The past three days I've been talking about our posture, our so-called mind, and our breathing. And I wonder if you have anything you'd like to discuss about those three subjects. If you have any questions or if there's something that we didn't talk about, that we should talk about it. Yes.

[01:02]

Why don't you go back a little bit? Just move your body. When I'm sitting and So practically speaking, at that point, I used to just change just a little bit.

[02:09]

I'd say something like three weeks. It's changing now. Well, you know, we have a certain amount, a certain number of factors that we're dealing with. And the point is to get them all to work together. And we have our body, the various parts of our body that have to come into harmony with each other. And then there's our breathing. And then there's the pain in our legs, which is a kind of factor. Our disposition, how our mind is accepting everything, or dealing with everything, and balancing. So when you have these various factors, there's quite a few of them, you know, the body itself is I don't know how many parts, you know, but it's a lot.

[03:14]

And we have to deal with all of them, balance all of them. And if one, if there's some, if we're heavy on one side, then we tend to or if we focus too much on one point, then that point becomes kind of overbalanced. So, in Zazen, the pain in our legs becomes a kind of overbalanced factor. It can become an overbalanced factor, and it usually is, until you learn how to balance it with all the other factors and how to let it take its place with everything. Is it going to be concentrated in one spot?

[04:19]

Is it going to be all over? Or is it going to be distributed? How are you going to distribute the pain in your legs? It's a kind of matter of distribution in a way. If we focus on one point, you know, say, well, where is the pain? It's like when I took an S seminar one time, you know, and one of the things that Werner Erhard, So he said, if you have a headache, you should go to find out where exactly the headache is. Try and pinpoint the headache. Try to find out exactly where the headache is. And if you do that, the headache will disappear.

[05:20]

I think sometimes that's true and sometimes it's not. Sometimes you can do that, sometimes you can't. But it's somewhat the same with the pain in your legs. If you try to say, well, where exactly is that? Sometimes you can find it and sometimes you can't. But if you try to find out exactly where it is, it's pretty hard to say exactly where it is because it kind of doesn't really have a center necessarily. And if you can allow the pain in your legs to just sit on the cushion, just be there.

[06:21]

Without feeling, this is my pain, this is my painful legs. then that problem will take its place within the whole sphere of things. Even though there's pain in the legs, there's also mudra, back, head, arms, all those other things that are just as important, or just as meaningful, or just as much there. But we tend to think, well, this is the main thing is, after a while, the pain in our legs. But the other things are just as important. So, to balance, to allow yourself to be there, means that when you get the pain in your legs, you don't grind your teeth.

[07:24]

When you find yourself grinding your teeth, let go of grinding your teeth. Or your mudra, pushing itself together, When you find that your thumbs are pushing together on each other, that means that's your barometer that tells you what's happening. Just let go. So you keep letting go rather than focusing on it. Rather than focusing in on the pain and making it into something, just let it go. First you allow your thumbs to be light. And then you stop grinding your teeth. And pretty soon your body starts to open up instead of close down. So, our reaction to pain is to close down. It's natural. You know, if you... a sow bug is a perfect example. You know, you poke the sow bug and he goes like this, right?

[08:27]

Or mimosa. There's a grass in Hawaii, kind of mimosa, which when you walk on it, it closes up. It's like this. And our reaction to being touched or to pain is like that. It's closed down, you know. And our posture gets all scrunched, and we don't realize it, and our teeth are starting to grind. So you have to do the opposite. You have to very consciously do the opposite, which is Stop that. Stop that closing down. Just be. And open your mudra. Relax your arms. Even though the pain is still there. See how free you can be with it there.

[09:30]

And stop grinding your teeth and work on your posture a little bit. And let the tension flow out of your arms. And let the tension flow out of your shoulders and your upper back. And find your balance. And when you do that, your body will start harmonizing itself. All the parts will start harmonizing together. You'll still have the pain, but you'll be able to accept it as part of what's happening. And then as you continue to sit Sazen and continue to practice in that way, to make that kind of effort, it'll become easier, become more... your pattern will be to relax instead of to tighten up. So you have to create that kind of habit, the habit of opening up to it instead of closing down to it.

[10:39]

And when you open up to it, even though there's pain there, it's not bad pain or unbearable pain. You can bear it. You can allow it to be there and have its place with everything else. It just has its place in the scheme of things. So you always have to balance that pain out with all the other factors. It's one factor. I mean, you're given so many factors, you know, in your body, and that's one of them. And so you have to learn how to let it be there, or die. That's the only time I actually let loose, only I get so wrecked that I just can't hang on anymore, and then it works. Well, of course, that's the place you have to come to, you know. You have to come to that place. That's the stone wall, that's the wall, right?

[11:41]

I can't do anything, you know? What am I going to do? And then you go through the wall. There's no other way. There's no other way. But you don't crash through the wall, you just... You just, you know, float through the wall. You've got to bang your head against the wall. This is a similar question in a way. I'm thinking about what we talked about in terms of the difference Yeah, maybe you could say what the difference is so that people know what we're talking about. Well, I was... Mel asked me about my practice and I said that it was like a dance where the idea of the dance is to get as close as possible to me and Zazen.

[12:50]

Me and Zazen getting as close as possible to each other. But somehow the music's always wrong. faster, it's too slow, the rhythm's off, I can't beat, can't quite get it. And sometimes it gets pretty close. And I'll say, well, what's the difference between what it does and what it doesn't? So that sort of pertains to my question. But I'm going to sort of shift the emphasis a little. During Sashina, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about various problems that I have in my life. I recognize that there are times when I just let thoughts go, come and go, and there are other times when I'll follow a thought through for a long, long time.

[13:57]

I don't necessarily think that the one is better than the other, but what I'm aware of is that during Sashin, I can follow thoughts through for a long, long time and ultimately reach a place where I realize that there's no I haven't accomplished anything by doing that. I haven't solved any problems. I've simply seen another sort of side of my own mind or my own desires or my own whatever. My question has to do with that I seem to be able to reach that during Sashi, when there's so many hours of zazen that I can spend two or three periods on the same problem, which right now is my work situation, and realize at the end of that that I've only seen different sides of my mind about that problem.

[15:12]

Solving it is in some other realm. Right. Solving it is in another realm. Right. In daily practice, when I come here in the morning, every day, I can't see that as readily. And that's because I, you know, I'm very stupid. It takes me a long time to see that what I'm doing when I do that Even though I've seen it many times, nevertheless, somehow I still find myself indulging in doing this kind of thing. And I was wondering, in daily life practice, how I can still carry that sense of that... How can I take the sheen mind into daily life practice?

[16:19]

I guess is the question. Well, first, I don't think you're stupid. You know, as Dogen says, it doesn't depend on whether you're bright or stupid. Actually, you're pretty bright. But there are different kinds of things, thoughts that come up in Zazen. And one of the kinds of thought that comes up is the obsessive thought. you know, something that keeps reoccurring, something that's... some thought that... the various facets of it keep just going over and over and over. It's kind of like a loop. And that kind of thought, no matter how much we think about it, we'll never... we'll never figure it out, you know, by thinking about it.

[17:24]

And there's a kind of thought, a kind of problem that gets solved by thinking about it. But the kind of problems that come up, the kind of thoughts that come up when we're sitting are not usually that kind of thought. It's usually something that you don't even know exactly what it's connected with necessarily. But it has a certain logic to it and it keeps coming up over and over and over. It's the kind of thought that when you stop thinking about it, then your subconscious will get taken care of. And some later time, you know, you say, oh, you know, or you'll have been already dealing with it for a while in a positive way. It'll have solved itself. And then later on you say, oh, jeez, I remember that problem. You know, but you're already, it's already gone, you know. And that's, I think, the nature of a lot of the thoughts that we have in Zazen.

[18:32]

They're not solvable logically or intellectually at the time, but it's kind of food that goes into our subconscious and gets solved when other things come together with it later, you know. So, these thoughts are continually coming up in Zazen, and we can't help thinking of You know, you can put a cap on your mind, but it doesn't help, you know, really, because it comes up over here, you know, and you put a cap here and it comes up over here. You find yourself thinking about something before you know that you're thinking about it. You find yourself in the midst of a thought before you start thinking, before you know that you're thinking about it. So it's very hard to catch a thought. But we can catch the end. We can be conscious of the end, when it ends. We can say, well, let's end it here. And that's conscious of ending, but very hard to be conscious of when it begins.

[19:40]

So we have a kind of open hole there where the thoughts are coming up. And even if you cap it, it's kind of like gas, you know, it just seeps through and forms an image. One thing you can do when you're sitting zazen is to not repress thoughts, but to watch for when a thought arises. Just have a kind of ready mind. When you're sitting zazen, breathing, posture, and you wait for a thought, you're going to catch the next thought that comes. And if you do that, really do that, there won't be any thought arising. No thought will come up. Because your thought is watchfulness.

[20:42]

But as soon as your thought of watchfulness is no longer there, the thought will come up. You should try it. Try doing that. They give you something to do during Zazen. And you become very attentive. And see if you can catch thought, a thought arising. And when you do that, then you'll be doing perfect Zazen, actually, because your thought will be your action. Your thought and your action will have no gap. Your thought will be, watch this, watch for a thought. And then you'll be sitting there with absolutely no thought in your mind except the thought of Zazen. Perfect, no gap, body-mind in perfect harmony.

[21:47]

And do that by trying to see when a thought begins. Yeah, see when a thought begins. See if you can notice exactly when a thought begins that is not the thought that you're thinking. Very good practice. And then see when that thought arises. Does it arise while I'm thinking? Or after I forgot? How did that thought get in there? It's different than not letting a thought arise, because you're really not letting it arise consciously, you're just waiting for it. Yeah, what I was talking about. I know, and what you were talking about, how do you do that in your daily life? Well, also that there are sometimes when it's easier to do that than others, there are some thoughts that just sort of demand to be

[22:52]

invited to tea. Well, you see, the thoughts, when you're in daily life, it's a different picture. You have to, because it's pretty hard to get away without thinking in your daily life. And that's what daily life is about. It's the Zazen of thinking. This is the Zazen of not thinking. And your activity is the Zazen of thinking. So our thoughts are very important to be aware of what we're thinking. Really be aware of what you're thinking. And in a Buddhist meditation, the Satipatthana meditation is awareness of mental objects and mind, consciousness. So, to be really conscious of what the thoughts in the mind are.

[24:00]

Same thing, only in zazen, it's bare attention. Whereas in daily life, you're actually using thinking. You're thinking thoughts consciously. You're not trying to stop thought. You're not trying to avoid thinking. You're trying to think. Well, but I was talking about the Zazen periods that I sit in, that are also Zazen when I sit in the morning. I see. Same thing. Yeah. But there's a difference. What's the difference? The difference is that in Zazen I reach a place where I two periods in the morning, it isn't enough to get to that place.

[25:10]

Well, another thing that you can do is to... Sometimes it's good to pay attention to your thoughts. It's okay, you know, sometimes. You know, you say in Zazen, don't think, don't pay attention to your thoughts, blah blah. But actually, sometimes, it's better to pay attention to your thinking. You might have something important that you want to remember. So, Hashimoto Roshi, in his little book, Tatsazen, says, it's good to have a piece of paper and a pencil in front of you. And when some thought comes up that you think is really important, You write it down on the paper and then you go back to sitting zazen. So if you want to try that, it's okay.

[26:17]

You can try it. Why don't you try that? And then you just let it go. You can stop thinking about it because you won't forget. One of the problems that we have I have to remember that. And then we get up and do service, you know, and go out. What was that, you know? It just happens over and over again. I've lost, you know, about 10,000 thoughts that were really important. But actually I wish that I'd written them down. Maybe if you wrote them down, though, you'd look at it later and think, well, that wasn't so important. Why did I write that down? You see, you have some way of judging. But another way is to do it right after Zazen. Maybe wait until right after Zazen, and then write it down.

[27:24]

But if you think that you really have to write it down, just write it down. Then you can, you know, take it up or do whatever you want with it. So it kind of leaves your mind free. It may not leave your mind free, but it might. Well, Zazen is not good for your memory. I must admit it. Actually, my memory is getting better.

[28:50]

It's getting better. It was always terrible, but it's getting better. Because I have to really make an effort, you know, to exercise it. And I do that because I get into so much trouble because I forget so much. So I really have to make an effort to remember. So by doing that, that effort actually has increased my memory. It increased the power of my memory a lot. And if I hadn't been doing Zazen, probably my memory would be worse, you know, because it wasn't good to begin with. But the fact that I have to do something about it, you know, kind of puts me in a position of having to do something about it. So it's actually a lot better than it ever was. Memory and attention go together. Memory and attention go together, yeah.

[29:52]

Yeah. My attention is not always so good either. Because I tend to be a dreamer. I've always been a kind of dreamer. Dreaming person. And my mind's always lapsing into dreams. So, um... That's why Zazen is good for a person like me. Maybe what's happening so that you really remember him more because maybe those little traces are happening because of the zazen and if you weren't sitting in zazen you wouldn't have those traces so you wouldn't know that you were forgetting anything. But I know a lot of people who have been sitting in Zazen for a long time, they never forget anything. So, who knows?

[30:53]

That's actually the perfect practice, to be able to return to listening. And just exactly what you said, you know, it's easier to return to driving or, you know, things that you're doing with your hands and body. return to our open mind. You know, that's the hardest. And that actually is what we're always, that's our practice, really, in our daily life. Keep returning to our open mind, which means listening to somebody, really listening, and not always interrupting, not always thinking our own thought about, you know, what they're saying before they're finished and all this. That's really hard to do.

[33:03]

really hard and it's the most important thing. The way to listen to a Zen lecture is to leave your mind completely open and not have your own answering machine going, your own agenda or your own thing going which is Digesting and putting everything into your own terms. But just to be able to listen. To be able to just listen. Very hard. Sometimes after I give a talk, someone will say to me, remember when you said da da da? I didn't say that at all. It's just the way someone digested it and put it into their own terms and it came out this is what it meant to them.

[34:08]

And we're always misinterpreting very easily everything. We misinterpret everything because of it. And I do it a lot myself. It's really hard to just pay attention to things as they are without interpreting or putting into some kind of subjective term. And if we can really do that, then that's how we practice in our daily life. Just allowing everything to be as it is and perceiving it that way. perceiving it as it is. That's real mindfulness. Mindfulness, you know, we tend to think of mindfulness as doing everything very carefully.

[35:13]

But the other side of mindfulness is you're always coming back to the dharma. Always coming back to reminding yourself where you are, and where you are is in the dharma. residing in the Dharma, which means that your mind is always open. That's no-self, practicing no-self. So if you can leave your mind open from the cushion, and then leave it open when you walk out of the zendo, in that way, when something comes, you can respond to it from that openness, rather than from some agenda.

[36:22]

I think we all have to practice that.

[36:41]

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