This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. So self and no self, noticing when you're caught up or in the throes of the agendas, the emotions, the fixed concepts, the memories, the anticipations that constitute the mental and emotional activity of your life, and noticing when you're not, noticing when the moment is clear and simple and direct. I don't know if you had a chance to read those.

[01:07]

This was the little book I was mentioning, Thich Nhat Hanh's Full Awareness of Breathing. I'll leave it there after the class. And this was the other book I was mentioning, Living Yogacara, a more developed explanation and description of Yogacara psychology. with a sort of therapeutic bent to the article, to the book. And that one I mentioned yesterday, too. This one. So it should all be there after the class. Consciousness Only School. Last week I mentioned the practice of pausing.

[02:21]

Trying to interject into the narrative that's usually going through our minds. A moment of pause. In that moment of pause, notice what's happening. In that noticing, open up to experiencing it. It's like there's a way in which There's the experience, then there's the naming the experience, then there's the response to what we've just named, both mental, emotional, and then psychological. And as we go through that, as we go through the response, the mental, emotional, and psychological, it becomes more about what's going on becomes more about the world according to me and less about the experience that initiated and stimulated that process in that moment.

[03:35]

So to try to interject moments of direct experiencing... Maybe simply put, so that we're not just simply in a dream that we've made up. I read a paper on neuroscience recently, and they were examining the activity in the occipital lobe, which is where the experience happens in the eye, and then the experience is sent to a part of the brain back here. and then that part of the brain creates our notion of pictures. You see something, and then, oh, the dining room. Now, amazingly, when they examine the activity of what happens in the occipital lobe, 80% of it is generated by other parts of the brain.

[04:45]

So it seems like 20% of it is raw data, and 80% is interpretation. So what's being experienced through the eyes has a lot of personal interpretation. So how do we... How do we not simply stay within that persistent construct? And that's a theme I'd like to develop for the rest of the intensive. And what I'd like to talk about today is mindfulness of breathing.

[05:50]

Mindfulness of breathing offers a description of a process that's often repeated in Buddhist practice. Saddle down, open up, notice what's happening. Learn from what's happening. And in saying, pause, notice, open, experience, which is a description I offered last week. It's really a version of the same thing. There's both doing it momentarily, and then there's doing it in a more deliberate and saddled way. As we're contained in the world of self, both from the perspective of Eastern and Western psychology, when we're contained in the world of self, we are contained within the agendas, the anxieties, the fears, the dominant emotions of the self, and a strong motivation, somewhat conscious and a lot unconscious, to resolve them.

[07:20]

This is the persistent, I would say, this is the persistent mental activity and emotional activity of Zazen. We want to resolve something. We want to bring it to a place of clarity, resolution, completion. But existence can't be resolved within the agendas that I have constructed. So we have a dilemma. We're never going to be done with our resolving. Practice of awareness says, well then look at the process, look at the activity of resolving and discover how to relate to that rather than simply be

[08:24]

caught up in the agendas it creates. So as I've been saying, you can either try to resolve the agendas of self or somehow suppress them or annihilate. Awareness practice, Zazen is saying, can you see them? At lunch time we've been chanting a fascicle, a piece written by Dogen Zenji called Self-Employing Samadhi, looking at the agendas of self. It's in Dogen's language, which is particular over time, and we'll talk a little bit about it. And we'll look at other Zen methodologies.

[09:32]

But I think Anapanasati is useful because it speaks to a process that arises in many meditation processes. In Awareness Meditation, in Zazen, to sit, become present, become saddled, become clear, notice the agendas of self. It's deliberately inviting subjective experience. Usually, as we enter into the subjective experience, we enter into a kind of dream. As we've all noticed, it's so easy to get caught up in something and lose connection to time and space and place. So directed attention as a way to stay connected to the experience of time and place.

[10:48]

Directed attention to stay connected to time and place. then directed attention to the body and the breath to also connect to what we might call the self. How do we connect with the self in its elemental way? Let's connect to the simple aspects of self, create a foundation for holding the complexities of self. then Anapanasati is not trying to connect to the many variations of our psychological life, of our mental, emotional life. It's trying to get at what they rest on.

[11:51]

Not exactly the unconscious, as we would think about it in Western terms, but something darn close. Maybe we could say the psychosomatic components of the unconscious. So it's helpful as you settle. Oh, we'll come back to that. Let me just... So it breaks into four sections. and we'll practice them as we go, so every time we finish, we'll all be enlightened. Thank you. Chris is leaving. True Mahayanas, that's... So, notice the Bharat. And I would say, in contrast to start...

[12:58]

with the agenda of what the breath should be. Notice what's happening. That's a very crucial point when you start to sit. Start noticing what's happening. By noticing what's happening, and then in our tradition, let your noticing find its physical demeanor, let your noticing find its connection to breath, connection to mental state. Notice the breath. Start to connect to the breath and the body. Thank you. And then calming the body with the breath. Before we do this, let me say a little bit about calming. Calming is not suppression. I mean, it's not forcing upon yourself something that weighs down agitation.

[14:15]

At this stage, in Anapanasati, there's a distinction between letting the body settle and letting the mind settle. The first thing you focus on is letting the body settle. If you could sit in Zazen posture. When I think of Zazen posture, I think of a posture that has an uprightness and an openness and a balance. Then notice the breath.

[15:21]

Don't try to manipulate it all. Just notice how it's happening, how it's being experienced in the body. And as you notice the breath in the body, can you let the exhale be like a sigh?

[16:39]

tensions or tightness there is in the body, can it be very softly released with the exhale? Whatever contractions there is in the body, can they be allowed to expand with the inhales? Thank you.

[18:42]

So, any questions or comments about that? Don't just master that right away. Yeah, I did. Yeah. Yes. And when I tried to correct it, I overcorrected.

[19:59]

And then when I stopped trying to correct it and let the breathing sort of do the expanding and settling, I came back to balance. Yeah, sometimes our doing is overdoing. Or sometimes it's about discovering, getting better at work. I would say, the pointer in meditation, to remember that the attentiveness is enlivening and the releasing is the saddling, the calming.

[21:04]

And if you're going to sleep, well, you're getting very saddled. But the attentiveness is dissipating, you know. So that's your balancing factor. Like really noticing the particulars of the bride. So watching for that. When you start to sit. Don't keep them balanced. Yes. Oh. That's a good question, Paz.

[22:07]

One way to answer it is something like this. like settling the core of our being, you know, and then let the particulars take care of themselves, you know. It's like maybe you notice you're holding some tension in your face. Actually, we notice as we continue to sit, you know, we notice like an all-day sitting or a sashim, we notice, oh, I'm holding tension all over the place. Sometimes it's evident to us how we're doing it and sometimes it's kind of mysterious you know we just sort of feel almost like the consequence of it and I would say classically in Zazen to feel the core of it it's like and that can be literal you know letting the breath settle and feeling what it is and and that's the next

[23:19]

phase in this. And then sometimes as you're starting to settle into sitting, the face is a very good indicator of both our physical and mental activity. So deliberately letting your face settle, maybe attending to it. And then as you learn your own body, You learn where your body tends to hold tension. And then you can also deliberately start by releasing that. The thing to watch for is becoming too busy or too manipulative, trying to make something happen, rather than developing that subtler retention. It's more like getting out of your own way. or discovering the aspect of non-doing in the middle of settling.

[24:23]

Do you have a question there? Yeah, just... I mentioned this week, and the context is unpacked. It's kind of a total mystery to me. It seems like, no matter how well, in fact, saying it all goes out the window, it's the awareness of the body, awareness of anything. It just motivates all of you and have... What doesn't make sense? Just the ability to be detached from any sort of awareness. It's like a total, let me say, immediate and total loss of any attention. And does that bring up a question for you? I think Zen practice is about being awake, not being asleep.

[25:37]

So I would say if we're going to sleep, a request from the point of view of practice to look at that, what's it about, and how simply not just give over in that way. Well, I just remember, Steve had mentioned at one point, it's just like, I don't know, I'll kind of mark about how like, I can't remember exactly, but some people think that sleep is a loss of consciousness, and like traveling to a different state, and like it's a forced belief, something really loaded on it, like this. Yeah, I wondered that a lot. It says that in the Sherbroganza? I think it's Sherbroganza. Sorry. I'm not familiar with the saying. I would say this, that when the mind saddles in awareness some of the characteristics of it

[26:48]

The brainwaves are similar to the brainwaves that happen when we're asleep. So they're not completely separate activities in that regard, but there are different characteristics when we're asleep. That attentiveness and the clarity it stimulates is different from when we're asleep. And as you become more familiar with this territory, you can hover on the edge as you meditate more. So often you'll see someone who's been meditating 10 or 20 years and their mind, their body has learned something about almost being asleep.

[27:53]

but still being awake. So that does come up. Do you want to say something? No? Go ahead, Dan. I'm almost asleep, but not quite into that. I think it's not unusual, especially after you've done a few sashines, like a seven-day sashine. First day, your sincerity and your intentionality stimulate your engagement. Second day, you start to release into the practice And a tiredness, a drysiness becomes more prevalent.

[29:02]

As you settle in more fully, something releases. Something starts to open up in the energy of your body. Third day, your energy, your physical and mental energy, starts to... be stronger and the dryness goes away. Fourth and fifth day, you sit in Shashin, and then sixth day, you start thinking about when it's over. And seventh day, you start anticipating and imagining what's going to happen after Shashin. Yes, Pat? It works for me. I dread it, I dread it, I dread it. I'm usually really angry. And by the end of the sheet, I've noticed we're all kind of spacey in a way.

[30:12]

I don't know anyone else's notice this, but it's sort of, I don't even notice each day changing. It's only maybe on reflection that I look back and think, oh my god, that's what, you know, I feel better or something happened, but it's not particularly immediate because my brain's fighting it so much, but somehow it's snuck in, some kind of a release, and I haven't noticed it. And then after, it's like this face thing, you know, as if I've been, maybe not on drugs, but, you know, somewhere else. Actually, the feeling of being on drugs increases at the end of sashim. The whole process of sashim has two strong characteristics to it. Stay present in the moment for each and every activity. And then sitting there and being immersed in the subjectivity of experience.

[31:20]

And this is really, in a way, The no-self and the self, and the harmonizing of the two. This is a strong characteristic of Zen practice. How do these two harmonize? How do you come out of the subjectivity and serve Oriyuki and attend to all the details of it? How do you sit and let the subjectivity be like energy, noticing the details of it, just letting it arise and letting it fall away? Okay. The next four. Allowing ease. So a calming. I might even more modestly think of an initialing sort of settling. And then as you start to settle, you notice you're unsettled now. like the best way to notice how distracted your mind is try to stay exactly connected to your breath and then you notice how often your mind goes somewhere else as you start to settle your unsettledness becomes more evident not to turn your efforts to

[32:51]

not to run away from your unsettledness, and not to turn your efforts towards suppression. But literally, as exactly and as full as you can, experience unsettledness as a physical phenomenon. And this is very helpful. to experience the unsettledness as a physical phenomenon. As you settle into sitting and the psychosomatic comes into play, often you may experience usually an unpleasant sensation in the body. And it has with it a sort of undefined psychological disposition. Maybe heaviness. Maybe... sort of uncomfortable tightness.

[33:54]

Maybe some sense of some part of your body, your throat, your chest, feels some kind of constriction, vibration. To open up to the sensation. And Anapanasati said, allowing ease. And maybe the paradoxical thing is that you might think, oh, then you take your breath and you suppress it. No. You open up to it. Maybe you could say, you allow it to become experience, you allow it to just become energy.

[34:56]

And with the steady flow of the breath, becoming like a flowing stream. So the steady body, the steady breath, holds the turbulence of the subtler vibrations of the body. Maybe the implicit challenge is to not get lost in your mental and emotional-related experiences. You have this experience, it stirs up a memory, an emotion, and that becomes dominant. Can you stay body? As you know, when you practice on Upana Sati in a classic way,

[36:04]

Often you do it on a retreat. It may be a three-month retreat, a six-month retreat. So to think we're going to do it in five-minute sections is a little ambitious. But let's try it anyway. So take your posture. Notice the breath. Let a connection to breath happen. And then opening up to the subtler experiences of the body. Noticing as best you can how the inhale invites the body to expand. How the exhale invites the body to release. Okay.

[39:33]

So. Any comments about that? Yes. Another thing that it was settled I think that's the second part. You either relax too much or... And feel safe.

[40:36]

And feel safe. Well, it's normal that the body can do all sorts of things. Well, see, I would say... Maybe neither of those is the question. The question would be more, okay, how do I practice with this? We have the response we have, and then, okay, how do I practice with this? If you think about it, what does it matter if everybody else has an entirely different experience, which they don't, but even if they do, This is still my experience. This is still there for me to practice with. So the attentiveness is energizing.

[41:45]

So the derisiness sort of subdues and dulls the attentiveness. It dulls the connection to the experience. So to reconnect, to emphasize connection, to emphasize arachnus of posture, to work with the breath. A little bit, maybe more, extending the exhale, allowing the inhale. Sort of bringing the balancing factor to the ease. Yes. So I settle into my body. Uh-huh. Oftentimes I'll settle into a pain in my back. Mm-hmm. It's somewhat chronic. Mm-hmm. Sometimes I feel as I settle into that, I get trapped within it.

[42:51]

Yeah. So, I mean, I wonder, do you settle into it and acknowledge it again? Because oftentimes I can use that and then sort of move it along. Sometimes I'm just like, I'm trapped within that. I wonder if what you're saying, Roger, is that when that pain comes up, there's associations you have with it, like ideas and judgments and emotions. that can then, you know, be activated. A lot of them. Yeah. And in this, on the position of Anapanasaki, as best you can to notice and experience exactly what the experience is.

[43:54]

And to let it be just that? And then quite literally, can you let that not compound? Can you just... Oh yeah, well right. I mean, experience it just as it is. It's quite different from running away from it. Then the methodology is, in that deeper connecting to the body as a foundation, then start to notice the mental activity. Noticing the mental activity as that, mental activity, trying to differentiate, trying to

[45:02]

It's almost more like noticing the state of mind than getting involved in the content of mind. And sometimes that's a helpful way to segue. It's just to notice deliberately. What's the state of mind? Is the mind agitated? Does the mind have a dominant emotion or mood? Does the mind have a preoccupation with a particular content? Noticing that and being spacious around that. Maybe we could say acceptance, but also something a little bit more subtle, just not resisting. There's a Zen coin which says, what is the sign of one hand clapping? is about not resisting, just allowing.

[46:13]

What is it when you don't resist or don't oppose the experience? It's like making space around what mind is doing. Sometimes it's like being body so fully that what arises in mind is not being given so much energy, so much attention, so much involvement. It's like the body is more abiding and the mind is allowed to flow. And then the third... The last part of this quartet is in giving that mind space, in not resisting, letting it find its own ease.

[47:30]

Ease. Okay, so here we go. body noticing the breath as exactly as possible letting the breath breathe the body and allowing body to be spacious and allowing mind to be spacious Any observations, any comments, any questions?

[52:56]

Yes? What I find really helpful about this is that sometimes the mind starts working and then he leaves the other, you know, and I think that he asked him this, whatever. And I guess I have a little bit of an analogy. It's sort of like when I get to the car and I start driving me before I'm adjusting for a lot of years. And then I feel like I'm moving along the seven years, something that I've missed. So what I tend to do, the breadth first of getting psyched with that, I'm not moving without being aware of what I'm doing. And so I know that it's not I don't think it's a good comment.

[54:04]

In my observation, in teaching meditation and watch people initiate their meditation, most people immediately start doing something. And I would say a much better question is to pause and ask, okay, what's going on? What's happening in the body? What's happening in the breath? What's happening in the mind? And as you do that, you start to reconnect what your body knows about how to settle. You start to reconnect what your breath knows about how to settle. sort of something starts to be remembered.

[55:18]

awareness about the body. So I thought that I didn't know more about the awareness while sitting in the woods. And when I would do that, my body is too comfortable. And then I think it's a helpful thing to look at. One of the other challenges that often happens or habits that often happens in zazen, is to park the body, especially when it's not giving you any bother.

[56:22]

So you can just park it and devote your efforts, devote your energy and attention to thinking. So it seems like... So sometimes sitting a certain way, like maybe for you sitting in half lotus right now, it's like, okay, well, this demands attention, and it stops me from just parking my body and just being thinking. So sometimes it's helpful to say, okay, this requires a little bit of extra attention and effort to do that. This posture. Then the slightly negative part can be some kind of straining in the doing of it. You want to try to release that And then one other comment on this part. Also, as we bring consciousness, as we bring attention to allowing the sensation of the body and the mind, it can stimulate all sorts of strange sensations.

[57:39]

Your hands might feel heavy. Your body can feel all sorts of ways. as you bring awareness to the body. And very interestingly, as the body starts to settle, and the body's being held more in awareness, is suffused more with awareness, the sensations that arise are pleasant. And the same with the mind. The sensations that arise are pleasant. And of course, being Buddhist practice, the challenge is to not get attached, to not try to embellish. But at the same time, it's indicative that this kind of saddled immersion in consciousness

[58:47]

stimulates wholesomeness, healing in our body and mind. And it helps us directly in what you might call, literally, our physical and mental health. But it also helps us psychologically, because it starts to give us a taste that well-being is not inextricably linked to resolving my psychological agendas. This is a very helpful learning for us. That well-being is not inextricably linked to resolving my psychological agendas. Our mind might say, I'm never going to be happy unless... And then you settle and you taste something about letting mind and body be spacious and you realize, oh, this is happy.

[59:51]

This is content. And none of those psychological, none of that got taken care of or resolved. And this is linked, if you remember the term we were using earlier, to Shrida. And we start to trust the process of practice. the willingness to engage it more quite naturally starts to get stimulated. But in the process of mindfulness, in the process of Zazen, we're creating the capacity, the steadiness, to now look at, okay, what does come up for me? When we're in an agitated state,

[60:53]

or in a distressed state, or an unsettled state, what comes up stimulates a reactiveness. Sometimes a highly charged reactiveness, and sometimes a more suddenly charged reactiveness. And awareness and attention get taken from what is it arising to what kind of reactiveness did it stir up. The experience happens, you have a strong response, and quite naturally your attention and your awareness go to your response. And this sort of gets forgotten. What was it that happened that made all that so stimulating, demanding? I'm going to go through these rather quickly.

[61:58]

Then the next section comes in quartets. The next quartet, the third quartet, is about ripening this process, letting it sink in, letting it register, letting the experience be noticed and assert its reality. On a felt level. Not that then you start having a whole lot of ideas about it. You let it happen, you let it be felt, almost invariably some ideas arise. Not even to hold those ideas too tightly, just let them float up. And it says, Being aware of mind, bringing ease to mind. Being aware of breath and mind, concentrating mind.

[63:03]

And as something settles, the energy of distractedness that keeps taking our attention away starts to dissipate. And just staying present starts to become more available, more doable. And as we become present, we can start to notice what is it to abide in presence. And so as we practice pausing during the day, you can pause, experience, and just abide in experience. And I would strongly encourage you to pick pleasant things.

[64:06]

Like if you go out into the courtyard and it's just to open up to experience the experience. So this letting it settle and a certain abiding. And then from that position of abiding, turning awareness to looking at the nature of existence. It's impermanent. It's always changing. You can notice in your meditation, if you just sit there, sound, seeing, physical sensation, physical sensation, thought, sound. It's always changing. It's always arising and falling away. The sound is heard, it has a kind of vibration, energetic experiencing, and then it falls away.

[65:24]

Similarly with how we take hold of it and how we let it go. If you watch consciousness, we take hold of something, we do what we do with it. Sometimes we take hold of what you might call positive bonding and negative bonding. We take hold of it because of its pleasure, you take hold of it because of its agitation. It's grasping and releasing. And then there's seeing in all that the nature of Dharma. This is the nature of what it... This is the truth of what it... So something about this that illustrates and educates both our sitting and our activity, and it's this.

[66:51]

Connect to the experience and let the experience be the teacher. Something about pausing opening, experiencing, and letting it do whatever it does. With each breath, with each inhale and exhale, and with each moment. So as best you can, as you... You know, now we're in the middle of the intensive. Just can you... Can you settle in? And whatever comes up for you, can you start to just hold it as the activity of mind, the activity of your emotional life, the activity of...

[68:05]

characteristics of your psychology. Can you just start to hold them? Notice them. Give them space. You know, Suzuki Rokshi's comment saying, if you want to control a cow, think of it as a cow. Give it a large meadow to roam it. Give it space, just notice Something about trusting the moment, something about trusting body and breath. There's a colon towards the start of the Blue Cliff Records where Master Ma is asked, it's not so clear whether he's dying or whether he's just not feeling well. But he's asked, how you do it? And he says, sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha.

[69:14]

Sometimes it's like this. Sometimes it's like this. Sometimes it has the energy, the heat, the passion, sometimes of the sun. Sometimes it has the space, the coolness of the moon. So as best you can, can you just let what comes up for you have that kind of permission to just be itself? As we do that, quite naturally, it becomes more apparent what it is. The reaction we have to it, the judgments we have about it, the ways in which we want it to be different, they start to recede a little bit and just what it is becomes more apparent.

[70:19]

Then it starts to teach the dharma. Then it starts to present the koan of life. How do I live this life that's appearing? We could say that in Zen, all that we've covered so far is sort of implicit. And when we look at Dogen Zenji's Jijiu Zamai, self-employing and self-fulfilling samadhi, we'll see it's in complete harmony and resonance with this teaching. And it just gives it a certain kind of language and emphasis. And I'll put these over there. You can read Thich Nhat Hanh's commentary and see how different it was from what I said.

[71:27]

Okay. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge. And this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[72:02]

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