What I would like to talk about today is how we practice zazen throughout the day. How we can practice zazen throughout the day without crossing your legs. Most of us lead very busy lives. Sometimes the question comes up, well, how come I can't practice zazen because I'm always busy? I'm always rushing to work and rushing to eat and rushing to sleep and rushing to go to the bathroom. And I'm always involved with people. So this kind of question comes up all the time.

[01:14]

I don't have time to practice zazen. But the fundamental of our practice is how we practice zazen all the time and how we use all the forms of our life to practice dharma. So, if you understand this, there's no place that you cannot practice, and there's no form that cannot be used, and there's no obstacle. So I just want to talk in a very practical way about various things that you can do during your day or evening, day or night.

[02:26]

We call it a day. Very concrete, practical things that you can do to help you be mindful of how you can practice. You may not be able to see how all of the forms of your life can be forms of practice, but you can see how some of them can be forms of practice. And if you start that way, then eventually you can more and more include all of the forms of your life as zazen. Well, some easy way, you know, is to always come back to zero.

[03:33]

Whenever you're having a difficult time, always come back to zero. Always come back to, where am I? What is this? One of the common phrases we have in our life is over-extending. And most of us feel over-extended because our lives are very busy. There's always something that we're doing that's more than we can do. So, over-extended means that we're top-heavy, in another sense. It means that we're over... over the precipice with our head, even though our feet are on the ground. So, just to bring ourselves back into balance is fundamental.

[04:36]

How do we bring ourselves back into balance? Suzuki Roshi used to say that our life is constantly What our life is about is constantly falling out of balance and coming back to our balance. Everything is constantly losing its balance in change. And we're constantly regaining our balance, finding our balance in the shifting sands of life. And if you think about it, you'll see that all of the forms of life are based on this principle. Constantly shifting, falling out of balance. Even when you sit in Zazen with your legs crossed, you may think, well, this is it, but something's changing, and you have to regain your balance.

[05:47]

So in Zazen, sitting Zazen with your legs crossed, How we sit is to constantly keep adjusting, constantly, very minutely, but constantly finding our balance. If you don't do that, then you start depending on your muscles, and then you find yourself in a state of strain, and then your body begins to get painful. because you're not depending on balance, you're not coming back to zero. You're using some kind of tension to sustain your position. And the same thing goes in our daily life. Instead of coming back to zero and finding our balance in a given situation, when we start slipping out of balance,

[06:50]

we start compensating by using props and by holding ourself in tension. So at the end of the day, what a day! Our body is all full of tension. We have to go to the masseur, masseuse, to get ourselves back into balance. Or we go to a therapist to get our mind back in balance. So the art of zazen is to constantly find our balance. Constantly know where our center is and find our balance in each moment's activity. physically, mentally, and emotionally.

[07:54]

And, of course, this is just nothing more than the four foundations of mindfulness. Physically, emotionally, mentally, and keeping in mind why we're doing what we do. What is our intention? we can get thrown out of balance if we don't know what our intention is, or if our intentions waver. Intention is a really interesting part of our life. We tend to forget so easily what we're doing. When we were coming into the Zen Dojo, I came here to give a lecture, but I was thinking so hard about what I was going to say that I went to the front door instead of the back door. And Megan had to tell me, we get sidetracked by something.

[09:08]

So to keep our intention straight is a practice of mindfulness. It's like the hierarchy of intention. Our life follows the hierarchy of intention. When we know what we're doing, then all of the parts fall into place and follow. But when our mind is divided, then some of the parts go this way and some of the parts go that way. Sometimes we want to get out of that by simplistic thinking. We don't want to have to think so much because it's hard, you know, to really figure something out. And so we sometimes take a simplistic way, which gets us in trouble, but, you know, at least everything follows that way. And so it's nice, but it's dangerous.

[10:15]

So, something that you can do in your day is when you're sitting and working, say you're sitting and working at a desk, we get into a kind of posture, you know, desk posture, or handwriter's cramp, or something. Some kind of, the tenseness creeps up on us, and before we realize it, we're in a certain posture. And to be aware of our posture in everything that we do is important. So if you just make an effort to be aware of posture in every activity, that's a real mindfulness practice. And so when you get down to the desk and you find that you're getting tense and cramped up, you just sit up. Put your hands in some, you know, if there are a lot of people around you, you don't want to sit with your mudra people.

[11:28]

But you can just sit, relax, you know, put your hands down and just take a few deep breaths. It only takes a minute. You may only have one minute, but that one minute makes a lot of difference. You're really using that minute That may be the most important moment in your day, just that one minute, in which you just come back to zero. Just let everything go and come back to zero. And then when you start again, you start with right posture. And when you do sit at the desk and write, is your chair too far back? Or is it, did you just sit down and then start doing something, or did you adjust your chair so that it's just right? Is your seat really positioned in a way that your body can be relaxed while you're doing that?

[12:38]

So you can do that. And then when your body starts to get tense again, you recognize that it's tense. So the important thing is to recognize what your posture is like and recognize when there's tenseness. And when you see that, then again, maybe you don't have time to take a few breaths. Just wiggle your arms and sit up straight. And then readjust and then go back. And if you do that a few times, then more and more, because you can feel the benefit of that, you do it more and more, and then pretty soon you get to where when you sit down, you really have an intention. You sit down with intention. One, to do the work, but really, your intention is to do the work with the most ease.

[13:45]

So centering yourself becomes as important as the work that you're doing. And when we say become one with the work, how you manifest yourself in zazen is become one with whatever it is you're doing. So if you do it mindfully in that way and have a constant understanding of how your body is working together with the work, then you and the work become one thing. There's no separation. How you pick up the pen, or how you sit at the typewriter. I'm sure that there's a way, if you go to typing school, there's a way to sit at the typewriter. And if you study music, there's a way to sit at the piano. If you go to finishing school, there's a way to walk with a book on your head.

[14:52]

You don't drop the book. That's like Zazen practice. I think they used to do that in women's finishing school. Deportment. Teaching deportment. But actually, it's a kind of Zazen. And the way women in Africa and various hot countries walk with a basket on their head. In Mexico, women walk with a basket on their head. Mild, mild, heavy baskets. And it's a form of Zazen. How you stay centered and mindful and really one with the activity. So you can practice these zazen in all forms. One other way of practicing is if you're waiting for something.

[15:56]

I remember when I first started practicing, and I was very aware of zazen, and I went to a dentist. And I didn't have any money, so there was a clinic, and I had to wait for a long time. If you go to a clinic, sometimes you have to wait for a long time. So I was waiting for half a day, actually, and I sat down in the chair, and I just did Zazen in the chair. And it was wonderful. I wasn't waiting for anything. I was doing something. It was a great experience. I wasn't anxious to do anything else. So, to put yourself into a mode where each thing you do is in the present.

[17:03]

It's like music. Music in time. You're moving through time. And what you're doing is music. Basic music. Keeping time in whatever rhythm you're moving in. We're always moving in some rhythm or another. Music is an example. It's a kind of abstract example. And why we love music so much is there's nothing to interfere with it. It's just straight moving around within rhythm. And it's so wonderful, you know. But in our daily life, we have the same kind of rhythms, but they're more subtle, and they're more broken up. But if we can recognize the rhythm of our movement within our life, and when the rhythm changes, we change with it. So our life can be a dance, or it can be music,

[18:16]

It has all those qualities. But it means being right there on the beat. If you get a little bit ahead or a little bit behind, then there's some problem. That's why in monastic practice, monastic practice is very rhythmic. The schedule is a rhythm. And staying with the schedule and keeping the rhythm of that, if you do it well, then you're right there, always right in the present. So monastic practice is to help you recognize the present and to be in the present. And then when you... it's just like being in Zendo.

[19:23]

And music, you know, the music of the Zendo is very plain and obvious. Easy to do. At least it's obvious. But when you walk outside and get involved in life, we have to take on various rhythms. and to be in step with the various rhythms that we encounter. It's good if we learn to sit zazen in a chair. We spend a lot of time in chairs. We spend a lot of time sitting down in chairs. So, sometimes people say, I don't like to sit Zazen in a chair.

[20:30]

But, and I would say that too, I don't like to sit Zazen in a chair. I like to sit this way. But actually, I can sit Zazen in a chair when I'm sitting in a chair. And since we spend so much time sitting, if you think about how much time you spend sitting in a chair, you realize that we need to learn how to sit zazen in a chair. If you can sit zazen in a chair, then you don't have to wait for anything. You can find yourself wherever you are. You can do Zazen walking. Kinhin is an example of that, but walking down the street. There are several ways to walk down the street. One way is to have your head down and think, and you don't see anything.

[21:37]

You don't see anything because of what's going on in your mind. And you can walk six blocks and not have noticed anything. Or you can pick your head up and look around. And when you walk down the street, you notice, without thinking, just notice, just what comes into vision. And be mindful of the steps, how the foot is touching the sidewalk, or touching the street. And also be aware of breathing. And that whole rhythm of walking, just getting into the rhythm of walking. You can do it going from one end of the hall to another. If you're in an office, you may have to carry a paper down to the other end of the hall. And your intention is to take the paper down to the other end of the hall. That's the reason. But you can spend that time walking

[22:43]

That's part of your life. It's going down. It's a chunk of life, even though it may be only three minutes, going from this office to that office. What are you doing? You practice walking. Just get into walking. Are you in a hurry? Maybe you could slow down. Maybe you could get some into the rhythm of walking. How many times do we walk maybe east and west, and never see the bay. You can see the bay. If you look down the end of most of these streets, you can see the bay. But how often do we actually see it when we're pointed in that direction? So it's pretty hard I'm not saying that we should get rid of our thoughts.

[23:47]

It's pretty hard to do that. In our daily life we have to keep thinking continually. But if we become mindful of how we're moving, how we're sitting, how we're doing each thing, then our thinking mind and our work and our activity Each thing can become a vehicle for practice. Each activity, each moment's activity. And ultimately, there's nothing left out as practice. If you can use the 24 hours, A monk asked Joshu some question about what he was doing and Joshu said his response to the question was, you are being used by the 24 hours and I use the 24 hours.

[25:00]

If you can use the 24 hours, then you have very good practice. If you can use 12 hours, you have a very good practice. If you can just be mindful at some point during the day, at a few points during the day of your practice, that's very good. Maybe you have some question I would like to discuss a little bit. Katherine? I'm very much interested in what you say about Zazen during walking. I take a very beautiful walk every morning. Do you think it's possible to be aware both of your rhythm of walking and to notice the blossoming trees in the bay without, I mean, having your mind divided too much? Yeah, I think you can. It seems to me that one would have to do one or the other, just stare without reflection on the trees in the bay, or be aware of the rhythm of one's body motion.

[26:21]

Well, it depends on your intention. Excuse me? Intention. Depends on your intention. Are you intending to just... If you're intending to just take in the bay, then sit down. But still be aware of sitting. walking is another motion, right? So it takes some more awareness. But, you know, there's different kinds of awareness. If you go to a movie, you just sit down in the seat, and all the lights go out, and there's such a visual impact that you're not even aware of your body, really. You lose everything. There's only the light on the screen, the movement. And if that's what you want to do when you're walking, I'm not sure that you can do that. You have to take into account the walking and the whole environment.

[27:26]

So you narrow down to what it is that you want to experience. in walking, say, on a beautiful path, right? You can experience the walking and you experience yourself with everything, in harmony with everything. That's Sazen. Experience yourself in harmony with everything, without losing anything. That's forgetting yourself, even though yourself is included. yourself is included in the forgetting. Dropping body and mind doesn't mean that there's no body and mind. I find it much easier to be in harmony with nature and animals than with people when I'm walking along, and a lot of cars.

[28:34]

And I find some days I'm very self-conscious of people. They just distract me from anything that I'm not doing. One must concentrate on it. Well then, the only cure for that is to get rid of all the people in all the cars. I've thought of that. I don't know. Get rid of everything that distracts us. I called a friend of mine and I told him I found a teacher and he said, oh my, did you practice? He said, what is this? Is it wrong? He's dead for 300 years. But that's how I felt after finishing that book.

[29:38]

So a common mistake is that people think that sizing For me, it's a pit bull.

[30:51]

For Nomaika, it's a pit bull. You know, and every time I go to visit him, we look at each other, you know. We can kill each other. So then we're difficult. Bankei was a... he's talking about Bankei, who was a priest in Japan about 300 years ago. And his practice is very simple, although he spent quite a few years doing very hard practice. But he ended up, his teaching ended up being based on the unborn Buddha mind. All of you are just unborn Buddha mind. There's no need to do any of these ascetic practices.

[31:52]

If you want to sit Zazen, that's fine, but don't depend on it. Just be in your unborn Buddha mind. Just resume to your unborn Buddha mind. And he was very famous, and he was a great Zen master, and his lectures, which one of his disciples took down, several of his disciples took down, has been recently published The lectures were published little by little in the Eastern Buddhist, but just a book has been published on his lectures. And I've always been very much, felt very enthusiastic about Phangke's practice, and I think about it a lot. But I'm always, I always have to chuckle a little bit The people who have very simple practice say, all you have to do is this.

[32:53]

Because those people worked so hard to get to the place where they said, all you have to do is this. That's true. All you have to do is just be your unborn Buddha mind. Go ahead. So, but I appreciate Bankai very much, and I would like you to all read Bankai's lectures. Get that little book and read his lectures. Ken? Yeah, actually I had the very same experience that I had with the back problem, which was really connected with my mind. I went in to see Sassanin, who's a teacher who practices really hard, and he said, and he acted that way, he said he was very compassionate, he says, but he more or less said I got the feeling it's really simple. I do 100,000 Om Mani Padme Hums, I don't know, 10,000 Om Mani Padme Hums a day, and do this and that, and then it's all right.

[33:57]

It's not like that. I couldn't see this being that simple. After I worked on my back, somebody helped me with my back. was not simple at all. And when I told him how I got healed my back, or started healing it, I went into him. He says, yeah, of course. It's very simple. All you have to do is do it. Yes? Is there a way of practicing zazen how you actually heal? When people, you know, you have problems that arise and you're trying to resolve, you insist on differences and things like that.

[35:08]

How are you, when you deal with someone, how are you keeping the harmony and balance of your own mind? And how are you Are you allowing the other person to say something? Are you waiting to get your idea across? When you're waiting to get your idea across, you're not listening to what the other person is saying. I've been to hundreds of meetings And in meetings, thousands of meetings. I remember when we first started having board meetings at Zen Center in San Francisco. And people were just at each other's throats. And at one point I didn't want to do that anymore. But these people over years worked out how to relate to each other.

[36:12]

And they're still doing it. And we're all doing that, you know. We're all working on how to relate to each other. And there are people that we relate to, we still have problems with. Every time we talk to that person, you know, it's still some problem. And learning how to keep your place and how to be centered and how not to offend someone and how not to offend yourself. and to create a harmonious atmosphere or place where what you're doing can actually take place without projecting your ego into it. It's hard. But that's how you practice Zazen, always maintaining your place here and not

[37:17]

putting your desire form forward, or willing to listen, and responding instead of reacting. Reacting is like when you shake a stick at a dog, the dog reacts to the stick. Whereas if you shake the stick at the lion, the lion responds by going for you. It's a more deeper kind of response. Response and reaction are different. There are several people who want to say something. One of the problems is not to stay centered.

[38:20]

For me to stay centered and balanced and the head not so much over the cliff. When I listen to the news and I feel an anger over the lives of kids getting lost in Central America. And I'm overwhelmed with sorrow. And I don't feel very balanced that way. It sits so heavy in my heart that I feel upset. And so I think to myself, well, it goes with the territory. If you listen to the news, that's going to be what happens. And then I think, well, I could maybe just shut that out, and I won't listen anymore. But then I think it's really a job for listening to find out what's going on. Like you said, what I guess is very frustrating is there's not a response.

[39:23]

Because it's not only me tonight. It's not the other person in the room that you can try and move around with. You're left there with your own frustration. Yeah. And it's daily trying to find that balance and center in the midst of that. You can't get rid of the problem. And I read the newspapers eagerly to see what's going on. And I get the same feeling. And I think, well, how am I balancing myself with all this? It's OK to be angry, even though we have a precept against being angry. I remember it's as if he was saying, it's against the precepts if you don't get angry when you should be angry.

[40:28]

But your anger can, if you remain angry, then your anger will find a channel to would help push something, you know. If you lose your head through your anger, that's not going to help anything. So, I know what's going on with myself, you know. I know how my anger is and my frustration and so forth. But I still have to do the things that I have to do, you know, all day. And when I'm angry, I let myself be angry. And then I have to do something else. I have to take care of the little boy, you know. So there's my attention there. Or I have to take care of something else.

[41:38]

But I allow myself to be angry and give myself that space. And then when I'm doing something else, I'm no longer angry. But it comes up enough so that I look for some way to express it without letting it just dominate all the time. It's like there's so much grief in the world. If you allow yourself to be inundated by it, then you're destroyed, and that doesn't help anything. You know, we can eat our dinner and we can talk to each other, even though some place in the world there's just madness going on. And you know that's going on, but if you just are consumed with it, you can't do anything. So we have to have partitions in our life. But if those partitions obscure, you know, then that's hiding.

[42:42]

We can't let the partitions our response. That's how I see that. I want to go back to the simple way of understanding things. In San Francisco right now we're studying a koan, and one of the lines is, going to sleep and closing the door is the way to receive those of the highest potential. So, what did you learn that way? Curiously, the closing the door is how you receive someone of the highest potential needs. If you have a good student, you don't have to do anything. They can do it themselves. That's what we mean by a real student of the highest quality is someone completely motivated.

[44:01]

You don't have to say, come on, try it. They have it. They have the great potential. I'm jacked. My son came to me with the same kind of difficulty that you're talking about. Kids are very concerned about having problems. And I told him, well, you know, you've got to do what you're doing little anecdote of, I'm interested in the gold market. I called KQED one day, and I said, hey, sometimes you've got to broadcast the gold market, sometimes you don't, and you need to broadcast.

[45:07]

Can you do it on kind of a regular basis? And every day for the last four years, they've broadcast the gold market to you. One person can make a difference if the opportunity is right. to manifest the influence and if you're prepared to manifest the influence and the only way I know that I can be prepared to do any of that is by sitting at this point in my life and in my son by pursuing his studies which is his own Zazen practice. The motivation issue isn't that the one of the most important or the most important function of the teacher to motivate the student. And once the teacher has accomplished that, then he can close the door and go to sleep. That's really one aspect. I don't know if the teacher motivates the student or not.

[46:10]

The teacher motivates himself. Inspires, whatever, just gets that process going. helps the student get over that hump to a place of high motivation. It turns the student on enough to the subject matter so that the student goes by himself from there. Yeah, we say, first you're a boxcar and at some point you need to be, you turn into an engine. The boxcar gets pulled along, you know, but the engine goes by itself. Once the student becomes an engine, the teacher wants to step aside. Well, at some point. At some point. At some point. The teacher should step aside at some point.

[47:13]

But, you know, it's not that simple. At some point, that's right. When you become a boxcar, I mean when you become an engine, you still need guidance. But at a certain point, you can close the door and go to sleep. But the teacher never leaves. No. So part of the teaching is there internally? When there's a teacher and a student, or one person, then the teaching never leaves. Does anyone ever have to become a boss? Yeah, we all do. Most of us. Become one? Become one. No, we usually are one. Another topic about politics.

[48:20]

Somebody said to me once about political demonstrations, participating in political demonstrations. You know, maybe there are, in the whole mass movement, participating in political demonstrations against the Intervention of the Civil American Movement won't immediately lead to a change of policy. But her attitude was, you see something about which you can do nothing, but you have to do something. So you do it. Right. We think that what we do, you know, if we don't see the immediate effect, we think that it doesn't mean much, but we can do something and not see the immediate effect. Sometimes an effect goes underground and pops up where you want it to go. Sometimes it goes overhead. and lands where you wanted to go.

[49:23]

But you don't see it going this way, you know, going by. But it has a lot of effect. I think all of the demonstrations, even though people may be discouraged, say, well, it hasn't changed anything. But it has. I think it has. You were talking about intention. and people talk about motivation, and it seems like that's really the root of it, that when you're really in harmony with your intention, and your intention is to be right here or to be fully responsible, then you just don't waste any opportunities to do it. If your intention is to clean up your living area, you just don't let some dirt go by.

[50:27]

If your intention is to be on your posture, you just don't let yourself get sloppy. And I often wonder how it is that that happens and why it is that one can have the experience of doing that and then still slip back into getting likely. than finding excuses for not doing what's right in front of us. We don't have much time to discuss that. It's a big question. If you go, excuse me, a long way, but people are very complex. Even though we have an intention, you know, we have a closet here and a cousin over there friend over here and, you know, some desire over there. And all those things weigh us down.

[51:29]

It's very hard to be single-minded. Very few people are single-minded. Most of us are mushy. We get, you know, this looks good and that looks good. It's hard to keep really motivated. unless you have some experience that you always have a touchstone, you know. But it's a big subject, and I think we need to end, but we can take it up again.

[52:05]

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