I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. I was asked to introduce Mary Moseed, and I didn't tell her that, sorry. Anyway, Mary is a Zen priest, and she is a disciple of our abbot, Sojin Milweissman. She's also the abbot of her own... I don't call myself an abbot. She is the founder and leader of her own Zen center, if you can call it that. It's the Clearwater Zendo in Vallejo. It's a very nice place to go and practice. I've been many times. And she has a long experience now in Zen practice. lived for years at the Green Gulch and at City Center and at Tassajar, all of them, and been the Tenzo at maybe all three of these?

[01:10]

No, I was never Tenzo at Green Gulch. Okay, but these are very important and difficult positions, great practice positions, and so she's a great authority in the Dharma. Oh my God. Good morning. You know there's a koan about the Buddha gets up on the seat and Manjushri strikes a plaque and says, behold the dharma of the dharma king is thus and the Buddha gets up and leaves. It's tempting. that I can't trip over my robes this time, I'm already up here. Thank you. I've never been introduced here before.

[02:11]

I want to talk about not moving. And I've been turning it in my mind and talking about it now for a little. And it's difficult for me to know just how to talk about it. I think it's a difficult subject. Not moving is central to our practice. In the Fukan Zazengi, Buddha says that that's the hallmark of our school, total engagement in a mobile sitting. And I think it is right in the middle, not moving. I remember when I started, it seemed like I always heard Mel talking about not moving.

[03:13]

And I could not sit still for a whole period of Zazen, especially during like a one-day sitting or Sashin or something. And I was always arguing with him in my head. about I'm not gonna hurt myself. It doesn't make sense to hurt yourself. I'm not a masochist. This isn't Japan and I'm not a Japanese adolescent boy. And I actually thought that I was arguing with him. And then about, I think it was about, A year, it might have been two years after I started practicing, there came, I guess it was a session, we were sitting facing out at night and there was this period and my knees hurt and I just knew I wasn't going to move. But it was not a decision that I made.

[04:16]

It just was something I knew. It was an organic experience. And I remember facing out and I remember this on the surface there were like the we talk about you know on the waves on the surface and there on the surface there was well why can't I move I want to move well this hurts that's ridiculous not moving and somebody that was seen to me I don't know I don't remember who it was somebody or another moved and their mind is going well so and so moved how come I can't move you know and and at the same time underneath that it just was not it wasn't a question It just was something I knew that I wasn't going to move. And from then on, I stopped moving, pretty much. Let me tell you that when I do zazen instruction, when I talk to people that are starting out in the practice, I say that, and I mean this, that the place to start is not not moving.

[05:23]

It's not the place to start. When you're beginning, it's really important to get to know your own body in this posture, whether it's in a chair or on a cushion, whatever, getting to know your body and getting to know what its signals mean. Because sometimes pain is just muscles stretching out. And sometimes pain is resistance pain. It's that your mind, your psyche doesn't want to be with something. So on some level it says, oh, okay, let's make the knee hurt. Ah, got to move and then change the subject. And sometimes you're sitting on your sciatic nerve and you're hurting yourself, you're injuring yourself. And it's not always easy, maybe not always possible, to know the difference.

[06:24]

But as you sit and as you have this experience, you get to know your body in this position, in this posture, and you get to have a sense of what kind of pain it is. I would suggest that before you move, if you're starting out, before you move, before you make that decision that you get as close to the pain as you can, really notice the detail of it. And from that place, decide whether or not to move. Okay, but I'm just saying, I don't wanna, I am gonna talk about the importance of not moving and what it means, but I just wanna really emphasize that I'm not talking about injuring yourself. Sciatica is a, What do you call it? There's a kind of, you know, sort of injuries that go with particular kinds of activity or something. Yes, it's an occupational hazard, but I don't think it's necessary.

[07:28]

So, not moving, sitting still, total engagement in a mobile sitting. What is that? What is that and why would you bother? Sometimes I've heard people say we should sit still even when it hurts or it's uncomfortable or unpleasant because time will probably come when we're sick or there's some chronic disease or something and we are going to have to learn how to live with pain. I don't really think that doesn't do it for me. I figure, you know, if and when I have some sort of illness or disease where I have pain that's just not going to go away, I'll have to learn how to live with it and then I'll learn how to live with that, you know. I think there is a much deeper reason

[08:40]

to sit still. And it's because our practice is about finding equanimity in the middle of our lives. We're talking about waking up to reality. It's not about going off to la-la land. It's not about cutting off thought and cutting off our emotions and our experiences, it's learning how to find stability in the middle of all that, a kind of radical acceptance of our lives as it is. Well, having the mind that's not pulled around by experiences, emotions, thoughts, That's difficult, difficult. That's the practice of at least a lifetime, maybe more.

[09:46]

We have periods when we can accept ourselves and our lives as it is, and sometimes we can't. Zazen is like a little, physically sitting Zazen is a laboratory or a time of, we talk about practice, it is practice. It's a simple situation and you know how complicated it is, right? But just sitting there with just your body and your breath. simply paying attention to this body and this breath and watching this mind going off like a popcorn machine at the movies. So I think that we sit still as a way, this practice is a very physical practice, it's a lot about the body, so we sit still

[10:52]

I think one way of understanding it is in acting with our bodies our intention to not be pulled around by the experiences of our lives. So we enact equanimity with our body, we practice it. In a way, I think we could say we're exercising the faith muscle to trust our experience. And as we have the experience of being able to sit still, then we can believe that it's possible. And then we can believe that it's possible to figuratively sit still for the experience of our lives, that we could let our mind sit still, if you will.

[12:06]

So developing a trust. And you could also think of it as developing, I sometimes think of habit energy as wearing a groove. So we're kind of trying to establish a groove, we're digging a role. so that every time we sit still, we're encouraging our habit of stillness in the middle of activity. We're enacting it with our body, which is not, of course, unconnected to the mind. They're not really two. We in Western society tend to separate the mind and the body as if they were two different things. But enacting our intention with our body is a lot of what this practice is about. So sitting still is enacting with our body that intention to not move, to not let the mind move.

[13:15]

And it is a kind of a radical allowing of stillness, a radical willingness, a complete willingness to sit still for whatever's going on, so that if there is fear that arises or lust that arises or sadness that arises, a radical willingness to allow that, whatever it is. not to run after it, the joy that arises, not to turn away from it. And sitting still is enacting that with our bodies. Not making such a distinction between pain in the knee and pain in the heart. And I want to talk about

[14:22]

this mind that doesn't move, this not moving in a different way, because sometimes we still have to move, right? Sometimes you know that you're hurting yourself, or you haven't been sitting very long, or there's a period that's really long. At Tassajara at any rate, well, we have the open period here. Or Tassajara, there's a period that's an hour and five minutes long sometimes, with an opportunity in the middle to stand up. So consider when moving, moving with the mind of Zazen. Consider non-moving. We talk about not moving. What about non-moving? It's not about just, it's not just about sitting still.

[15:24]

It's about sitting with a mind that's still. There was a man named Yao Shan, and he was a student of Sherdo Shichian, otherwise known as Sekito Kisen, Sekito Kisen Daisho, the man who wrote the Sandaokai, the merging of difference and unity, or the harmony of difference and equality. We have so many names for it nowadays. So Shirdo was his teacher, and then he was the teacher of Yunyan, who was Dengshan's teacher, and Dengshan is the To of Soto Zen, so he's right in the middle of our experience. And he was a teacher who talked about non-thinking.

[16:27]

which Dogen also talks about in the Fukanza Zangi. Think about not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. So I'm talking about non-moving. A kind of, again, a radical allowing of not moving. A kind of radical acceptance of whatever is without grasping after it, without avoiding it. One day as Yaoshan was sitting, Sherdo asked him, what are you doing here? Yaoshan said, I'm not doing a thing. Sherdo said, then you're just sitting leisurely. Yaoshan said, if I were sitting leisurely, I'd be doing something. Sherdo said, you say you're not doing anything. What is it that you're not doing? Yaoshan said, a thousand sages don't know.

[17:28]

Chardot then wrote in response, long abiding together, not knowing its name, just going on practicing like this. Since ancient times, the sages don't know. Will searching everywhere now make it known? Not. So do you see in that the radical acceptance? Without knowing, without having an idea, just sitting still in the middle of whatever comes up. Not seeking after something, not trying to avoid something. Just watching. There's a piece from a lecture that Catherine Thanes wrote in the most recent issue of the newsletter from the Santa Cruz and Monterey Zen Center.

[18:42]

And she talks about willingness to accept our ordinariness. And again, this sitting still in the middle of your experience. Can you accept, can I accept simply being another person? when I was at Tassajara, I did something, I don't know, I did something to my knees, and I could not sit for an hour straight, and I decided that I just, that was over for me, that I couldn't sit for a whole hour, so that when we sat for one of those long periods, when this little tiny bell would ring, I would stand up. So I worked with this mind, of zazen. I worked with non-moving. Could I stand up for five minutes and not have my mind shift? Could I not look around the zendo?

[19:45]

Could I stop with the, oh, I'm too old for this, oh, I'm incompetent, oh, I shouldn't have da, da, da. Could I just do zazen? Could I just hear the bell, Do a little bow, turn around, stand up, stand in, you know, like this, finding my posture, paying attention to my breath, five minutes, little bell, little bow, turn around, sit down, without the mind changing. That's non-moving. And that was my practice. I got so that I could pretty much do that. Or at any rate, that it wasn't particularly different, the standing up wasn't so different from the zazen. And if it was busy mind zazen, it was busy mind standing up. But it wasn't a big difference. It wasn't such, there weren't waves there.

[20:47]

And then came work period. Came April. And all these new people came. A lot of them really young, people that were out of college, there for the summer, and brand new to the practice. And we were doing that kind of sitting with an interval. And so I'm sitting there, and the little bell rings, and I didn't move. I'm sitting there and thinking, you're supposed to move, you're supposed to stand up. I couldn't get myself to do it. And I was also, I'm sitting there kind of laughing at myself, but it was the, you know, the ego came up. I couldn't, I was senior. I was experienced. I was a resident. And I could not get myself to stand up. And even towards the end of the hour, my knees really hurt. And I sat there, watched my mind. The waves were like tsunamis.

[21:52]

It was ridiculous, and it was funny, and it was stupid. Anyway, it took me a few days before I could get to the point of being willing to stand up, to accept myself as an ordinary person. and to stop moving. Because believe me, those few days when I was not standing up, that was moving. That was moving. So I think what I'm talking about is a kind of a willingness to set aside the ego, to set aside what Catherine Tannis calls our defenses and strategies. So if your knee hurts, can you just let it be a painful knee?

[22:54]

If your back hurts, can you just let it be an aching back? Sit up straighter, give it breath, send blood, but not moving. And if you do move, can you move with a mind that doesn't move? Can you move with a mind of zazen? Though I don't think that we sit still in order to practice for cancer or rheumatoid arthritis or something like that. There is a way that we sit, not to work with some difficulty in the future, but to be willing to work with those same kind of difficulties right now. Because when you sit still, often you meet fear, you meet

[23:59]

Anxiety. Someone talked the other night at a sitting group I went to in Sacramento about, she said at the end of her exhale, anxiety arose. That's common. Sometimes we call the end of the exhale the little death because we die on the exhale, right? You exhale, you don't inhale anymore. That's a definition of dying. So we have to kind of have faith that the next one is going to come. There's that pause. And there is often, there is anxiety there if you can be quiet enough to feel that. or we sit and where self meets no self, where there is that place of dropping away of ego-based thinking and ego-based practice. That can be scary, because it's not familiar territory.

[25:06]

Egolessness is not familiar territory. So we sit still in order to get to know those places, that are not so accessible to us other times. And when we move, it's like we're kind of often changing the subject. Then the subject becomes the moving, the new position, whatever your mind does. about it, the self-criticism or the defensiveness or the hoo-ha, whatever it might be. It changes the subject. So we sit still in order to really, really get to know our experience, get to know our lives, to get to know those

[26:07]

I started to say gaps, it's completely not about gaps, it's about completely being one with whatever's going on. But to get to know maybe those quiet spaces, those pauses where the noble truth of dis-ease can arise so we can really get to know it. And then find out What's beyond the resistance? What's beyond the anxiety? What's there? And the way I know to find that is not moving. So I think it is fundamental. I think maybe that's enough for me.

[27:23]

Do you have any comments or questions or does this bring up anything? Yes. I think even though it might have been your ego that had you wanting to continue or not stand up I think that when we don't move, that's another thing, is that we help other people not move. And there are times when I'm okay about, you know, it's not so hard for me to not move, and that's helping other people. And then other times it's really hard for me to sit still, but the fact that other people sit still helps me. But I think that I was Head Dawn, and I was practicing service all the time, and I was going to be ordained, and so I was trying to learn how to get up without using my hands or something, and I was doing it a lot, and I think I really

[28:40]

hurt my knees. So there's another example sometimes I think that we can offer each other, which is taking care of ourselves. So I think that at that time, it wasn't the time for me to sit still, because I really I mean, now my knees are, I can sit for an hour and it's no, I thought at the time that that was the end of that, but it turns out it wasn't. But anyway, I think, I hear you, but I think in that particular instance it wasn't, it wasn't good. Ellen. Well, we all have these different bodies, as you were saying. It took me several years before I could not move anymore. I could sit, you know, sequential periods of Zazen without a lot of pain. What I find now after a number of years, there's this other place of not moving, which I may have missed.

[29:48]

You might have talked about it in some place else. But there's a place of joy. ready, if you can believe that. And I said, I don't want to move. This is so sweet and quiet and still. And I said, well, the bell rang. And now it's time to get up. It's OK. Just leave that behind also. But I just wanted to say, because I'm as big a doubter as probably anybody in this room, there too, you cannot force it, you can't make it happen. But if you sort of keep at this practice, it's something that a lot of people experience.

[30:54]

And so you're just naturally not moving. It's really wonderful. chunk of time at Tassajara where that was happening a lot. And I used to think about, you know how you learn how to ride a bicycle? And at some point you think, oh, I could just keep on. You know, because somebody's holding you or whatever and helping you and you just go like half a block or something, a parking lot. And then you think, oh, you know, I don't have to stop. I could just keep going and something shifts. And I used to think of it like that. I would be kind of making the effort to sit still and so on and then I would remember about, oh, I don't have to stop this. I could just go on. But also to know that this is not, there are no guarantees there either. more and more.

[31:59]

Yeah, I just, I touched on it. I didn't, so it's helpful for you to emphasize it. Sue. Thank you. It's very helpful to focus on this. I have two comments. One is that I think it's also helpful to see people move. observed that other people are being released still, but I know myself, because I have such a strong voice that's saying, what's the matter with me, everybody else can do this, and I can't, to know that sometimes other people have different ways of taking care of themselves, and it might not be being like a statue, and it helps me to forgive myself. And also, I'm particularly respectful and appreciative of people who sit or whatever, people who sit in chairs, people who lie down on the floor, people who have other ways that they need to sit to take care of their bodies and that they are modeling doing that, you know, with equanimity is very helpful.

[33:02]

You know, you, yeah, oh, I'm sorry. And of course, the other thing I wanted to say is that I found that sometimes setting one's intention at the beginning of a period for some particular thing is helpful and setting my intention to not move in a specific moment, in a specific period, I sometimes find it very helpful. In this whole period, I'm not gonna move. Just a simple little vow like that. Yeah, and that's, you remind me of something I wanted to talk about and I didn't, that it's important to set yourself, to respect yourself enough, take care of yourself enough, to really set yourself carefully when you sit down each time, so that you lay the groundwork for not moving. And sometimes if you're kind of a little bit late or something like that and everybody else is settled, it's a little hard to take the time you need to really set your base and make sure that you have the curve in your lower back and that you're really sitting up. straight and so on. And Mel says that what he does is he gives himself zazen instruction every time he sits.

[34:07]

And at first I thought, what? And then I realized, oh, I do that too. I just, you know, I don't, it doesn't, it doesn't take half an hour, but that there's this almost like this little checklist that happens. And I think that's a, that's an enacting an intention. But to say it, that's a useful thing. I do, I intend to. to sit still, and just one more thing, I just, it was because there was something else, you reminded me too of one time Mel was talking about posture, and Judy Smith was here. She's a woman that, she comes, okay, I think she comes in the afternoon some nowadays. She's a quadriplegic, she's in a wheelchair, and she's a dancer. But at any rate, she said something about, she raised her hand, she said, how can I assume the posture? And Mel said, you are assuming the posture, aren't you? It looks to me like you have the posture. So that's something that is really encouraging.

[35:10]

Yes? I don't think there is any difference between non-moving and stillness. I think there can be a difference between not moving in stillness, and I think that what I was doing at Tassajara was a great example. Yeah? Well, I definitely got from your talk how valuable this emphasis on physical stillness is. And for me in my practice, the emphasis is definitely on the mind rather than the body. Not to say the body isn't part of the mind, or whatever you want to say there. But the body and mind is the most important. And I can hear from your talk, and one of my concerns from hearing what you're, I mean, specifically for new students, and even in general, is this emphasis on this physical stillness that can become a competitive sort of, and in your example, when you were at, what is it, Tafakara,

[36:26]

It happened in that example, and I can see how people can be very attached to making sure that their body is still, but their mind can be going 1,000 miles a minute. And so I guess what's important to me is that the focus be on not keeping the mind still, because even keeping the mind still is a mistake, but coming from that place rather than reverse. So that's just something that's a concern of mine, because I think that people can start to judge other people and start to analyze themselves without judging themselves about the movement. And I think that's a different direction from the basis of which I think Ben is about, which is more about not moving mind. I think it's both. I don't think it's about picking and choosing. It's about not moving.

[37:27]

And it's a lot about the body. And you're right that we can get attached to it. It's easier to see whether somebody physically moves or not. You can't see what's going on in their mind so that it's easy to judge about that or to be filled with pride about it. Absolutely. Well, keep sitting and see what happens, because they're kind of breath people and body people and whatever. I didn't mean to say that that's not important. I'm just trying to say that that's a legitimate concern. All movement is a legitimate concern.

[38:29]

There was somebody's hand over here. My experience has been that I've noticed that I have these periods where my breaths start to get shorter and shorter, and I want to take a huge hunk of breath and just grab.

[39:41]

And it's really about exactly what you were describing. It's like an anxiety about dying or non-existence. So what I have, where my non-moving practice has come up, has been to slightly open my just go on with these terribly short little breaths. Remembering, even hearing in my head, Mel's instruction about not opening your mouth, right? So there's a sort of thing there, you know, where you say, okay, it's okay, and go with these little short breaths, but I really feel like I'm just gonna drown in certain moments. And it's extremely, I really have to remind myself, I am gonna go on, but I found that place where the exact same experience that you described across the heart is occurring for me, without any physical manifestation externally.

[40:42]

So do you ever like, you know, take a deep breath? Oh, well that has been what I, you know, I would take these really big breaths, but I started to realize Well, actually, if you relax, you won't drown. You'll float. So it's really that practice. It's interesting, right? So that would be moving, I guess, taking a deep breath in that instance. Yeah, that would be moving. And the not moving would be to defy mental construction. I'd open my mouth a little bit and just let the breath come and go. Yeah. big no-no for me.

[42:01]

And finding stillness, which has been my journey. And whenever I find myself holding still, that's what I'm hearing you describe as moving, because my mind is really doing a number on my body. And when I find stillness, I'm coming to that sweet place that Alan described. And for me, it's been interesting that the one time I injured myself It was actually when I had found stillness. It was the first time I really found my seat. And my whole body felt rested in just a really beautiful posture that felt so balanced. It went so deep. And lost track. I mean, I wasn't doing nothing, but I really was having a very deep experience as I was then. And I was still sitting cross-legged in those days. And when the bell rang, and I unfolded, I had badly injured my hip.

[43:05]

And I really never came back from that to the point where I can comfortably sit in hospital permanently. And that's my body. And I knew that when I started doing Zazen. I knew that I had various conditions that would make it very difficult for me to overstrengthen or whatever. So over the years, I've been working with that and getting my body back and learning to do yoga so that helping my body in all the ways I could. But the most helpful thing was finding these muddy chairs so that I could more easily go to that place without this pain and injury. So you do continue to find stillness? Absolutely. And I also really know that I am some days very loose with myself, that because of the old years of injury, I'm very forgiving. Well, that's the con. That's the con. So I'm just really grateful to be reminded that I really want it to be intentional.

[44:09]

And the thing you said about noticing when you want to move and waiting and then choosing to move is so different from just wiggle, scratch, whatever. So that was helpful. Things are numberless.

[44:33]

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