Today I plan to give us a Zazen refresher to think about our Zazen and there are certain points that I would like to talk about. And I think that if people are sitting behind somebody else and you can't see, you can just bring your cushion up to the front, not just in the aisle. So anyway, find a way to make yourself, give yourself a good position. And you can turn if you're sitting on the tom here, you just turn this way. So I wanted to talk a bit and then also give you an opportunity to ask questions.

[01:14]

First, I wanted to say that You know, when we approach our seat, we bow to the seat. And when we bow, you know, we have our fingers and thumbs together. And you put your palms together. And sometimes, you know, people hold their thumbs up like this. But it feels better to hold your thumbs down with your fingers. That's just something that I want to say. And then when you bow, to bow from the waist, rather than just like this. Because actually we're bowing our body, and hands are just part of that. When we bring our hands together, it's like bringing the two sides of our nature into one.

[02:22]

So this is why bowing is an important practice for us, because it unites the dualistic parts of our nature. So when we take our seat during zazen, Especially a beginner should not try to stretch their legs too far. In other words, it's good to take a position which is easiest to maintain. And as you sit for longer periods of time, over a period of time, over a period of years, then gradually your legs will become more accustomed to sitting. And you'll be able to take a more extreme posture.

[03:30]

But you shouldn't start out thinking that you have to have an extreme posture with your legs. But I suggest to everyone that you at least try to sit cross-legged. And when you try to sit cross-legged, you'll find that your legs becoming accustomed to the position will give you some problem, as we all know. You'll have some painfulness in the legs. But I encourage you to continue sitting making an effort to sit cross-legged anyway, if you can. If you can't, that's fine. You can sit in Seiza, which is sitting on your knees, or you can sit in a chair, or if you have an extreme problem, you can always lie down. That's possible, too.

[04:33]

But if it's possible to sit cross-legged at all, then I encourage you to make that effort. to sit cross-legged. And little by little, your legs will become accustomed to sitting. But that won't happen unless you make the effort. But whatever position you take, with your legs, we make an effort to sit up straight. to sit with our back very straight. So what I suggest to people is when you begin zazen, when you sit down in your seat, is to put your hands like this and sway this way, because that will help to loosen your body. And often we sit, but we don't do that, even though we know that

[05:40]

But this way will help to stretch out your legs and also it helps you to make a transition from what you've been doing to what you're doing now. So when we come to the zendo for zazen, especially in the afternoon, in the morning, we just got out of bed and we don't have a lot going in our mind yet. So in the afternoon, you know, we've been through the day and there's a lot in our mind that's already going, you know, and our body posture, we've already assumed the defensive body postures. Do you know what I mean by that? Throughout the day, when we meet circumstances, we become involved with circumstances.

[06:44]

And then our bodies, our body posture is conditioned by the events that we meet. So we have a lot of tenseness in our body often, and our mind is reeling. And when we start to come to the zendo, we should already be preparing for zazen. preparing ourselves for zazen. So by the time we walk in the gate, the atmosphere of the zendo is already affecting us. And we stop talking so much, and we stop looking around so much, and start to concentrate on what we're doing. And then by the time we get to the porch, and we're taking off our shoes, we should take off our shoes of mindfulness. Often, you know, people take off their shoes and just leave them where they stepped out of them.

[07:51]

You know, or just kind of toss them out someplace. That does happen. But we should really take care of our shoes. We step out of the shoes and put the shoes in the shoe rack. Put them someplace, and you know where they are. There's a story, you know, a Zen story about this advanced student of a teacher. And the student left his shoes outside the door, came in to see the teacher. And the teacher said, where did you leave your shoes? And he said, I'm not sure. And he was so embarrassed that he left the monastery and went out to study, wander around for 10 more years. He became a shoe salesman. He became a shoe salesman.

[08:55]

And then when we walk into the zendo, the atmosphere of the zendo completes our connection, our letting go of our conditioning. So when we come into the zendo, letting go of our conditioning from the day. And so when we come to our seat, when we enter the zendo, we bow. And the atmosphere of the zendo helps us to do this. The formality of the practice helps us to let go of our conditioning. When we bow and hold our hands in Shashu and come to our seat, we don't have to worry about all the things that we've been worrying about during the day, because we have some way to conduct ourselves.

[10:07]

We actually can assume a form which is not conditioning. that the forms that we use for the practice are forms which decondition us, actually. Putting our hands together, bringing the universe together in unity and paying mindful respect to everyone that came before us and paying respect to everyone here, and sitting down in the cushion, and turning around, and facing the wall, crossing our legs. This is all deconditioning. It allows us, if you really practice these forms completely,

[11:12]

you enter into an unconditioned state of mind. And then you can sit zazen more easily. And so then we cross our legs. And if you do this, to really stretch yourself out, not fast, but in a slow way, mindful way. This is also zazen. It looks like preparing for zazen, but even though it is a kind of preparing for zazen, this itself is zazen. And the reason why this itself is zazen is because it's completely done. It's just doing this. When you're doing this, you're just doing this. It's not preparation for anything. Therefore, it's just sasan, just this simple act.

[12:24]

And then we put our hands in the mudra. When we put our hands in the mudra, you know, we should keep our thumbnails trimmed. The mark of a Zen student is that their thumbnails are trimmed. So otherwise you can't put the tips of your thumbs together. So mudra, this is called cosmic mudra. And it's like holding a gem. It's a circle, actually, without anything in it. Empty circle. But you hold this empty circle as if there was a big round gem. This is called the Cosmic Mudra.

[13:29]

Circles are very interesting in Zen practice. Empty circle means nirvana. So this circle is a very important feeling of a circle. Form is emptiness and emptiness is form. And the way we hold the mudra reflects the condition of our zazen. So when we become sleepy or distracted or lack energy, and the amrita collapses and starts to fall apart. So you can tell, it's like a barometer, you can tell what's going on by the condition of your mudra. And if you hold your thumbs like this, too much, too tense, then you know there's a lot of anxiety or sometimes fear.

[14:40]

sometimes too much energy. So just to hold the tips of the thumbs very lightly together, so they're just barely touching, and to keep awareness all during zazen, the tips of your thumbs, the way they rest on each other, the way they come together. So to feel that light tension, of your thumbs, very lightly touching in a good, with good form, feeling of a circle. And then up against your abdomen, resting on your leg. Sometimes people hold their mudra way up here, but that's not so good. Sometimes here, sometimes here. But if you allow your mudra to come low, then you can relax your back, your upper back and your shoulders.

[15:50]

You don't have to use your arms. So then, when you have established your mudra, if you push your lower back forward and sit up straight and lift your sternum, and put your head on top of your spine, then your vertebrae will be in a straight line. A straight back is not straight. A straight back is not like a stick, like a straight stick. Straight back is actually more like this. It has a curve in the bottom. A natural, you know, vertebrae has a natural curve in the bottom. So we can emphasize that curve so that when you're sitting, you're not sitting on your tailbone. You're actually sitting off of your tailbone. And your thighs, right about here, is what's taking your weight.

[16:57]

Sometimes people can't do that. So if you can't do that, then sit a little more straight. Everybody's a little bit different, but there is a kind of standard, and you have to see where you are, where your ability or your body falls within that standard. So you should do whatever you can, but if it's possible to push your lower back forward, then you should make that effort. Then you have real support for your upper body. So our legs are like the roots of a tree. And then when you push your lower back forward, lifting your sternum and sitting up very straight, then your body has a lot of flexibility. So

[18:07]

sitting with our back vertebrae lined up, a straight line, and our head on top of the spine. Often people sit like this, and that puts a lot of weight onto your upper back, a lot of strain on your upper back. So you avoid sitting with your head forward. Keep your head on top of your spine, but not looking up in the air. that you just rotate your head forward so that you're facing a little bit down from straight ahead. And then your ears are in line with your shoulders. Your nose is in line with your navel. When your ears are in line with your shoulders, then it means that you're not leaning forward or backward. And when your nose is in line with your navel, It means that you're not leaning to the right or the left. So during Zazen, we make a continual effort to sit up straight.

[19:19]

If there's nothing else you do in Zazen, you should make this continual effort to sit up straight, which means stretching your waist and lifting your sternum and keeping your head on top of your spine. and your teeth together, and your tongue at the roof of your mouth. And when you make this effort to stretch your upper body, it's a kind of continual effort in Zazen. And you find, just after a while, you find just the right kind of effort. At first, you have to make a lot of effort. And in making this effort, people get very tense. When you begin to practice for the first year or so, it's easy for your body to be very tense because you're making this effort.

[20:23]

But when you begin to refine your posture, And when you find out where your balance is, then you can begin to let go of the tenseness, which you don't need to hold you up. No need to have tenseness in your hands, or your lower arms, or your upper arms, or your shoulders, or your upper back. There's no need for any tenseness there at all. So there's a difference between tenseness and tension. Tension is what holds everything together, is what keeps a form together. But tenseness is something extra. It's the tension in muscles which is not necessary. So it's important to continually let go of the tenseness in order to maintain the proper tension.

[21:27]

So, in our posture, balance is the most important thing. Balancing all of the parts of our body together. And to allow each part to be independent. And at the same time, all the parts lined up and harmonious with each other doing one thing. So actually there's plenty to do in zazen. If you're bored, then you're forgetting something. If you say, oh, I'm bored in zazen, it means usually that you're separated from what you're doing. So if you're bored, all you have to do is get back into the body. So during Zazen, you go over all the points of your posture. Is your mudra okay?

[22:34]

Is the back straight? Are we lifting the sternum? My head on top of the spine? Am I leaning one way or the other? This is not even to mention the breath. So once we've established our posture and let go of the tenseness in our upper body, you can, to let go of the tenseness in your upper body, you can just think about letting go of the tenseness. Think about your body rising and expanding. And just feel the tenseness draining out of your body. What we're doing actually is resuming our natural posture. Natural posture is to sit up straight.

[23:38]

When I say natural, I mean unconditioned. Because conditioned conditions will determine what our posture is, either bent over or tense or defiant or frightened or anxious. These are all posture conditioners. So in Zazen, it's just freedom. Freedom to resume our natural posture, unconditioned posture. So, to let go of the tenseness in our body, or the conditioning that we came with, is to just allow our natural posture to assume itself. So after we have our posture, then you can start to watch your breath, following the breath.

[24:54]

And following the breath, is to just breathe naturally through our nose. But when we breathe, we should get our breath down to the lower abdomen. So we inhale, the abdomen expands. When we exhale, the abdomen contracts. So it's like a kind of ball. Inhaling, exhaling. Inhaling, exhaling. And when we have anxiety or fear or something, then the breath starts to come up and then we find ourselves breathing in the chest. So we should be mindful, make an effort actually to bring the breath down to our lower abdomen so that we're always breathing here. And so in order to do that, When you put your hands like this to begin your Zazen posture, take a few breaths, like open your mouth, and inhale, and let your lower abdomen expand.

[26:12]

And let it contract until all the air is out. Do you feel your back and your front coming together? And keep pushing until all the air is out. And then take another breath and feel this expand down here. And then when you exhale, do it silently. Push all the air out. And if you do that three or four times, that primes your breathing. And then when you start to breathe naturally through your nose and zazen, your breathing is deep to begin with. And then if you lose your breath, or if it becomes rough, or you can't follow it so easily, or it starts to rise, you can do that again to re-establish your breathing. So there's always a way to re-establish deep breathing, and that is to take a few deep breaths and expand your lower abdomen.

[27:15]

and then contract it. It's important to contract it because then you can feel how it's like a bellows. And if you do this, if you breathe this way continuously in zazen, and breathe it this way through all your sushins, then when you enter the world, you'll still be breathing that way. And you'll find yourself coming back to your breath. Because when you have difficulty in Zazen, the only place to go is to your breath. And sometimes it's just one breath after the next. That's all that you can do. And so then you learn to, that you can rely on attention to breathing in difficult situations. And that will calm your mind. And when you do that in sushin, then you automatically come back to that when you find yourself in a tense situation.

[28:24]

So during your working hours, you keep coming back to breathing in order to establish your zazen in your daily life. So then, of course, for we always teach people to count the breath and you count your breath on the exhale after you inhale you exhale and when you exhale you count one and inhale two and when you get to ten you come back to one so you're always counting from one to ten and this is Although we teach this to beginners, it's not a beginner's practice. It's just counting breath practice. And when you learn to count your breath, then when you have difficulty or when your mind is scattered, you automatically come back to counting breath.

[29:32]

So it's a kind of handle on breathing, on attention. Helps you with your attention. And a lot of times people don't like to count the breath. They say, well, can I stop counting my breath? Well, when can I stop counting my breath? Because I'd rather pay attention to my dreams or my fantasies. But when you count the breath, it's not counting off like sheep jumping over the fence. The breath and the counting are one act. So the breath is the counting, and the counting is the breath. And when you're counting two, there's no one and there's no three. There's just this count, and the number just becomes the breath. So this is called being one with breath.

[30:36]

So these are some aspects of zazen which I want to just remind everyone about. And there are more things, but I want to give you a chance to ask some questions if you have any questions. Do you have any questions? Yes. I want to see if I understand it. With pushing the lower back forward, my understanding was that you want to be sitting on your sitting bones. Is that what part of the thigh that you meant? Yeah, I guess you could call it that. On the sitting bones. So not on the main part of the thigh, but because my legs tend to go to sleep if I sit that far back. I would say, find what's comfortable, you know. You know, pushing the back forward and taking the weight off of your tailbone.

[31:52]

And find what's comfortable. It's no specific place. Do you mean the difference between being back on your tailbone and pushing? I see. And more on your legs, I see. Yeah, more on your legs. Let your legs take the weight of your body. And that way, it really induces a lot of energy in zazen. If you're not collecting energy in zazen, then there could be something that you're not doing right. After a day of work, or whatever we do, and then we come to the zazen, and we sit, and then we fall asleep. Because as soon as your mind stops and your momentum stops, you get sleepy. Especially on a warm day. And so we kind of have to fight off sleep too.

[32:55]

And it's hard to stay awake. But sometimes. And so sitting up, really giving our effort to the posture, helps to keep us awake. And gives us energy. Creates energy. Yes. Could you say something about the importance of longer sittings or day-long sittings or practice period? Well, you know, we have like one-day sittings, three-day sittings, five-day sittings, seven-day sittings, periodically. And these times of concentration, concentrated effort, give us an opportunity to deepen our Zazen practice.

[34:03]

Because in one period of Zazen, one period of Zazen is wonderful, but it's possible to not go so deep. But when you sit for all day, by the time the day is over, you've reached a certain depth of practice because you have less distraction. And when you sit for three days, by the third day, you have settled. Your mind has begun to settle. In a five-day session, By the third or fourth day, your mind is pretty much settled. I don't say this as a rule, but there's that opportunity. And in a seven-day session, your mind is usually, by the end of seven days, your mind is very settled. And it's like you have never done anything else.

[35:08]

So you're really in the unconditioned realm, And even though you have difficulty, you know, in a seven-day session, you may have a tape going in your head the whole seven days, you know. But this is practice of body and mind. And even though the mind is still moving, the body is still sitting zazen. And so, you know, It's not like everybody's mind will always be settled in seven days, or five days, or whatever. But even though the mind is not completely settled, it's more settled than you think. Even though you have a lot of disturbance going on, on the surface. So, sashin is like a glass of muddy water. you know, you take a glass and scoop it out of the pond and it's full of mud, you know, and very murky.

[36:21]

And then after, when you let it sit, pretty soon all the murk comes down, settles down to the bottom and all the disturbance, you know, stops. But that's only one example. But even though, even in zazen, even though the mind becomes more clear, there still can be a lot of disturbance on the surface. Even after seven days, there may be some surface tension. But that's not so significant. even though you have this surface disturbance, your mind still settles. It becomes clear. Yeah. 620? Okay. So, I just want to say one thing, and then we'll have evening service.

[37:30]

Gravity is always pulling us toward the earth. Gravity is pulling everything toward the earth. And in order to sustain ourself, to bring ourself to life, we have to release our spirit, which is going up this way, away from gravity. So we're always working with this tension between spirit going this way and gravity going this way. by the pull of gravity going toward the earth and spirit rising up away from the earth. And at the point of this tension between these two is where our life takes place. And when we sit zazen, we're dealing with this moment by moment. So that's why what zazen is, is releasing our spirit to be fully functioning, fully alive.

[38:35]

That's why to let go of obstructions and just allow the spirit to function fully and completely in harmony with gravity. It's pretty simple. Anyway, this is not all there is, but this is very fundamental. So, how do we do that? How do we do this sitting dance? the dance of spirit and gravity. It's there in everything we do.

[39:39]

The way we lift our arm, the way we eat our food, the way we think, the way we relate, Yes. Great wisdom beyond wisdom.

[45:03]

Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva, when practicing deeply the Prajna Paramita, perceive that all thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, if narrowed, hidden, are emptied and are saved from all suffering of Shariputra. Form does not differ from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is emptiness. That which is emptiness, form, the same is true of feelings, perceptions, formations, consciousness, thoughts, charity, food, control, all are what are, aren't with emptiness. They do not appear nor disappear, are not tainted nor pure, do not increase nor decrease. Therefore, with emptiness, no form, no feelings, no perceptions, no formations, no consciousness, Consciousness, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind, no realm of eyes until no realm of mind.

[46:19]

Consciousness, no ignorance and also no extinction of it until no old age and death and also no extinction of it. No path, no cognition, also no attainment with nothing to attain. A bodhisattva depends on Vrajna or Anitta, and the mind is no hindrance without any hindrance. No hindrance, no fears, it's just far apart from every perverted view. One dwells in nirvana, in the three worlds, all would else depend on Vrajnavaramita. Limited, unsurpassed, complete, perfect, enlightenment, therefore known as Vrajnavaramita is the great transcendent mantra, is the great bright mantra, is the utmost mantra, may the merit of this chanting pervade everywhere and may we together with

[47:36]

Chi-O-San-Chi-I-Chi-Fu Chi-San-Bu-Sa-Kho-Kho-Sa Oh. Thank you.

[50:08]

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