Okay, today, since this is the beginning of our Sashin, I just thought I would go over some points of Zazen. Even though all of us know all these points, I will go over them anyway. help us remember some things that we may not remember. So, sasheen is to unify body, breath, and mind. Actually, body, breath, mind and the universe.

[01:03]

I remember Suzuki Roshi talking about zazen as big patience. Patience has several meanings, but sometimes it means to wait for something. But I think in this case it doesn't mean to wait for something, it simply means to be where you are without anticipating. without any anticipation. It's not like waiting for the bus to come and being patient, but simply being where you are and then, surprisingly, the bus appears.

[02:29]

So just to be where we are, just to settle on where we are, not so easy. So first of all, I want to talk about posture, because posture is the basis. We talk about breath and we talk about thinking, mind, but actually posture is the first order. practice because posture is the base, how we hold ourselves in zazen, and of course each one of us is different, you know, our body types are different and some of us have old injuries and some of us have never really sat up straight, but The effort to sit up straight is the basic aspect of Zazen.

[03:38]

This is Japanese practice. Japanese monks or practitioners, for Japanese practitioners, posture is the main thing. The Chinese don't put so much emphasis on posture. And other schools of Buddhism don't put so much emphasis on posture, but we put a lot of emphasis on posture. I remember when I sat with Master Hua, who at that time was called To Lun in San Francisco, whose students started the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. He had this place, actually he had this place right down the street from Sokoji, on Sutter Street. And he would always sit kind of slumped over, and didn't emphasize sitting up straight at all.

[04:47]

And when I went to China, I noticed there was a monk sitting in the zendo, and he was kind of slumped over. It's like, and then I think Tolan kind of criticized Japanese Zazen as sitting up too straight. But I was very happy to get back to Suzuki Roshi and our good posture after I sat Tsushin with Tolan in 1965. Sitting up really straight, stretching out the vertebrae. You know, if you can sit this way the whole session, you'd be very happy. You know, we have a tendency to start out this way, but then we get sleepy and, you know, our posture sags.

[05:53]

So we have to make an effort to keep our posture all the time. When it sags, you straighten up. People say, well, you're not supposed to move in Zazen. That's not moving. Adjusting your posture is not what we mean by don't move. Adjusting your posture is not moving. In that sense. Because the posture is always changing. There's nothing that stands still. Even though we say, sit still, it's only relatively still. So, posture is always changing. So, you know, the way to... the most efficient way to sit up straight is to move

[06:58]

your lower back forward and lift up your sternum. Keep your head on top of your spine. When we say keep your chin in, people can't... that's a difficult thing to understand. It doesn't mean to, you know, choke yourself. It simply means to not let your head fall forward. Keeping your head on top of your spine because the spine Your head is a weight. If you've ever picked up somebody's head, when they're lying down, of course, you realize how heavy it is. And when it's off-center, it's pulling your back, pulling the muscles of your back when it's leaning forward. So it's putting stress on your body. So what we look for and what we strive for posture is balance.

[07:59]

So if the head is balanced on top of the spine, and the spine is balanced on top of your lower behind, with your lower back pushed forward, then you can find balance. So there doesn't need to be any a lot of tension even though you're holding your back straight. But lifting the sternum is important. Lifting the sternum doesn't mean just put your chest out. It simply means to lift up and when you lift up you can feel it in your lower back. So those two, sternum and lower back, are co-operating. And then it's easy to keep your head on top of your spine and your nose in line with your navel.

[09:04]

Because when your nose is in line with your navel, then you're not leaning to the left or the right. And when your head is on top of your spine, your ears can easily be in line with your shoulders. The hardest thing in posture is to keep your ears in line with your shoulders. we easily get a kind of hump on the upper back near our neck, even if we're sitting up straight. So it's good to feel as if there's a stick on the back of your head and going all the way down to the seat, your back and the back of your head are in one line. And that way your ears will be in line with your shoulders. And then you won't be leaning forward or backward.

[10:07]

And then you can maintain a balance. So there doesn't need to be any strain in your upper back. Your arms don't need to have any tenseness in them. They're just hanging there in their mudra. So the mudra is very important because mudra gives us information. Mudra feels round. It's not really round, but it feels round. And the thumbs are facing each other, not like sticking up. I don't know if you can see that, but the tips of the thumbs are facing each other. just very lightly, so lightly, so that it's like, are they touching or not touching? That lightly. But they are touching.

[11:10]

When you maintain that kind of sensitivity, that means you're awake. When the thumbs start pressing against each other, it means there's a lot of tension building up in your body. When your thumbs start separating, it means that you're losing your concentration. So the mudra tells us where we are in our zazen. Too much resistance building up, or too little concentration, too much laxity. Are we falling asleep? What is going on here? So the mudra reminds us of what we're doing. And if you pay attention to the mudra while you're sitting, you can stay alert. So, Zazen is always continuing to wake up.

[12:23]

You drift, Then you come back, and you wake up. And you drift, and you wake up, and you come back. Drift, you wake up, and you come back. Over and over again. Over and over and over again. So, where tenseness builds up in the body is often in our arms and our shoulders and our neck. So when we start to resist the discomfort that eventually appears, then our shoulders often start going up like this. What else can you do? Except let go, of course. So, as the tenseness builds up, and then your thumbs start pushing against you, just let go of the tenseness, and just let the tenseness drain out of your body, because there's no need to be tense.

[13:38]

So, this is counterintuitive, if I'm using the right word, because intuitively, we want to resist something that's intruding. But we have to just allow whatever is intruding, we invite whatever is intruding to come in, and then we just let it drain out. We provide a back door, which is goodbye. So, Instead of letting it build up, we just let it flow out. So it flows in, and it flows out. Discomfort flows in, and then it flows out. With no need to be tense, because it doesn't help. Doesn't help. As a matter of fact, it just causes us more discomfort.

[14:42]

So how we allow that to be, and allow it to leave, So to feel the tenseness draining out of your back, if your back gets sore, just feel that this tenseness is draining out of your elbows or out of your back. I don't know how else to explain it. But we can do that with the breath. There are different kinds of ways of thinking about breath. Usually we just say, let the breath. Dogen says, when we breathe, we breathe through the nose. And if it's a short breath, let it be a short breath. If it's a long breath, let it be a long breath.

[15:45]

He doesn't say a lot more than that. But there is more than that. There's a way of breathing where we put some emphasis on the exhale. And when you... Suzuki Roshi says, you know, just feel that when you exhale, everything is leaving your body. You're just dying. This is called dying, letting go. When you inhale, you come back to life. And when you exhale, you leave. So it's like the tide. The tide comes in and the tide goes out. But when the tide goes out, you can let everything leave with the tide. You can let all the tenseness in your body leave with the tide when the tide goes out.

[16:52]

You breathe out and you just let all the tenseness in your body go out with the breath. Then another breath, you come back to life and let all the tenseness leave with the breath. Another way to deal with breathing, think about breathing, is that breathing permeates, it's not just a long movement, but breathing permeates your whole body. So, you can also think or feel on the out-breath that instead of the breath leaving the body, that the breath is permeating the body and reaching into every corner of your body. And since the breath is down here in the tanden, we breathe from this point in the tanden, which is the center of our body and it's the center of the universe, that this breath is coming from the center of the universe and permeating the whole body.

[18:11]

And you could even think of it as filling the whole body with light. so that all the little corners and crevices are opening up. And often we think of Zazen as something that physically is happening in our upper body, but it's also happening in our legs. Our legs give us a lot of trouble sometimes. So to breathe into the legs, to open up the tension within the legs by breathing into the legs, it opens up any resistance there is and creates circulation, circulation of oxygen

[19:24]

So you can feel the whole body opening up and letting go of tenseness. So struggling doesn't help. The only thing that helps is acceptance. patience to be exactly where we are with what we have, without wishing for something else, and just letting breath flow through the whole body, permeate the whole body. Sometimes There's also a way of thinking of the breath as traveling up our back and around the head and down through the front.

[20:39]

Certain meridians, but that's too complex for me. So during zazen, to check all the points of our posture, to make the rounds of the points of posture, to check the mudra, to check the posture, to check to see if your head is on top of the spine, to check to see if your teeth are together and your tongue is at the roof of your mouth. Sometimes it's hard to keep your teeth together, depending on how many you have. but generally to keep your teeth together or your tongue at the roof of your mouth and to breathe from here.

[22:00]

When you find yourself breathing in your chest and your breath is not going down, then you can take some deep breaths. to reorganize or re-establish your breathing down in your lower tongue den. So, if you want to do that, just go... That's not me, that's just... Silently, of course, I'm just doing the... making the sound for exaggeration, but... And expand... And then that's priming your breath. So when your breath becomes rough or when it's up here and you need to get it down, just take some deep breaths in your lower tongue, den, and reestablish your breathing. So I want to say again that micromanaging or readjusting your posture is not the same as moving.

[23:12]

Moving means I don't like sitting in this position, so I'm going to change my position." You can do that, but if you... It's better to simply see through, see it through, see the position through that you're in, and then next time then change to a different position if it feels if you feel that it would be better. But really try to stay in the position that you've chosen, even if it is difficult. Because if we don't see our difficulties through, we won't know how to deal with difficulties. So it's really important to see our difficulties through. And that way we can begin to understand more, better, how to deal with difficulty and how to accept rather than give up.

[24:28]

And when we can accept, can let go of self-centeredness. The purpose of zazen is to let go of self-centeredness. You know, we say, I am sitting zazen. That's true, but it's not so. If you say, I am sitting zazen, that's not right. If you say, it's not me sitting zazen, that's not right either. If you say, my leg hurts, that's not right. If you say, it's not my leg that hurts, that's not right either. It's just, there are painful legs sitting Zazen, doing their own Zazen. So every part of our body is doing Zazen independently, but all these parts of the body

[25:43]

belong to the body, the one body. And the whole body belongs to the bigger body, called the universe, or the world, or whatever. So, we have all these little parts that we pay attention to, called this body. And they all line up and co-operate. So we want them to all co-operate to do this one act called Zazen. But if we claim it as mine, we have a big problem. So we say, Zazen and doing Zazen, or it's Buddha's practice. So each part of the body is practicing independently, and we have to take care of each part of the body independently.

[26:59]

And even though they're all lined up together, they're not poured in concrete. So we have to take care of them, each part, as we fit. So while we are sitting up straight and making that effort, at the same time we're letting go. So it's the balance between effort and letting go. So receiving and letting go is passive. And making the effort to sit up straight is active. So this is not just a passive practice. and it's not just an active practice. It's activity, active and passive at the same time. If it's only passive, then there's no

[28:09]

there's no effort in it. And if it's only active, it blocks the energy. So activity brings energy to the practice, and passivity allows everything to be without blocking. So active and passive. This left hand is passive, right hand is active. And when we bring them together, we have the complete person. Then there's the mind. The body is not just a pedestal for the mind. Body and mind are one activity, interact together.

[29:29]

So when we sit zazen, Dogen says, think, not thinking. This is The art of Zazen. I don't know if art is the right word, but this is the koan of Zazen. Think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Beyond thinking and not thinking. Because thought, thinking and not thinking are simply two sides of the same equation. So it's beyond thinking and not thinking. In Zazen, the mind has to go somewhere. Thinking mind has to go somewhere. So we think the thought of Zazen. Don't think something else.

[30:31]

Just simply think the thought of Zazen, but then something else, some other thoughts come in. Sometimes we introduce thoughts, and sometimes thoughts just come up. So the nature of the mind is to produce thoughts. And thoughts are continually bubbling up, like a soda pop, like bubbles. And it doesn't matter what the mind's thinking about as long as it's thinking about something. So we allow the mind to think because that's its function. But when we direct the mind, you direct the mind to the thought of zazen. And if we have a positive thought, then we have some direction. Even though there's no place to go, we have direction. So, to keep the mind focused on the body,

[31:40]

The posture and the breath is thinking the thought of Zazen. And to let the thoughts come, the random thinking will come and go. It just comes and goes. That's the passivity. The passive part is to just let the thoughts come and go. Hello and goodbye. The active part is to direct the mind to posture and breathing, and to letting go. So, we often think that Zazen is just passive, but it's active. To keep the vertebrae, keep the back really straight, and keep stretching the back. Stretching, lifting the sternum, stretching the back, keeping the mudra in place, letting the arms just hang because they're not doing anything.

[32:47]

No need to have muscular tension in the arms or your shoulders or your back. Let them fall off, except that the mudra keeps them there. The mudra is holding up your arms. Don't let the mudra rest on your heels. even though it may touch your heels. And just keep waking up all the time, stretching, stretching. And then you induce energy. When you sit up really straight with good effort, it induces energy. And then you feel very alive, very energetic. and you're not squashed. So, do you have a question about Zazen?

[34:02]

Well, you know, there's variation, right? Don't grind your teeth in zazen. If you find yourself grinding your teeth, it's just like holding your mudra. That should be a signal to you that you're not very calm. You're not calmly practicing if you're grinding your teeth. Sometimes I don't put my teeth together because in time, you know, like your upper teeth should be in front of your lower teeth normally, but in time my upper teeth have moved back or my lower teeth have moved forward, something like that, and they don't go that way. It's an effort for me to put my upper teeth in front of my lower teeth. So you just have to find, given, you know, Zazen instruction is idealistic, but within that idealism, you have to find the actuality of what you can do.

[35:41]

So not everybody can push the lower back forward, but you do the best you can. A lower back has a curve in it. A straight back, a straight lower back has a curve in it. But then, some people's straight back is straight, you know. So, same with your teeth, you know. The configuration of your teeth may be better if you're a little bit open or something. But, these are the, this is the ideal way. But within that, you have to find what really makes sense. given your body type and your structure and your nervous system. Number two. Yeah, number two is I find a lot of tension in my... around my mouth and even going up into the head. It's like if I... it's not chronic, I think, but if I relax, I have very slight, very slight, small health issues.

[36:48]

That's right. So, you know, at the same time that you're asserting effort, You're relaxing all those parts. So, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh says, smile. People don't like to do that. I don't like to put in a fake smile. But, you know, if you smile a little bit, maybe it can help to remind you to let go, to relax. Right. Yeah. The thinker is used as an antithesis for Zazen. Quite often, actually. The thinker, Rodin's thinker, is not considered the opposite of Zazen.

[37:53]

That's the posture of discursive. Yes, it's the posture of discursive thinking. Yeah. Yeah, not leaning. It can touch, but not to lean on it. Not to lean on it as a convenient resting place. Holding it where? Yes, some people hold it real high, some people hold it down here, some people hold it here, some people hold it there. something to be said for all those positions. Usually when somebody's holding their mudra way up here, I put it down here. But I would say you hold it up a bit, but not up here like this, but holding it up a bit is okay.

[39:01]

Well, yeah, so you have to work with that. But it also, if you hold your mudra up a little bit, it puts a little tension in your lower back and pushes it forward a little bit, which is kind of good. So you just have to work with it. A lot of people say, well, my mudra, if I hold my mudra, it puts tension in my arms. So you have to find... the place where there's no tension in your arms when you're holding your mudra. So you can find tension in your arms if you want to, but you can also hold it and then figure out, well, let's see, how can I hold this without any tension? And then you work with that. And pretty soon you realize, hey, I can hold my mudra here without any tension because the only thing that's holding it in place is balance.

[40:06]

So we just keep finding the balances in our body. And also the balance of our mind. Because where we keep our mind, our attention, is in the center of equilibrium. So there's no grasping and there's no rejecting. The grasping, as it is on this side, Rejecting is on this side, and where you keep your mind is in the middle. Where you keep your mind, I don't want to say your attention, your mind is right there in the middle. So that grasping your attention may be going like, and rejection might be going like this, but this is where you are. You're right there in the middle, so that you're not affected by the seesaw or the teeter-totter. Not really.

[41:33]

Not if you make some effort to find the balance. Because you don't really hold the mudra with your arms. You hold it with your lower back. You hold the mudra with the small of your back. And the arms are just there like a little swing. the space underneath? Yeah. It can be lower, but if you really push your lower back forward and hold your, of course, some people's arms are long and some are short, right? So, anyway, it's not a big problem, right? It's a small problem. If you really need to have the pad, it's okay. Okay? Yeah, but yeah, see what happens. When you don't, when you just lift your lower back, hold your arms. It's a kind of wonderful circle here.

[42:39]

Sure. Oh yeah, the eyes, yes. Well, you know, most of the time our eyes are tired, right? When you close your eyes it feels so good because they're sore and they're tired. But Zazen makes an effort to keep them open. So sometimes they're closed. The truth is, ideally, keep your eyes open. But the truth is that they'll close and then they'll open, and then they'll close, and then they'll open. So, you know, make some effort to keep your eyes open. If you make some effort to keep your eyes open, you can accept the fact that they will close. Now my eyes are closed, but I should keep them open, so you open them up. Then they close.

[43:44]

Then they feel so good to be closed. Oh, I should keep my eyes open. So you just kind of go on like that. No matter how much you want to keep your eyes closed. So I just, you know, it's just like coming back to your breath and posture. You keep coming back to your eyes open. I used to sit with my eyes wide open, like this. That's really a good way, actually. Because then when they close, they only close halfway. But I remember when I used to do that, when I was really putting a lot of energy into my back, sitting up really straight, when I remember to do that. And then my eyes, because of all that energy, my eyes would just pop open. True.

[44:46]

Peter? Well, what we do in that case is we stretch your thumbs out. I'm not complaining. Well, you don't have to hold your shoulders back so high. If you put your mudra together and lift up your sternum and keep your back pushed forward, your shoulders will fall into place where they should be.

[45:55]

put your mind in your mudra, and then your shoulders will fall into place, rather than putting your mind in your shoulders, and then having your mudra not come together. Carol? Is it mosaic? You were talking about how the Chinese, like Master Hua, how they sit, and how the Chinese sit today. She's wondering. How did they sit in Dogen's time? Where Dogen got his transmission on how to help people? Okay, well, Dogen rejected a lot of, he rejected all of the Zazen treatises in China.

[47:05]

And he was influenced by some here and there, but basically he rejected them. And that's why he wrote the Fukan Zazengi. If you read Carl's book on Dogen's manual of meditation or whatever, you'll see that he rejected all these treatises from China. He thought, no, this isn't right, that's not right, and just one by one just dismissed them. And Carl didn't like that. He thought, well, geez, you know, these guys have got a lot to say, and Dogen seems, you writing his own, carving his own dragon, so to speak. But this is what Dogen did. He really rejected a lot of the stuff that was written out in the Chinese meditation manuals, and just wrote, I guess he was influenced by Ru Jing,

[48:20]

And there's some manuals that are close to Dogan, but not completely. He told me not to put a cushion under my knee like I did, and I haven't been doing that like he told me, but now a lot of times when my leg falls asleep. Oh, good. Because if you don't experience your legs falling asleep, you're not a Zen student. I remember my legs fell asleep every time for about three or four years. And then suddenly, they never fall asleep. And then, they fall asleep for six months, then they'll never fall asleep. That's the way, that's... Welcome, welcome, welcome to the club. So just let them fall asleep and then, you know, at some point, who knows, they'll wake up.

[49:32]

So it's okay. We don't have too much time, but one and two. What about the legs? Well, okay. It's very interesting. I saw my doctor yesterday before I came back, and he said, you know, the hip, people think the hips are here, but the hips are here. The hips are here. This is something else. This is the behind and the thighs. So, like, you're talking about the thighs and the buttocks. What about it? I've had pain all over the place in the last 40 years.

[50:45]

It goes from one place to another, you know. Right now, I used to have sciatica, you know, on my left side and it went down. And so what I did was I got this, I experimented with the cushions. And I ended up with a cushion, my famous cushion, which is almost nothing, you know. And so I'd have to hold my back real straight all the time because there was no support. Then that disappeared after about 20 years. Now I think I have it on my right side. So now I have a high cushion, you know, and my knee hurts, you know. So this is the problem I'm dealing with now, and I just experiment with it. I am dealing with that problem.

[51:46]

It gets my, this buttocks here and my knee here, you know, it kind of goes back and forth, and sometimes I raise this, depending on which one I want to favor. And then there's a tie in between. So, you know, you just experiment with what works. Just keep experimenting until you find what works. And then pretty soon it changes to something else. So I just have faith in my body. It really feels like it's getting old. But I think it's mostly sciatica, but I don't know what your problem is. Maybe your body's just still stretching out, you know?

[52:47]

Because your body has to stretch out in Zazen. It's not a static thing, you know? Your body's always changing. and certain parts get stressed and then you have to deal with that stress, you know. I don't know how it works but I just keep going and then pretty soon it changes. And for years I sat without any pain at all. Not without any strain or pain. I never had any problem for Years and years, I could sit through a whole session without feeling my knees at all. And I never had anything, you know, hip or anything. But, you know, that's what's happening now. So, I sometimes change my legs. Sometimes I'll sit in a half lotus, sometimes I'll just put my leg up here, which is unusual, but...

[53:54]

I feel sad doing that, but that's just my pride. So, I don't know, you know. I can't say what your thing is that you have, you know. All I can think is just find a way to deal with it. That's what we all have to do is just find a way to deal with what's going on in our body. You know, our body, if we put too much concentration on this part of the body that we think is the problem, then we create more of a problem. But if we let the whole body take care of the problem, like the whole body together will organize itself to take care of that part of the body that we feel that there's a problem.

[55:03]

So, you know, when I'm sitting and I feel like, oh, there's this pain here and there's this pain here, I don't dwell on that. That becomes part of what I'm doing, but hey, there's the whole rest of the body, you know, to deal with. There's the whole rest of the body and the breath and the mind, and that's just something that's happening. But we tend to think, oh God, you know, that's really the spot we have to concentrate on. And it's really the spot that if we don't concentrate on it, we'll likely be okay. But the more we just get drawn to that part, get drawn to the part that's painful, and then we make it more painful by dwelling on it. You know, when a person gives a talk, They're thinking about what they're saying. And they don't think about this. If I wasn't thinking, if I wasn't giving a talk, I'd probably be thinking about, my leg hurts.

[56:09]

And then it'd be getting worse and worse and worse. And you're sitting there listening, right? So your pain is getting worse and worse and worse. I'm sitting here talking, my pain's getting easier and easier. So, da-da, it's all up here. I'm gonna let you go. Yeah, intention.

[56:34]

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