I wonder, did you ever find yourself in a position in some activity of your daily life where you're doing something but you're actually thinking about what comes next. No, you haven't. And even though you want to do what you're doing, still there's some feeling that you should be prepared for something that's coming. And then maybe you're thinking about what comes after that, too.

[01:05]

And we can easily get into, slip into a mode where what we're doing, we're not really one with what we're doing. but we keep thinking always about the next thing and become disconnected and something is unsatisfying about the present activity but we don't know what it is so we're waiting for this to get over so we can do the next thing which will spark our interest But then when we get into the next thing, we think about the next thing, because somehow this next activity is not satisfying either.

[02:11]

So, how to renew our life, or how to get into our life, is very important. And be in our life. Sometimes I find myself, I'm not immune from this. Sometimes I find myself slipping into, well, as soon as this is over, I'll be doing that. And then I have to, but I've been practicing long enough so that I can pick up on what I'm thinking or feeling and return to what I'm doing. I can usually do that. But we easily catch ourselves, or we should be able to catch ourselves doing this. And it's sort of like there are two selves.

[03:17]

One is our self and the other is our ghost. Maybe the host and the ghost. But the real person has to be somewhere. And the ghost is disembodied. The ghost is not really planted. The ghost is floating. So we can say that sometimes we live the life of a ghost, not really settling anywhere. You know, once a year we have a ceremony for feeding the hungry ghosts or assuaging their misery. But the hungry ghosts are really ourselves. And all of us have a quality of hungry ghost. We say desire, to get rid of desire.

[04:26]

And people get confused about that in Buddhism. They say, oh, In Buddhism they say get rid of all desires. And that makes us frightened. Because what is it that we like most about life? The objects of our desire. But to get rid of desire doesn't mean to get rid of desire. When we say desire, We don't mean that you shouldn't eat when you're hungry or sleep when you're tired. But desire, basic desire is the will to live. And then the desires are based on will to live. And so

[05:31]

we need to have desire in order to sustain ourselves. But when desires get out of hand or start controlling us, then we call those evil desires, because we're enslaved by desire, which is exaggerated and then we need to sustain ourselves and actually be happy. The desire to be happy is also okay, but what do we need to be happy? So it's a problem. If we don't find our true happiness within ourselves, then our desires become exaggerated, looking for something, some kind of fulfillment. So in practice, our focus is to keep desire, all of the desires, harmonious and focused in a way that is satisfying, keeps us satisfied and interested in our life.

[07:02]

So in our Zen practice, if you know how to practice, whatever we're doing should be interesting. If you're washing dishes, it should be interesting. Not interesting in the sense of reading a novel or something, We should be able to focus our attention and interest on what's at hand. So a person who has perfect freedom will find everything interesting. But a person who doesn't have freedom or who is dominated with desires is always looking for something interesting, because the thing at hand is not interesting.

[08:19]

The inability to focus and be content with what's at hand is not strong enough. Which brings me to what I want to talk about, which is how to keep our practice, how to maintain our practice and maintain interest in a practice where gaining something is not the object. When we begin to practice, it's interesting. Everything is new. Whatever we do, is new. When you start to sit zazen, for the first time, it's a completely new experience. And so you're continually discovering something, continually finding new things and usually new insights.

[09:29]

So one can have enthusiasm and interest. without too much difficulty. That is, if it doesn't just you. But then, after one has been practicing for a number of years, the practice becomes rather usual. And sometimes someone who was practicing over a long period of time And suddenly their interest starts to wane, or to flag, and their practice becomes a little stale. And they begin to say, well, what is this all about anyway? Why have I been doing this? What am I doing? This kind of question. And usually this kind of question comes up because we have some expectation.

[10:40]

When we begin to practice, even though we're told that practice should be done without any expectation of results or without the idea that you will be a better person or enlightened or have certain kinds of powers. Even though we say not to look for these things, not to expect anything, but just to practice for the sake of what you're doing. Even though we say so, everyone still has expectations. People still have expectations. And so down the line, someone will say, Nothing's happening. I sit zazen every day, nothing's happening.

[11:47]

And this comes, this is very much like when you sit zazen and you think, well, after this comes breakfast, and then after that comes going to work. Same thing. we begin to be disconnected from what we're doing. So how do we reconnect? So the problem of continuous practice is the same as the problem that you have in your daily life of either being connected or disconnected. The way we practice in our daily life is to always be one with our activity, which is Dzasien.

[12:51]

So the problem we have in our daily life is not different than the problem we have in our practice after a long period of time. Once we become connected, there's no problem. Once we're one with our activity, there's no problem. Suzuki Roshi used to talk about bowing. Bowing is just bowing. We don't bow to anything in particular, or we don't bow for some result. When we bow, we just give ourself up to the activity of bowing and become one with whatever direction we're bowing. So this is an act of non-separation, an act of connecting, or being one with everything.

[14:02]

This is bowing. There's no result. There's nothing to expect. And when you can bow with this kind of attitude, you understand all about Zen and Buddhism. Zen practice is very simple. All you have to do is keep renewing yourself moment after moment. All you have to do is connect with whatever you're engaged with, moment after moment, then there's no problem. So whenever we feel ourself wondering about what's next or why am I feeling bored or nothing's happening, this is where we should look.

[15:10]

Somehow I'm not where I am. Somehow I've slipped off my Dharma position and continuing to slide. So in Zazen, we do this all the time. Our mind is continually wandering. Consciousness is taking a walk. We sit down, we put ourselves in the position. Pretty soon our mind is out for a walk somewhere. And then, oh yeah, we bring it back. Zazen is continually bringing ourself back and waking up to this activity. And when we're completely awake in our activity and completely involved with Zazen, it's no problem.

[16:16]

So I think, I know what happens a lot is because something we do over and over becomes what we feel is repetitious, we lose the vitality. So every time we sit, we have to sit for the first time. This is why I always say that whenever you sit, you should give yourself zazen instruction, as if you were giving instruction to somebody else. But often we kind of zendong, because we've sat so many times, we just kind of sit down and start dreaming, or wait for it to be over. And if we do that, we lose the vitality. So Zen practice is very simple to keep returning moment after moment to the vitality of the moment with the activity.

[17:37]

so that you're not outside. As soon as you start separating, you become, you are outside. And once you're outside, it doesn't make sense. It only makes sense when you're completely one and not two. The ghost has to find its, have to keep bringing the ghost back so it can find its place in this moment activity. And that's how we practice in the zendo, and that's how we practice in our daily life. It's easier in the zendo in some ways, because that's all there is to do. But since practice is continuous, we extend that to our daily life.

[18:51]

So there are various ways, actually, of renewing your practice. But the simplest way is to encourage yourself to be attentive and to be present. And when you really put your effort and energy into whatever you're doing wholeheartedly, that's the best way. So we need encouragement a lot. And when people come to me about practice. This is mostly what my role is, is to encourage you to be wholehearted about what you're doing, and to do it completely, every time.

[20:04]

It's easy to fall asleep. I fall asleep a lot in Zazen, because mostly I go to bed late at night and get up early in the morning. But when I'm awake, I make a lot of effort in Zazen. And when you're asleep, you're completely asleep. And when I'm asleep, I'm completely asleep. So, one way to renew your practice is, say, for a week to concentrate on one aspect of Zazen, to renew your Zazen practice, so that it doesn't get usual or lazy. So, to put the effort into sitting up straight, really concentrate on that for one week.

[21:05]

Not at the expense of the rest, of course, but to say to yourself, For this week, I won't let my mind wander from my posture, and I'll really work on posture. Or, really, for this one week, I'll really pay attention to the mudra. I won't let my mind wander from the mudra. Or, for one week, to say, I will concentrate on letting go of the tenseness in my body. That's a good one. Because people sit with so much tenseness, you know, we bring our tensions into the zendo. And so you can say for one week I will sit with really good posture and let go of all the tenseness in my body.

[22:10]

Without letting go of the structure of sitting, I will let go of all the tenseness, like letting the tenseness drain out of the skeleton. So to take up one aspect of attention as a focus, for a period of time. That will help to renew your practice because pretty soon your zazen will feel vital again and you will be able actually to improve your posture because sometimes we fall into irregularities in our zazen posture without knowing it.

[23:13]

And it's hard to correct. But if you think about these things yourself, pretty soon your posture will be corrected. So as I said, every time you sit you should give yourself instruction in tzazen. so that you don't forget all the points. And then if you concentrate on one aspect at a time, this asana will have a lot of vitality and you'll feel enthusiastic about it. So anyway, these are some points that I just wanted to bring up about how to renew, keep our practice fresh and vital in a continuous way.

[24:18]

Because everyone's practiced flags at some point. And we should know how to renew it. And our life, daily life flags at some point, and we should also know how to renew that. But it's the same thing. Zazen practice and daily life are really the same thing. And by sitting, sitting should help us to understand this. So I wonder if you have any questions. Yeah, yes. Talk about the need to constantly renew yourself. dying and birth and death.

[25:23]

Are those two things related? How much do we actually lose when we lose the connection? Well, yeah, we lose our place. We lose our place, yeah. We lose our place. You know, life still goes on, but we lose our place in it. We actually lose our place. Yeah, we actually lose our place. And then we start living in a dream world. It's real then. The connection, the separation is real. Separation is real. Even though it looks like we're doing something, it's not real. Or it's only, as we say, half-assed. It's not complete. we fall into a kind of self-consciousness.

[26:23]

When one is really complete, you don't have the feeling of self-consciousness. It's only through the separation that we feel self-conscious, because we have no self. When we're complete, everything is ourself. And when we're not complete, then we think of ourself in a separate way. Of course there is individuality, but that individuality fits with everything else and is part of everything else. Yes. I'm wondering, you know they, you know a parallel computer? They have the, instead of going like one line, they're going multiple, multivalent.

[27:35]

And it sort of works like a metaphor, in other words, things are, and I wonder if, you know, you're talking about focusing on the one, I know that like certain people, like poets, think of juggling, that I think it was F. Scott Fitzgerald that said, juggle as many living contradictions as possible. And isn't, when you're speaking about the now and being in the now, doesn't that involved dreams, doesn't that involve hopes, doesn't that involve, can't that all be there at once? Yeah, everything's there at once. Purpose and anticipations and all these things, I don't think that they're separate. Because the presence, the communication involves all those parts of what's going on in your nature, you know?

[28:43]

If I pull the wheel and say, what's wrong with two? The thing is that we've got binary things that are going on. And it seems like life is like that. It isn't like making things down into a literal something. In other words, if I'm doing something, of course, if I'm bicycling, I want it to be bicycling, or else it'll be run over. But at the same time, I can be bicycling if I don't get too far in something. that it seems like it's making us kind of stupid to make everything just focus down to one kind of thing, just completely doing the dishes. You know, it's not that dangerous. I mean, if I can do the dishes, I can do the thing without having to do just a sober afternoon.

[29:49]

So I wonder about that. And another thing, when they say about meditation, now, if I'm trying to control the wild horses that are going on in my mind by meditating, by bringing my attention back to my breath, I am working to get some kind of brain on my attention consciousness. So therefore, I'm working toward a certain purpose there. If I didn't have purposes, if I didn't have, especially when I get in certain situations, if I couldn't think about the future, and get out of those things, I might not survive. Because if you're in a certain nightmare, you don't have any meta, anything that you can go outside of that particular nightmare. I mean, you can go into the nightmare, but the thing is that a lot of particular situations help me to have hopes and have certain things and think about the future and plan things and do all those things that you're talking about Well, to untangle all the contradictions of what you said is difficult, but I'm not talking about all that.

[31:02]

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how you do something completely and be with what you're doing. That's all. Of course, the mind, you know, You can't only do one thing. Whatever you do is a combination of many, many things. But those many, many things are in the present. So our mind is not just a mono-mode. Our activity is not just a mono-mode. most of our life is dreaming. And Zen practice includes dreaming, but dreaming is not the point. So most of our life, or a lot of our life, is taken up dreaming.

[32:12]

Dreaming is okay, but often dreaming takes the place of doing, of being. So if you understand or if you actually practice zazen, you'll understand what I'm talking about. I think this may be a version of the same question, and I may be asking you to repeat what you just said. A way to put it for me is, is there a contradiction between your recommendation that we focus our attention on one aspect or another of Zazen as a way of renewing it on the one side, and the principle of just don't discriminate, just don't pick and choose as a way of

[33:17]

Well, those are two different aspects. One is the positive, the other is the negative. So in the negative aspect, you don't pick and choose. You accept everything as it is. And on the other hand, you have to do something. So what you do is put effort into doing something. So those are two important aspects. Sure, you know, non-doing, right? Non-doing doesn't mean that you don't do something. Non-doing means that you're in such close harmony with things that there's no ego doing things. Life, you allow life to live itself through you. But there's also the positive side, which is you do something. You put effort into sitting up straight. you put effort into directing yourself.

[34:22]

So these two aspects have to work in harmony with each other. And yes, to allow thoughts to arise and to allow things to go as they go is one aspect, but to actually direct yourself and do something in a positive way is the other side. So, one has to take both of these aspects and work with them. When you say, which I think is a wonderful suggestion, every time you sit down and give yourself Zazen instruction again, Would you give us here now the real short, I'm sure it's short, Dasen instruction that we can use to renew our practice?

[35:27]

No, just kidding. Real short. What should we say as we settle ourselves? Oh, OK. When you settle yourself, you should say, when you bow to the cushion, you realize that you're bowing to everyone that came before you in this practice. And then when you turn around and bow away from the cushion, you're bowing to the whole universe. And then you sit on the cushion. Then you cross your legs and put yourself in to the position, but there's a lot of minute details that go along with that. So you cross, now you say now, you just tell yourself, now cross your legs, now put your hands like this, now do this to loosen your body up, and now lean forward

[36:43]

and arch your back so that you're really sitting up straight. Now you put your hands in the mudra, the right hand on the bottom, left hand on top, holding your thumbs in a circle so that the tops of your thumbs are very lightly touching each other. And your elbows, now let your elbows be free from your body. Stretch the back of your neck and rotate your head but not leaning forward. Leave your head on top of your spine and put your teeth together. Put your tongue at the top of your mouth, at the roof of your mouth. Let your breath go all the way down to your lower abdomen. Breathe through your nose. Let go of the tenseness in your upper back.

[37:45]

Let go of the tenseness in your shoulders. And then go over all the parts of your, this is simple, go over all the parts of your body, one by one, during Zazen. And your mudra will maybe start to collapse. So you put a tension on it. Make sure it doesn't do that. Keep it held lightly. Keep your whole body held lightly. And as you go from one part of your body to the next, that becomes the focus and the rest is in the background. And you go over and over the parts of your body, renewing your posture during the whole period of zazen. And when your mind wanders, you bring it back. This is because this is what you're doing. It's one thing to write poetry and let your mind think philosophical thoughts.

[38:50]

If that's what you want to do, do that. But if you want to do zazen, then you let them go. Those are the rules. Otherwise, it's not really zazen. So, even though it's a great thought, even though it's a wonderful beautiful enlightened thought, let it go and come back to Zazen. Because that's what you're doing. It's real easy to get distracted by wonderful, beautiful, enticing things. But if you're going to do Zazen, then you have to let them all go and just do Zazen. So that's how we keep renewing our practice. So Zazen is a narrow activity that includes everything.

[39:53]

But it doesn't include everything by putting all those things into our mind. By allowing ourself to not have the restrictions of thinking of things, our mind becomes limitless. As soon as a thought comes into our mind, then our mind becomes limited. As soon as philosophy enters in, our mind becomes limited. As soon as poetry comes in, our mind becomes limited. Our mind is unlimited when there is no thinking. We like those thoughts. And I'm not saying we shouldn't think those thoughts, but there's a time and a place to think those thoughts, which is not Zazen. I'm not saying that you can order your life, you know, to only think philosophical thoughts at five o'clock.

[41:05]

When a thought comes, it comes when it comes, and it's interesting, and that's when you take it up. But during Zazen, we let all the thoughts go, because that's what Zazen is. And they'll still be there, continually bubbling up in consciousness. The mind, that's its purpose, is to continue to create thoughts. So don't worry about thoughts. They'll be there. You don't try to push the thoughts away, or empty your mind, actually. When a thought enters, that becomes the subject of meditation, is that thought. And then the thought will go away because you're bringing yourself back to Vajra. So, the old saying is,

[42:12]

You can invite the thought in, but don't serve tea. And when you're sitting, keep your upper body stretched. Keep stretching your upper body and pushing your lower back forward. In this way, you induce energy, lots of energy, and it helps to clear your mind. As soon as you start putting your head down, then you start thinking. So this is the thinking posture, and this is the open posture. So, we don't discriminate. that thoughts are bad or wrong to him, but you just keep letting go of them. So you don't say it's bad that you have thoughts.

[43:14]

We're not thinking good and bad. Just this is what the activity is. So when you sit down, do this. Especially to hold your back up straight, as straight as possible. That's the most important thing. To hold your back as straight as possible and to let go of the tenseness in your body. Tension is what's necessary to hold everything in place, but tenseness is what's extra. You don't need that kind of tension. The tension that you don't need, you should let go of. And then you find out what the right tension is to hold your body up.

[44:19]

And then your body becomes more supple, and there's less, not so painful, and you don't wear yourself out. So it's a process, a continuous process for the rest of your life. finding your posture. You may find it for a moment, and then next moment it's changed. So you're continually looking for posture. This is the fact of the matter, that everything is continually changing. And in order to maintain the posture, we have to maintain it over and over again, moment by moment. we have to bring it back to life, moment by moment. So you can't do that by being a statue or by being stiff. You can only do that by maintaining ease and good structure.

[45:21]

But you can only do it by practicing over and over and over again. So there's no end to practice. And when you get stale, there's a way to renew your practice. You should know at that point that there's a way to renew your practice and make it vital again.

[45:44]

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