I love to face the truth and love to talk to the world. During sashin, we're concerned with three things, body, breath, and mind. There are actually three aspects of one thing. So to say mind, may be better to say a consciousness, body, breath and consciousness, which are all aspects of mind, big mind, dharmakaya.

[01:09]

So our sambhogakaya body is facing Dharmakaya and the three aspects of consciousness, body and breath are unified through Zazen. Zazen sometimes It's called various things, but I like embracing mind. So mind, or consciousness, unifies breath and body, and breath unifies consciousness and body, and body unifies breath and consciousness.

[02:20]

So, whichever one we concentrate on, it includes the other two. You can change your attitude by changing your body. I mean exchanging your body, but by changing the attitude of your body. By changing the attitude of our body, we can change the attitude of our mind. And by changing the attitude toward our breath, we can change the attitude of our mind, of our consciousness. So all three work together and are inseparable. Mostly in our life, we're very much worried about our state of mind. If we're not worried about our state of mind, we're worried about our state of body.

[03:28]

But we don't think so much about breath. Breath just comes and goes. It's an inadvertent activity. Breath, you can't stop it and you can't make it go. It just goes. And when it's ready to stop, it stops. But through this breath, which permeates our body and mind and connects us to this world, we can liberate ourself. So breath is one of the doorways of liberation. Knowing how to use breath, or not how to use breath, but how to use breath as a doorway to liberation is most important.

[04:39]

When we sit zazen, we just sit and breathe. We just sit and let breath happen. And mind, or consciousness, is attentive to breath and attentive to body. And by the way, many thoughts are created in consciousness. inadvertently. So a thinking process works in some way like breath, because mind wants something to, needs an object in order to express itself. If we don't give it an object to express itself, it creates its own objects, which are called fantasies. So mind is continually creating its own objects called fantasies and it gets bored with just concentrating on body and just concentrating on breath.

[06:07]

So because of its great attachment to this world, Mind is, consciousness really keeps us grounded or even its flights of fancy are grounding in this world. And so it's neither good nor bad, it's just a fact. But breath is something outside of the body. I mean oxygen is something outside of the body and when it enters the body it's called breath, transformed into breath. And so we're continually inhaling our world and exhaling our breath.

[07:20]

into the world, giving something back. So trees and plants are giving us something, some nourishment, and we give back some nourishment for trees and plants. So we have this connection with the sun and the sky, and the atmosphere and all the little creatures, we're not apart from all this. And our body, this body, looks for earth objects to devour in order to nourish it. So, in a way, we're kind of like earthworms eating our way through the earth. and digesting it and leaving something behind. In Zen we say we shouldn't leave any trace, but we always leave something behind.

[08:34]

So the most important thing for us is awareness. What is it that is happening? What are we doing? Breath is just universal activity. I am not breathing. But you can say, I am being breathed. The universe is breathing me. The universe is thinking me. The universe is being, but usually we have it all backwards.

[09:37]

You say, I am alive, which in Buddhism is arrogance, considered arrogance. But you can say, I am being lived. I am being breathed. There is thinking. When we see from a proper perspective, then we have some ability for liberation. some way to find reality. So, in Sashin, there's nothing but body, breath, and mind.

[10:54]

Body, breath, consciousness, and big mind. Suzuki Roshi says, used to say, we should always be aware of big mind and live our life in big mind, which includes everything. So I want to talk about breath and how we approach awareness of breath. There's a citra which maybe you're aware of, I call it the citra, the awareness of mindful breathing. the Sutra of the Full Awareness of Breathing, which is commented on by Thich Nhat Hanh and arranged very well.

[12:14]

And this sutra is one of the earliest sutras and is on a level with the Satipatthana Sutra, which is the Four Foundations of Mindfulness Sutra. Satipatthana Sutra deals with the four aspects of mindfulness. Mindfulness of body in the body, mindfulness of feelings in the feelings, mindfulness of or awareness of mind in the mind or consciousness, and awareness of objects of consciousness within consciousness. And the sutra always says within, awareness of body within the body, meaning when body is observed, it's not observed as an object, but the observed and the observer are not the subject and the object.

[13:22]

So when the mind observes the body, when consciousness observes the body, consciousness is observing itself as the body. And when consciousness observes the feelings in the feelings, consciousness is observing the feelings as consciousness, as itself. And when consciousness observes the mind, It's observing the mind as itself. In other words, the mind is observing the mind as its own body, as its own mind. And consciousness observes the objects of mind as its self. This is the most difficult to get.

[14:25]

The objects of mind means whatever the mind perceives. So if there's a table, the consciousness perceives that object of mind, which is the table, as itself, even though it's an object. So the subject and object is not two, and yet it's not one. and yet it is two and yet it is one. This is the koan of subject and object. So when we sit in zazen, consciousness observes the breath, in the breath. So when we follow on a breath, we don't follow breath as an object.

[15:34]

When consciousness follows breath, there's only breath. When consciousness follows posture, there's only posture. And when consciousness observes thinking, there's only thinking, only thoughts. Dogen says, the art of zazen is to think not thinking. What is non-thinking? What is not thinking? Non-thinking. Not thinking is non-thinking. Non-thinking doesn't mean to not think, and it doesn't mean to think. It means thoughts are just thoughts.

[16:38]

When the mind and the thoughts are not separate, there's only this thought. When the thought and zazen is just zazen, then there's no thinking. When consciousness is concentrated on the body, there is a thought, a concentration on the body, but it's non-thinking. Because there's no separation between the thought and the activity. So this is also called Shikantaza. No separation between the thought and the activity.

[17:48]

And then there's just this moment. And there's only this moment. Only this activity on this moment. And this is to be free of everything. So apparently Buddha or somebody created this sutra on the mindfulness of breathing as a doorway to liberation. And there are 16 aspects. called 16 methods. I don't know if method is the right word or not, but there's 16 aspects, which include some methods. And I'll briefly enumerate them.

[18:58]

You know, the citrus, the old citrus were written as mnemonic devices, not mnemonic devices, but yeah, mnemonic devices to remember, to help you remember, to chant. So they repeat a lot of things unnecessarily. So I'll shorten it so that I'm not repeating forwards and backwards. The way the Sutra is recorded is You're very familiar with these first ones. Breathing in a long breath, one knows, I am breathing in a long breath. Breathing out a long breath, one knows, I am breathing out a long breath. Breathing in a short breath and a long breath, no, breathing in and out, one knows, I am breathing in a short breath. Breathing in and out, one knows, I am aware of my whole body.

[20:01]

Breathing in and out, I am making my whole body calm and at peace. Breathing both in and out, I am feeling joyful. Breathing both in and out, I am feeling happy. Breathing both in and out, I am aware of the activities of mind within me. Breathing in and out, I am making the activities of mind in me calm and at peace. Breathing in and out, I am aware of my mind. Breathing in and out, I am making my mind happy and at peace. Breathing in and out, I am concentrating my mind. Breathing in and out, I am liberating my mind. Breathing in and out, I am observing the impermanent nature of all dharmas. Breathing in and out, I am observing the fading of all dharmas.

[21:06]

Breathing in and out, I am contemplating liberation. Breathing in and out, I am contemplating letting go." That's the sixteenth one. So the four last ones are more advanced practices. And the first four are, of course, preliminary. eight in between are intermediary. But they're summed up in a way that we can talk about them more easily. The first two actually have to do with how you can actually follow breath or be aware of breath in all of your daily activities. So in order to establish ourself with breath, we don't have to sit zazen.

[22:13]

If you know how to, or if you make an effort, actually, to make breath the focus of your daily activity, In other words, the main thing that you do in your life is to be aware of breath. And then you have all the other activities you do, like working in a shop, working in the kitchen, being a dowan, being general labor, being unaffiliated, being the abbot, being the shuzo. This is what we say, what is your activity? What's your job? Well, I do this. But if someone asked you, what is your job? What is your main activity? You could say, to be aware of my breath. I would like to hear somebody say that sometime.

[23:27]

When we sit in Zazen, we have a great opportunity to establish awareness, especially when we have a hard time, you know, when our legs are killing us and we can't move and we can't stay there. You know that spot? And then just following one breath, all you can do is just Don't move. And then, you know, you get a real appreciation for breathing. Really get intimate with breath. And when you get intimate with breath during Sashin, in that way, then when you are moving around in your daily life, it stays with you.

[24:38]

and you can cultivate that awareness so that in all your movements you move with your breath. You lift your hand to do something and you pick up something and you do it with awareness of breath. I am breathing with this activity. The breath is being breathed in with this activity. When walking to feel that we're breathing with this activity. When we do kinyin, we lift our foot on the inhale and put our foot down when we exhale, even if we take two or three steps in between. But when we do lift our foot, we wait for the inhale and then we put it down on the exhale so that our breath and our activity are flowing together. So this is a kind of a good way to establish breathing, awareness of breath, awareness of breathing in movement.

[25:51]

If you've ever played a musical instrument, especially a wind instrument, you know, you take a breath on purpose. When you sing, you take a breath on purpose. I mean, you know when it is, if you don't take a breath at the right time, you're not going to make it through the phrase. And sometimes I hear people, Kokyos, you know, stop in the middle and take their breath, because they didn't take it in the beginning, in the right place. So, when you're a Kokyo, you have to know exactly where to breathe, where to take a breath. That should be part of your training. And so you always, you know, learn how, and then you put breath marks when you're learning how to play, the instrument you put breath marks on the music so you take your breath in the right place otherwise you're right out in the middle so that helps to establish a sense of breathing and even piano players pianists have breath training and drummers in how to breathe when you're playing not just wind instruments and swimmers have to know how to breathe how to be aware of breath

[27:08]

But in our ordinary activity, unless we have some training, we don't pay much attention to it. So as a Zen student, we should really be aware of breathing as the fundamental activity which connects us to this earth. And it has its rhythms, and its rhythms go with the way we think and the way we act. And so, if I ask you sometime, where is your breath right now? You should be able to point to where it is. And what I mean by where it is, deep or shallow. Are you breathing in your chest? Are you breathing in your throat? Are you breathing in your belly? So conscious awareness of breath means to always be concentrated on breath in your belly.

[28:15]

Not to let your breath climb up. When it climbs up, to get it down. This should be an awareness. When your breath climbs up, this should be some kind of warning or awareness. I have some tension. What's this tension? Why is my breath up here? Why am I tense? What's making me like this? and then let your breath go down. So by paying attention to breathing, by paying attention to where I breathed it, we can change our attitude just by letting go. Just by letting go of whatever it is that we're clinging to and calm the mind. So we're continually calming the mind by being aware of breath and what rhythm and where it is in our body.

[29:24]

So it doesn't mean that we should ignore the things that irritate us or that cause us some problem. We have to address those. But we can address them much easier with a calm mind. And what happens is that some little thing, which is not so significant, will be bothering us. But we allow it to continue to build and build and build and build until the little thing becomes a big irritation. And then we have to explode in some way. But if we know how to come back to our breath and to calm the mind, then the calm mind can see in a perspective what this little thing is. It may not be so big and it can deflate before it bursts. So the work of a monk is to always be connected or aware of breath and to always establish calm mind.

[30:44]

Establish yourself on calm mind continuously. It doesn't mean to ignore problems, but it means to address the problems through calmness of our mind. And most of the time we'll find that the things which seem so big are fantasies. It's like having a little pebble in your shoe. It's just this little thing. But the more you walk on it, the more irritated you get. And if you can stop and shake out your shoe, you find that life's a lot easier. So to be aware of breath,

[31:46]

continuously as your main job. The main job. I don't care what else you do. To be able to be aware of breath continuously and to establish yourself on calm mind. Keep coming back to establishing your breath down here. So when your breath is up here, It's always a way to establish yourself. It's like... So let us do it. Now what? It's like starting all over. That's the demarcation between old state of mind and fresh state of mind. Sometimes, you know, somebody's agitated, sit down and take a deep breath, you know, or have a cup of coffee, or have some tea, you know.

[32:55]

But it's self-regulating. And the more you practice it, the easier it is. If you don't practice it, then it's hard. People sometimes say, My mind is always agitated, you know, and angry, and I get angry all the time. What should I do about it? Well, there's nothing they can do about it. You have to practice doing something about it all the time. If you're an angry type, you have different kinds of types. If you're an angry type, you have to practice dealing with anger all the time. You can't suddenly get an answer and then do something about it. You have to practice it. And if you practice awareness of breath and calming the mind through awareness of breath, that's the entrance into liberation.

[34:08]

So that's the beginning. is to be established in mindfulness of breathing continuously. And you learn how to move rhythmically with breath. Not controlling the breath, but moving with the breath, so that you begin to see how the breath moves with you. you begin to find your rhythms. And when breath is established down here, then you find the body moves in a different way. When you lift something, you should lift with your legs. If you keep lifting with your... Of course, your upper body is involved, but the main power is to use your legs when you lift something. Otherwise you ruin your back.

[35:14]

Because this is your center. Everything comes from, all of your activities should come from the center. And Japanese Zen always emphasizes hara, the belly. That's where the breath is. And that's the center of your body. And that's where the power comes from. And this is actually where mind emanates from. This is thinking mind, but this is big mind emanates from the center, the solar plexus area. So we keep our mind concentrated here rather than up here. So when we have a problem, put your mind down here to find the answer. You won't find it up here so much. This is just, you know, keeps going and going and going.

[36:20]

This is the fantasy realm, and this is the realm of reality. So, during sasheen, I like to talk about practical matters and help us to concentrate on what we're doing and not be distracted by philosophy. I want to encourage us all to practice this way and I'll talk about this some more.

[37:41]

Somebody was so kind enough to bring me water. I should drink some.

[37:49]

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