I'd like to describe what it was like when I came to BCC for my first Zazen instruction and it was my entry into Zen practice. It was October of 1976 and I had just landed in California, in Berkeley, having moved here from the East Coast and really not knowing what I was doing. In fact, I thought I was just visiting and I wanted to study Zen, so the first thing on my agenda was to check out the Zen Center. So, I came one afternoon to the little, to the house on Dwight Way, which preceded the Zendo we have now on Russell Street, so it was a weekday afternoon and it was nothing official. Zazen was not really offered then, but I heard if you show up at 5 o'clock, somebody will

[01:12]

give you instruction, so I showed up with a friend and we received instruction and I'm just going to describe it a little bit to you. After, the first thing I learned was to bow. That was even before meditation. I thought that the most important thing was meditation and what you do with your mind. Anyway, I was taught how to bow, the very first thing, and then I was shown how to sit down. I learned that the next thing you do is you bow to your cushion. Next, you turn 180 degrees clockwise and bow away from your cushion into the room.

[02:22]

Next, you sit down on the cushion, backward, and then you turn 180 degrees clockwise to face the wall. Then you stretch and spend a few minutes adjusting your spine, and I was told exactly how to do that. You sway slowly and you make circles, and you start with large circles, and you feel your spine, you feel your tailbone, and you settle eventually into what is a straight posture.

[03:25]

You make sure your chin is not sticking up. The nose is in line with the navel, and the ears in line with the shoulders. We learned how to do the mudra like this, which everyone, I'm sure, knows here. The cosmic mudra, the way to hold our hands, that the elbows should not fall against the body. We learned how to gaze downward. So, all this happened before the bell rang to begin the meditation. Now, this, for me, at that time, was not really what I wanted to learn.

[04:41]

My mind was, I mostly was a mental person, I would say. I liked to study, and I liked, I read a lot, but I had unwanted, repetitive thoughts in my mind that I didn't like. So, for me, zazen was like walking, hiking through a whole forest full of mosquitoes that I would be swatting, because those would be thoughts, unwanted thoughts, and I had thought that that was what meditation was about, calming the mind, making it quiet, not hearing those buzzing sounds, and not being stunned.

[05:47]

So, anyway, I was a little disappointed at first, but I did it anyway. So, I learned that, slowly, that zazen is the harmonization of body, mind, and breath. So, Genroshi loved to give zazen instruction, and he said that every time we sit down, we should give ourselves instruction. During this year and a half on Zoom, we see each other in our little Zoom boxes, and sometimes I see people bow, sometimes I see people sitting all different ways.

[06:55]

There really isn't just one way to sit. It's really the intention and the effort that matters. In the very beginning, in the attic on Dwight Way, we didn't even have chairs that I remember. There might have been some, but I don't remember any. So, now we have chairs, and it's really the same practice in a chair as it is on a cushion. Your legs are in a different spot, but that's the only real difference I can think of. So, I've been missing watching people practice with their bodies in the zendo. One way we've really come to know each other, I think, and part of why our sangha is so close,

[07:57]

is because of all this practice we've done together. I came to know how people walk, how they practice kin-hin, or walking meditation. I could usually tell who was who by their movements. We serve meals and receive meals in the zendo. We've cooked together, gardened together, years and years of practice. So, moving a little further,

[09:10]

Dogen said in his book, Zooey Monkey text, which was really addressed to monks about how monks should practice and behave. He said the most important thing is understanding impermanence. You can't practice unless you understand impermanence. Dogen, who lived in the 13th century, became a monk at a very young age. He lost his parents, I think, before he was 12 years old. So, he really had a very deep and early understanding of loss. We all learn this as we grow and age. Some of us experience this sooner than others.

[10:14]

Along with loss and impermanence, that naturally comes together with an understanding that we don't have an inherent essence. We often call it no self. But a lot of this is not something we understand intellectually. Reading a book about it isn't enough. We have to experience it through our bodies and minds. In Zazen, we experience physical discomfort. We stay with that discomfort.

[11:18]

There's no escape. I teach Zazen instruction. I've done it for years. People often ask, Can I move? Is it okay to move if my leg falls asleep or something like that? I always say, of course, it's okay to move. But before you move, just stay still. Experience exactly what is making you uncomfortable and observe. Does it stay the same or does it change? I remember I used to think one of my one thing I wanted to get from practice.

[12:25]

We talk about often about how we won't. We don't get things from practice. We don't achieve things. But I have to admit that there was a reason behind my desire to practice. And one of them was that I really wanted to grow old gracefully. Now, when you're in your 20s and in good health, that seems very doable. So I spent quite a bit of time thinking that that would happen. I wanted to be one of those smiling older people. At peace with the fact that the body doesn't work so well anymore. Whatever else it is, you know. But I found that wasn't so easy. So this is a real.

[13:37]

Example. Aging is definitely not an idea. It was an idea to me when I was in my 20s, but it's not an idea anymore. It's very physical and mental and psychological. As you can see, I'm sitting here. You know, I can't stop shaking. I have this tremor. And fortunately, it's not terribly serious. But it does get in the way of me doing anything like I can't look at notes. Well, you know, it does what it does. And I thought about taking a beta blocker before my talk, but I was afraid I'd fall asleep or something. So I didn't want to do that. But this is an example of being with impermanence. So in Zazen practice, we practice stopping.

[14:56]

We return to our breath over and over. Thoughts come up in the mind. Preoccupations with the physical body. And we have the opportunity to look at them. To understand impermanence. One of my favorite passages in Dogen's Shobo Genzo is in the Genjo Koan, where he says, to study the way is to study the self.

[16:12]

To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be awakened by the myriad things. Your body and mind, as well as the body and minds of others, drop away. No trace of realization remains. And this no trace continues endlessly. So when we sit down to practice meditation, we are studying the self. But study doesn't mean just playing with words. It's a deep, full engagement.

[17:16]

To study the self is to forget the self. One way I look at this is forgetting the self means less attachment to the self. And how do we practice less attachment to the self? We bring our thoughts back to the breath. We let go. It doesn't matter how many times during a Zazen period that we have to wake up and bring ourselves back. Because each moment is waking up. Often when I teach Zazen, somebody will say,

[18:28]

I only made it to breath number four. Or, wow, I could do 10 breaths easily without being distracted. But that's not the point at all. It doesn't matter how busy your mind is or how calm it is. It's the act of letting go of the thoughts or the preoccupation or the emotion, the story, the narrative we get involved in. It's bringing it back to the present moment. The body is always in the present moment. It's the mind that wanders off and gets caught up in future and past and what if and back then. This is why I came so much to appreciate everything I learned from my very first Zazen instruction.

[19:42]

The body is really in the present. And how important bowing became. So, Thich Nhat Hanh often compared the mind to a wild horse. He tells a story about how somebody was riding a horse and going somewhere. And someone stopped him and said, where are you going? And he replied, I don't know, ask the horse. That's, to me, what our karma is like. It's a horse.

[20:47]

So, when we practice Zen and when we take precepts, for example, not even taking precepts, we're going to chant our vows at the end of this talk. We make a decision to live by vow and not by the wild horse, the karma. So, I remember once I did a number of long Vipassana retreats back in the 80s and 90s. And I did a few with Joseph Goldstein. And one thing that he said to me, well, he said it in a Dharma talk, which I never forgot, was that every time you bring yourself back from your breath to your breath,

[21:57]

you're off wherever it is. Every time you come back, it's like breaking a link in the karmic chain, the chain that ties us to habit, to that clinging to oneself and one's view. One thing that I've struggled with a bit is paying attention mentally. My mind tends to go all over the place. So, in Zazen, and I don't mean just working with the mind and the breath,

[23:16]

I mean the physical aspects of it, I've been able to rest my attention. I remember, well, in this day and age, everyone with all their devices and choices, I mean, you have choices about everything, right? If you have a smartphone, right on your phone, what kind of music you want to listen to, what kind of podcast you want to hear, who you want to talk to. There's so many options, and it's extremely distracting. I often don't know where to put my attention, and I'm really happy that we don't have a lot of choices practicing Zazen. There is a particular posture.

[24:20]

Even though our individual bodies may be different, and some have different challenges than others, we sit in a very similar posture. And Suzuki Roshi used to say, well, within this structure, very specific structure of sitting, we have complete freedom. It's a relief to be free from having to make choices, and to be driven by feelings all the time. So I remember once I was talking with a Jukai group, the group for sewing their Rakusus, and we were talking about the precepts. The subject came up of generosity,

[25:28]

and this person told the group that she had absolutely no money, and she really could not give anybody a dime, basically. But she said, what I have to offer is the gift of my attention. And that is such a big gift. When I worked at San Francisco Public Library, and I've talked about this a lot over the years, the library, the main library, six floors, at Civic Center in San Francisco, most of the people in there, and they spend most of the day in there, have nowhere else to be.

[26:32]

There are a lot of people who are homeless, have mental health, serious mental health issues, substance abuse, and just poverty. And the people who come in to do research, first of all, most of them come on Sundays. A lot of them are students trying to do a last-minute paper, but really, the vast majority of people that I worked with at the reference desk were not there in search of books or answers to reference questions. Most of them wanted attention. And this, of course, is a challenge, but this is where I felt some of my deepest practice happened,

[27:42]

was working at the library, where people, they wanted someone, anyone with a calm mind and willing to listen. And certainly, my patience was tested quite a few times because there were people doing things in there that were clearly against the rules, to say the least. So I'm going to stop in a minute, but I started a meditation group there, and I kind of imagined it mostly for homeless people, but in reality, all sorts of people came, a lot of city workers from the neighborhood.

[28:42]

People came with all sorts of mental health issues. It was not a quiet zendo. And I often started just with 10 minutes of body practice, settling the body. And we would go through, we'd do what we call a body scan, which we don't really do in Zen practice very much. And we focus on each part of the body, feeling it, the crown of the head, the forehead, the temples, the nose, the lips, the chin, the throat, each part so that you can really feel it.

[29:44]

And it calms the mind because we're focusing on something tangible and the breath. I think I will stop here since it's 10 minutes to 11 and see if there's any questions. I hope there was some thread consistent through this talk. I felt like I had a lot to say. So thank you for listening, and I'm happy to take any responses or questions. Thank you, Karen, for both uplifting

[30:50]

and grounding us here today with your talk. We have a question already from Peter Overton. Peter, please unmute yourself and go ahead. Hi, Karen. Hi, Peter. Thank you very much for your talk. I'm always inspired when I hear you speak. This morning, I'm inspired to use sometimes my habit to really think again about the conventional ways we talk about our practice. And in particular today, I was reminded that we talk about it often as the act of returning to presence or awareness, to awareness of our body and posture and so on. And just the other day, a couple days ago, my wife read to me a quote on her telephone that was attributed to Chogyan Trungpa, where he said essentially something like, well, there really is no place to return to.

[31:51]

So the question I have has to do, is there really any place to return to, or what's the relationship between the story we have about what we're doing and what's actually going on? And I don't know if that's doable. I don't know if you can respond to that. But anyway, that's what's up for me. Well, that's a great question. When we return, the way I look at it is, we say return to the breath. And we treat it as though the breath is a solid thing, because that's where we live in the world of solid things. However, when we look at the breath more and more deeply, it isn't solid. It isn't a thing.

[32:55]

The present moment isn't a thing. The process in sitting practice, we are letting go over and over. And the mind has such a tendency to cling to things. It's always looking for something to hang on to. And that isn't a bad thing at all. It's just what the mind does. But then we see our attachments come up, and we let go. So when Dogen says, for example, to study the way is to forget the self, and to forget the self means that the body and mind drops away. So we're really not coming back to anything. And I want to separate those two syllables, any, thing.

[34:05]

I don't know if that helps. It does. Thank you. So we're coming back and letting go. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Peter, for your question. Please, anyone, bring us your question. We have now from Jeff. Jeff, go ahead and unmute yourself. Thanks for a great talk, Karen. Thank you. So one of the things I appreciate about listening to you is that when you speak, it's so spacious. There's so much room to inhabit the things that you share and so many paths into practice. It's really always so nice to get to listen to you. One of the things that's been up for me lately is that in Zazen, there's an awareness that I return to or an awareness that I carry in meditation.

[35:09]

And when the process of waking up or returning or letting go of the dream or returning the breath and all the ways that we talk about that kind of transaction, there's an awareness that I'm returning to that is exactly like what happens in my daily life when I get caught up in the dream of my activity in the day or the dream of the fear of what's going to happen around some activity in the day or whatever it is that's going on. And when I return from that, I'm returning to an awareness where everything is possible. What do you think about that, and how do you hold that idea if you do? Can you clarify what you mean by anything is possible? When I am centered around my hara, when I am centered in my breath, when I'm mired or when I'm alive in that awareness that is Zazen for me,

[36:14]

I'm not so aware of consequences or outcomes. I'm not so much thinking about what might happen next. I'm just kind of in this awareness of the central practice question, who am I and what will I do next? It's like that. I'm not capturing it well. What I'm hearing from you is that you feel more connected to things so that they're not obstacles. You're not grasping at them or avoiding them or worrying about them, but they're there, and there's a way that you're relating to them which is different. I just want to go back to Dogen again. To forget the self is to be awakened by the myriad things. That's what I thought of when you said anything is possible. When one lets go of one's preoccupations, for example,

[37:21]

the rest of the world becomes alive in a way where I'm not really in it. I'm able to see someone, for example, differently. For example, in the library, I was much more generous with my attention because I wasn't using it all on myself. Now, excuse me if I'm jumping to conclusions. What do you think? No, no, no. You capture some of it nicely, and it is like that. One of the things that I used to really appreciate about Sojin Roshi is he would often sit like six inches beyond my conscious mind, and he would call this thing that I referred to as the ineffable, which in borrowing your language, which I agree with, by the way,

[38:24]

is sort of calling no self. It is an aspect of connection. It is an aspect of the self falling away, of dropping away. And this awareness kind of arising where I can hold the reality around me and come closer to seeing the reality of my life, which is sort of what happens in Zazen for me. So I like what you said very much. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Jeff. Any other questions, please? Karen, I'll go ahead and ask a question if you don't mind. Your talk is so nicely focused on the sitting and just being in the zendo.

[39:27]

I felt us returning to the zendo when you opened your talk. How – and I know you did kind of address this, but how do we retain the rigor of self-discipline, especially around the bowing and the things that aren't so-called meditation? What would you recommend in the much more fluid home scene or whatever you've seen working? Please tell. Thank you. Well, I'm glad you asked that because that was the motivation for this talk. I'm not sure, but I think probably some of the forms have fallen away a bit since we haven't been in the zendo together and people have different arrangements in their home. I would urge people not to be lax, to actually give themselves zazen instruction when you begin

[40:32]

because we don't have each other to sit with and encourage each other's effort. Today, you know, I usually don't make it early Saturday mornings before the 945 sitting, but I was really happy today to come to service and just to bow and chant. There weren't that many people there. I think I counted maybe 15, but I would encourage people to come to service and you can always bow at home. I mean, bowing is such a deep practice. I do know people who do that every day, bowing over and over again. So that's another possibility.

[41:33]

Thank you so much. You can seem a little self-conscious, but I think we can take license and go ahead and get as formal as we want. Thank you for that comment. Please, everyone, let's take advantage of Karen today. Bring your questions. I don't mind waiting. I have spaces in my talk. Thank you. Oh, I see. Ellen, please unmute yourself. Hi, Karen. Hi, Ellen. I never say anything too much questions. I just want to thank you. I'm happy to see your face. I see Fania has her hand up.

[42:56]

Fania, would you like to ask a question? Oh, I'm sorry. Karen, this is Blake. Oh, Blake. Got it. Yes. I just want to thank you, of course, and say I miss you guys. I'll be back soon, if the Earth's willing. I'm on vacation. So, Karen, as others have alluded to, you came in to Dwight Way, and you learned the forms, and you were mostly interested in mind. Sorry if I'm paraphrasing incorrectly, but maybe perhaps understanding how the mind is empty. How is that going for you after 40 years? The mind, you mean?

[44:01]

Yes. Your original sort of intent as you came into Dwight Way, what you wanted to get out, as opposed to what you got, right? You sort of indicated that you were more cerebral, and you wanted to deal with the classical question of emptiness. How is that quest going for you after 40 years? Well, after four decades, I have to say that things have changed. First of all, I started off at age 21 with a lot of pain in my head, and my body was in pretty good shape, but over time I've encountered more and more physical pain in sitting. And this is something some people have this from the very beginning, but actually I've come more focused on the physical difficulties now

[45:08]

than the mental. Also, over time, I think, you know, when I was young, I took my thoughts much more seriously. Sojan used to always tell me, stop worrying about your thoughts. Just sit. And, of course, I dismissed him because I thought that, well, you know, he's just not an intellectual or whatever. He doesn't understand neurotic mind, whatever. So over time, though, I've begun to see that the repetition is habitual, and I just don't engage nearly as much or feel the need to struggle with thoughts. But thank you for that question. I look forward to seeing you when you get back. Thank you very much. Thank you, Blake. We have a question from – actually Lori asked the same question as Blake,

[46:12]

so we're going to move on to Ed Herzog. Please, Ed, go ahead. Hi, Karen. Hi, Ed. It's so sweet to see you. I have a question for you. When I first started sitting, bowing was kind of strange for me. But like you, over the years, I've come to enjoy it. And my question for you is maybe you could talk a little bit about your process of learning how to bow and what has come to mean for you. Because I know for me sometimes it feels like I'm releasing, letting go. It's helping me let go, let go of my ego.

[47:14]

And so I'm just curious about how it affected you. Well, in the beginning, when I started practice, I was very anti-authoritarian. So I interpreted the forms in Zen to be associated with authority. I didn't know what it really meant. And I thought that bowing was kind of an embellishment, that it wasn't really a practice. So anyway, but I learned. I asked a lot of questions. First of all, bowing is connecting. When we bow to our cushion, we're bowing. We're connecting with the cushion. We're connecting with Zazen. We're connecting with the ancestors. It's a living thing. And then when we turn and we face outward into the room,

[48:18]

we're bowing to our fellow sangha members because we're not alone in this practice. We're practicing this together. So it's an acknowledgement and relationship to other people in the room. And then bowing is a giving up of oneself. I love it more and more all the time. In fact, sometimes when I don't know what to say, it seems that bowing says everything. One thing that's kind of a relief in our practice is we don't have to be social, but we can connect. You don't have to go up to a sangha member and start saying, well, how was your day and talk about what we've been up to. You just bow. Thank you, Ed.

[49:23]

Thank you. Oh, yes. Thank you very much. We have Charlie and Rondi waiting. Let's see who is bringing the question. It is Charlie. Thank you. Thank you so much, Karen. You covered so many things. I was going to talk about or make a comment about something else, but I'll just say this, that when we were in the Zen Do and when we left the Zen Do, we bowed to Sojin, and as we bowed and came back up, we saw his eyes. It was eye-to-eye contact. And at that moment, there was true connection. There was no mind. There was no body,

[50:24]

only connection. That's all I want to say. Thank you, Charlie. That's so true. There really is a connection. Thank you, Charlie. We have a question now from Janae. Please go ahead and unmute yourself, Janae. Karen. Thank you so much for a talk that I feel was brilliant in its honesty and its simplicity. And thank you for talking about your work at the Library in San Francisco. And I wanted to thank you for your spaciousness in this talk, but I really want to thank you for your spaciousness in that work and what you allowed and what you held the space for happening with all of those people and doing Zazen instruction there.

[51:25]

And thank you for stopping each moment, the space that you give. Thank you, Janae. Thank you, Janae. We now have a question from Gary. Gary, go ahead, Gary, unmute yourself. Hi, Karen. Hi, Gary. Nice to see you. My question is related to emotion. When you're doing Zazen and a thought comes up and it's really connected to a very or it's followed by a really strong emotional response, what do you do? Well, that's a really good question. I think the most important thing is just to let it be.

[52:36]

You have a thought and you feel a strong feeling connected with that thought. Don't try to push it away. I think it's the same practice of coming back and letting go, but it's harder to let go. It's harder to let go of strong feelings than just random thoughts. And sometimes, just like the pain in the body, you know, often if your foot really hurts during Zazen, you sit there and just observe that. Well, if you have a strong emotion, just let it be. You know, we walk a really fine line in our practice between not engaging in either grasping or aversion.

[53:38]

We're walking, that's the middle way. And so often we have an emotion come up and we keep feeding it or fighting with it or trying to fix it. We can't really fix it. And it has a life. You know, emotions, they're impermanent. So I would just let it be and try not to feed it too much or fight with it. And just be kind to yourself. So you think that, or you're somewhat saying, I think, if I can repeat in some way what you said, is almost a separation between a thought and the emotion. And so you move from the thought to the emotion and then open to the emotion.

[54:42]

Is that what I think you're saying, but not cling to it? So it is kind of a letting go of the emotion but not pushing it away at all. Yes. I mean, they're hard to let go of. And also, usually with an emotion, there's often some kind of narrative surrounding that emotion, but not always. If you have a story, if there's a storyline around the emotion, just first try and let go of the storyline. You may have to do this over and over and over again. And I would suggest, I don't know if you do this, but let go of any goals involving being free of it or getting rid of it or anything like that. Okay. For more emotional people.

[55:45]

Thank you. Thank you, Gary.

[55:51]

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