taking care of ourselves as practice. How we take care of this body and our mind as well, because body and mind are not separate. We have, you know, in our thinking, our Western philosophy, We have the subjective, which is our thinking, and the objective, which is the world outside of ourselves, outside of our thinking mind. And these two aspects seem polemic, but Buddhist understanding bridges the gap between the subjective and the objective, between our body and mind.

[01:09]

In the objective sense, we reduce everything to elements. When we think objectively, we think of larger forms, and then smaller forms, and the larger forms are made up of smaller forms, and we can keep reducing to the atomic level, and then Tsukuroshi says, in Buddhist terms, there's a Japanese word, Gokumi, which is the smallest particle imaginable. So this is the objective world where everything is reduced to its elements and there's no subject.

[02:12]

But the other side is the subjective world where Everything is, for our understanding, is an idea. The idealistic world and our conceptual world and the world of our feelings and our emotions and what we call our life. So when we get down to the smallest particle, we realize that the smallest particle is myself, and myself expands and covers the whole universe. So subjective and objective are reconciled in emptiness, which is Buddhist understanding

[03:16]

of inclusiveness. Emptiness means inclusiveness. Another word for it is Suzuki Roshi called it big mind. Everything is included in big mind. So the objective world covers everything and the subjective world covers everything. So Suzuki Roshi used to talk about total subjectivity. Everything is on this side when we... Our world of ourself is totally inclusive in big mind. Sometimes I think of it as When we think about consciousness, consciousness is everywhere.

[04:20]

We tend to think of consciousness in terms of our way of being aware, which it is, but it's aware through the universal consciousness. So I think of it sometimes as air or water. If you have a big body of water, we call that total consciousness. And then you take a jar and you fill it with water, and the consciousness is called a jar full of water. Or you take the elements that make up a person, and then we have a container of consciousness. But the consciousness doesn't belong to this person, the consciousness is just universal consciousness, and each one of us has our particular portion encased in this body, in this container, which is not really solid at all, it's simply forms of consciousness.

[05:36]

which are continually changing. So when we come to birth and death, it's simply the changing forms of consciousness in various containers and taking various shapes and forms. So But this body-mind complex takes shape and is born into this world, as we say. And then there's a feeling of personal ownership. So, what do we do with it? The first few years of our life, it takes care of itself.

[06:41]

Somehow it's programmed to take care of itself. Mama takes care of us. Daddy takes care of us. Big sister or whatever, you know. And there's this growth that comes out and lots of energy. And the first part of our life, called youth, or growing up, is the expansion of this energy, and the growth of this form, and the psyche, and so forth. The energy being distributed, and this persona cooperates with the growth process, or doesn't cooperate, but it operates some way. with the growth process. So I always think of our ego, our personality, as that part of our self that cooperates with nature to bring this form to its destiny.

[07:50]

Not its fate, but its destiny. Fate is something preordained. Destiny is something that we create. where it's a destination. If you take this path, then it reaches this destination. If you take that path, it reaches that destination. So we're continually creating through our persona, our ego, a destination that's called karma. Karma is the volitional action which creates the path that we take. So we take a step in a certain direction and that's where we go, that's our destiny, our destination. So we're continually creating this. Sometimes you don't know which way to go, you know, we're confused or whatever, but we're self-creating beings.

[08:54]

And so this subjective side meets the objective world and creates a scenario out of the raw material of the world. So, at some point, well, our whole life is practice of one kind or another. We have degenerate practices or we have generative practices. And I like to think of our Buddhist practice as a generative practice rather than a degenerative practice. Sometimes we have these degenerative practices and then we try to find some way to regenerate ourselves and we find Buddhism or some other practice, some spiritual practice, especially in California, yoga or something. We like to think of it in this way, but when I met Suzuki Roshi, he didn't emphasize taking care of ourselves so much.

[10:07]

It's kind of interesting. He felt if we take care of the practice, the practice will take care of us. He didn't particularly advocate, suggest that we exercise or that we do anything special to take care of ourselves. I want to read you a quote from Suzuki Roshi that will help me to explain some of this and to think about how we take care of ourselves. as practice. He's talking about, in the Sandokai lectures, he talks about, he says, originally the Sandokai was the title of a Taoist book.

[11:08]

Sandokai is the oneness and diversity. The subjective and objective sides. Sekito used the same title for his poem, which describes Buddhist teaching. What is the difference between Taoist teachings and Buddhist teachings? There are many similarities. When a Buddhist reads it, it is a Buddhist text. When a Taoist reads it, it is a Taoist text. It's like if you go to a Chinese restaurant, celery and green peppers and shrimps and whatever, beans, and it's called Chinese food. When you go to a Mexican restaurant, you eat peppers and celery and beans, and it's called Mexican food. So, yet it is actually the same thing.

[12:12]

When a Buddhist eats a vegetable, it is Buddhist food, and when a vegetarian eats it, it is vegetarian food. still it's just food. Because the Taoists and the Buddhists, when Buddhism came to China in the early part of the millennium, 500 AD, well actually 200 AD, but when it started really taking off, the Chinese characters and the way of thinking didn't match with the Sanskrit Indian alphabet and ideas. The closest thing to Buddhism was Taoism and so the Buddhists explained Buddhism using Taoist terms. and there was a name for that and it was practiced for two, three hundred years until finally enough texts started being translated in Sanskrit and in Chinese and they dropped that practice.

[13:29]

But the practice of assimilation between Buddhism and Taoism continued. So we use a lot of Taoist terms and thinking in our Zen language, like the Tao itself is a Taoist term, and it's one of the principal terms used in Buddhism. And if we read Lao Tzu, Lao Zi, we read it kind of as a Zen book. It's kind of like a Zen master, but the Taoist read him as a Taoist. So anyway, as Buddhists, we do not eat a particular vegetable just because it has some special nourishing quality, or choose it because it is yin or yang, acid or alkaline. Simply to eat food is our practice.

[14:32]

We don't eat just to support ourselves, as we say in our meal chant, to practice our way we eat this food. This is how big mind is included in our practice. To think, this is just a vegetable, is not our understanding. We must treat things as part of ourselves, within our practice and within big mind. Small mind is the mind that is under the limitation of desires or some particular emotional covering or the discrimination of good and bad. So for the most part, even though we think we are observing things as it is, actually we are not. Why? Because of discrimination or our desires or our thought coverings, because of our discrimination or our desires or thought coverings, that's my term. The Buddhist way is to try hard to let go of this kind of emotional discrimination of good and bad, let go of our prejudices and see things as it is. Well, in this Suzuki Roshi's attitude, when something comes we just eat it.

[15:36]

We don't pick and choose our food. very traditional monastic practice in India and China and Japan up to a point. You know the monks in those days only ate one meal a day and a lot of monks still do. They'd go out in the morning and beg their food and eat one meal a day and whatever they got they would eat. If you only eat one meal a day you don't have to worry about what's put in your bowl. You can't overeat that way. It doesn't matter whether it's got fat or alkaline, you just eat it. But a lot of monks get sick. Very often the case in Japanese monasteries and Chinese monasteries probably, the monks often have some kind of physical deficiency because they only eat certain kinds of food over and over, like a lot of rice and some vegetables and pickles or something, and some people can be sustained on that and some can't, but in a sense

[16:59]

in order to sustain practice, not in order to enjoy the food. Now this is a very radical kind of practice. In India, this practice of eating one meal a day in a hot country where the mugs didn't work They were not allowed to dig in the ground, not allowed to grow food, not allowed to carry money, and they just subsisted off of what was offered. And in our meal chant, we have this, you know, does our practice, virtue and practice, do we deserve this? Does our virtue and practice entitle us to this food? So the only way that they could be supported was through their virtue and practice. If people didn't feel that they were worthy to be offered to, They were just starved to death. I remember Ussilananda, who was a Burmese monk who used to practice here.

[18:09]

I mean, he used to let me have classes here. And I was at Gringotts one time, and he was there, and people stood in line in the kind of buffet style to get their lunch, and he was just standing there. And something clicked in my mind, and I said, I thought, he's not going to take any food. Somebody has to bring him something. Somebody has to offer him something. So I said, would you like something to eat? He said, oh yeah, I would. I didn't ask him what he would like. So that's that style. We have a different kind of style. In America, We eat differently than people, I think, in other parts of the world. Of course, now, in wealthy countries, people eat a lot like we do, but we have this, you know... Well, I'll get to that a little later.

[19:19]

So he says, simply to eat food is our practice. We don't eat just to support ourselves. So as we say in the meal chant, to practice our way, we eat this food. So this is how big mind is included in our practice. And to think this is just a vegetable is poor understanding. we relate to the vegetable as a part of ourself. So actually what we're eating is a part of ourself. And so it's ourself eating ourself, digesting ourself, and energizing ourself through ourself. And when we plant the seeds, we're planting part of ourself in the ground, which is ourself, and watering the ground with the water, which is ourself, and enjoying the fruits. So this is really our understanding.

[20:24]

So when we eat things, you know, when we have our meals in the Zen Dojo, this is our attitude. toward what we eat. That's why food tastes so wonderful in Zen, even though it's very plain. It always tastes wonderful and different, a little different than when you ordinarily eat, because you're so focused on this practice of transcending subject and object. Because of our lifestyles and the way our society is oriented toward pushing food on us and pushing sedentariness on us, we start to become overblown and heavy and docile.

[21:30]

And so we have to make a big effort, not everybody, but most people have to make a big effort to not get caught or trapped by this, in this kind of style. Watching TV, the kids get, you know, not only kids, it's so easy. You just turn it on and there's something interesting or you look for something interesting and then you sit down and then And then you start eating something, you know, and then it just goes on, on and on. When you walk in the grocery store, everything is saying, try me, try me. Oh, God, look at all the wonderful... So, we get into these habits. And it's really hard to, once you start doing that, it's hard to get out of it.

[22:34]

So I think as a practice, we have to be careful to control ourselves and limit ourselves and not get caught by either being sedentary or overeating. And I've never particularly been caught by being sedentary But I have been, I'm guilty of being caught by overeating, which I stopped recently, stopped doing that in March. And I lost 35 pounds. And I feel like my body has been, I've rediscovered my old, true body that I'd covered up with this encasement of fat. So people thought I was fat, you know.

[23:36]

They thought that was my true body because they hadn't seen me in my real body for about 10, 15 years. And they said, are you okay? Are you sick? So this is my testimonial. Linda asked me to give this talk, actually. I wasn't thinking of it, but she said, why don't you give a talk about that during Thanksgiving dinner? So I'm trying to figure out how to do that without bragging. I'm really pushing this. I really recommend it for all of us. It used to be that the standard for maintaining good health was to exercise a half hour, three times a week.

[24:44]

and then half hour once a day. It's actually up to an hour and a half now, which I think is right. If you eat very carefully and walk an hour and a half a day, that's really taking care of yourself just as a daily routine. It's hard, you know. There's so many, there's this old saying, so many books to read, so little time. So many TV shows to see, so little time. But, you know, in order to stay in good shape. You know, zazen itself is sedentary.

[25:48]

So with a sedentary practice like zazen, we need to do something like exercise. I never felt that Suzuki Roshi promoted yoga, and so I didn't for a long time. But I think it's the stretching, at least. Stretching type yoga is really important. I started doing that a couple of years ago. And the stretching, just the stretching, every morning before Zazen, 10 minutes, just cured me of everything. Truly. I'm 73 years old, you know, my joints started getting a little bit stiff or, you know, hurting. Stretching, I don't have any problem at all with joint problems.

[26:52]

People talk about their knees, oh, you know, I'm getting old, my knees, you know. Well, take the weight off your knees. And what happens in our body is that As we, you know, before we're about 20 or 21 or something, we're still growing, right? But after that, our growth is slower and then the weight starts pressing down on our joints and unless we exercise those muscles around our joints, we lose the temper of our joints, of our muscles. And then the joints start pressing down on each other and we say, oh, I'm losing this cartilage in my joints. But you can rectify that through exercise. You can do that. 10 years ago, 15 years ago, I had a problem my knee.

[27:56]

I went to the doctor and he said, Well, it's degenerative arthritis, you know, there's nothing you can do about that, you know, it's age-related. That was 15 years ago. And when he left, I took, there was a knee exercise pamphlet in his office, and I took that out of the little box there, and I went home and I did the knee exercises. And I never had a problem with my knees since then. Because strength is the muscles around your knees, and that's what keeps your knees in good shape. And if you're doing Zazen, you need to do that. You need to do something like that. Because people are always complaining about their knees, the degeneration of their knees. And I think, just do the exercise. Do exercises. And the back is the same way. Do exercises for your back. Do exercises for all of your body parts.

[28:58]

That's how you keep in shape. And I think, as a practice, we should keep in shape. Sometimes people say, well, you know, it's so boring. Satsang is also boring. And then I say to people, do you do that? And they say, yes, I do. How often do you do it? Well, I do it sometimes. That's not good enough. It has to be a real practice. It has to be part of your life. And you can't just say, well, I'll do that tomorrow, or next week, or once a week, or something. So I want to save you your bodies. Please exercise them correctly. So as a testimonial, I have to say that I feel like I did when I was a kid through eating not too much and exercising well, you know, like walking up hills and all that every day and stretching.

[30:18]

So there's also this idea in Buddhism, and also other spiritual practices, like the body is not something that we should be concerned about, it's the spirit. And so they divide body from spirit, and the body is something that we leave to the earth, but the spirit is But in Buddhism, actually, in Mahayana, body and spirit, body, mind, spirit, it's all one piece. When you're taking care of the body, you're taking care of the spirit. When you're taking care of the mind, when you're taking care of the body, we get very top-heavy in the mind. And it's kind of our intellectual, subjective side. becomes more and more expansive.

[31:31]

And we crave more information. As the world gets smaller, we think we need more information. And then we store our information in a machine that's designed like the mind. It's a memory machine, because we can't keep it all in the mind. So we put it in the machine, and we draw it out of the machine. So we're constantly dealing with all this information. It's questionable how much information we actually need. We really think we need all this information so we keep our minds getting top-heavy and kind of neglect the body. The body is just a kind of vehicle to carry the mind around. But when we take care of the body and integrate the body and the mind, then the spirit has a home.

[32:35]

Not that the spirit is something different, not like this thing that has a home, but it's just a way of speaking. Spirit is body, spirit is mind. Do you have any questions? Linda? When we had that conversation, what I was thinking was that I wanted to hear experientially how the... I mean, you started out today with a kind of lecture on objective and subjective, and I thought, oh, he's trying to avoid talking too personally, or whatever. But I actually really wanted to hear out of your experience how this change in your body was experienced as liberating to what we sometimes call heart, mind, spirit, you know, as you say, not separate.

[33:53]

I wanted to actually hear about your experience. Yeah, well, I got into a habit of loving to eat. You know, I just love food, you know. And then I was just starting to get more and more, probably a sublimation or something, you know. But I was trying, I was getting more and more heavy. And then I had a little bit of, about 10 years ago, for a short time, I had type 2 diabetes. And then I started doing more exercise, you know. But I didn't want to... I put it on to exercise, but not to eating. Most people will take care of their eating, but they don't want to exercise. Exercise is the hardest thing to get people to do.

[34:55]

They'll deal with the eating, but they won't deal with the exercise, mostly. But I did it the other way. So even though... I took care of the diabetes, that went away, but then I had angina. I had to get angioplasty to open up some of my arteries, but I still did the same thing. But I was in good shape, and the doctor said, yeah, you're in good shape. But then I started getting heartburn all the time, and then I just said, I know this is all connected with weight. I know that it's all connected with weight. So then I went to Weight Watchers. And all these wonderful obese women and me. Weight Watchers is the Zen of diet.

[36:06]

Because it's not a diet. It's simply mindfulness. It's just a mindfulness practice. It's really Buddhist mindfulness practice. You can eat whatever you want, as long as you stay within a certain range. And then you balance what you eat. I used to eat a lot of chicken, a lot of fish, and I didn't eat red meat much. But just the effort to stay within this range, it's just that all those hardcore foods just dropped away because they're not conducive to keeping a healthy diet. They're really not. You don't need them all. Beans provides almost everything, and vegetables, and fruit.

[37:16]

So, I didn't stop doing those things because I didn't think they were good. I just stopped doing because they weren't adding anything. They were just, I mean, they weren't too additive. So, the heartburn, of course, went away completely. And dropping away, my body just felt lighter and lighter and more agile. And this wonderful feeling of agility and lightness It just makes you feel, made me feel great, you know, and still does. And then my body, I can feel my body starting to disappear. That's interesting. Like, you know, I've always had pretty good muscular arms, but then they started getting narrower, and my legs started getting narrower, and this is the last part to go.

[38:25]

But I started out with it, when I was 35, up to about 35, I weighed 135, and my waist was 29. And then I went up to 179 pounds, and my waist was 36. And then at some point, after a couple of months, my waist, I put on a pair of pants and it was 32. 31. You know, it's like, and then looking at myself in the mirror was like when I was a kid. So, you know, that makes that I'm going the other way. Yes. Thank you very much. It's very helpful. Oh, good. I was wondering if you could also tell me about rest.

[39:31]

Breath? I never had a problem with breath. Rest. Oh, rest. Yeah. I used to fall asleep in meetings. I was known for falling asleep in meetings. But I don't feel, I don't have that tiredness. And I've always been able to sleep at night. I never had that. That's never been a problem for me. But I do notice that the effect that tea and coffee have on me now. I never noticed that before, really. But I notice it. The lighter I get, the more I notice what everything, the effect everything has on me. I can tell when I've gained a half a pound without weighing myself. And I can tell when I've lost a half a pound without weighing myself.

[40:33]

I can just tell, you know, by the way I feel and kind of the bulge or whatever. So it's like really zeroing in on what's going on in the body. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say, thank you Mel. I really appreciate your time. It's nice to see you again this morning. I do, I practice something called Grima bodywork, which is in probably Middle East, Afghanistan, many hundreds of years ago. And it's all about body comfort, body has weight, body breathes. And it's a kind of massage, but it's very spiritual in that, but it's all about being in the body, not in your head. It's very Zen, and very nothing added, nothing extra, no worry, no pause, simply being present. And it's been wonderful for me in that regard, what you're speaking to, that you take care of yourself by being mindful of what your body is experiencing.

[41:43]

And if you're not in your body, where are you? In your head. Is your head a part of your body? No. I was assigned at a board meeting tea, and part of the tea job task is to prepare two plates heaping with cookies. And I'm wondering if we should have an alternative to the cookies. Well, let me say something about that. I eat cookies. There's nothing I don't eat. I mean that I, you know, but I eat one cookie and then I eat another one, you know. And sometimes I indulge in things, you know. But then I know I'm doing that consciously. And I know, well, it'll put some weight on, you know, or it'll cause this.

[42:45]

But I know that. But then I say, well, I'll eat a little less for dinner or for tomorrow. So it's okay to eat a cookie. It's okay for us. I don't think we need to be so austere. It's not necessary to be so austere. It's okay, you know. And we should do something sometimes that's a little naughty. Otherwise you become too pure, you know. You have to be careful. That's why we like them. That's what makes them cookies. So, you know, we have our little taste, right, of something that's a little impure. That's good for us, actually. So it's okay. You tend to be a kind of a Puritan, I think, a little bit on the Puritan side. Which is okay, too. That's okay, too. Laurie? having, you know, being around you through this process and sort of witnessing it and being part of it, it's really easy to see how it's kind of a matter of taking self and others across.

[43:53]

I mean, you're taking care of yourself, but we're all benefiting and we feel sort of inspired or encouraged and also relieved that, you know, we know you're taking care of yourself. And I think that it feels to me like part of what Smriti Roshi is sort of the other side is kind of doing it as a personal purity project and also as a kind of you think you're going to somehow save yourself from impermanence or whatever that you're so so like that's sort of what i feel like that's what he's getting at on the way i've experienced this process with you is it has been really a real um just it hasn't been even though you've been doing it for yourself and it, you know, you haven't, like, it's just something about it, it's made me feel how much it's all about us being together and how we are together and depending on each other. Right, and so whatever one, whatever we do influences the people around us. That's right, right. And when people see me not taking care of myself,

[45:01]

then it doesn't make them feel so good either. And also, we depend on each other. So if I don't take care of myself, then you have to start taking care of me at some point. We will anyway. But the less you have to do that, the better. Did you feel weak after you lost them? Strong. Much stronger. I'm much stronger than I was. You know, like, the wonderful thing is, like, I find I can do push-ups. I can do chin-ups. You know? I can do all those things that I haven't done since I was a kid. It's great. It's really great. I'm much stronger. At least in proportion to my body weight. Thank you for sharing, Neil.

[46:04]

I was... I tried to approach you many times that you remember, but you had it in your heart. I'm so happy now to see that Zen is looking the other side of the nutritional stuff. And always I had this question, this was a question that in young age, very young age, he had cancer and I had read The story is that he was stuck in many places when he was traveling to eat hamburgers. He never ate hamburgers. He ate one hamburger. He didn't eat hamburgers. As a matter of fact, he ordered the hamburger and switched it with the other guy. The other guy ate the hamburger because he was bragging about being a vegetarian. That's the point.

[47:02]

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