I vow to face the truth of the Socrates words. Morning. Morning. It's said that we are all creatures of habit. And I think this is accurate. We tend to habituate ourselves to various activities, whether we like it or not. It's said that, when I think about it, when we do something one time, it's not yet ingrained in us. When we do the same thing a second time, we have the choice of doing or not doing.

[01:04]

After we do it the third time, it usually is the beginning of a habit. So habits are acquired rather easily. And habits have their good side and their bad side. But in our practice, it's very important to cultivate good habits. It's important to cultivate good habits for sitting zazen, and it's important to cultivate good habits for how you practice. Practice habits. When I was learning to sit zazen, I'm still learning to sit zazen, but it's only been 34 years.

[02:11]

I'm serious. Zazen is something that you're always learning how to do. But when I was beginning to sit zazen, my teacher always corrected my posture. He always made sure that I cultivated good habits for sitting. And he never let me get away with being lazy or with slumping or with not working with my posture and working with the correct way to sit.

[03:14]

And I realized recently that I was cultivating good habits. And often when I see a lot of Zen students, I realize that they've never cultivated good habits. If you don't learn these habits from the very beginning, it's very hard to put them in later. So I think it's very important from the very beginning to, when you're learning how to sit, to sit well. and correctly. Some people say, well, there's maybe not any correct way to sit. But I would say that there is a correct way to sit according to our school. According to some other school, you can do whatever you want. This morning, I was sleeping.

[04:16]

That's not correct. I kept nodding off. I found myself like this. But, because of my good habits, I could wake up and sit up again without any problem. Although we make some effort to do our best in our practice, we're always sleeping or wandering. or getting caught by something. But if we cultivate good habits, then we'll always be able to bounce back. So zazen is actually falling off and bouncing back. Falling off and bouncing back. Our life is like this. It's a mixture of delusion and enlightenment.

[05:20]

Master Dogen says, when you have a a very flat plain for many miles, there are always hills and rock outcroppings. And when you have a big mountain, there are always flat places somewhere in the mountains. This is like enlightenment and delusion are mixed. Within delusion there is enlightenment, and within enlightenment there is always delusion. And within correct practice, there's always wandering off. And within wandering off, you find your correct practice. So our school tends to be somewhat formal and strict. One should be strict with oneself.

[06:24]

to be strict with oneself and compassionate toward others. In other words, really pay attention to your own practice and don't look around too much. But in cultivating good habits for zazen and for practice, in zazen, What I suggest to everyone is when you sit down, that you give yourself Zazen instruction every time, as if you were teaching somebody how to sit. And of course, that person is yourself. You're always teaching yourself how to sit Zazen. And then when you can do that, then you can teach someone else how to sit zazen.

[07:39]

And it will come straight from your own understanding. If you teach yourself, if you give yourself zazen instruction every time, then you will tend to remember and you will tend to cultivate good habits for sitting. And then, at some point, it will become second nature. It takes a while before azasana becomes second nature. Actually, it's first nature, but we say second nature. Before you are one with your true nature. Is my back straight?

[08:41]

No. Straighten your back. Push your lower back forward. Sit up straight. Keep my head on top of my spine. Don't let it fall forward. Don't look up. Look down without pushing your head forward. And is keeping the mudra correct with the thumbs very lightly touching in a circle when you check your teeth. How are your teeth together in your mouth? Where is your tongue when you sit on it? It should be behind your teeth in your upper, against your upper part of your mouth. And your eyes open. Are my eyes open? Am I letting go of the tension in my back?

[09:43]

Am I letting go of the tenseness in my arms? All of these points, and there are many more, many minute points to zazen, to actually sitting correctly and to be aware of all those points continuously during zazen. You know, the body is composed of hundreds of separate parts, and each one of those parts is independent, and yet they're all connected somehow. And when we sit, the mind is leading all these parts into one action, to do one act, sitting up straight. with calmness and unity.

[10:46]

So Zazen is unifying the mind and the body, which includes when the mind and body is unified, everything is included. The whole universe is included. Because when body and mind are unified, there's no self. When there's no self, the whole universe is yourself. So it's very important to know what you're doing when you're sitting. Is it just some kind of physical exercise or something to make you feel good or to relieve tension? It goes way beyond. any of those narrow views. So there are two aspects to Zazen.

[12:00]

Well, one is the positive aspect. and the other is not negative but the accepting aspect and the projecting aspect. The positive aspect is to put all of your energy into this one act. This is one of the most beneficial parts to cultivate, to put all of your effort into sitting. It's not just relaxing, but it's putting total energy, total effort into this one act and maintaining it. And the other side is to be completely open and to accept everything.

[13:09]

in a passive way, the passive side and the active side in complete balance, completely unified. So this is what we should be thinking about when we sit Zazen. And of course, the mind tends to make the laundry list and various other endeavors But then you just keep bringing it back to this. You should cultivate the habit of bringing your attention back to putting your effort, total effort, into sitting up straight and to opening up your mind, body and mind, so that body and mind are totally open and receptive without any tenseness. All of these little parts of the body, hundreds of parts of the body, are all somehow doing the same activity, participating in the same activity, without hindrance.

[14:23]

But there's lots of hindrance. Our mind creates much hindrance. So how to respect the independence of each part of the body and at the same time line them all up so that they're participating in the same activity. This means to be completely loose and open and without any extra tenseness and to do the most amount of work with the least amount of effort. It's like an airplane taking off, you know, you see these jets go... almost straight up, then at 30,000 feet they level off. And then they kind of coast.

[15:27]

Zazen's a little bit like that. You make this big effort, and then at some point, it levels off. And then you're just there. your effort. The effort is still there, but it's effortless effort. But until you can make that, until you make that effort, the effortless effort doesn't appear. The effortless effort is total balance. and total oneness with the activity, body and mind completely harmonized. So in order to get to this place, which is just a plaza, it's important to create good habits for practice,

[16:41]

which means to integrate your life so that you can actually practice. Suzuki Roshi used to always say, before you can practice, you need to get your life in order. You have to put your life in some order so that you actually make space for this activity. And it doesn't mean that you have to settle everything in your life in order to practice, but it means that it doesn't work as just an arbitrary activity. It has to be integrated with your life because If you don't see it as a really important part of your life, then it won't have much meaning for you.

[17:53]

So you have to make space. What I say to people is to put Zazen on your calendar. Whatever rhythm of practice, and one must have a rhythm of practice to cultivate a rhythm of practice, it has to be stated. So you put that on your calendar, Monday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon. Okay, I can do that. And then you create a rhythm for practice, and that creates a good habit for practicing. If you just Say, well, oh, today's a nice and sunny day. I feel pretty good. I think I'll sit sadhya. That's OK. But it's not practice. Not the same as creating a rhythm for practice.

[18:59]

Because to really create a practice in a serious way, it has nothing to do with your feelings. It has nothing to do with how you feel. It simply has to do with your intention. I intend to do this." Then that's the beginning of practice, is intention. Feelings are bringing you to practice, but they don't sustain you in practice. You may have some inspiration. You read some good books about Zen, and maybe you sit Zazen sometime and you have some inspiration. But that only brings you to practice. To actually sustain practice one must have intention. And intention is what helps to create the proper habits for having a practice. And then to have a rhythm of practice, even if it's one day a week.

[20:05]

But if it's one day a week every week, that's a rhythm. If you can sit three or four days a week, that's even better, obviously weren't better. So it's very important to actually put zazen on your calendar, if you really intend to have a practice, so that you have a rhythm of practice which creates the proper habits for practicing. And then, it has nothing to do with your feelings. You may feel, gosh, I put that down on my calendar, and today I don't feel like practicing. Too bad. It just goes, sits on its own. If you can't do that, then it's not a real practice. It's only something that, it's only doing something according to your feelings, or your whim.

[21:13]

Actual practice has to go beyond your feelings. Zazen itself has to go beyond your feelings and your thoughts. The biggest obstacle to Zazen is feelings and thoughts. Not that you shouldn't have feelings. We all have feelings and we all respect our feelings. And we should all be in touch with our feelings, as they say. But Zazen goes beyond feelings. Otherwise, if we can't get beyond thought and feelings, we can never unify the mind. Because thoughts and feelings are discriminatory. Just having thoughts is called discrimination. Just having feelings is called discrimination. Discrimination means to divide, to discriminate, compare one thing with another.

[22:20]

And as soon as you start comparing one thing with another and dividing the world into thoughts and compartments, you have discrimination. Not that discrimination is so bad. Discrimination is just discrimination. But it blocks unification. So in zazen, we let go of discriminating mind. You have to cultivate the habit of letting go of discriminating mind in zazen. Which means not attaching to any feeling. Not attaching to good feelings, not attaching to painful feelings, not attaching to pleasant thoughts or painful thoughts, just letting everything come as it comes and go as it goes without discriminating.

[23:31]

So difficult. But if we cultivate this kind of practice, then we can feel the effect of that in our daily life. Not trying to, you know, we do say that raising the mind of enlightenment is the beginning of practice. But if you seek enlightenment as a prize, you'll never find it. Only through cultivating practice will the mind of enlightenment arise. Although we say that sentient beings are Buddha, without proper practice to bring forth Buddha mind, enlightenment doesn't exist for you.

[24:49]

But we say one moment of practice is one moment of enlightenment. By practice we mean unifying the mind, unifying body and mind with our surroundings. There's an old saying, are you a practitioner of body or a practitioner of mind? We tend to think of the mind as superior to the body. But actually, body and mind are one. They're not two different things.

[25:52]

Often we tend to think that the body is simply a vehicle for carrying around the brain. So we become top-heavy. We have a top-heavy society. And the brain is really charging ahead faster than we can keep up with it. The mind and the brain are not the same. We have different meanings for what we call mind. to balance the mind and the body and with the fundamental life force keeps everything in balance. So we don't operate just from the head, or just from the body, or just from the life force.

[27:17]

But integrate all these aspects so that Buddha mind, which is our natural endowment, and enlightenment, which is our natural endowment, to come forth unblocked. So we practice with the body, and we practice with the mind, and neither one is most important. One is as important as the other. And when body and mind are perfectly integrated, there's only Buddha. When we sit zazen, it's not my practice. It's Buddhist practice. We let go of me and mine.

[28:26]

Me and mine are, I, me, mine, are the hindrances to realization. But we must be very careful It's easy with the mind to have fantasies about enlightenment and about realization. That's why cultivating good habits will keep you grounded. Spiritual practice is very dangerous. Very dangerous. and can drive you crazy if you're not careful. And we must be very careful that spiritual practice is always grounded. And the most important thing is the grounding.

[29:31]

But we like to have flights of spiritual fantasy. And especially these days and in our new age, spirituality, there's a lot of fancy and not a lot of grounding. Sometimes our practice looks very stodgy to people, actually. Looks a little very conservative and stodgy because there's so much formality and we go slowly. But it's important. I think formal practice is grounding. You can't go too fast. You can't fly around.

[30:34]

You just have to pay attention to what's going on in a very mundane way. Before you can be a teacher in this discipline, it takes maybe 20 years, 15 or 20 years. I was at a conference a few years back where I was explaining that it takes maybe 20 years to be a teacher in our tradition and somebody was outraged I would never be in your tradition. These teachers pop up all the time after about two or three years of something, of various practices. But in here, we are very careful about

[31:47]

how we authorize people to teach. And we just keep everybody's nose to the grindstone, so to speak. As a matter of fact, in our Incent Center, when we first started, we were all given a lot of responsibility because it was a new It's really best, really good to not authorize people to teach for a long, long time. So that we're always very grounded, very grounded. And the practice becomes so much a part of one. The teaching comes from their own understanding.

[32:57]

So when I think about Zazen, and how to sit Zazen and how to create good habits for Zazen, one is always looking for the correct posture. And when you find the correct posture, it changes. So even though you find it, you lose it. And you have to keep finding it again. And then you keep losing it. And then you keep finding it again. There's no right way that lasts forever, that lasts more than a few minutes, matter of fact. So if you know how to sit zazen, you know that you're always searching for the right way. It's not something that you have found. It's always there to be found and we're always seeking it out and always searching for it.

[34:30]

So there's no place where you can actually rest contented and say, oh, this is it. And so it's important to have this spirit of continually searching, continually finding, continually coming back to waking up over and over again. When I correct posture for people, I find most people whose posture I correct are very tense and very stiff. Dazen is not like being a statue. If I were to come along and push one part of your body, like your elbow, your elbow should just move without the rest of your body moving.

[35:43]

But if you're too stiff, if I push your elbow, you go over like a statue. So I think one of the most important aspects to cultivate is how to be loose, how to have the proper posture, structure, but all parts of your body should be independent and loose. This is one of the most important things, and I just keep emphasizing this over and over again. And so many of your problems come from tenseness, not letting go. You don't need this to sit down yet. People are very stiff-necked. If I push their head up, They resist. But your head is glued.

[36:48]

If I do that... Whatever. That's the way you should sit Zazen. Whatever. And at the same time, have really good posture. So it's a wonderful balance. It really depends on balance. It doesn't depend on muscular tension. The only tension is in your lower back. That's the support for your posture. Otherwise, the rest is just all balance. So it's good to cultivate this habit of letting go of tenseness. and resuming your original posture. Because our postures are determined by how we interact with life.

[37:53]

So when we look around, we see how people walk and handle themselves, handle their bodies. And you can tell a lot about how people handle their bodies by their posture. Defensive postures, frightened postures, nervous postures, all these various... And, of course, we all have these postures because we meet various circumstances which challenge our posture. But in zazen, you let go of all that. You don't need any of that. There's no defense. Nothing to defend. There's nobody there. to defend. Only Buddha. And Buddha doesn't need to be defended. There's nothing to hold on to. But, you know, we do hold on to things.

[38:58]

And if there's nothing to hold on to, then we hold on to ourself. If there's nothing external to hold on to, we hold on to ourself. And this causes a lot of self-tenseness. So our breathing gets restricted and our muscles get tense. Because since there's nothing external to hang on to, we have to hang on to ourself. And this causes us a lot of physical problems. Most of the physical problems that we have in Zazen are due to clutching ourself, self-cleaning. So little by little we should be able to let go of that self-clinging and just be open and defenseless and innocent and resume our true nature and our natural posture, which is not conditioned by circumstances.

[40:01]

Do you have any questions? Yes? You said that Suzuki Roshi said that we should not come to practice until our lives are in order? No, I didn't say that. That's not what I said. I said, in order to practice, you need to put your life in order. But he didn't say you shouldn't come to practice until your life is in order. Matter of fact, I said that. I said he didn't say that. Can you say it again then? What did he say? He said, in order to practice, you should put your life in order. But he didn't say, you can't practice until your life is in order. Because it seems to me that often the two go hand in hand as you develop your practice, your life. Yes, as you practice your life, you begin to put your life in order. Yeah, they go hand in hand. Yeah. That's right. Hopefully. Not always. Not always. Hopefully. One reinforces the other.

[41:15]

So, yes, when you begin to practice, you have no idea what practice is, really. And then as you begin to practice, you realize that in order to really do this, you have to put your life in order. And you have to let go of some things that are not, you know, you have to restrict your life in some way in order to really practice. You have to go to bed early if you get up in the morning. And there's certain things that you realize you can let go of because our lives are very crowded. The problem of our lives in this day and age is that there's too much to choose from. And the more receptive we are, the more we want to include all these things in our lives. But we can only do so much and do it well. So if you want to do something really well, you have to restrict yourself and not take on a lot of things that seem necessary.

[42:26]

So in order to practice, you have to limit yourself. You can't just do everything. But if you do really one thing well, you'll find much more satisfaction than taking on a whole bunch of little things and trying to do each one of them. It's better to do one thing well. And also, as I always say, if you want something valuable, you have to pay a high price for it. You spoke a lot about attention to posture, tails, and so forth. Where does attention to the breath come from? Yeah, that too, of course. I include breath and posture.

[43:35]

So, posture and breath, breathing. But first is posture. Posture, you know, people say, well, you sit down and follow your breath. But posture is first, because posture is the foundation for practice. And then, when you have reasonably good posture, then you start to let your mind follow the breath. And then exhale. on the exhale. Or you count on the exhale if you're counting breath. But put more effort, or not effort, but attention to exhale. Because exhale is like letting go, and then you come back to life, and then you let go. So putting an emphasis on the exhale is putting emphasis on letting go. But posture comes first.

[44:40]

But posture is first, yeah. And then, you know, you go over all the details of your body, but then at some point you just concentrate on the whole thing, on the whole body and mind and breath. Yeah, well that's discriminating. Yeah, it's like trading one thing for another. It's like saying, there's something better than this. So in Zazen, everything is just what it is. There's nothing better. If you're having a lot of pain, you may think, it'd be better if I wasn't.

[45:44]

Right? And then it causes you a lot of pain. Well, better if you don't talk to yourself. Actually, it's better to just feel what's being felt. Just let what's being felt be felt. And pay attention to posture and breathing. Posture and breathing takes you through everything. To change your state of mind is to interfere. That's discriminating. If you just trust body and breath with attention, then that will take you through every state of mind.

[46:49]

That will carry you safely through every state of mind without discriminating. That's why it's so important to just pay attention to posture and breath. But the mind is just churning out Thoughts. And thoughts can be happy or unhappy. You know, good thoughts, bad thoughts, happy thoughts, unhappy thoughts. But the fact is, there's just body and mind, breath, sitting. That's the fact at this moment. Your happiness or unhappiness has nothing to do with it. Yeah? What about being happy sitting there at the same volume? There's just more discrimination. That's just another thought. The fact is, body, mind, body and breath, sinning is saving all sentient beings. You don't have to think about it. Thinking is just thinking.

[47:51]

There's nothing wrong with thinking, but in Zazen, it's discrimination. And it's very important. to trust posture and breathing. Just give up for everything to posture and breathing. That's the fact of this moment. Any thought of misery or wonderful things is just fantasy. It's just fantasy. There's no need to do that. In this moment, We're all sitting here, or you're listening to me, right? But I could say, or we could decide to all think miserable thoughts. Let's all think a miserable thought. No, no, let's all think a good thought. Why? Isn't everything just kind of fine right now?

[48:53]

Your legs probably hurt. Fundamentally, we just have, as you described, and we have a practice where we've established It reminds me of what Mark is bringing up about trying to create or put forth positive energy to the universe. Yes, I want to remark on that. In the Sutra, we have a liturgy that says, may all beings be happy. This is our expression, right? That's fine to express it verbally. When we sit Zazen, Zazen is called silent illumination. That's his practice.

[50:01]

It's also called Shikantaza. Just sitting. just allowing the illumination of your buddha nature to extend throughout the universe. That's what you're doing. If you're thinking about something else, you're blocking that. It's like you're just a vehicle for buddha light. And when you're sitting sadhana, Zazen is being sat thoroughly. Buddha light is extending throughout the universe. And thinking is limited, but buddha nature is unlimited. about the pain in the knees.

[51:10]

Pain in the knees? Yeah. Yes.

[52:13]

And I feel like if I didn't move, then I would get to the place where it doesn't bother me. But if I move, I just miss it. And it's just sort of like, that seems to be the trick that I'm playing with myself right now. I mean, this is my threshold right now. Right. Yes. And our mind will think up every kind of reason why we Or how do I get out of this? But the only way is to just don't think about it. And I can't tell you how to do that. We all have to come to that place where we just let this thing be what it is without discriminating it. And it takes a while before you get to that place. We really have to stop. Paul? Lately, when I've been meditating, the expression for meditation is to bring forth a mind that dwells nowhere.

[53:27]

It's kind of come up, and so I sort of try to see if I can do that one way or another. And so I was wondering if you're actually doing that, can you be aware of the fact that you're doing that? Well, it's better to not be self-conscious It simply means not to be attached to any special state of mind. That's all. Not abiding in any special state of mind. Oh, I like this state of mind, or I don't like this state of mind. Not to be attached to anything is what it means. But yes, you can be conscious of it. You should be conscious of it.

[54:10]

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