sort of, of this Sashin. And I said, Zazen. So we're just going to focus on what is Zazen and do it. So this is going to be a kind of refresher. People who have been around long enough know What I'm going to say, you know, I like to say that every time you sit Zazen, you give yourself Zazen instruction, just like you were talking to somebody else. Here's what you do. You do that, then you do this, and then you do that. And you do that every single time you sit.

[01:14]

And then you don't forget. Not only that, we always have a lot of things on our mind, as most of you know. So we really feel that we really have to pay attention to those things that are on our mind. our mind is continually involved with. So it's easy to forget that zazen is the main subject. Sitting down and standing up are daily activities. But zazen, as you know, is not exactly the same as when you ordinarily sit down. Although, when you ordinarily sit down, it's good to know, now I'm sitting down, now I'm standing up.

[02:17]

That's good to understand, to pay attention to, because we're so caught up in our head that before we have finished one thing, we're already into the next thing. And this is the most common for most of us, for most everybody, that we're already into the next thing before we've finished what we're doing. So this is the wonderful thing about our formal practice, is that formal practice helps us to begin one activity, extend that activity into its end, and then end that activity, and then begin another activity. So I really want to emphasize this.

[03:24]

talking with somebody we're having a kind of conversation and then pretty soon we're thinking about the next thing while we're talking about this thing and then we've already left before we have gone and this is true so much of our activity we've already left before we've gone so I want us to stay with This is what I'm doing now. This is the beginning, if you can find that. Not always easy to find the beginning. Because we think of our activity as motion. It is. But this motion contains increments of beginnings and endings. Every activity contains moments of beginnings and endings.

[04:36]

So, if we can actually perceive some of those beginnings and endings within the larger context of a beginning and ending, then we have a better sense of being involved with our activity. So, that's one aspect. Another aspect is finding our balance and maintaining our balance. As Suzuki Roshi used to say, at each moment we're falling out of balance and regaining our balance. So if you think about it, this is our life. A moment of falling out of balance and a moment of regaining our balance all the time. constantly changing, and we're constantly changing, we have to find a center point in ourself in order to relate to what's going on around us and with us.

[05:52]

Sometimes we notice people who don't have a focal point. And so there's no way to relate to our surroundings from a still point. But we always have to keep finding that still point, because it's always moving. Everything is a moving target. So, when we sit in Zazen, become very still. I remember when I first started to practice at Sokoji, what we were, because we were learning how to sit, and we had a lot of difficulty, a lot of pain in the legs and back and

[07:00]

Everybody was having a hard time. And the only way to stay in our seat was to focus on the still point of our breath, which moves all the time. The still point of just being as still as possible and just letting the breath flow within that still point, one breath at a time. We don't like pain, you know, originally we don't like pain, but pain can actually be a, it helps us because we have to stop wiggling in order to be able to sustain ourselves. So in order to be able to sustain ourself sitting within a painful situation, we have to become very, very quiet.

[08:05]

Very, very still. As soon as you wiggle, you create a problem. And then I can remember times when it was so painful that it was just one breath at a time. one breath, inhaling and exhaling. And that's when I got to concentrate on that inhaling and exhaling was the refuge. I don't have that problem anymore because I learned how to not let the pain be my master. I learned how to encompass that sensation that we call pain, and not enclose it so that it is trying to burst out of its limits, to just let it be, and be one with it.

[09:18]

I remember Suzuki Roshi always used to say, just be one with the pain, just be one with the sensation. And that was a kind of koan. Because how do you do that? How do you be one with the sensation, with the pain in your leg? When there's no opposite, then there's no problem. So it all boils down to duality. When we talk about non-duality all the time, well, what's that? It means just being one with what is. What causes the problems is opposition. When there's an opposite, then that means that we're trying to get away from something. As soon as you start trying to escape, you create a problem.

[10:21]

So instead of closing down to open up, which is counterintuitive, it is counterintuitive because when we have an intrusion, we don't want it. That causes aversion. Intrusion causes aversion. But if we simply let the pain overwhelm us, that's no good either, right? So how do you do that? Let's be gone. How do you do that? How do you accept the pain and be one with it without letting it overwhelm you? So you simply have to grow bigger. You simply have to expand so that there's no boundary. As soon as you have a boundary, you have a problem.

[11:28]

And what is the boundary? The boundary is our sense of a fixed self. This is Buddha Dharma. As soon as you have a fixed self, you have a problem. The antidote is flexibility. Flexibility. My teacher would always talk about a soft mind. So body and mind are not two things. We talk about the mind as one thing and about the body as another. So Zazen is concerned with body, breath, and mind. Those three elements. Body, breath, and mind. how to unify body, breath and mind. Because body and mind are one thing, and breath is in between.

[12:35]

Breath is a kind of link between body and mind. So, Soft mind and soft body. But soft is only one side. Soft and hard. Firm and ease. So all these elements are present. So how do we balance flexibility with firmness? When we sit down then, There has to be some firmness. We sit up straight and balance our body.

[13:37]

360 something little parts, I don't know, it's just a number, to our body. And all these parts are cooperating to do this one act. If some parts of our body are not cooperating to do this one act, we suffer. So every part of the body has to be cooperating. It's a very complex, simple thing to sit up straight. We just take it for granted. Oh yeah, sit up straight. But actually, it takes some effort to sit up straight. Firmness. To have a firm foundation and a soft mind. And soft and flexible body at the same time. So the most important thing is balance.

[14:39]

We can't sustain ourself with muscular flexing. So, we have to pay attention to what we're doing moment by moment. You know, your mind naturally goes to other things when you have a lot of pain. And you start thinking about it in order to, you know, help to not think about it. But actually, that's one stage. The next stage is to not think about something else, but to actually accept what is actually happening so that you can work with it in a soft way. to allow the sensations, all the sensations to be there.

[15:51]

But your mind has to grow big enough to allow, be soft enough to allow everything to be, and big enough to allow it to be there. And then it's not a problem. It's only a problem when you don't like it. Like and dislike, you know. Aversion and attachment. These are all the things we're working with. That's why we always say Zazen is the great teacher. teaches us how to be selfless and be in the world in a selfless way. Because the problem that we have is the problem of too much self.

[16:57]

When the self is the center, then we have good and bad, right and wrong, like and dislike. pleasure and pain. That's life according to self-centeredness. Life according to self-centeredness is pleasure, pain, like, dislike, want, not want, aversion and attachment. So in Zazen, we leave self-centeredness aside. is centered, which means no self, no special self. The self, we're centered on actually emptiness, for lack of a better word.

[18:09]

So we don't let the self obstruct the merging. Zazen is merging in one sense. We merge with the universe. You know, the universe has got all this pressure on us. And so we act out of the world according to these pressures that we have. And our postures are determined by the pressures that we have. We don't ordinarily walk around with Zazen posture. Ordinarily. But if you're a Zen student, you can do that. Walk around in Zen posture. Which is natural. But we think it's unnatural. To sit up straight is unnatural for most people. I say to somebody, well, there are people, Zen students, whose postures I have corrected, adjusted.

[19:23]

I don't think it's correct, but adjusted. And I say, but that's not natural to sit like that. But we've lost, to a large part, we've lost our natural posture. And we think it's unnatural. we've lost our freedom to a large extent. And we think that we live in a natural way. So, it's hard to explain how to let go You just have to find it. What I'm talking about is giving us some way to think about how to be natural in a Buddhist sense.

[20:27]

And we don't say, I am sitting Zazen. We put that aside. Buddha is sitting Zazen. This is Buddhist practice, sitting zazen. I remember my teacher saying, it's just painful legs sitting on a black cushion. You are not there in a self-centered way. So balance is the most important thing. Balance and flexibility and openness. So when we sit, we sit up straight and open.

[21:30]

I always like to use the term lifting up the sternum. I say that over and over, and people will be sitting, and I'll say, lift up your sternum, and nothing happens. pushes forward, and you can balance yourself. Zazen posture is like a cloth. You pull one corner and the other corners all move according to how you pull the corner. So when you sit up straight, the body, all those parts of the body in a strong posture. So Zazen is a strength and ease. It's a balance of strength and ease. Dogen calls it great dynamic working.

[22:34]

Zinki. So Zazen should feel dynamic. At the same time, if you you get stiff and tired. And if you're too lax, you get slothful and you lose your energy. So sitting up straight, really making an effort to sit up straight. And stretch, stretch your waist. That's how you draw in energy. If you're just sitting like this, you're blocking the energy. It's pretty soon it'll be over.

[23:38]

You draw in energy, so you expend energy and you draw in energy. Unless you expend energy, you don't draw in energy. Those people that work the hardest have the most energy. So, to sit up really straight and make that effort and at the same time to let go. It's like a fountain, you know, a fountain, the water goes up, but it's also going down. And to balance ease and energy is how you deal with the pain in your legs. You sit up straight, you have structure, good structure. And that good structure allows the flow of energy.

[24:52]

And at the same time, the body are connected. Each one is independent. All the joints of your fingers are independent. Your arms are independent. Your elbows are independent. But yet they're all loosely connected and balanced with each other. So when we're sitting zazen, people say, oh, I'm bored. I'm bored because you're not connected to your body. You know, when you're connected to your body and your breath, you can't be bored. You're working too hard. I mean, you have to work hard. This is where your mind goes in zazen. What should I think about in zazen? Think not thinking. That's Dogon's koan. What do you think about in zazen? I think not thinking. Non-thinking. Which is, think the thought of zazen.

[25:57]

Think the thought of Zazen. Well, how do I do that? Well, lift up my sternum, keep my posture really straight, create energy, lift up my waist, keep my mudra light. The cosmic mudra, this is how you connect with the universe. As soon as your thumbs start pressing together, you know that there's too much tension in your body. And as soon as they start to part, you know that there's too lax. So this is the barometer. This mudra helps us to know where our Zazen practice is, and keep the balance, whether it's too tense or too loose. And just keeping that balance, it's like walking a tightrope. or walking the edges of a blade. And to keep that attention all the time.

[27:03]

And as soon as you find yourself doing this, to readjust. And we're micromanaging our posture all the time. Because the posture is always changing. So it's a lot of work to zenzansen correctly so that you're comfortable. And then we let the breath come and go. But although the manuals often say watch the breath at the tip of your nose, as the rising and falling of your lower abdomen. And all the time, I'll ask a student, where's your breath right now? I don't know. Would you breathe up here or do you breathe down here? I don't know. Maybe up here.

[28:07]

Maybe, I don't know. You should always know where your breath is. All the time. Waking or sleeping. Dreaming or eating. walking, knowing where your breath is. Shit, I want you to be here. When your breath is up here, your body's not being oxygenated properly. This is the seat of fear and doubt and perplexity. So when you let your breath come down, inhaling, your abdomen expands. Exhaling, it contracts. This is where the breath, where you breathe in Sazen, and all the time that you're not sitting. And if it's up here, you can take some deep breaths, like this. Open your mouth and go. But that's the way I was taught.

[29:22]

I was taught that when you want to get your breath down, you take it through your mouth, you go, and expand, and then contract. Contracting is good because then you naturally have to take another breath. You push the breath out. So you do that two or three times to prime your breathing. Whenever you find you're lost, I don't know where my breath is, it's rough, take a few breaths like that, quietly. This is where your breath should be all the time. I say should, right? Bad word. This is how you should synthesize it.

[30:26]

So, not everybody can do this. That's okay. This is the standard, actually. And some folks can't get up to the standard. You should, and we all have some difficulty, right? One difficulty or another. And we should pay attention to that difficulty and do what we can. If you're sitting in a chair, You have to adjust or modify to sitting in a chair. If you're laying down, you have to modify that. But you do as much in the standard as you can. And what you can't do, you can't do. But we're always working on, it's not like having perfect zazen. It's like being one with whatever it is, however it is that you're doing it.

[31:32]

Not everybody can hold their back straight. And then you go through periods where you can't do anything. But you still keep practicing. You practice with, I can't do anything, but I'm still doing it. That starts then. Even though I can't do it, I'm going to do it anyway. That's the practice. Even though I can't do it, I'll do it anyway. That's enlightened practice. It's not that the person who sits perfectly is the enlightened one. It's your perseverance that furthers, as we used to say in the I Ching, And that's what Sashin is about.

[32:40]

But you have to tough it through until you finally open up. Until you don't need to do that anymore. So when we begin to practice, we tough it through. Some people can't do it. They don't want to continue. But the person who continues, it will open up. I mean, you guys have been practicing a long time. I'm not telling you something new. But I'm reminding us of what our practice is. Do you have any questions? Ross. Thank you. Thinking, not thinking is not thinking, and not thinking When we assume this posture, we're reminding ourselves of the points of nada, and that's non-thinking.

[33:47]

Well, it's beyond thinking and non-thinking. Actually, it's beyond thinking and not thinking. It's translated as non-thinking, but it's actually beyond thinking and not thinking, which means it's thinking and it's not thinking. Okay. As you describe non-thinking, those particular points to remind ourselves is going beyond that. Okay, lift up the sternum and then just sit with this. So there's the active mind of lift up the sternum and then letting go of that thought, I think. Is that...? No. Zazen itself is beyond thought. Yes, in a way, in a sense, that's right, yes. But it's not like I lift up my sternum and forget it. No, I lift up my sternum and keep it up all the time. I don't forget it. But the active side is the reminding, and then there's the so-called passive side, or beyond that, of just being.

[34:59]

Just being. Just being. And then if there's a noticing of a collapse of the sternum, then it's like the active mind, the attentive mind, This is the thinking part. This is the instruction. And the non-thinking part is letting go. So one is the essence and the other is the function. The essence is letting go. The function is doing something. But the function is integral with the essence, and the essence is integral with the function. That's called form is emptiness and emptiness is form. It's demonstrating the heart sutra. It's practicing that, what the heart sutra is saying. the hindrances, the foundations of mindfulness.

[36:25]

And I really, I think a lot, you know, I think of Suzuki Roshi's saying of Mahayana practice within the Mahayana mind. And lately, you know, the mindfulness movement is all the rage. And what I really like is the translation of that word and physically recollecting ourselves on the moment. And that, you know, as you say this, it has the function and the essence are integral. That you actually have to do something. We have to keep bringing ourselves back and we drift away and we recollect ourselves.

[37:26]

I find that really useful. more useful than a kind of objectification of mindfulness of absolute presence, which I don't know what that means, of being just in the moment. Sometimes we're in the moment. is falling off and getting on all the time. There's no constant. It's really hard to maintain a constant mindfulness, so to speak, or presence. Presence, yeah. But the presence, there are two things that are happening, so to speak. One is the active.

[38:29]

part of zazen, and the other is the essence. And so even though mind wanders and we fall off and we forget what we're doing, the essence is still being expressed. That's why we don't say that thinking is wrong. or bad, because the mind wanders and that's its function. But even if the mind wanders, the essence is still not disturbed. That's Razan. So when we sit in this posture, we're not thinking about something else, but the mind wanders anyway. wandering. And so we wake up and bring it back. And so we're continually waking up and dreaming, waking up and dreaming.

[39:31]

This is how our body-mind works. But Zazen, but the essence in Zazen, in Zazen we bring, we allow the essence to be the dominant And all this stuff is going on all the time in our brain. But it's beyond thinking. So Zazen is beyond thinking. Even though it includes thinking, it's beyond thinking. So we don't dismiss the thinking, which is a big mistake, and say, oh, I only had two minutes of calmness in my whole life. you. That's not understanding. The essence is there whether you recognize it or not.

[40:32]

Some will recognize it and some won't. And so we get caught on the idea of clarity. that clarity is what we're trying to bring forth. But clarity is good. But if we become attached to clarity, then we fall into duality. So it's cloudiness and clarity. We're not supposed to be attached to the cloudiness, and we're not supposed to be attached to the clarity. It's great when there's clarity, but if you think this is it, then you have a problem. Because there's no special state of mind in zazen, although we think there is. We think that the state of mind in zazen is supposed to be clarity. But true clarity includes cloudiness.

[41:35]

That's why as soon as we... The problem that we have because of evaluating, we evaluate according to the idea of clarity and cloudiness. We should have clarity. That means that there's something wrong with the cloudy mind. But when it's a cloudy mind, it's just a cloudy mind. to get through. Yes. Bringing together body, breath, and mind, is there any heart in this practice? Well, that's just a word, you know. That's the heart. Body, breath, and mind. Bringing body, unifying body, breath, and mind is the heart. It's all called love.

[42:41]

But we don't know what love is. It's all love. Love means harmony. It means a lot. It means so many different things that we can use it to mean anything we want. But basically, for me, it means harmony. It holds everything together. What's the short list, like ears in line with shoulders, nose in line with... Short list, yes. Lift up the sternum, keep the head on top of the spine, not like this. Even though you're standing up straight and the head is like this, and your collar is way back here. Now keep your head on top of your spine. That's the balance point. It's a big heavy weight, right? And when it's leaning, it pulls you over. So keep your head on top of your spine.

[43:46]

And your ears in line with your shoulders. You don't want to press here, you know. But if you, you don't want to keep your head like this. And your nose is in line with your navel. leaning this way or that way. Your ears are in line with your shoulders, so you're not leaning forward or backward. Your mudra is in place. And you're breathing through your nose, deeply. And when the thoughts come in through your mind, you just let them pass through. It's scenery. It's called the scenery of your life. Ta-da, ta-da. And then you wake up. So sadhana means waking up. moment by moment, and just wake up from the dream. So, imagination, interdependence, and reality.

[44:51]

Those are the three natures that we have. So, we're only dealing with the imagination. Imagination is always going on. Imagination is not bad, it's just that it's not necessarily anchored. And it obscures reality, but it's useful. We have to have it. And in this interdependent nature, we realize that everything depends on everything else. And we experience that in Zazen. Then there's the nature of reality, seeing things really as it is. And so at some point we have some realization of that. But there's no tenseness in your body at all.

[45:52]

There's a difference between tenseness and tension. Tension is what holds things together. But tenseness is what's extra. When we use parts of our body to hold us up, they're not necessary. So it's not necessary to have any tenseness at all in your body. So what is the structure? You concentrate on the structure which has tension, but not tenseness. So there's flexibility. Everything's flexible. Nothing's attached to anything else that can't move. It's all held together by little tendons and, you know, things that musculate and stuff. And it's all loose, even though it looks, oh God, that's really stiff, you know, but it's all loose. So there's no tenseness. The tension holds it together. The way you think is what holds things together.

[46:57]

And so when you have a soft mind, this structure It's all loose. It's all loose and flexible. And so when there's intrusion, you just expand to include it. So you're always expanding. That's what opens you up. So when you do have an intrusion, some pain or whatever, it helps you to open up. And then you can include it, and it's no longer dominating you. And you can enjoy it, actually. So, this is... keep working. I know that, you know, you're old students. I'm not telling you something new. You've said it very well, you know. So I'm just reminding us of what we're doing today.

[47:57]

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