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. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. How many people are new here for the first time? A few of you. Well, welcome. No. Really? Kind of. Semi. Semi. How many of you are semi-quasi-new? A few of you, yeah. Okay, that seems to be a category. Who knew? Well, welcome. And afterwards, the Eno will tell you all the wonderful ways that you can get involved in all the great activities that are going on. I want to thank Rosalie and also... Zen Center for inviting me to speak this morning.

[01:00]

It's really a pleasure. You probably can tell just looking at me that I am polysangal, which means that I have multiple sanghas. I'm a member of Zen Center and have been for a long time. First walked into Zen practice through those very doors over a quarter of a century ago. And I'm very happy to be part of the activities here at Zen Center. And I also am part of a small sangha called the Wild Geese, which has been, we've been about eight or so women. We've been practicing together for almost a decade. And we just get together twice a month to kind of talk about practice and life. And then I'm also part of a group called the Upstairs Sangha, which so creatively named because it's upstairs at my house.

[02:01]

Be prepared to be astonished with my creativity. And then a key sangha that I'm part of is the Meditation and Recovery Sangha here at San Francisco Zen Center. which has been going on for over a decade. And that's the main reason why I'm here today, is we're going to be having a half-day sitting. And we're going to be talking about the 11th step. For those of you who are not familiar with the recovery, there are 12 steps leading us to healing of our addictions. And this particular step is... sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God. We're going to focus on meditation and on body during our half-day sit today. So one of the things that I thought I would talk about then as a result of that theme is actually body and body practice.

[03:06]

You know, in Zen we hear so much about the mind, right? Working with the mind, the mind. And in reality, you know, there's... In a certain way, there's absolutely no separation between body-mind. We know this from the way medicine is going, right? Body-mind healing and things like that. But in another way, there are some distinctions in terms of the practice, and I'd like to focus and talk a little bit about that this morning. So I'd like everyone to just take a few breaths and maybe just close your eyes for a second or two. And just think about what arises when you hear this question. Why am I here this morning? And just notice if it lodges in a particular part of your body, if some part of your body comes forward to answer that, if you have clarity about it, if you don't have clarity.

[04:11]

if it touches some part of yourself that normally doesn't get accessed? I think that this is a wonderful question. And for me, it is indicative of the way in which body can be a real source of wisdom and of information. And feel free to open your eyes whenever you would like. For me, I'm here today because I want to be awake. Whatever that means, I want to be awake. And I want to live wholeheartedly, and I want to live wholesomely. It's really just become that simple over the years. And I need to keep coming to sanghas and practice centers and teaching events and things like that in order to continue my training and my practice. One of the ways in which I live out this desire to be awake, this desire to be wholehearted in my life and to be wholesome is through my body.

[05:17]

And so, you know, in Buddhism, body is actually very, very important. In the sutra, the four foundations of mindfulness, the first foundation is actually contemplating the body in the body. And that is the posture that we adopt when we do seated meditation. There are several body postures that we work with. Being seated is one of them. Standing, walking, and lying down are the four. But the seated meditation is the place that we start. And the one in Soto Zen, this particular lineage, that we really emphasize and we think is paramount to our practice, The Buddha is purported to have answered when asked why seated meditation. He said, because it is the front door to mindfulness and enlightenment. I say purported because these things are written hundreds of years after he died. But it's a good answer.

[06:18]

It sounds great. I'll take it. Dogen, who is the founder of Soto Zen, talks about Zazen, seated meditation. as the Dharma gate of bliss and repose. So what actually accrues to us when we engage in zazen, when we bring our bodies into a certain posture and we sit for a protracted period of time? Well, many things, I think. First, we have an opportunity to do something that we don't often get to do in this culture, which is just to be still. Oh my goodness, the power of just being still. And in that stillness, by contrast, we get to see busy mind. Need to do this, need to do that, forgot to do this. You know, for my first couple of years of meditation practice, and I do want to say that... I hope you are not like me in that it took me a long time before I actually started to sit down and to meditate.

[07:24]

I probably came here close to six or seven years before I was in enough pain that I thought, okay, I'll try whatever they're doing. We'll see if that works. And then I also tried to do Zazen by myself. And for those of you who practice Zazen by yourself successfully, you know how hard it is. And for those of you who practice Zazen by yourself unsuccessfully, you know how hard it is. But at any rate, this activity of being still, we get to see, by contrast, exactly how busy our mind is. We get to actually start to hear that endless... or sometimes it's more of a diatribe that is just going on, that the mind is constantly projecting at us. And so we get to start working with it because by contrast, that busy, busy mind doesn't always feel comfortable.

[08:25]

The other thing that we start to accrue in Zazen is that we develop capacity. to sit still and to be still and just capacity for sitting for longer periods of time under different conditions with different things happening. Our nose itches and we don't scratch it. And in that simple, simple act, we develop capacity. Capacity not to react to every single thing, right? Not to give in. This is especially important for those of us who don't practice and don't live in practice centers. And we meditate on our own because there are so many distractions. Should I get the phone? Maybe I should go to the bathroom. You know, I really do need a drink before I can really do quality meditation. So to develop this capacity is enormous. And what this capacity to just stay with things as they are leads to is the ability to start to experience more space in our life.

[09:28]

The more we build capacity... the more capacity we have to genuinely be completely and fully with our lives for longer periods of time. We also start to build a very, very important skill that serves us throughout our practice lives, and that is the ability to return. Many of you were here this morning for meditation instructions or have come to other ones, and you know that we start by counting the breath. an inhalation and an exhalation, and we try to get to 10. And if you have ever tried to do that for any period of time, you know that who knows at what number, suddenly you're far afield and you wake up over here finishing out a conversation that you wish that you had finished out yesterday with a much wiser reply, by the way, right? And so there's nothing wrong with that. That happens to all of us. that's not even so important that that happens. What's more important is that we learn to return back to one, back to breath.

[10:33]

In all of our lives and all of the situations that we have in this very, very dynamic culture that we live in that's so robust and also so challenging in so many ways, there are tons of things that want to take us away. And so learning how to build this muscle, to return is really important. The other thing we learn to do in zazen that accrues to us is a fundamental ability to start to experience what harmonizing is. So we sit down with this still body, and yet we notice this busy, busy mind. And so with breath, we start to harmonize with our body, and then we start to harmonize with our mind. And that allows us the opportunity to then take that out into other situations when we're not necessarily in seated meditation, but we're agitated and we want to harmonize. Or we're in a difficult conversation with somebody and we fundamentally want there to be harmony.

[11:37]

The other primary thing that all of this does for us is that it affords us opportunities to acquire and establish discipline. I hate to be a buzz buster by bringing discipline into practice, but it really is a wonderful quality to have in our lives. We live in this culture that is so characterized by speed. I just got a text. And sometimes that's all very good, but it all happens so quickly, right? It's characterized by acquisition. You know, oh, I'll be happier if only I can get a 700-thread count of sheets. And tons and tons of distractions. You know, we have endless opportunities in terms of anything that we can do but practice, right? And, of course, we live in a society that's very, very goal-oriented.

[12:40]

Not so much what do you do, but what have you done lately? And what have you done lately for me? A boss might say. So living in this culture and learning to acquire this discipline to withstand these unbelievably powerful forces of our society is really good stuff. For me, fundamentally, what I get to touch, when I asked you that question, what comes up for me, is the answer that I gave you is based in wanting to live in society. an intentional life. In the practice context, we talk about living a life of vow. This means that I want to live in alignment. I want my head to be over my heart, to be over my feet. When I take action, I want it all to be in alignment and to sync up with my intention. And discipline, in the midst of this very, very challenging culture, wonderful culture but challenging, allows us to remember that and to do that more often than not.

[13:48]

But there are other facets of body practice that I wanted to bring forward. I was reading Facebook this morning. But it was good. It was good because who did I find on Facebook but a quote from the Dalai Lama and proving that Facebook is good. And when asked about Hugh, what was the... What surprised him most about humanity? This is what he answered. Man. I think he meant that generically, don't you? Don't guys take that personally? Man, because he sacrifices his health to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future, he does not enjoy the present. The result being, he doesn't live in the present or the future. He lives as if he's never going to die. and then he dies having never really lived."

[14:49]

Something that we can all probably identify with a little bit. So this aspect of body practice for me is an antidote or is a tool that I can use to try and counter these forces that I identified that I think that the Dalai Lama captured very succinctly in that quote. And my teacher, Darlene Cohen, had another way of putting it. She says, what it is you must have in order to live a rich, fulfilling life, relatively free of dead or numbed out spots. I'm sorry. What is it you must have in order to live a rich, fulfilling life, relatively free of dead or numbed out spots? I don't think you have to have the perfect body. buffed up from the gym or the right man-woman waiting for you at night, freedom from economic pressures, extensive training and spiritual disciplines, or even a meaningful job, thank God, to be deeply involved in your life.

[15:59]

You don't even have to change the circumstances of your life to enrich it vastly. Really? You don't even have to change the circumstances of your life to enrich it vastly. You need only... You only need to break the bad mental habit of living your life on automatic pilot and cultivate the necessary skills to actually be present enough to live the moments of your life, however miserable or boring your life situations might seem when you compare them to your fantasies. You need to learn how to be alive for all of your life, to be present as much as you can, not to pick and choose the moments that you think are worthwhile. to be alive for and then to numb out for the rest. Because just as a muscle gets weak from disuse, your ability to be present in your life fades if you don't practice it. So this is, I think, a compelling reason to tune in to the whole aspect of body practice.

[17:01]

And I want to say that, you know, of course there is nothing wrong with mind. mind in the way that Suzuki Roshi talks about it in Beginner's Mind is, you know, he offers us two options, big mind, very spacious place in which there is no separation, everything is included, and then our small mind, which is the mind that for me tends to get me in trouble. So there's nothing wrong with mind and it's very, it functions for us, it helps us to get run over and When we cross the street in front of a car, we have the wisdom that we use our mind to know not to do that. But the problem is that it does tend to tyrannize us. Maybe part of it, I wonder if mind were not at the top of our head if we'd feel the same way about it. If mind were in our feet, maybe we'd have a little less respect for it. But it kind of follows that paradigm in Genesis where after God finishes making the world, then on the last day, he puts man on top of everything.

[18:06]

and everything belongs to him, is under him, in his dominion. And I think sometimes mind gets the same idea, that every aspect of our lives is the dominion of mind. This is extremely limiting, and it can often be, as I'm sure all of you know, extremely, extremely painful. So to revert to the body, to bring the body fully forward, is a way of learning how to practice and to put mind, in a certain way, in mind's proper place. So... For me, the body is fundamentally the essential expression of my practice. Dogen said a number of wonderful things. He said, when we train the mind, we train body. And when we train our body, we're training our mind. So all of those things I articulated in terms of what happens to us when we just sit down and zazen actually trains our mind and makes us ready. We're ready to engage in our lives and take those skills forward when we're not on the cushion.

[19:09]

But it also is the field of practice through which I get to fully express this alignment of my intention, my vow, and the actions that I choose, right? So we say in the... some of our gathas, through body, speech, and mind. These are all the aspects of ourselves through which we live our lives, through which we express ourselves. And this is a significant one. So we are vessels, if we are in alignment with our intentions, we're vessels of wholesomeness and skillfulness. And this is a place of living that I think offers us great ease, great ease. And it doesn't really matter what we do with our body, what the body activity is. It can, honest to God, be urinating.

[20:12]

It can be working with a homeless person. It could be comporting ourselves with great dignity. It could be absolutely being totally angry at somebody. If we do this in a way that is mindful in which our vow, our intention is completely shot through, the activity we choose to express this is going to be skillful and wholesome. You know, we are always, always transmitting and we're always being transmitted to. So the way that I sit here today is transmitting something to you. I went through a training program where they said about 95% of what gets passed on to people when you give a talk happens all in your mind. All through your body, rather. And what I'm saying here in the paper is like 5%. But anyway, so what we transmit, what I'm transmitting to you, what you're transmitting back to me through your body, this is practice.

[21:16]

This is what happens here. in intentional centers where we all have shared vow, and it's also, of course, what happens when we go out in the world, quote-unquote, at large, and we practice at work, right? So what do you transmit? On a day-to-day basis, what is in our body, how we hold our body, what we convey through our body, the actions we choose, are all transmitting something. If indeed you are here... today, the answer to your question, why you are here this morning, is because there is some desire to wake up as well, then we want to try and bring everything online so there is this alignment in terms of our action and this deepest intention of ourselves or this deepest, truest self that we have. Our bodies are also a conduit for connection. This is most easily felt, I think, during times of sitting with other people. And if you sit with people for protracted periods of time, you know, when somebody gets up off the cushion and suddenly there's an empty cushion there, you know, you feel their absence.

[22:28]

And in that absence, you feel, oh, wow, there's connection going on. And in the way that we work with form, there's a sense of connection, right? the bowing together, the chanting together. This is a way in which we allow our bodies to come into alignment and to feel the fundamental connection that exists, but that we don't always have access to consciously. And so for those of us who don't live in practice centers and work in that world out there somewhere, this is a very, very important question for us in terms of what we transmit at work. and how we embody this practice. You know, and that's a whole other Dharma talk, which I've already given, but nonetheless, you know, there are very simple things that we can do with our bodies. Bow into our day. Before you start your coffee, bow into your day. When you arrive at your office... bow into your office, have a bell there that you ring.

[23:31]

There are all kinds of ways. We need all of these reminders because our habituated mind is so strong. The way in which I first started to experience this was with my teacher, Darlene Cohen. She was a perfect teacher for me in so many ways because she had been imprisoned by crippling pain, the crippling pain of rheumatoid arthritis when she was a young woman of 35. And using her body, she found a way to penetrate suffering. As the student that was attracted to her, I realized that I had been imprisoned by crippling psychic pain. It wasn't so visible on the outside, but it was very visible on the inside. And I just wanted to be all over that woman in terms of what she learned about living for 35 years with unbelievably painful rheumatoid arthritis and living a satisfied, engaged, joyful life.

[24:38]

You know, what do you do? So one of the things that she taught me is this, what she called body-to-body intimacy. She, of course, had a bevy of students, so I don't mean to imply that I was her only student and this was her only teaching. And this manifested itself in very, very simple ways. You know, I mentioned the empty cushion that we notice when we're doing a sitting and somebody leaves. I would go up with other people, some of my Dharma sisters from the wild geese, and we would just, every four or five weeks, we would spend a practice day together. And from Darlene's perspective, we would just be there with each other, with our bodies. We'd sit together, we'd study together, we'd have tea together, we'd walk together, we'd make lunch together and eat lunch together. And over the course of... probably close to 10 years, something like that, our bodies started to tune to each other.

[25:44]

And we really came to understand and know each other in ways that surpassed words. words would elude, right? So this is the type of connection that we can get with people. And I'm sure that many of you can think of an example in your own lives, maybe not so much in a practice context, but think about a grandparent, perhaps, or a childhood pet. That type of body-to-body practice that you felt a certain connection, a certain warmth, this is something that our bodies and focus on bodies can afford us. One of the largest areas, which I think is often neglected and missed in terms of body practice, is that our bodies can be an unbelievable refuge for us in a number of different ways. You know, we talk in the Loving Kindness Meditation Sutra about wanting to be freed from sense appetites. But there's another way in which our senses can actually serve us and help us to widen our experience of our lives by letting our body take their point of view, if you will.

[26:57]

So what do I mean by that? Let's just try a simple example of it. In this moment... Try to let your discursive mind, the mind that has been listening to me so attentively, just kind of put it in neutral or put it in a little cradle off to the side and don't worry about it. And now just open your eyes and look around this room. Look at everything that you can see and try not to label it. And just look. And when the label comes up, try to look beyond the label. And when you think you've seen everything in this room, look again. Imagine seeing this room as if you were a baby. Just images, color, light, shape, form.

[28:05]

The refuge of going through all of our senses like this is that it allows us, first and foremost, a greater opportunity of having direct experience. I mean, this is one of the things we want in practice, right? We want to have direct experience with our lives, and yet if we're going through the filter of this busy mind, it's going to be a challenge. Oh yeah, but first let's do this. or no, that's not a good idea, or you're not doing it right, or whatever. But if you circulate through your senses and let your sense come forward and take the point of view of your sight, of your hearing, of your taste, of your touch, you have an opportunity to widen your experience of what your life is. You know, again, this is the tyranny of mind. This organ tells us that everything it's thinking and planning and plotting is everything that's going on in life. And that is so, so limited. That is such a narrow view of what our experience is. The other thing that happens is not only does this widen our experience, but it affords us a refuge in terms of replenishing ourselves and restoring ourselves.

[29:16]

About a year or so ago, I was on a business phone call, and I'd been working on this project, and I was getting it up to the point where everybody in this collaboration was going to be signing off on it on this particular day. during this particular call. And at the last minute, holy moly, somebody came up with an objection. And it was so interesting to feel what happened in my body. What's happening here? What's going on? I'm being sabotaged. What's this person doing? Why is this person doing this? This is not right. This is not right. All that reactivity, right? All the years of conditioning. And... I've been practicing long enough that I didn't use any inappropriate language. I didn't yell. That was all very good. I did try to get off the phone as quickly as I could in order to make sure none of that happened. And then afterwards, I was so tweaked. I was so amped by this particular experience that the only thing I could think to do was to go out for a walk and what I call a sense walk.

[30:22]

And again, I just put my mind in a cradle as best as I can. put it in neutral, and just walk through my neighborhood and let, as Dogen might say, the 10,000 things come forward. Let the smell of jasmine meet my nose. Let the color and the form of the day, the vibrancy of it all, hit my eye, the warmth of the sun on my cheek, the feel of my clothes as I moved, the shifting of my weight from foot to foot. There is an unbelievable world that is available to us through our sense experience. And it is so nourishing and it's so restorative. So 40 minutes later, you know, I still had a little bit of a grudge, but I was in such a different place. So this is something else that our body allows us to do. It allows us to deal with our suffering. I was suffering. You know, my ideas came up in a heartbeat, and I was attached to them, and I was suffering.

[31:22]

I was suffering anguish. And by using my body and going through my body, I was able to practice in a way that brought relief of that. So when we engage in a practice like this, particularly where we are looking, utilizing our senses in ways where they're just unleashed on the world and we don't inhibit them or cut them off and the mind doesn't stomp all over them. One of the benefits is that we start to learn how to refine our consciousness. You know, a lot of times we start off in practice, and for some of us we continue in practice, with kind of gross thinking, right? That's right, that's wrong, that's blind. The world of dualities, right? We all know what I mean by this.

[32:22]

And by sinking into a particular sense and really working with it and sticking with it, we start to see more and more of what is there. And then, as I said earlier, when we train the body, we train the mind. This then accrues to our minds and we start seeing more and more of what our mental formations are, our ideas, and also our emotional formations, our emotions. Darlene once said to me, all of these things are continuums. It's not like anger is just a big black box. And I have to tell you, that that was just a revolutionary concept to me. And I started thinking about it, and she's absolutely right. You know, anger is everything from being absolutely blinded by anger to the point where I can't see you and I don't even want to be in the same room with you to mild agitation because, you know, maybe my Internet's down or something like that.

[33:24]

So there's a whole continuum, and this is what we call refining our consciousness, to know these wonderful subtle gradations. All of this helps us when we come to actually experience practice, particularly with other beings. So the other piece of this that body practice gives us access to and reminds us of is is that in this wide world, we're freed from this paradigm that we often live under, which is that we're living our lives with before or after. Oh, before I came here, I did that. After this lecture, after she finishes talking, I'm going to do this, right? And our life happens in between before and after. And when we learn to start to sink into this with our body, through our body, through this great, vast field of opportunities, of body practice, then we start to be able to engage in this and to really engage with all the moments of our lives.

[34:35]

Darlene says, the most important step in breaking free of a life dominated by stress and anxiety is to be present, what is actually happening rather than to be swept away with our ideas of what may happen to us later. So there is a difference between actually living an event, being open to all the details of its immediacy, and thinking about it beforehand or just imagining it. Our heads know our inadequacies very well. When we're present with our bodies receiving somatic information, which our intellects may not even be aware of, some kind of magic happens. The situation becomes fuller and assumes an integrity our heads could not even comprehend. So this implies that there's a wisdom that we can access as well in our bodies. I mean, you know, you all are very, just by virtue of being in San Francisco, much less being here on a Saturday morning, very hip, savvy people. You know the difference, the qualitative difference that a walk...

[35:47]

to the store, when you're just goal-oriented, what am I going to get? Get me to the store quickly. What that is like versus feeling your feet on the sidewalk, noticing the trees around you, listening to the sound of traffic. feeling the temperature of the air hit your face, going into the store, seeing what enormous variety of color and shape and form there is, delighting in, you know, exerting preference mind and choosing the things that you like to put in your basket versus those you don't. I mean, this is qualitatively a different way of experiencing our lives. And this is what tends to get lost. because we're so goal-oriented, because we're imprisoned so much by this habituated mind, and because, as I said earlier, the broader culture just so wants us to be there for all kinds of good reasons, right? I think that American worker hours are up, vacation time is down, and productivity is through the roof in this economic recession because we're all very good at listening to our habituated mind and the habituated mind of bosses and things like that.

[36:58]

And those are realistic circumstances. We can't ignore them, but we can work with them. Our mind tells us, no, we can't. We can't be present and be at work. We can't be having a difficult conversation with our partner and still be practicing and present. But we can. We absolutely can. It's getting free of this tyranny of mind and allowing body to come in in a skillful way that helps us there. So living from the body's point of view is not easy. Replacing your automatic reactions to stress with an attitude of open awareness is not easy. It takes a great deal of practice and cultivation. You will have to do it over and over again before your meditation continues.

[38:01]

muscle is strong enough to take you through an entire crisis, even if the crisis only lasts a few minutes. At first, you will be lucky to interrupt your torrent of reactivity with a single breath. One moment of open awareness when you suddenly register your heartbeat, an acid taste in your mouth, or any of your physiological responses to crisis. After you have done this breath check in many times in many different situations, you will develop a great deal of faith in your ability to hold your ground in difficult situations, not necessarily with the wisdom of Solomon, but with your very own intelligence and sanity to which you will have greater access since you will have started looking past your habit patterns for other options. So we are in a practice, the Soto Zen practice, where we're supported by a number of ideas, if you will, that I think are very helpful.

[39:02]

The first is that it's all a mistake. Great, okay, I can't screw up any more than I already have. It's all a mistake. I'm right on target. The other one is that in this particular lineage, there is unity of practice and of enlightenment. And there is a feeling that every body is Buddha. So in the monastery of each of our lives, how do we bring this forward? Moment by moment, whatever the place is, whatever the circumstances are, how is it that we actualize this Buddha? And can body practice be a resource that can help us bring that forward, first and foremost for ourselves, to penetrate and alleviate, minimize our own suffering, and then as a nice side benefit maybe for other beings as well. This is a wonderful, wonderful koan to work with. Well, I think that that's probably enough for today.

[40:07]

I wish you all a wonderful day of body practice. Notice when you leave this room, if there's anything, any semblance of a feeling, any resonance of what I'm saying, how long you can hold on to it. Can you pick up your cup of tea and have that first taste and really fully feel the temperature of it, the robust flavor? Or are you immediately taken away by a message on your smartphone? It's an interesting practice. The wonderful thing about body practice is that our body is always with us. It's always with us as a practice ground and it's always with us to support us as well. Thank you very kindly. 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.

[41:12]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:14]

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