This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, Bodhisattvas. So, this is interesting. I was just noticing as you were bowing at the end of the chant, let's try that again. I was just noticing what an event that is, that bow. And usually it's something that we do quickly and then the person says good morning and the lecture begins. So I want to honor that bow. First of all, for its incredible conciseness as a practice device with which to understand something very important about body and mind.

[01:11]

So, once again, if you put your hands up like this, and all sorts of things may be going on in your mind. For instance, if you're here for the first time, am I doing this right? The first one. Or... If you've been here for a very long time, it's a little warm in here. I wonder whether the lecture is going to begin and how long it's going to be and so on. Or if you're really studying the way and you have some experience, you might be thinking, well, where do I put my palms and how do they line up with the energy centers of my body? And when you bow, you're moving your body, your torso and your hands, and your head, your spine, at the same time. The energy has to be expressed physically somehow in a particular way. So we say in this vow that we say the fingertips line up with the nose, tip of the nose.

[02:22]

You can try that. But also, sometimes I think of this as the base of the palm mirrors the energy center of expression. And we say left and right hands join as one. But sometimes I also feel in my body, can my palms really touch as one? Is the left one touching the right one the way the right one is touching the left one? For instance, how about the basis of my thumb? If I'm left-handed, which thumb is pressing more strongly? If I'm right-handed, which thumb is pressing more strongly? And then as I bow, do my hands and my body follow each other and keep in the same relationship, or does something else happen? This came up this morning also. I was bowing to Roger, and Roger was bowing to me.

[03:24]

Roger is my helper. He helps me schedule appointments and carries the incense, and as you saw, he also helps me maintain my sense of balance. I was in some accidents that sharply affected my sense of balance, and if I were to try to do those full bows, I could touch the ground, but then... When I stand up, it's not pretty. I go reeling. And so Roger helps me stand up. So this morning we were greeting each other as usual, and he had his rakasu in his hands like this. The rakasu, if you look around and you don't know what that is, you'll see that some people are wearing big robes. These are called okases. And then some people are wearing smaller robes that are... square and have a neck piece. And those robes are rakasu, which means small okesa, or small robe.

[04:28]

And so when Roger, excuse me if I divulge this, sorry. So when he bowed, you know, it was also five in the morning, right? So when he bowed, he did this. And I said, no, when you bow, the form is to hold the rakasu up at the same height and then the body bows. Let's try that again. And then I thought, oh, this is saying something about the mind. And then I thought, what if you decentralize your mind so that it's resting here and here? at the same time. And then he bowed like this. And later said that awareness of decentralization was key to being able to do this, to being able to bow in a new way.

[05:34]

Now, maybe, you know, if you haven't been around so much, this seems like, what is this? This arcane, arcania of where the hands go and where the object is. But I'm really discussing not what's the right way to do this, not can I remember a thousand tiny details, but what is the relationship of body and mind? Can I study and explore it through relating to a physical object or a physical person or my own body in space and in time. And this is part of our tradition. This is part of the tradition of Zen practice. It's called body and mind study of the way. Now, mainstream American culture

[06:39]

I don't know so much about other cultures and whether every culture has this bias or not, and I would suspect not. But mainstream American culture, I was always taught that body and mind are separate, that body is matter, and mind is immaterial and light and can do many different things, whereas body can only do certain things. So I was always taught that. And until I had studied for quite a long time, I didn't entertain the possibility in my body, although intellectually I thought I knew this, that body and mind are one. So when somebody said, body and mind are one, I thought, oh yeah, of course they are. But then in practice, and it came right down to it, body and mind were not one.

[07:41]

For instance, I could have the intention to do something, but if I was tired or hungry, I wouldn't be able to do it. And I would disassociate from not being able to do it. So, for example, if I was very tired and I had the intention to clean my house, not only wouldn't I clean my house, but I would also avoid the very notion of house altogether. So I would safely remove myself from being able to see my house and the parts of my house that needed cleaning, and instead I would turn my attention to, you know, something else. So these days it might be an email, but in those days it was something else. I can't even remember exactly what it was. Maybe it was music or a book.

[08:47]

But Buddhist practice and the Zen lineage, which is the yogic, one of the most overtly yogic arms of Buddhist studies, body and mind is taught as one. Actually, that's a good idea. So if you've lost contact with yourself physically, let's take a moment. This is a commercial. Let's take a moment to appreciate and understand how we're meeting the ground. You might want to adjust yourself on your buttock bones to sit equally on your cushion You might want to refresh the cross of the legs, or maybe not. Maybe just refresh with a breath. Maybe not refresh by moving.

[09:48]

It depends on how you sat down and what has happened between then and now. And you might want to find where the trunk of your body is in space. So... Sometimes when we think, oh, zazen, it's an upright posture, it's Buddha mudra, and we try to take the shape of the Buddha, we force ourselves or hold ourselves from the outer layers of the muscles. And that's one way to do it, and the outer layers of muscles are important. For instance, if you draw your outer hips closer to each other, you might feel that the spine lifts, your trunk lifts. And you can also support this height by raising the ribs one by one off the waist, off of the hips, and by balancing the shoulders, your shoulders, evenly over your buttock bones until the breath spontaneously comes.

[11:07]

And you might Release the back of the neck so that your ears can migrate directly over your shoulders and over your buttock bones. You might also modulate your effort so you're neither underworking nor overworking in the seated meditation pose. If you find yourself consistently overworking because of muscle fatigue, maybe you need to rest or change positions. If you find yourself underworking, maybe you need to sharpen your effort and make it more exact. Now, the study of the Buddha comes... The study of the body comes directly from the Buddha. He was a yogi. And when he decided to study how to relieve human suffering... His first teachers were yoga teachers.

[12:11]

Only the teaching that he received and penetrated there did not satisfy his need to thoroughly penetrate the question of human suffering. And it's lost to us whether that was a function of how the tradition was being transmitted in that place or at that time or whether that was... We don't know exactly what happened there. We do know that when he was awakened, his first idea, his first thought was to go and report back to his yoga teacher. But in the meantime, his teacher had died. And if his yoga teacher had been alive, the story of yoga and Buddhism might be very different today. But his yogic emphasis carried through in his teaching of the middle way.

[13:14]

He taught not to keep ourselves at the extreme between annihilation and existence, between indulgence and asceticism, but to be right in the middle to where we receive, take in, and do exactly enough to manifest our intention in this life. And the Buddha's tradition of body and mind unity was also transmitted to China by Bodhidharma, who is said to have developed both tea and the Shaolin style of martial arts. And also to Japan by... in our lineage, by Ehe Dogen Dayosho, who was enlightened or awakened in relation to body and mind.

[14:17]

So one day, or actually one night, his teacher, Ru Jing, was saying body and mind, talking about body and mind in the meditation hall. Some people think that Dogen misheard his teacher's words, and some think that he heard them exactly. But at that very moment, Dogen's body and mind dropped away. And in the middle of the night, he went to his teacher and said, body and mind have dropped away. And his teacher said, yes. And Dogen said, please don't approve me without reason. And his teacher said, there is a reason. Dogen said, what's the reason? And his teacher said, body and mind dropped away, the dropped off body and mind.

[15:27]

And later, Dogen was to teach... the unity of body and mind in many different settings, including one very beautiful teaching called Shinjin Gakudo, Body and Mind Study of the Way. When we think about practicing with the body, and we realize that the path has been transmitted body to body, now in this lineage for 93 generations, or perhaps even 94 by now, that each body, the body of teacher and student, manifested as the great full moon in relation to each other, that there was actual body-to-body transmission, actual mind-to-mind transmission, actual face-to-face transmission. It seems miraculous that this practice has come to us through the body presence of generation upon generations of teachers.

[16:39]

We have many forms that transmit this presence. You just did one, but there are many, very many forms. There's the seated meditation form, the walking meditation form, work meditation, you know, chanting, which emphasizes the breath. So many different forms there are. And I encourage you to study them all. And at the bottom, at the base, at the ground, there isn't anything that we can find. For instance, if we really sit examining body, examining the body, we'll see that it's subject to change. and that eventually it dies. It doesn't stay the same. And we also can see that this is part of the miracle of existence, part of the miracle of life.

[17:45]

We can sit moment after moment watching the changes of breath and body at any second we choose to pay attention. And some of us are sitting a half day sitting today. And that's what we're doing for a half day. We're studying how the body and breath change moment after moment and what stays the same. And when we walk, we study the changes that happen step by step in relation to each other, in relation to a circle of bodies who are supporting each other. When we eat, we study where the food came from and how it becomes us. So many different meditations there are.

[18:46]

And this half-day sitting is part of a larger event called a practice period, which is ten weeks where we get together to sit in meditation and to support each other. And how many people here are in the practice period? So there's a few. And how many people are here for the first time, I should have asked. And welcome. Actually, Suzuki Roshi talked about beginner's mind as... the mind that's very much to be valued and very close to awakening. He says, in the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind, there are few. And he came here to transmit and to transmit the teaching of the Buddha to beginners like us.

[19:52]

You know, so I've been studying this for a long time and there's so many things that we could say and do in this lecture. However, I want to keep it simple. And so where I would like to go is, we had a questionnaire at the very beginning of the practice period and I want to tell you some of these questions. Every week we've been looking at some questions to study. And these questions were part of a class called Practice from the Body's Point of View. That's the practice period class. People's answers were profound. But right now, I'm interested in you considering what your answer to these questions might be. And so the very first question is, what do you hope to get? from, we said the class, but from your practice here today.

[21:01]

What's your intention from your practice here today? By coming in here for the first time, or by coming to sit a half-day sitting, what is your intention? And many of us might think, I don't have an intention, or I really wanted just to hear an interesting talk. But there is a deeper intention behind that, maybe one that has been behind the facade or under the surface for a long time. Like, I want to be alive. I want to be awake. I want to be awake in a way that helps people. I want to be awake in a way that benefits all beings. Another question is, what is your relationship with your body?

[22:07]

Some people in the class said things like, I have a good relationship with my body. Other people said things like, I tend to think of myself as riding around my body like a machine, on my body like a machine. It does what I want. So there's an I, it going on there. Others said, I enjoy my body. Others said, I hate my body. I think this is interesting information, interesting knowledge, interesting self-study for us. We need to know what we bring. A third question is, how aware are you of your body physically? How aware are you physically of the world? How aware are you of the information that the senses bring?

[23:11]

And what are some of the factors that might contribute to that? Like one person said, I'm very tired, and when I get tired, I tend to disassociate. Another person said, I'm constantly aware because I have years of athletic practice. These are different conditions in the body. Another question is, what does the body need? And sometimes... A question like, what does the body need, can be in the body and go unnoticed for years. But the Buddha certainly thought about what the body needed, particularly after his attempts at asceticism. The Buddha, when he tried to become awakened, decided that he was going to practice very, very diligently.

[24:15]

And he fasted. and sat for long hours. And only after many months of this realized that that was an extreme and that he needed to be more moderate about what he did. Because he was really after it, after a long-term solution to suffering, to human suffering, the human condition. Another question, the last question was, if you were completely and thoroughly awakened, what would the body be like? And there were several answers to this, ranging from it would include everything, to darned if I know. But these are important questions. What do you see as the Buddha's body, the body of complete awakening?

[25:20]

How is that the same or different from this existence right here and right now? Sometimes when I sit, I bow to the seat and think a thought that Thich Nhat Hanh encouraged in me. He came and did a, he's a great Vietnamese teacher, and he came and did a workshop at Tassahara about 30 years ago, in which he sat with us for three weeks, no, two weeks, and taught us how to write gattas, verses, to express our intention with everyday actions. And the one for sitting ended up being something like, sitting here on my seat is just like the Buddha sitting on his seat to wake up.

[26:26]

And I asked him after we wrote this verse, should we say the same thing every time? What if my intention changes when I sit down another time? And he said, no, use the same verse every time. And then this practice of sitting down just like Buddha will become your practice. And the Buddha's awakening will become your awakening. This is very simple. But it's not easy to remember or do. Our habits are strong. So my message My main message today is that this body, with all of its limitations and all of its talents, with all of its needs, all of its inconveniences, and all of its joys, is the body of awakening.

[27:35]

This is the body, not that we have, but that we are. And the people all around us, came to be the way they came to be through many different causes and conditions. And the people around us are also sitting just like the Buddha sat. Can we realize this in everyday life? Can we be awake with each other and for each other? Can we physically understand how much we want to wake up and how much we want to be of help? Can we understand that with each other and support each other to do just that? And when we come to a place like San Francisco Zen Center, which is a storehouse of many different resources for awakening, collected for awakening,

[28:47]

Can we play freely in that environment in the very specific form? Can we use it? Can we allow ourselves to be used in the surface of waking up? In life, can we be ourselves? Can we really allow ourselves to be ourselves with our own intention and understand in the midst of my own commitments, my own relationships, my own physical conditions with that form, how does the truth arise on this spot right here in this body? If we're ordained, how does the truth arise in this form that is like a billboard for the tradition, you know, deliberately designed so that we look like generations of practitioners, so we're identifiable and can, you know, take questions?

[30:18]

There's a place for everybody, everybody in this practice. And everybody means everybody and every mind. Every set of conditions, every set of emotions, every set of problems, every set of relationships. And I encourage you to please take care of yourself. please get exactly what you need and do exactly what you need to wake up for and with all beings. So this has been kind of a serious talk. And it's not all this way. There are moments of high comedy, of enjoyment, of poetry, of bliss. But when we think about body and mind study of the way, every poem is a poem that describes this.

[31:34]

Every experience is an experience that describes this. Maybe I'll see if I can remember a poem that my sister wrote when she was 12. It is midnight and the stars shine. How I would that those jewels were mine. Gorgeous, wheeling, endlessly glowing. Thrilling, pale light the stars are showing. Far off in the night like a spark. a girl stands wishing in the dark. She gets her wish, but it's all a dream. But oh, what a glorious sight she has seen.

[32:39]

Here's another poem, which you may not recognize as a poem. To make steel-cut oats for morning cereal. First, you get one quarter cup of steel-cut oats per person. And depending on the desired creaminess of the cereal, you can use water or milk at a ratio of three to five times the volume of steel-cut oats you have used. Put in a dash of salt and simmer over a low flame for some time until it tastes good. Put on any desired topping and enjoy with a friend. Thank you very much for your attention.

[33:50]

Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[34:17]

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