Today, since this is the beginning of our sasheen, I just thought I would go over some points of Zazen. Even though all of you know all these points, I will go over them anyway to kind of 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. I remember Suzuki Roshi talking about Zazen as

[01:38]

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 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. So just to be where we are, just to settle on where we are, not so easy.

[02:47]

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 of 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. You know, this is Japanese practice, Japanese monks or practitioners, for Japanese practitioners,

[03:53]

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. And when I went to China, I noticed there was a monk sitting in the Zendo and he was

[05:00]

kind of slumped over. And then I think To Lun 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 Zazen with To Lun in 1965. So, sitting up really straight, stretching out the vertebrae, you know, if you can sit this way the whole Sashin, you'd be very happy. You know, we have a tendency to start out this way, but then we get sleepy, and our posture sags. So, we have to make an effort to keep our posture all the time. When it sags, you straighten up.

[06:03]

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 most efficient way to sit up straight is to move your lower back forward and lift up your sternum and keep your head on top of your spine.

[07:05]

When we say keep your chin in, 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 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 in posture is balance. So if the head is balanced on top of the spine, and the spine is balanced on top of your lower behind,

[08:12]

with your lower back pushed forward, then you can find balance. So there doesn't need to be a lot of tension, even though you're holding your back straight. But lifting the sternum is important. Lifting the sternum doesn't mean to 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 cooperating. And then it's easy to keep your head on top of your spine. And your nose in line with your navel. 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.

[09:15]

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 your 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. 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.

[10:19]

They're just hanging there in their mudra. So the mudra is very important because the mudra gives us information. The 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 it's like, are they touching or not touching? That lightly. But they are touching. When you maintain that kind of sensitivity, that means you're awake. When the thumbs start pressing against each other,

[11:21]

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. You drift, then you come back, and you wake up.

[12:23]

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, let go of the tenseness, and just let the tenseness drain out of your body.

[13:28]

Because there's no need to be tense. 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. So there's no need to be tense, because it doesn't help. It doesn't help.

[14:31]

As a matter of fact, it just causes more discomfort. 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.

[15:35]

If it's a long breath, let it be a long breath. If it's a short breath, let it be a long breath. 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. Suzuki Roshi says, 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. 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.

[16:35]

You can let all the tenseness in your body leave with the tide, when the tide goes out. So, 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,

[17:41]

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. 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.

[18:45]

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. 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,

[19:48]

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, certain meridians, but that's too complex for me. So during Zazen,

[20:56]

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 we're doing it right, 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, is to breathe from here. 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

[22:01]

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 re-establish your breathing. So, I want to say again that micromanaging or readjusting your posture is not the same as moving. Moving means, I don't like sitting in this position, so I'm going to change my position.

[23:02]

You can do that, but if you... It's better to simply see through, see it through, see the position through that you are 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

[24:06]

difficulty, and how to accept rather than give up. And when we can accept, we 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.

[25:06]

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 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 this, 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.

[26:11]

So we say, Zazen is 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. 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 sit. 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.

[27:18]

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 there's no effort in it. And if it's only active, it blocks the energy. So activity brings energy

[28:20]

to the practice. And passivity allows everything to be without blocking. So active and passive. This left hand is passive. The 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, mind are one activity. Interact together. So when we sit Zazen, Dogen says, think, not thinking.

[29:20]

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. 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

[30:22]

of the mind is to produce thoughts. And thoughts are continually bubbling up. Like your soda pop that you 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, we 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 and the posture and the breath is

[31:22]

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. No need to have

[32:27]

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 and very energetic and you're not squashed. So,

[33:36]

do you have a question about Zazen? I have two things. One is that my dentist colleague sees a lot of green gulch people and he says that having the teeth together is actually not so good for people who are crying especially but in general and that teeth naturally separate from the teeth and yeah 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 so but you know sometimes I don't put my teeth together because in time you know like your

[34:36]

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 I have 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 so not everybody can push the lower back forward you know but you do the best you can some a lower back has a curve in it a straight back a straight lower back has a curve in it but then some people straight back is straight you know so same with your teeth

[35:37]

you know the configuration of your teeth may be better if you're a little bit open or something but this 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 oh yeah 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 because I'm crying I think but if I relax I have a very light very slight smile that's right so with 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

[36:37]

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 you said that the hardest thing to keep your ears in line with your phone I was thinking this morning about the sculpture by Auguste Rodin the thinker 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 the posture of discursive yes the posture of discursive thinking yeah

[37:37]

yeah not leaning it can it can touch but not to lean on it not to lean on it as a convenient resting place holding it where yeah some people hold it real high some people hold it down here some people hold it here some people hold it there so you know there's something to be said for all those positions usually when somebody's holding the mudra way up here I put it down here right but there you can I would say you hold it up a bit but not not up here like this but holding it up a bit is okay well yeah so you have to work with that but it also you know if you hold your mudra up a little bit it puts a little

[38:47]

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 you know find out a lot of people say well my mudra you know 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 now 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 there's only the thing that's holding it in place is balance so we just keep finding the balances in our body and also the balance

[39:48]

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 so grasping 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 it's you're not affected by the seesaw or the teeter-totter following up on that mudra question a little more I usually put a little pad right there is that not optimal

[40:49]

am I missing out because I just want my hands to rest in the right spot but I've never heard that before that you should actually be holding them up and pulling them in wouldn't you be sitting the whole 40 minutes like holding your hands not really 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 keep the mudra with your you hold the mudra with your the small of your back and the arms are just they're like a little swing yeah it can be lower but if you really push your lower back forward and hold your of course everybody's arms are 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

[41:49]

you know the pad it's okay okay yeah but yeah see what happens when you don't when you just let your lower back hold your arms it's a kind of wonderful circle here sure oh yeah the eyes yes so well you know we're 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

[42:49]

but the truth is that they'll close and then they'll open and then they're closed 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 I should keep them open so you open them up and they're closed 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

[43:51]

actually because then when they close they only close half way but I 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 so yeah and then my eyes because of all that energy my eyes would just pop open true Peter getting back to that mudra you know in addition to pushing the lower back forward I used to sit with my mudra rested on my lap and when I was kid the last time Vicki and Michael worked with me on turning my back curved a little and raising the sternum and putting the shoulders back with the ears on and what I found was I couldn't reach my feet I couldn't reach anymore so you see my frame it's actually my shoulders that hold my arms up when I sit up straight if I let my hands

[44:51]

rest on my lap the thumbs don't touch it's not well enough to actually hold it up a little but but it is somewhere in here that's holding them up it's not my arms well what you know what we do in that case is we stretch your thumbs out I'm not complaining I'm not doing that well you don't have to hold your shoulders back so high so far you know just just 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 so 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 I have a question about what Nogin created this this thing

[45:51]

where did he get his transmission from what was that again where did Nogin get his transmission to the city if it wasn't from China when he wrote he Nogin wait a minute before we before we you were you were you were talking about how the Chinese like master Hua how they sit and how the Chinese sit today but she was wondering how did they sit in Nogin's time where where Nogin got his transmission on how to help people instead of oh okay well because Nogin rejected a lot of he rejected all of the Zazen Zazen treatises in China 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

[46:52]

Nogin'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 Nogin seems you know writing his own carving his own dragon so to speak but this is what Nogin did he really rejected a lot of the stuff that was written out in China in the Chinese meditation manuals and just wrote I guess he was influenced by Ru Jing and there was there's some manuals

[47:56]

that are close to Nogin but not completely he told me not to put a cushion under my knee like I did and I hadn't been doing that he told me now a lot of times when my legs fall asleep oh good because if you don't experience your legs falling asleep you're not a Zen student I remember when my legs fell asleep every time for about 3 or 4 years and then suddenly they never fall asleep and then they fall asleep for 6 months then they'll never fall asleep that's the way that's welcome welcome to the club so just let them fall asleep and then you know at some point

[48:57]

who knows they'll wake up that's ok we don't have too much time but 1 and 2 what about the legs? well ok 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 the behind and the and the thighs so like you're talking about the thighs and the buttocks what about

[50:00]

you have yeah yeah I've had pain all over the last 40 years it goes from one place to another you know right now I used to have sciatica you know my left side and it went down and so what I did was I got this I experimented with 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 and and now I have a high cushion you know

[51:04]

with a 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 it gets my this buttocks here and my knee here you know it kind of goes back and forth and sometimes I raise this and depending on which one I want to favor so and then there's a thigh 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 you know it really feels like it's getting old but I think it's

[52:04]

mostly sciatica but I don't know what your problem is it's where it's yeah yeah maybe your body's just still stretching out you know because your body has to stretch out in Zazen and it's it's not a static thing you know it's always 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 sat 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 I never had anything

[53:04]

you know hip 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 I feel sad doing that but that's just my pride so I don't know you know I can't say what 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 but you know our body if we if we put too much concentration on this part of the body

[54:06]

that's 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 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 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 we just get drawn

[55:06]

to that part get drawn to the part that's painful and then we make it more painful by being 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 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 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 attention

[55:58]

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