This morning I'm going to talk about Zazen, as you know, and I'm going to, I want to cover some of the fundamental points and some of the subtle points and also to give you a chance to ask questions. So that's a lot. Especially since when I give Zazen instruction, it's very detailed. Not generally for beginners, but this is not exactly beginner's Zazen instruction. It's Zazen instruction for all of us and covers many aspects that are not covered in beginner's Zazen instruction. When we give Zazen instruction to beginners, we do it in a fairly thorough, fundamental way.

[01:24]

But then after you have Zazen instruction, you have to actually practice. Then when you actually practice, then we give you some more instruction to cover what you didn't know or forgot. the practice and instruction come together. So we cover this kind of re-fresh our memory over and over again. Because it's very easy to forget some points or not pay attention to certain things. So I want to start by covering a point about how we enter our seat. After we come into the zendo and bow, we come to our cushion and bow.

[02:29]

And when we bow to the cushion, we're also bowing to the people on either side of us who happen to be sitting there. So when we bow, we're bowing to the Christian. We're bowing to all the people that came before us whose efforts have allowed us to practice on their Christian. So that's one aspect. The other aspect is we're bowing to the people on either side. So if you're sitting there and somebody bows to the Christian, you should bow to them. And then after you bow to your cushion, you turn around and bow out. And when you bow this way, you're bowing to people across the room, but you're also bowing to the whole universe, everyone. You don't have to think about everyone, but just bow.

[03:30]

So bowing is a very serious practice. And if you're standing on the other side of the room and someone bows, then you also bow with that person. That's a Zendo Enfit. And we always turn to the right after you bow. So you turn to the right. And then after you sit down, Some people are turning to the right, and some people are turning to the left, and it's conflicting. So they all turn the same way, and don't bump into each other.

[04:41]

So when you sit down on the tan, to get into zazen posture, You can sit down like this on the Zabaton, and then put one foot up onto the Zabaton. Don't put your feet on the meal board. The meal board is the table where we eat, so we avoid putting our foot on the meal board, which goes for those meal boards on that tong too. And then just lift yourself up. You may not be able to do it that way, but find some way to do it so that you don't And then you cross your legs. I'm not going to show you so much about crossing your legs today. Just take a posture which you can sit with comfortably. I always encourage people to not take an extreme posture when you begin to sit, especially

[05:43]

Little by little, your posture will become, as you become used to zazen, you'll be able to sit in half lotus or full lotus, possibly. And it's good to keep working toward that, but, because the more tight your, the more you can get your legs up, the easier it is to sit eventually, or the more stable your position is. But, if you try to do something that's more than you can do, then you cause yourself a problem. So, you have to know, it's a subtle process, and you should go step by step, little by little, not trying to do something too extreme, because someone else is doing it. You may say, well, so-and-so sits very easily in half lotus, I can't. Well, that realization is enlightenment.

[06:47]

So, please retain your enlightenment. I can't do that, so I'll do it this way. Don't fall into the delusion of thinking that you also should do it that way. So, each one of us has our own is in a certain place in practice, and we shouldn't confuse ourselves with someone else's practice. So, choose a posture that you can hold. The main thing is to be able to sit through a period of Zazen without moving. So choose a posture in which you can sit through a period of Zazen without moving. And if you come to Sashin, sit through the period in a posture where you can sit the easiest in Sashin. If you can sit easily, you know, in easy posture, then your leg will tell you, sooner or later your leg will say, I want to move up. I want to have a little more extreme position.

[07:54]

And it naturally will tell you, your body will tell you. Sometimes your body may need a little coaxing, but that's, you know, another side. So anyway, I think you get the point. Take a position where you can sit easily for a long period of time. And when you have got your legs in your posture, put your hands on the back of your knees like this, with the backs of your hands on your knees. This is a kind of relaxing posture. So I'd like us all to do it together. What you do is just sway back and forth. Sway to the left. Let's start with the left. And go as far as you can. Just bend your whole body. Let your body loosen up. And feel your knees coming apart.

[08:55]

You know what I mean? Don't let go of any tenseness you have so that you can just go as far over as you can. Then the other way. Feel your back, stretching out your waist, stretching out. Then, come back the other way, a little bit less, and quite as far. And then to the right. And then to the left again, but less far. And each time, a little bit less, so that finally you're sitting up straight. And then this is the transition between coming into the zendo and actually sitting zazen. Now I want to next talk about posture.

[10:00]

And the next thing to do is to establish our posture. And there are various ways, various postures that we can sit in. the two fundamental postures that we can sit in. One is to sit in a very extreme way with the lower back pushed forward. And the other is with your back more or less straight. So not everybody can sit the same way. And so you either fall into the category of back pushed forward or straight back. Curved back is not good. because you don't have any strength. And also it's not a, you quickly tire out. So important point is to have a foundation, firm foundation for the upper body, which means to have a straight back with vertebrae lined up, one on top of the other. And then on top is our head.

[11:03]

So in order to establish posture, I want to show you first, before you do this, to push your lower back forward, and at the same time, arch like this. Keep your head up. And then when you come up, you sit up straight. Back. Very straight. Roll your head forward. so that you have very extreme posture. This is probably the most extreme posture you can take. So I'd like you to try doing that. Push your lower back forward and arch your back. Lean as far forward as you can. Feel your lower back stretching. Okay, now slowly, slowly sit up. Straight, straight, [...] straight. Now, if you're not used to this, Now roll your head forward.

[12:08]

If you're not used to this, it feels maybe like you're leaning backwards. If you're not used to sitting up straight, straight feels like you're leaning backwards. So don't worry about that. You won't fall over. And you stretch out the back of your neck. It feels very good. If you have a headache, it will take care of your headache. So this is the posture of our back in Zazen. And when we sit Zazen, we make our effort to maintain this posture throughout the whole period. We may fall asleep or forget about it, you know. But the actual Zazen is to keep waking up to this. Zazen is about constantly waking up to this fact

[13:10]

And during the period of zazen, your posture will settle. But even so, you should keep this kind of effort throughout the whole period of zazen. And if you find it difficult, that's okay. It should be difficult, a little bit difficult to do. And then our mudra, If you hold your fingers together, fingers and thumbs together, and put your left palm inside of your right palm, so that the end of your middle finger is right in the center of your right palm. And then with your thumbs you form a circle. Yeah. And the tops of your thumbs are touching each other. And then you put your hands up against your lower abdomen.

[14:21]

Some people hold their hands up here, but you can hold your hands. It's better, I think, to hold your hands down here. You can put your back of your palms on your foot or on your legs, depending on what's there, but not leaning. You don't lean on your mudra. You just hold it there. And it should be up against your lower abdomen. And mudra is held with good form, very good form, but not tensely. You don't press your thumbs together. And you don't have a rigid feeling in your hands. And the mudra is a barometer for what's happening to us in Zazen. If your thumbs collapse, it means you're falling asleep, usually, or dreaming.

[15:23]

And if your thumbs start pointing up in the air, like this, it means you're forgetting the form. You're wandering, usually. And if your thumbs start pressing together real tight, it means that you need to ease up. let go of the tenseness in your body. The body easily gets very tense. And I would say most people are very tense. And in zazen, most people hold a very tense posture. But I'll talk about that later. Okay, so this is our mudra, and this is our posture. Now our head, is big weight, like a big stone. And if you put a stone on the top of a pile of blocks, in order for that whole pillar to balance itself, the head has to balance along with, the top stone has to balance along with the vertebrae.

[16:37]

So if your head is leaning forward, then putting a strain on your back and your muscles have to compensate in order to, for you to stay upright. And so you say, oh, I have a backache eventually. I don't know why my back hurts in Zazen, but it's there. So and if your head is tilted the other way, leaning up, Then it's easy just to fantasize. Anyway, it throws your posture this way. So the point is to be not leaning, not let your head lean forward or backward or this way or this way, but to keep it up on top of your spine. You keep constantly adjusting your spine and your posture because you're always moving.

[17:42]

And to keep that balance. So you're always looking for the balance. You can spend your whole time in Zazen just finding your balance. Keeping your back straight, finding your balance. So you have your mudra, and you have your posture, and put your teeth together in the back of your mouth. So if you have teeth back there, just put them together. Some of mine are gone now. But the front teeth naturally overlap the bottom, the upper teeth naturally overlap the bottom teeth. then your tongue clings to the roof of your mouth, and you breathe naturally through your nose. But before we breathe naturally through our nose, I'd like us to take a deep breath through our mouth.

[18:50]

And you can do this when you sit down in zazen, when you take your posture in zazen. Take a few deep breaths through your mouth, and I'll show you how. When you take your breath, you let it go all the way down so that your lower abdomen expands and it feels like a balloon expanding. And then when you exhale, it contracts and you can push, really push, so that you feel your front and back coming together and push all the air out, everything. And if you feel there's some air left, if you feel you've come to the end, Push a little more. So let's do that three times. Open your mouth. Do it a lot. So you have to go to extremes.

[20:45]

Feel a little light-headed? You should feel a little light-headed. When you breathe like that, you get a little light-headed. It's like if you play a flute for the first time, you should feel a little bit light-headed and dizzy. You can do that without making a sound when you sit zazen, in the beginning, just to establish your breathing in your lower abdomen. You don't breathe in your abdomen, of course, but it feels like you're breathing here. You get your breath as low as possible. And then when you breathe through your nose, Not up here. Don't breathe in your chest. If you find yourself breathing in your chest, which is very natural in our tense society, then make an effort to bring your breath down to your lower abdomen.

[21:59]

So that's what we're doing. And we're establishing our breathing by taking a few deep breaths that way. And once you've established where your breath is, then you just allow yourself to breathe naturally through your nose. If your sinuses are plugged up, you can breathe through your mouth, but normally you breathe through your nose. So, inhale, exhale. And it all takes place down here. And we watch our breath during Zazen, we watch our breath coming and going, but we don't watch it coming all the way up and going all the way down. We just watch it as it rises and falls in our lower abdomen. Like a saw, when you saw a piece of wood, you don't watch the end of the saw, you watch where the saw and the wood come together. So you just watch this happening. So you put your, sometimes people's, the instruction for Zazen is to put your mind in your left hand.

[23:06]

But actually, just keep it on your breathing. Your breathing will be about where your left hand is, or your right hand. Just follow your breath at that point. And if you find yourself breathing, sometimes when we have a lot of pain in Zazen, we tend to breathe in a shallow way. You have to let go of that tendency to do that and relax and let your breath come down again. So the way to align your posture is that your nose is in line with your navel. That gives you alignment this way. from side to side. If your nose is in line with your navel, you can say, oh yeah. And your ears should be in line with your shoulders.

[24:12]

So if your head is like this, well, the alignment's like that, right? So bring your head back so that your ears are in line with your shoulders. And constantly, What you can do to keep your posture upright is you can stretch your waist. Try stretching your waist. See how it feels to stretch your waist as if you're just growing, stretching yourself, growing up to the ceiling. And you can lift up your sternum. Sternum is right here. Lift. Not throwing out your chest exactly, You lift your sternum and it has an effect on your lower back, which you can feel immediately. So this is posture which is not being, not conditioned posture. It's not conditioned by events, but it's not conditioned by something coming toward you.

[25:22]

But it's just completely free posture. which it comes from your own determination to sit up straight. So this is really sitting in freedom, complete freedom from any kind of influence. Yes? Well, the effort is in your lower back. It's not in your upper body. The effort, even though you raise your sternum, you're still, you know, fluttering in the breeze. It's not tense.

[26:24]

You're not tense. And this is another point, is your arms are not holding you up. And your upper back is not holding you up. Your shoulders are not holding you up. So there's nothing to be tense about. Only your lower back. That's why we put so much effort into our lower back. And lifting up the sternum is just a way of keeping our posture straight, opening up our chest. So if you open up... Any sort of holding up, like that feeling of holding up at the sides? The waist, yeah. You don't, well, you don't really feel much there. So it's really your back. But even though you're sitting up very straight like this, your abdomen is completely loose. There's no tenseness here at all. This whole front is completely loose.

[27:24]

Your arms are completely loose. Your arms are hanging from your vertebrae like branches of a tree. So, each one of our joints is independent. This is a very important point. Each one of our joints, unless we have arthritis, each one of our joints is completely independent. And we can form any kind of form we want. So, even though each one of our pieces of our body are together in this one form, each one is still independent. They're not locked together. So if somebody hits your elbow, just your elbow moves. Your whole body doesn't move with it. You're not cast in cement. So the point is to be completely at one with this form,

[28:27]

which is a very tight form, and on the other hand, be completely loose within the form. That's the secret of Zazen. Even though you have a form which is completely formal and so-called unmoving, to have complete looseness of freedom within that form. Otherwise, you can't really sit. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense to do what we're doing. So your lower abdomen is completely loose. This posture allows your breathing to be as completely free as it can be. And if you're really breathing down here, not up here, then you immediately can understand it.

[29:38]

And so while we're sitting, The only thing you have to worry about is maintaining posture and following breathing, following your breath and maintaining your posture and dealing with your thoughts or not dealing with your thoughts or how you deal. I haven't gotten to that point yet. So posture is a very specific thing. And during the whole period of zazen, you can put your attention on posture the whole time. And it's good to do that. Put your mind in your lower back, and on your posture, and on your spine as it goes up, and the position of your head.

[30:43]

So all during zazen, you're checking your posture, because it's always changing. The posture's always changing, so you're always checking over and over and over the parts of your body to see that you're sitting up straight. If you have that kind of concentration, when you finish zazen, your energy will be quite high. But we don't do it to create high energy. It has to be a byproduct of zazen. Also, your mind will be clear. And when you've established your posture, after about 15 or 20 minutes of sitting, then you can watch your breath. Just let your mind follow your breath as your breath comes and goes. And don't try to control your breath.

[31:45]

Zazen is not breath control, but just let your mind follow your breathing, which is a very subtle thing. If your mind is subtle enough to follow your breath as it comes and goes, then you have very good concentration. If it's fast, let it be fast. If it's slow, let it be slow. But don't try to make it one way or the other, or don't try to creates some special rhythm. And then, we always teach beginners to count their breath. When we give Zazen instructions, we say, you should count your breath. And we count from 1 to 10 on the exhale. So every time you exhale, you count. Hold on. When you get to 10, you start again with 1.

[32:52]

But you don't just tick off the numbers in a mechanical way. The whole breath is the 1. The number 1 and the breath are the same. So the point is to bring the number that you're counting and the breath to make them one thing, so that your mind and breath are one piece. And you can go back and forth between your breathing and your posture. When you're watching your posture, you also have a sense of your breath. And when you're watching your breath, you also have a sense of your posture. And when we sit, we keep our eyes open. Sometimes we fall asleep or our eyes close, but you should make an effort to keep your eyes open so that you don't fall asleep or dream, even though we do those things.

[33:54]

We keep waking up. So, keeping our eyes open is an important aspect. You don't have to look at something or make an effort to pinpoint your vision, but it's just vision, just hearing, just feeling, just breathing. This is Zazie. Not, if something, if some sound comes into your ear, you don't say, that's an airplane, or that was a car. Just hear the sound. Just hearing hears. Just seeing sees. Just feeling feels. Without making an identification. So, all of our senses are open in Zazen, but We don't try to hear something and we don't try to identify something.

[35:02]

But in your field of vision, you'll see many things. And if you have to do something, you respond. So, This last aspect I want to talk about before our questions is how you... Well, one thing is dealing with the thoughts in your mind. Thoughts are always coming up in our consciousness. And when a thought appears in consciousness that's different than the thought that we're thinking. The thought that we're thinking is Zazen. Posture, breathing, so forth. But when other thoughts that we don't try to think will continually come up in consciousness, and when those thoughts come up, you just let them come. So if you have a thought, it appears in consciousness, and then you just let the thought march on.

[36:09]

If you start building on the thought, if you think this is a good idea, and you start building on it, which we always do, that's called thinking. But just the thought appearing is not thinking. It's just a thought which appears. But if you start to use that thought as a foundation for fantasy, for a dream, that's called thinking mind. So, when thinking mind takes over, as soon as you recognize that thinking mind has taken over, then without blaming or judging or anything, you just let go of the thought and come back, wake up to this situation. So we're constantly waking up to this present situation of Zazen. That's what Zazen is. Over and over, waking up. Either you fall asleep or you start thinking or something. And in just bringing yourself back, constantly bringing yourself back to posture and breathing and to this moment, this moment's activity, which is our decision.

[37:32]

When we sit in zazen, we make a decision and a commitment. So what we keep bringing ourself back to is our decision and our commitment. It has nothing to do with our feelings or our thoughts or whatever else is going on. That's extraneous to the situation. But when it comes up, it's included. We don't reject it exactly, but we keep waking up to our commitment and our decision to sit Zazen in the present, to be awake in the present. without being moved by conditioned things. It's actually all very simple, but very complicated. It's pretty complicated simplicity. And when you sit, even though we have tension, we have to have good tension in order to sit well in that form.

[38:36]

Anything beyond the proper tension is called tenseness. So we sit with tension, but not with tenseness. So you're constantly letting go of the tenseness in your body, which is a very important aspect. Even though we sit with very good posture, with good tension, no tenseness. So we feel at the same time that there's tension holding us up, we're allowing ourself to be very free and allow, when I say relaxed, it may not be what you mean by relaxed. It may be. But when I say, what I mean by relaxed is the softness within the tension. So in order to sit zazen, there has to be some tension, same time, complete softness. That's why I was explaining this.

[39:42]

If someone moves your elbow, just your elbow moves. It doesn't move your whole body. If I come behind you and adjust your head, whatever I do, it's okay. Your body's still sitting zazen. but it doesn't disturb you. But if you're locked together as one piece, and I move your head, then you'll say, ouch, or ooh, or what are you doing? So every piece of our body should be independent in zazen. You're not locked together. You're freely putting all these little pieces together in one act. There's no rigidity in it at all. But it takes time to find that.

[40:55]

So what I'm talking about is what you should be working toward in Zazen. I don't expect that everybody will be able to do this in the ideal way that I'm talking about it right away. But every time we sit, we have to give ourselves that kind of Zazen instruction. So The people that I ask to give Zazen instruction are the people who give themselves Zazen instruction and are sincere about it and know how to give themselves Zazen instruction. So every time you sit in Zazen, you should give yourself Zazen instruction and then pretty soon you'll be a teacher. Eventually you'll be a teacher. But someone can be sitting for 10 years, and they don't do it. They don't give themselves Zazen instruction, or they don't pay attention, or they don't want to put in that effort.

[42:01]

Also, there are exceptions. There are always exceptions, and everyone is not physically the same. But Zazen is not a physical thing like athletics. It's just handling your body, putting your body and mind together in communion with the universe in a way that is not supplication, but an offering. We're just offering our whole body and mind in the cleanest way we know how, with all of our strength, in just pure presentation.

[43:19]

And if you know how to sit well, even though it looks like there's a lot of effort to it, it's the most comfortable way. When you really learn how to sit well, you can sit all day in the most comfortable way that you can't in any other way. No matter how many cushions you pile around yourself and try to be comfortable, eventually you're not comfortable. The person in bed, who stays in bed too long, is the most uncomfortable of people. Anyway, I don't have as much time for questions as I would like, but please, if you have any questions, Oh, I knew it was coming.

[44:34]

Pain. Do you have a specific question about it? Relaxing with pain. Trying to relax. The problem of trying to let go. There you go. If we sit long enough, either at the very beginning or if we sit long enough, we eventually have some kind of painful difficulty in our legs or in our back. And part of that difficulty is doing something new, if you're a beginner. And part of it is Just that there will always be pain in zazen. There's always some problem in zazen. Although, you can get to a point where you can sit through a period of zazen with no pain at all, which is also very common.

[45:40]

But longer sittings, we have a lot of pain, usually, eventually. So the fundamental point with pain is to not set up an opposition to the pain. Opposition, whenever we set up an opposition, then we create what's called pain or suffering. So there can be pain, but pain is not necessarily suffering. But we tend to associate the two. Pain and suffering, we tend to associate as one thing. But we can have pain, and if you analyze them a little more closely, you have pain and suffering. And sometimes they come together, and sometimes they don't. So the pain that we have in Zazen,

[46:43]

Our attitude toward the pain we have in Zazen is to, instead of rejecting it or setting up an opposition to it, saying I don't like it or I do like it, then we become the pain, merge with the pain. And then the pain may or may not be strong or weak, But when there's no opposition to it, then you can settle in with it. You can just settle on the pain. It becomes part of the whole process. It doesn't stand out in some distinct way as a focus. So although, you know, right now it's, we're toward the end of, you know, you've been sitting for a while and we all have some pain, you know, I have a little pain in my leg, you know, but the pain in my leg is not bothering me from talking to you or from sitting while I posture straight or from watching my breath.

[48:02]

There, there is some pain, but if I say I don't like it or that's bad, or will I be able to walk again? Or, you know, various things. The more I deal with it on that level, the more I'm separating myself from it. But without saying anything, or without thinking anything about it, just to let it be. And not rejecting it, and not dwelling on it. just be open to whatever is there, then I can be with it. And it can accompany, you know, it's part of Zazen. It's not something that I'm trying to escape from or enjoying particularly. And that's, we all experience that in Sashi. And we sit there, there's the pain.

[49:06]

And sometimes the pain is very intense. and helps us to focus, actually. It brings us out of our dream world and into the world of this reality, which you can accept, but it's hard. It takes time to be able to touch that fire and to really be able to deal with it. But once you can deal with it, you feel a lot of confidence. you don't feel that you're being dominated by something, but rather there's something very strong, pain is something very strong, but without using any of the usual escape mechanisms, or distancing mechanisms, or separations, if we really put our whole attention into what we're doing, then the pain, even though it's very strong, we're able to deal with it.

[50:19]

And that gives us a lot of confidence in our ability to not be pushed around by our feelings or by In regard to pain, at a certain point, pain, like in sports, indicates possible injury. And I was just wondering if you know of any people who sat for many years who have developed back problems or leg problems because they weren't sitting properly? Yeah, people have done that. Mostly knee problems. Not back problems. I repeat, back problems is not something you develop because of zazen. Zazen will really help your back, strengthen your back. But knee problems, because knees are delicate, you know, and people get very much attached to their pain.

[51:32]

You can have a lot of pain in your knees, but if you become attached to it, and and try to escape from it while you're there too much. In a critical situation, you can't hurt your knees. So that's why I always say to take a posture that's not too extreme, because your knees will be painful when you're learning to sit. And if you take too extreme a position, you can hurt your knees. So that's why I say little by little. Even though little by little will also hurt, but it won't give you a problem when you're dealing with how you can stay there and really just completely be there with it. the struggle you go through will be hard on your knees. The pain is not hard on your knees, but the struggle really, you know, the struggle to allow yourself to just be present without making a split.

[52:41]

The point is how you can be one with what's going on and not separate yourself. That's the point. And of course, you know, want to separate ourselves. That's our natural instinctive thing. So, you know, it's a struggle. I've had this indecision for years over my breathing. Breathing? When I breathe, I let my On the other hand, if I maintain that deep exhalation and then a slight sharp inhalation, and it stops right at the heart, my thoughts immediately cease and my perception becomes sharper.

[53:47]

So I don't know if... Well, I mean, if you give some strength here, Well, there is a way that you can put a little pressure on your exhale. When you exhale, you know, some people do that. But that actually makes you a little lighter, usually more heady. At the end of your exhale, to push, give a little push on your diaphragm. And then inhale. Inhaling is quicker than exhaling. or you give a little push, you know, that's okay to do.

[54:52]

But that's, usually though, we say just let your breath come and go, but you can also give a little push, a little strength down there. If it makes you feel more clear-headed, fine, but some people, it would have a different effect maybe, but I think it's okay. What do you call sleepiness? Well, we used to walk around with a stick more. Sleepiness is something you have to take care of yourself. You know, you gotta go... Or... You know, something. Blink. But sometimes we walk around with a stick. And if you're really sleepy, you should ask for the stick because it wakes you up. And not only does it wake you up, but it wakes everybody else up.

[55:54]

And if it's done properly, it doesn't really hurt. I mean, you feel it, but it's not, you know. And it's quite a wonderful, you know, experience, waking up. Everything disappears. And you fall asleep again. Just that kind of feeling of activity in the zendo gives the zendo more a wakeful feeling. But here people do sleep, but they don't sleep so much. I sleep probably as much as anybody, or even more. You have to find your own way of staying awake. Okay, thank you for coming and I hope that it was a benefit.

[57:01]

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