Lake Walbegon here at Green Gulch. It was graduation, eighth grade graduation and picnics last week of school, elementary school and Mill Valley Middle School. So I asked, I didn't spend a lot of time earlier in the week preparing, but I asked both of my children what I should

[01:07]

talk about for lecture. My daughter, who's 14, said, talk about me. And my sons, who's nine, said fruit, talk about fruit. So we'll see if I can weave those subjects in. I came across a quote from Lin Ji, Rinzai, which was this, it's best not to have obsessions, just don't be contrived. Try to be normal. And that struck me very funny because it reminded me of a workshop that I did once with Keith Johnstone, who does improvisation workshops. Is it dark in here? Should we have some more light? Uno, could you turn the light up a little bit? Thank you. He works with improvisation and invented theater sports. Some of you might

[02:11]

have heard about it. Anyway, he did some workshops in the Bay Area and a number of people from Zen Center went. And one of the exercises we did was each person was given a phrase to repeat over and over in their mind. And then with that in mind, you would go forth in these ensemble groups and improvise. And the one I was assigned was, I'm normal. So I had to think in my mind, I'm normal, [...] I'm normal. Going through and then come forward and interact with people. And other things people had were, you know, I'm sophisticated, I'm rich and powerful or whatever. A lot of different internal little phrases. So I found as I went out on stage to do this, thinking I'm normal, I'm

[03:12]

normal, I'm normal, I'm normal. And then what I found was when it came time to say something, what came out of my mouth were things like, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. And very cliches, a stitch in time saves nine. Because I was normal and I had to say normal things. I couldn't come up with anything fresh. It was because it might not seem normal. And the, oh, it was very funny because the one who was saying, I'm sophisticated, I'm sophisticated, kept dropping little French phrases. And I learned quite a lot about how we condition our interactions with our own internal monologues about who we are and how we're supposed to be that go on all the time. Maybe not quite as blatant as I'm normal, I'm normal, I'm

[04:13]

normal, but maybe not so different actually. So when Rinzai, when Linji says, it's best not to have obsessions. Just don't be contrived. Just be normal. I feel like this is not pointing to putting on the clothes of I'm normal. I think it's more pointing to function freely and naturally and authentically. That's your normal functioning. That's what being normal is, rather than this idea of I'm normal, I'm normal. Now, I had this long conversation recently with Reb Tenshin Anderson and Ed Brown and Gary McNabb. And we were talking about, Reb mentioned that if you chew gum on the same side of your mouth over and over and over and over, you get depressed. There's been

[05:16]

studies that you can get depressed by doing this repetitive action of chewing gum on the same side, which I found rather amusing. So what also we discussed was the fact that people who are depressed have, when they take pictures with, what would it be, infrared or something to see warmth, they have hotspots, certain hotspots in the parts of the brain that are kind of heated up, people who have depression. These heated up spots on the brain. And people who are not depressed have a cooler brain, cooler head. So this repetitive thinking over and over again, certain thoughts, certain tapes that we have, that we're caught in these loops of thinking over and over and over, these actually contribute to states

[06:23]

of depression, these hotspots in our head. And this is also true, Reb was talking about, in mathematics, there's certain formulas that if you work them out, they keep going and going and going and going ad nauseum, and they actually make people sick. If you're a mathematician and working on these, they go over and over and over and over the same root of the brain, and they've found this out that these cause you to feel sick. So he was telling a story of a teacher in a class who was asked to prove why this theorem was the way it was, and he said he didn't want to do it, it was this way, but he was pressed by the students, so he left the class and worked it out and came back and didn't want the student to do it himself because of this loop

[07:24]

you get into. So when we're sitting, a one-day sitting, we may become very aware of our, people often call it their tape, our tapes are looping repetitive over and over, I'm such and such, I'm such and such, I'm such and such, and why did they do that, and why didn't I say this, and if they only hadn't, and next time I will, and over and over in the same, and you get to the end and it kind of goes back to the beginning, this kind of repetitive, which is not very helpful way of thinking. Kadagiri Roshi once participated in this experiment, I guess they put some kind of electrodes on his head and measured his brain

[08:29]

patterns while he was sitting zazen, and I guess some other people were also there and they rang a bell, maybe some of you have heard this story before, they rang a bell while he was sitting zazen and the brain, you know, would register some kind of rising on the graph and then go down, and then the bell would be struck again at another interval and up it would go, and down, and same with the people who are not sitting zazen, who are just sitting, having this test, but after a while, as the bell kept being rung during this test, the people who were not sitting, pretty soon they didn't register, it was kind of a lower, the line didn't go as high, and then pretty soon it just, the bell would ring and there would be no notice of it whatsoever, because they got totally used to it, whereas with Kadagiri Roshi, every time the bell would ring, every time the bell would ring, how are we doing here,

[09:39]

it would be like a fresh event, and his registering of it would be like, fresh, new, bell, never heard it before, which is true, and then, and over and over and over, all during this test, while he was sitting zazen, this same bell would be registered as fresh and new, so this fresh and new momentariness of our zazen, or we can experience this in our zazen, if we're sitting upright and aware, where each, you know, in the morning, we, not during sesshin, but during regular morning schedule, we have 18 hits of the obancho, the big bell,

[10:42]

out in the, overlooking the pond, and you might register the first couple hits, or I might register the first couple, and then I kind of miss a couple, but there's 18 of them every morning, fresh, new sounds of this bell coming over the air, so we have the capacity to hear this fresh each time, to hear the birds, fresh, fresh, it's not the same old bird, but often we're caught in our tape, our repetitive thinking, and this seals us from experiencing the freshness of the moment, our life is momentous,

[11:47]

you know, the word momentous is like a very unusual, wonderful occasion, momentous, but that's the way our life is, it's this momentary life, it's momentous, so we do, we are able to experience the momentousness of our lives, and yet we're often kept from it somehow, with this internal dialogue that goes on endlessly, endlessly, endlessly, recently someone talked with me about forgiveness, and the inability to forgive, and mainly to forgive herself, and it's interesting about the word forgive, because it's a direct translation of the Latin perdonare, to pardon is like donation or a gift, forgiving, perdonare is forgive,

[12:58]

and as I looked at the word it began to turn for me the way words can, and the forgiving, when we forgive someone or ourselves, there's a gift that's given, but who receives the gift, the person who isn't forgiving, who will not forgive, and usually we have trouble forgiving an offense, we have resentment, resentment is indignation at a perceived offense to ourselves, something someone's done to us, or we've done to others, that we cannot pardon, we cannot let go of it, we cannot give this gift of letting it go,

[14:05]

so who receives the gift, does the person, first of all, who is it that we can't forgive, are there people in our lives that we cannot forgive, and if so, what's that all about, or can we not forgive ourselves, if we forgive someone else, do they get the gift, or do we get the gift, where is this gift, where does the gift go, Joko Beck has a chapter in her book, Nothing Special About Forgiveness, and she speaks very strongly about it, basically in the regular world there's reasons one would say, well I don't forgive them for that, you can't forgive them for that, certain ways you've been treated, no, you don't forgive somebody for that, but in the practice world, that won't cut the mustard,

[15:21]

in the practice world we know that even though it takes a long time, maybe it takes a lifetime, we have to work with this forgiveness, forgiveness of others, and she points out that our lack of being able to forgive keeps us from realizing the joy of our life, it keeps us from joy, now, also at the bottom of relationships that are difficult, all sorts of areas of our life, if you look deeply, or if you look carefully, you might see that somewhere in there, there's this inability to forgive, or inability to forgive oneself, so the inability to forgive is also bound up with our own self-centered ideas,

[16:35]

it's not, we can't get off kind of scot-free, well, they deserve it and I'm not going to forgive, or I deserve it and I'm not going to forgive me for that one, ever, this holding on to that is a self-cleaning and a self-centered way that keeps us from fully enjoying and feeling joy, it keeps us out, and this may be one of these internal tapes that we have about not forgiving someone, and not forgiving ourselves, hatred, it's also connected up with hatred, and one of the precepts is, a disciple of the Buddha does not harbor ill will, and ill will is this holding on to a grudge,

[17:38]

because of feeling we've been harmed, and not letting go, and it's often, we do it because there's a feeling that we receive from doing that, and it augments our own self-esteem often, to hold on to these resentments, so it's not easy, you know, it's funny, I just remembered listening on the radio to this doctor who was on KPFA, and she was talking about forgiving, she's a cancer specialist, I think, and she said that what you get from forgiving is ecstasy, you feel the ecstasy in your full body, because the non-forgiveness lodges all over in your body and mind, and is stuck, you know, you're stuck in a certain place, or you have a hot spot in your head,

[18:40]

and the forgiving is ecstasy, is what she said, now I don't know about that, but maybe some of you do know about that, the ecstasy of forgiving, maybe that's this joy that we're being kept from, so to be able to know who it is and what it is that we will not forgive, and to look at that, and know it, know what it's about, and practice with that in our bodies, can be maybe something that's up for you, I know it's up for some people. So this joy, this enjoyment, the Sanskrit word enjoyment, the word for enjoyment also means, I should say the English word function,

[19:43]

in Sanskrit means enjoyment, so function is the natural way that a system or a mechanism or a being works, naturally is how it's functioned, and in Sanskrit that means enjoyment, so when we're fully functioning and living without these internal tapes that are predisposing us to act in certain ways, there's enjoyment, and I don't mean necessarily likes and dislikes, but you can also enjoy your dislikes, there's humor in that too. So functioning in this way naturally is just be normal, I think, it's not being contrived, and it's best not to have obsessions, these obsessions are like not forgiving and refusing over and over not to do something,

[20:48]

rather than being there with the sound of the bell as it hits this time. So this may take trust, and one way that we develop this trust and experience this is through our sitting, our sitting practices, this wonderful way to find out about these things, find out about ourselves, to study this and try out what it's like to be present for the old tape. When you're present for the old tape, it weakens it, it weakens it so that it's not just fast forward, you know, it's pause. So I wanted to talk a little bit about our Zazen to which this day is devoted.

[21:59]

One thing that I noticed that even though we talk about it in Zazen instruction, I think people forget or maybe there's some sense that, well, I don't need to do that every time or something, but that's when you first take your seat, and cross your legs or get into your posture that you're going to be sitting in, it's important to take a deep breath, an inhale and an exhale through your mouth. Usually during Zazen, the rest of the time we breathe through our nose, but when you first sit to take, sometimes it's called a cleansing breath, but to take a breath through your mouth, kind of a big inhale, doesn't have to be real loud, this is, you know, on the mic, but inhale and exhale all out. And this will really make a kind of bridge between getting to the Zendo and getting your shoes all set in and take your seat, and then you take this deep cleansing breath,

[23:04]

inhale through your mouth and exhale all the way out. So I'd like to remind everyone to try that, one or two of these breaths before beginning the period of Zazen. And when you do that, your hands are open on your legs, and then we do this rocking. Now, this isn't, I don't think of this as optional, this rocking. Nor do many of the teachers who, you know, taught us at Zen Center. So with your hands open, you bend way down and exhale, and then inhale up to the center, and then exhale all the way down, and inhale up to the center, okay? And then exhale a little bit less of an arc, inhale less,

[24:09]

until you come to rest right in the center. So to take the time to do that every period of Zazen, exhale down, inhale up to the center, exhale down, inhale up. So this will help you find your upright position and to be exactly centered, but it also prepares you, and it really is your Zazen. It doesn't necessarily prepare you for something coming. It is your Zazen mind in movement, in action. And then, I mentioned this the last one-day sitting, to stretch up a little bit, stretch out your front body, and to stretch like this, excuse me, before you sit. So you do these rockings, exhale, inhale up, exhale, inhale up,

[25:13]

and then exhale, stretch, inhale, stretch, okay? And then, you may feel really settled, really settled, and I also want to talk about your lower back. You know, if you've ever seen a baby, like a little one-year-old who's sitting up straight, they sit so beautifully, the legs go straight out, and the back, they push their buttocks kind of out, and their tummy goes forward, and they're completely upright and balanced. So this lower back, there's a little curve, and you can think of, it's not, you don't want to overdo it, because you can actually strain that lower back, and so you're not pushing out like that and opening up your rib cage, but you let this little concave shape in your lower back allow it to come,

[26:18]

and you can, you know, you can make your pelvis, you know, you can try your pelvis, it rocks back and forth, so try it in different places, but to get just right, and your belly forward. So that's the position you want, and your spine then just goes right up and out of that little curve, it comes right up. When Sasaki Roshi was asked, what is it that we should retain from the Zen teaching, what is it that's the most important, he said, posture and breathing, posture and the breathing. And Akin Roshi amends that by saying he would just say posture, just the posture is enough to retain from the Zen teaching. So taking this minute care with your posture is getting as close as you possibly can to expressing the teaching through your Zazen.

[27:24]

So we, depending, I mean, some of you sit in chairs, and some of you sit Seiza, and some of you sit Half Lotus and Full Lotus and Burmese, it doesn't really matter, for every person you can take enormous care with getting your posture right from the start. And this back of your neck area, which I've talked about before, but I just want to mention again. You know, I once, I think it was in a lecture, said to flatten the back of your neck, and someone later told me that they did do that, and they did it too much, and they pinched a nerve, and they had to go to the chiropractor, so they said don't say that to people, don't say flatten your neck. So what I'd like to say about the neck is to keep your neck parallel with the wall, and then with keeping your neck still, pull in with your chin.

[28:29]

So the movement is in and up, and this becomes the topper most part. Now, it just so happens that if your chin is way out, kind of hanging out and up, there is a tendency to produce thoughts. I don't know physiologically what happens to the cortex or whatever, but there tends to be more production of daydreaming and thoughts, and when your chin is up, and you can tell when you're walking, because I know when someone's sitting like that, that they're in Hawaii or thinking, thinking, thinking about various things, and it may be that their tape is really on the stereo speakers. So the position of your head is very important. You want to keep your neck parallel with the wall, and then pull in and up with your chin. That makes your ears in line with your shoulders, and your nose in line with your navel,

[29:31]

and this part should feel like you're pulling up and holding up the ceiling. So many of you have heard these admonitions a million times, maybe many, many times, but it takes an effort every time you sit to do that. You need to make an effort, because if you don't, you go slack. It's just our tendency, and the chin comes forward and the hands fall apart, and the back rounds. So to take this posture with care each time you sit, and maintain it through your zazen is the effort that we make. And this will help you in looking at this study that we're doing of ourselves. This will help to...

[30:36]

Well, I'll read what Dogen says about it. This is from Guidelines for Studying the Way. I'd like to read this chapter, which is about how you already are in the way, so we just want to harmonize ourselves so that we can be in harmony. Those who study the way seek to be immersed in the way. For those who are immersed in the way, all traces of enlightenment perish. Those who practice the Buddha way should first of all trust in the Buddha way. Those who trust in the Buddha way should trust that they are, in essence, within the Buddha way, where there is no delusion, no false thinking, no confusion, no increase or decrease, and no mistake.

[31:38]

To arouse such trust and illuminate the way in this manner, and to practice accordingly, are fundamental in studying the way. You do this by sitting, which severs the root of thinking and blocks access to the road of intellectual understanding. This is an excellent means to arouse true beginner's mind. So, to sever this thinking, this kind of thinking, thinking, thinking tape, and block access to intellectual understanding, which is where you have a conception of, oh, that's that old bell, I heard that a million times, that's not interesting, what a bore. And then that's the kind of intellectual understanding of this momentous reality that's arriving for you every moment, that you are not separate from.

[32:41]

But the intellectual understanding is where you already know all about it, and you don't have time for such, because you've got other more important things to do, like think about that person who really you're really mad at, like that. This is a kind of obsession. So, just be normal, to take this posture. You know, someone might say, well, this isn't normal, this is terribly uncomfortable. But this is full functioning, and this practice is called the comfortable way, this is full functioning enjoyment, to take this posture and do all the things that will help you to stay in the momentous moment, with your head and this lower back and your belly

[33:44]

completely out there and loose. And you might hear a bell, or birds. So, here we have this rest of the day in front of us, and we have one more orioke meal to practice together. I wanted to say a few words about that. Our orioke practice is a wonderful dance, just like the zendo, moving in the zendo is like the dance. There's the zendo dance, and you learn the steps, and when everybody knows the steps, it's very wonderful. People are bowing to each other as they sit, and stepping in with the foot closest to the door, and it's a beautiful dance, and positioning ourselves for kinhin so that it's evenly spaced,

[34:47]

and we just move in harmony together. It's not that the forms are divinely given or something. It's to make a wonderful and harmonious dance so that we can not worry about that so much and concentrate on studying ourselves. And orioke is a more complicated step. It's like in ballroom dancing or something. Actually, I don't know how to ballroom dance, but it's a more complicated dance, and it includes, like the zendo dance includes, an emotional life, our emotional life as well. So the orioke meal is a chance to practice with all the negative emotions and all the positive emotions as well. The food is coming in, coming down the line. What is it going to be? I hope it's not oatmeal. I hope it's not oatmeal. It's oatmeal, all right? And this kind of thing goes on while you're receiving the food,

[35:54]

and we have ways in which we practice with these things, with the likes and dislikes of our life. So the posture during orioke is the same as zazen, and during orioke you sit with upright back. So when you lift your bowl, you always use two hands because you want to have your left and right sides together, moving together. You can do it with your right hand if you're right-handed or your left hand. It's simple. You just pick up the bowl. But we want to develop both sides, the sort of blind side, whichever side is less developed. So you lift the bowl with both hands, and then you bring it up. You sit upright, and you bring the food to your mouth rather than kind of bending down like this. You bring it up. It's a very noble feeling to sit upright and bring the food to you. And when cleaning your bowls also, now this is at the end of the meal,

[36:56]

and you bend from the waist, keeping your back straight, and clean, clean, clean, do the dry cleaning and the cleaning with the water with your back straight rather than kind of down like this and leaning. You know, sometimes you see someone might, you know, it's the end of the meal, your legs are killing you, leaning with their elbows kind of on their arms. So through the whole meal, right from beginning to end, to practice fully, without cutting corners, without trying to find a shortcut. You know, the last one-day sitting I started with the quote, to look for any shortcut in Zen, this is Da-Wi, to look for any shortcut in Zen is like putting your head in a bowl of glue. So any shortcut, like, you know, let's get this over with quick. It's like putting your head in a bowl of glue.

[37:57]

So you sit upright, you bend this way, you move things with both hands, and practicing with the emotions and many of us, all of us, not many of us, all of us have a lot of emotion connected with food and receiving of food and how much to have and how we like it. So when the server comes and there's the certain hand signals we have, you know, a little bit, enough, or just waiting until you have enough and then letting them fill it as high as possible and then say enough. When you receive that food, the admonition is to not do anything, to change it from what it is. So if you add gomashio, the condiment of sesame salt, one isn't supposed to then mix it all up. You just, however it lands and is sprinkled, you just eat it that way.

[39:02]

And you'll see that, you know, the way you, each spoonful will have some gomashio in it without stirring it up to the consistency that you really like it. This is to relinquish trying to control. This is a wonderful, you know, you've got your bowl and yet we want to control it and make it just the way we like it. So to drop that during orioke, to just receive the bowl and just eat it the way it comes. And same with, sometimes I've heard people say, you know, ask for certain things from the server, like look in the bowl, tofu, tofu, juice, juice. And it's true, you know, when you're only having orioke meals like at Tassahara or during Sashin, and maybe the server didn't stir the pot so that you get some of everything, and you really like, you know, the broth, and you've got mostly beans, you know, and you just want to say broth, broth. Well, the practice in orioke is whatever arrives in your bowl,

[40:04]

that's your offering, that's the offering for you. So to refrain from asking for special tidbits, and you'll see what happens. Then you get to study what happens and how angry you are at that server for, you know, not giving you any tofu in the miso stew, you know. So this kind of thing, this happens in orioke. This is part of the dance. And also this comes from the practice of the monks who, you know, in Buddhist time would just have one bowl. They would go around, and whatever was put in the bowl was their meal. And if it was not necessarily vegetarian, then they ate if the householder gave them some cooked meat or whatever. It couldn't be killed for them specifically, but they ate whatever was put in their bowl. And there's this story, I don't know if I should tell this. A little gruesome. I won't tell. Well, I'll tell it.

[41:07]

It may be apocryphal. Anyway, it's about a leper giving food to a monk. Pindar, I think, was the name of the monk. And his thumb fell into the bowl. I won't tell you the rest of the story. Anyway, that's a teaching story, I think, for the state of mind that one has when you receive your food. However it arrives, this is the Dharma. This is for you to transmute into zazen energy and for the benefit of all beings. And to drop away our incessant wants, my incessant wanting it to be the way I want it, down to the consistency of the cereal. How about trying, everyone and me? It's such a created world, you know, this oreo cake, you and your three bowls. How about trying in this instant to not control it, to not have it be fraught with self-centered ideas and self-clinging.

[42:11]

How about just however it is, that's how it is, and study that. It's very, what shall I say, momentous, it's very momentous, how that food arrives and what happens when you're not leaping forward trying to make it how you like it. So we get a chance to do that, we get a chance all the time, but in oreo cake in particular, when we go down to the buffet for lunch or dinner tonight, you're kind of expected to take, to have preferences. You can just stick in the spoon and pull it out and whatever comes out is fine, but you know, it's not necessarily part of buffet dining. But oreo cake, it is really part of it. Let's see, what else, I had something else for oreo cake. Maybe, maybe that's all, that's all on oreo cake,

[43:17]

but this is a chance to practice all the virtues, you know, of patience, morality, vigor, those are all the paramitas, and forgiveness. We always have this chance on every moment, really. And so don't, please don't think oreo cake is just kind of a convenient way to serve 30 people lunch and wash their dishes all in, you know, 40-minute time. It is that, it really is, but it's much more than that. It's really a wonderful practice of studying ourselves and the way our mind is and our self-clinging, it's all there. And same with the quietness, I think this was the last point. We often say, please be quiet with your bowls and utensils during oreo cake. Well, often if you're making noise, the person who's making noise, scraping, scraping,

[44:17]

clatter, clatter, clatter, is not studying, they're not studying, they're often somewhere else. So how do we bring someone back to studying themselves? We say, be really quiet. Well, to be really quiet and placed on your utensils, using two hands, you have to be there for it. You can't put those chopsticks down quietly without really getting all the way down to the bowl and letting go. If you drop them down, they clatter. So today I was thinking about this lecture during oreo cake and how it was a dance and learning the steps and all, at which point the Kamashio picker-upper arrived and I wasn't ready at all. I missed that wonderful pas de deux of pas de trois, I guess, of they arrived, you're feeling them coming down the row,

[45:20]

time to put down your setsu and gassho. Totally missed it. Big surprise, oh my God, they're here, put it down. It was very embarrassing. But I realized, oh, I was off giving a lecture on oreo cake. So fully functioning is enjoyment, fully naturally functioning. And the day is just devoted to finding out about that. Thank you very much.

[46:07]

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