Zazen Instructions A

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BZ-02839
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so thank you good afternoon everyone
ah
i guess summer is over
ah
that was quick ah
actually
the weather is really nice today
and it's brisk and keeps us a week
so this afternoon thanks for coming we're going to have as as and refresher
which is something that
such an always did during practice period and it's important for us to do it
on a regular basis suddenly give some instruction and believe time for discussions and questions
and i would like to point you
to the website
on the berkley jensen website
ah there is a
about forty five minutes as an instruction by sojourn roshi that he did in september of two thousand and twenty and it's really good
and it covers all the points that
oh and more than i will doubtless cover here today
it is grounded in his ah more than fifty years of sauce in practice
so
when he structured his practice
he relied on the teaching that he received from his teacher suzuki roshi
and suzuki roshi it turn relied on the instruction that
was passed down to him from in century
and we're studying we studied last week and also will continue tomorrow to be studying
dogan centuries for cancer mg which is is his instructions for zazen
so the fundamental distinction of suzuki roshi is zazen is that
it is the manifestation of practice enlightenment
practice enlightenment means that we practice not to attain enlightenment which is the usual way that
people have thought about buddhist practice we practice to become buddhas and been a speak about that for tomorrow
rather
we practice because we are buddhists already
and the practice of are sitting cross legged or however it is that we said is
to express
are already enlightened nature
it's to practice not towards our enlightenment but from our enlightenment and sharing it with all beings
in a few kinds or sandy
dogan says the way is basically perfect an all pervading
yet if there is a hair's breadth deviation
this is like a gap between heaven nurse
if the least like or dislike arises the mind is lost in confusion
therefore put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases
and learn to take the backward step
that turns like and shines it inward
if you want to realize just this
get to work
i'm just this right now
so this backward step we step away from me entered the xander or we enter our own
meditation place in this pandemic world
we're taking this backward step that shines the light inward at the same time we're not excluding
the world that comes to our senses were not excluding what we see what we hear
or even what we think
it's just that we're not stuck on that
we're free in that space
the basis for this he's ours as him
and the three elements of laws him
are essentially
her body her breath in our mind
letter will talk about how to how to establish them how to how to settle in them during our zazen practice
i wanna say in a right now
you may have gathered i'm actually sitting in the zendo
i just feels wonderful
it's quiet
it's peaceful
and i really look forward to the time when together we can practice in here again as we've done for so many years
we just so well during the pandemic in maintaining or saas and practice and and in maintaining the the principles that we're going to elucidate today
and there's something wonderful about been right here in his room
looking around
at this really well used room that is imbued with the energies of hundreds of thousands of hours of zaza
so
we don't necessarily need to have a place like this but we have a place like this and we treasure it
so as i said
the basis of zazen his body speech and mind
shall we begin by establishing our body
we find a place
and put a sabaton a thick mat down and put us off who or bench or a cheer on top of it
and we said
facing the world facing the wall bracing ourselves
and the way we said first we establish our posture
and so
your number of postures that you can
try
and if your body is not ready for them
it's good to try them anyway and let your body relax into these postures and see if they work for you rather than immediately going to
the next easier posture
so if you can sit for lotus
that's great
ha
my son at a sojourn always said that ah follow this was the most comfortable way to sit and he's sat that way for much of his life and of lazy ah our son alex
who is at a zen monastery in japan has been sitting for lotus and he says the same thing it's the most comfortable
hum
i wish that i could i try to do it
and it doesn't work for me
but if you can do it if you're young and flexible please try to do it
don't force your body into any of these postures
but many of us can sit in half lotus
so in half lotus
you rest the base of your spine on the front of your zaful
and you sit with your left foot resting on your right thigh
it's also fine if the way your body works is to place your right foot on your left thigh
and when you cross your legs
you've created a triangle
between the knees
the base of the spine
and the triangle as we know is one of the most stable geometric forms
and i've sat like this for many years it took me some years to be able to
allow my hips and my niece to open to be able to sit half lotus but once they did i found it a very
relaxed and comfortable way to sick
right now
in my seventies
ah
dmr eyes say that i have no cartilage left in my niece
and so there's some pain in my left knee
and i've been sitting in what we call burmese buster
burmese posture is
to sit with one leg your left leg in front of your right or your right leg in front of your left
and they those are both resting on his overtime
that's also very stable posture it also creates a triangle
another posture to do on a cushion is to sit in caesar
japanese the japanese wave of sitting
or some variant of it sitting says that means
essentially
resting on your ankles and knees but upright
hand
in japan he would sit caesar
without a cushion
and if you like you can sit caesar by supporting
you're supporting your behind either with a cushion underneath your seat so raising you a little bit to take some of the stress off of the ankles
or using a says a bench
i have varying heights where does one have you have a a bench than sitting on
if you can hold it up and weekends spotlighted i should have had one for not i'm not seeing was commies
there we go if you've spotlight ellen
can u c l and web down there or cricket does or says or benches and they are
thank you they're very convenient ways to ah take some of the strain off of your off of your pup ankles
and that's another effective so effectively that's also creating a triangle
but it's true that your center of gravity's a little higher so is perhaps a little less vertically stable then sitting cross-legged but it's fine
and if you can't do that has some of us may not be able to as we age ha
sit in a chair
and when you sit in a chair
you want to sit again upright you want your feet to be touching the ground news good straight armless chair
sit upright not leaning back
and you can use a support cushion behind behind the base of your back to to support you
and if you want a cushion under your feet
so that your feet can actually rest flat on the floor
so that's the first the first way of establishing your posture
the second thing we do to establish our posture is
we sway
so she sit down
put her hands on our knees
and sway from the left to the rider the right to left
and gradually decrease the arcs so that you come to a place that is centered
this is not preparation for zaza
this actually is awesome and itself
so we swayed the upper half the body of few times
and you can also if you like go forward and backward to to find your your center in that access
and finally you reach an upright posture
the menu up when you find this upright posture you move your hands into what's called the cosmic mudra and let's see if i can show that yeah
the cosmic madrid is like this your left hand 's backwards ah your left hand is resting in your right palm
and here's some tips are just touching very lightly as if you could
slip a sheet of paper between your songs
and you're creating sort of half circle
it's as if you're copping something precious in your hand this is called the cosmic mujer
you rest is you can read this in your lap or against your body
and there's some space underneath your arms so your arms are a little open
the usual metaphor descriptor that's used his ah it's as if you're holding ah a raw egg underneath your arm
so be careful
you know if you're to loose diego drop and i'll make a mess and if you're too tight diego crack and it'll make a mess
so we find a stable upright posture and then we at then we align ourselves
you can think of
your posture as rising
from the base as a tree would rise from the earth or as a blade of grass
hum
those growing things are flexible
an upright
they are rooted in the ground
and they're reaching towards the sky so the crown of your head
is reaching straight up it's as if there's a string
from here hop into the heavens that's holding you up
and this lift is coming from the base of your spine
it's not been hung from your shoulders
so can talked about this again and again he talked about to lift coming from the base of this binary chakra extending your upper body we're extending your your midriff and i understood it
and for years i couldn't do it
ah because i came to size and
in my late thirties i already had a lot of bad physical habits so instead of lifting from the middle i was kind of collapsed
try to lift yourself
to your posture
is open open chest open belly open to the world
exposed
vulnerable and strong
you can think of that posture as
if you've ever seen a baby when it learned to walk he kind of walks with its belly forward
or the other image i like is ah if you are familiar with samurai movies
to think of to share or funny
walking through the world striding you know belly first so we lead with a with an open exposed front of our body
ha i'd really like the expression and it's it's not rigid i like the expression expression that i learned from roshi joan halifax said you pyre ah where she says
zazen posture is strong back soft front
strong back soft front
so we establish this posture and this is the basis and in the course of
a period of practice
come back and check these points of of of posture is to think about your nose in line with your navel
and think about your ears in line with your shoulders
your head is tilted down slightly your eyes are slightly open
your mouth is closed
with the tongue resting against the back of your keys
can you just naturally breathing in and out
so having established the posture
can we establish the bresch
i would like to suggest something that
i've absorbed over the years that wasn't in the first sauce and instruction that i had but it's actually have

it's actually in him
the thought of this year but definitely not ah
yes curious
from the saw johnny which is this a zingy that ah dogan borrowed extensively from when he wrote to concerts mg ah by master zhang lu xun zhou
he says the bodhisattva who studies prajna should first aroused the thought of great compassion make the extensive vows and then carefully cultivated samadi
vowing to save sentient beings one should not seek liberation for oneself month
yes to you is that when you sit down you raise your intention
the boat you raise bodhicitta
the attention the intention to be awake
for the sake of all beaks
and what i do having established my posture
i say silently to myself
may i be awake and others may awaken
this is just my expression you can choose anything you want
or you can move directly to your breathing
but i really
like doing this i
i say it silently three times as if i'm dropping a stone into a pond
and
pretty lightly
not little lot of effort not a lot of energy but just to let that thought of enlightenment
flow through this period of zazen
to set an intention for my saturn
so as i said i do their three times and then
you can take a few breaths to really establish your breath breathe in deeply through your nose
and breathe out
the long and slow manner try that

just as long and exhale as you can do
as if you're spinning out a stream
a spread of grace

and when we reach the end of that just breathing again naturally
get for five breaths like this
as you're breathing out that stream what you find is inoperative freeze like that you actually have to have some control of your diaphragm
and as you take a mindful control of your diaphragm as you do this law mindful breathing
you may find yourself changing gears from whatever activity you had previously been in during the day
that's the point of to really establish yourself in your body
and once you've done that
just allow your breath to be natural
see if you can allow it to reach down to your horror
to your belly
and you can feel the horror as you inhale you can feel it expand
and as you exhale you can feel it contract
but it's no special breath it's not long
it's not deep
it's not shallow
it's just a natural open receptive breathing
and if you like to put your attention on your breath
you can count each exhalation
give each exhalation account go from one to can
and start again
very often we get to two or three or four
and then we're thinking about
dinner or work or something someone said
when you notice that
just set those thoughts aside start again at one
without any judgment or evaluation of success or failure
this is just natural or lines which were about to get to are constantly sick greeting but
so you can count your breaths
you can just simply follow them by putting attention on the rise and fall of your abdomen
practice that i've been doing for some years is
ha
breathing in on the word this
i've tried reading in on the word just and breathing out on the word this
just
this
jess
this and i find those rest really naturally and easily on my brand
so we moved from breast mind
and
often
we think of the mind as the problem
but it's not a problem the mind is just being the mind
we're thinking beings
and
we exude thoughts
ja schon said
advised think not thinking
this is infrequent sap and he was asked how do you think not thinking
he said nah i'm thinking
so what is non thinking
non thinking is
complete receptivity
it is if one was one were sitting by the stream of life
and watching the river flow
that river his thoughts memories sensations all those things
we recognize it is flowing as we sit by a stream we may try to keep her mind on a particular point in that stream where
we're say a small
rivulet of the stream
cascades over a small outfall of rock
and we can see that nets a cycle were right there are really in that and then there's a bubble that comes by there's a or a branch or stick that's flowing by and it catches our attention and it draws
your mind just naturally down the stream
hand that's the way our minds work it's so easy for us to get
shall i say caught by
these thoughts for these perceptions but there's nothing wrong with that
the challenge he is just as when your destroyed your breath is distracted
you notice it just returned to one the same thing is that applies that's actually activity of mind that
oh and then you come back to that place in the stream
henry continuously
pulled away pulled down stream
and continuously returning
what i was told years and years ago
is that the essential act of zazen
was the act of return
and it's really important for us to know i'd i was not told this when i started practicing night i wished i don't understood in earlier
this is not
the practice of concentration is hello davines has and for concerts thinking when he says the zazen i'm speaking of is not learning meditation
kate
ah repose in bliss so meditation means often means concentration intense focus a kind of blotting out of everything that ha is extremely as to the single point ignace of ones concentration that's not what
we're doing
what we're doing is
yea
maybe a contradictory
way of expressing it is we're concentrating on everything
so if it as if the top of your head were lifted off and you were opened to all sensations and all perceptions not just external but also from within your body

so as we establish all these things
something may interfere with their also a sound a thought bodily sensation
please don't think of that please think of that as an opportunity to return
to come back to the beginning to give yourself very quickly to scan your body and your mind and give yourself the czars and instruction that ah is something like what we just did
and begin again
when when i asked certain roshi what what he did in zazen he said i can myself as an instruction
so he went through all these points the points of body points a breath the point of mind to align himself
and yet he might fall asleep and he would wake up and he would realign himself this is our task this is actually a practice and the practice is one of complete receptivity
i've including everything in our as awesome
everyone
every been of our own mind
so i'm not going to speak of other forms today i think i'll stop there and and leave about with but five minutes or one leave little time for questions ah so thank you for listening i hope this was useful
and ah
let's see what questions you have please you can raise your hands digitally if you like core
or actually entered raising digitally or maybe mere lori can look at them because i can't quite see everyone

if if ah
it would be great if people could use the raising hands function because i i can actually fit all the participants in the participant window on my screen but i'm
i'd have to keep scrolling through the top bar to see all of dreams so
a minute if somehow you can't find the raise hands and you get frustrating huge just an mutants and talked to us was only there's a small amount here some still not seeing any hands
roll got this right

you can also just have a comment
yeah
i'm speechless
i it was so clear and so helpful i don't really have a question many others are feeling that way to who is it that people's i could put you on that was that was hannah
thank you why is that money
oh i don't know
it's true he said

this helen
i i i i think it was yesterday the include as you said a two syllable phrase in chinese and i don't remember with the phrase was or what it meant but
i think it will say yeah yeah it was arm
gree ye
it was the way
i guess it was chinese for take refuge
that's right okay i was trying to think i might use a two-word phrase for justice but that meaning doesn't work like
they will just stick with justice
just this is awesome
i find that very useful just it sits on my breath so easily
and then i don't have to count
yeah

joe
yeah thanks
maybe this does better in person but i figure i asked
have anything to say about kind of what to do with live your lower back is a coming up straight from your bottom you know or the kind of curve yeah i've heard different things your your lower back is coming up straight from the base ah
of your spine
now
often the question that for the experiment that's useful is to find how high
your sabaton should be a from a high what support you need under the base of your spine years offer and your exact mean your of yeah
ross was it was astonishing i mean surgeon sarah is completely mushy cushion and that was as you know that would find that were totally for him ah i said for years i've been sitting on one one visa inflatable kush
oceans
dad you know i have found just the right inflation but sometimes you need you know and somebody media to pretty support cushion it depends this is an it's all a matter of angle angles and torque you know so you have to find what's comfortable for your ah for your
skeletal alignment
does go to experiment
supreme is just look for that comfort right like look for look for the place you know what i will say again for myself i think i said ah
i think it took me ten years a capturing the instruction to lift from the base of my spine and i kept trying to do it he kept collapsing
ha and in one day
again it was in instruction in surgeon said it and i get it and it was like
everything clicked in and i was able to do that
so it's a lot of what we do with our posture depends on all the work that we have done for a long time
same thing with sitting sitting loaded full lotus or half lotus
so give yourself that space don't push too hard but keep trying to move towards a stable upright posture
best karen
i want to echo what can i said i appreciated how clear this was felt really helpful and one question i have is i'm recently experienced a lot more of the a tendency towards falling asleep where i find myself my eyes are getting heavy am rocking of her forward
both in the morning and in the afternoon and i'm wondering if you have any particular advice for when that happens wake up
what i tell myself that feels like the war that i say that the more my eyes and like we're going to close harder now the harder you try i have this device that someone gave me the uses in in japanese in a chinese monasteries chin rests
it would prop the they prompted chin risk hundred sabaton and nutritional
and so you couldn't not out
what weeks me off is the like fun for her that all of us have had this experience and you know every now and then ah in the zendo you'll hear some they go against the wall
hope
it's just you know it's sleepy zazen
if there's something you can do to keep yourself awake fine
but if what's happening is this period is a period of sleep this is just one of the just just stage it may be a moment that you're going through might be stage at you're going through ah but don't reject rejected as not zazen okay
don't judge it
thank you a helpful thank you one more than we have to and suit
yeah thank you are one thing that was very helpful years ago you could i think the key asarco
against the base you know where i was sitting on the sasuke and i can sit up and put my hit the back of my head against the top because i'm sure didn't instead of a broomstick for people and it has helped with a long as a while
lifting the cause you're not losing your lumbar curve but the by you're on the i don't know there was an alignment thing that really helped welding a wrap i learned that from surgeon and from read and from ah from other teachers it's a very common can
need to use on my can reach the kiyosaki or to use it just move it against the base of somebody's spine of their back and then they can they can move back against it and find the right alignment ha
just to say to people who move here we we haven't carried the cure saku as to strike people with it for many for years now and i i regret that but i don't think it's coming back but we can use it for adjusting postures
and ah to that when we come back to the we come back to the zendo i'd like to be adjusting postures or i'll try to do it more ah
during periods his thousand and their people there other people who are trained who are really good attack
thank you
i think we need to end
let's and by chanting the for vows