This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Gary Snyder tells a story of being in Japan. He practiced in Daitokuji in the early 60s. And there was a very famous old Japanese Zen master. People would travel all over the country to hear him give Dharma talks. But the thing was that he talked so softly, no one ever heard what he had to say. But what impressed me about this story, Gary says, it didn't matter. So that's my goal. Someday, So this morning I wanted to talk about the role of the body, our bodies, in Zen training and Buddhist practice.

[01:10]

Our body is a very important part of traditional Zen training. And in a sense, your body is the Zendo, is the meditation hall that's portable. and we can learn how to take it with us so that your zazen, your cultivated presence, is not something that is only in meditation, but goes with you everywhere you are. And it was one of the discoveries for me, and it's true for many people, I think, that Zen training is very much an embodied training. We use our body a lot in Zen. I was lucky when I first went to Tassahara, the Zen monastery, and driving in there, so I was getting a ride in, and we stopped in Carmel Valley, and I had the opportunity to go into a bookstore, the last bookstore before the monastery. For someone like me, it was important to have a sign on the freeway, the last bookstore for a year.

[02:16]

But I didn't have much time in the bookstore, so I went to the section where they had spiritual books, And in the short amount of time I had, I thought, well, I'll just open one at random and just see what it says and put it back on the shelf. So that's what I did, and then I went to Tassara. And the nice coincidence was that what I read was that someone wrote, the problem human beings have is holding themselves apart from their experience. And I thought that was interesting, but... I didn't like the way it was stated negatively, as if this is our problem. And so I thought, well, the opposite of that, the opportunity, is to participate with my experience, to engage in it. And with that in my mind, I started my time at the monastery, and I felt very lucky to be there, partly because I did a lot of physical work, and the physical work was part of the training.

[03:20]

And much of Zen training involves using your body in many different ways. We use it in Zazen, sitting in meditation. Many people think of Zazen as kind of something you do with your mind, perhaps. You focus your mind, your mind wanders away, you come back. But a big part of Zazen, some people might say the bulk of it, is... embodied practice is composing yourself on your breathing, composing yourself on your body, taking a particular posture and then letting yourself settle into it and allow something to awaken through the body, some kind of awareness of the body. And so in the monastery, there was lots of chances for this, and it wasn't always so pleasant, but it was always engaging. Sometimes there was pain and discomfort, but that turned out to be, for me, a very rich area of learning to be present in my body in a clear, non-reactive way, not getting caught up in the ways that I tried to pull away or resist or avoid what was going on.

[04:34]

I learned a lot in the Zen kitchen at Tassajara because I was a relatively new student at Tassajara when I was assigned to the kitchen. And the thing about the kitchen is that you didn't get to meditate very much, not so much zazen. And I was kind of young and idealistic, so that's what I thought it was all about. So I was kind of a little disappointed that I wouldn't be able to be meditating so much. What I discovered in the kitchen with this question I had, how can I participate more fully with what I was doing, was I didn't participate with chopping the vegetables. I didn't want to be there. And I would kind of have my, literally have my body turn towards the door and I would kind of chop with one hand. The other left hand was kind of not doing much at all except maybe pointing towards the door. And my mind would drift away. And I would notice that because this question, how do I participate more fully with what I'm doing?

[05:40]

So I would see what I was doing and then I would turn myself literally around to be square up with the carrots. And then just try to be just me and the carrots, just me chopping. And this idea of turning the body towards it and with both hands kind of being part of it, participating, and all of me being there for the experience. And I could do that for maybe a moment, probably a little bit longer, and then at some point my body would start turning and my mind would start turning to go somewhere else. And so over the months that I was in the kitchen, I had a lot of training in just being present for the onions, the carrots, the cabbage. The first three months I was mostly chopping vegetables, and it turned out to be a great training in being present in the body. You come into a variety of situations in Zen training, and you're offered tea. And one of the things you're kind of trained to do is to pick up the teacup with both hands.

[06:42]

And this was very important in Japan when I was assigned, not to teacup, but other things. My job for a while was to go in the Zen monastery in Japan, was to bring the rice pot from one place of the monastery to the other, to the dining area. And I just, you know, casually pick it up with one hand. It was not such a big pot. And this was considered disrespectful. And there were monks who would kind of tell me, Gil, you have to pick up the pot with two hands. And this idea of using both hands is a way of participating in what you're doing, to really there, fully there for the experience, what's happening. So your body is participating in what you're doing. And as the body participates, something comes alive, something opens and awakens within. And I think what awakens, I identify it as a kind of awareness that flows out of the body, as opposed to awareness that resides in the control tower up in the head. And I think many people are centered in what they think is kind of like a control tower, the place where we're thinking about things, directing the show, judging the show, what's going on, making commentary about what's going on.

[07:55]

And sometimes very strongly identified with the thinker, with the control tower. And what's peculiar about this is that we usually have very little control up there. And the way we think we do, we think it's a place. And so a lot of planning, a lot of thinking things, rehearsing things, reviewing things over and over again, could be maybe understood as an attempt to try to master, control, fix, take care of our life, our situation. But while we do that, it often keeps us apart, keeps us separate from our experience of the moment. And so part of Zen training is to not live apart from your lived experience here and now. And so to spend a lot of time lost in thought, lost in commentary, lost in trying to fix things, keeps you separate. But it also keeps you separate if you're in the present moment, but you have kind of up in your control tower, and you're kind of like observing or watching your experience from up there, or trying like a laser to bring your attention maybe on your breathing or, you know, focus on something.

[09:05]

It's kind of like you're a little bit removed. Maybe one part of you is focused on it, but it's a narrow section. So I call that the control tower. And so to drop into the body and let the body be aware of what's happening, yield to the body, relax into the body, compose ourselves on this body in what we're doing. And what is it like to be composed, to be settled, to be present, to be at rest, and let the body speak, let the body become awake, is a very important part of this. So if you go back to the earliest Buddhist teachings, you find a lot of emphasis on mindfulness of the body. And one of the great ways of emphasizing this was that after the Buddha died, while he was alive, he was kind of seen as being the... important teacher that people orient themselves to and went for teachings.

[10:06]

Soon after he died, someone came to Ananda, one of his primary disciples, and asked a reasonable question. Asked, now that the Buddha is dead, who's going to be your teacher now? Who are you going to go for teachings for? So the answer would be quite important. They say so-and-so and you go and hang out with so-and-so. And Ananda said, now that the Buddha is dead, our teacher is mindfulness of the body. So that means that each person has their own body as a teacher. And that saying is comparable to being in the presence of the Buddha. And what is it about our body that can be a teacher? It was not literally the body that Ananda said. It was awareness of the body. mindfulness of the body. That's the teacher. So to enter the body with awareness and pay attention to the body.

[11:08]

The body is a wonderful vehicle that is completely harmoniously in harmony or working with the mind. They're not so separate. And in fact, the body is sometimes much truer than the mind. We can tell ourselves stories in our mind But the body, if you pay attention to it, will reveal so much of what's going on for you, reveal your emotional life in a rich way. The more sensitive you are to the body, the more nuanced we are to understand what's going on emotionally. We can understand how we're reacting to the world around us. We can get early signals about stress and tension or what feels good and what feels not so good. And the body has a tremendous amount of information that's available if we pay attention. I was sitting here in the Wheelwright Center many years ago and teaching him, Kadagiri Rashi was talking about the body, and he referred to it as an antenna, that the body is an antenna that picks up all kinds of things.

[12:15]

I think he mostly implied what's external, but also internally, what goes on with you in a deep way. So to use mindfulness of the body as a teacher means to have access to a tremendous amount of information of what's going on here in the present moment. We also become aware of how we don't want to be in the body, how we tend to leave experience of the body. Some of us might discover that we have well thought out arguments, consciously or unconsciously, about why it's important to be other places than in our bodies. that it's important to be thinking about things, planning things, rehearsing things, fantasizing about things. I've heard wonderful justifications for being lost in fantasy that people like to give. A common one I've heard is, you know, I've had a hard time, or I've done my work, I've sat zaza now, it's been five days into the sishin, and, you know, I deserve a break.

[13:19]

And so I think I'll go off into fantasy. So these are kind of, or it's frightening to be in the body, or the body doesn't count. It's not important. You know, that's not really where important things happen in life. The creativity of life, the richness of it occurs with our mental life, our mental world. So there's a lot of resistance that people can have to really being willing to settle in. But to notice that resistance, to notice the tendency to leave the body, teaches a lot. One early teacher I had said, offhand comment one day, said, don't do anything that takes you away from your body. Don't do anything that takes you away from your body. This is before I understood much about the value of mindfulness of the body. And so I was kind of struck by this. This is strange. It's the beginning of a retreat. So during that retreat, this little

[14:22]

admonition, instructions stayed with me, and I started paying attention to what was going on for my body, in my body, when I was in my body, when I left my body. And the first thing I noticed about leaving my body was we had to walk from the meditation hall across a hill to the dining area, and I used to be really hungry for lunch. And I would leave my body walking to the dining area, anticipating lunch. It was kind of like my body was, my center of gravity was ahead of my body a foot or two. I was slightly leaning into where I was going, and sometimes meals are the best entertainment on retreat. So I was leaning forward to it and going there. And then I would come back and settle back my center of gravity so I'd be centered here in this body. And it didn't take long before I was drifting off into thinking about lunch again and leaning forward. And I got to learn how easy it was for me to get disconnected, disembodied in anticipation, in desire of wanting something.

[15:34]

I also learned how sometimes my center of gravity went behind me. I would lean back if I didn't want to experience something. I didn't really want to be part of something. And there also, as I learned, these very important movements that my psychophysical system made going ahead of myself, behind myself. And then I learned what it's like to drop in and get composed, be centered here, stay in the body in the midst of what's going on. And I learned how quick and easy it was to lose that composure, often because of fear or anxiety, sometimes because of desire, sometimes because of resistance, sometimes because of aversion, sometimes because of just drifting off into fantasy. So I got to learn about the tendencies of my mind, but it wasn't that I stayed in the mind then to think more about them, to reflect on them, to fix the mind with the mind, but rather I would drop into my body, compose myself here, be centered here.

[16:37]

The Zen master Dogen has a wonderful definition of mindfulness of the body, awareness of the body. He said, Mindfulness of the body is the body's mindfulness. Awareness of the body is the body's awareness. Observation of the body is the body's observation, depending how you translate the Japanese. And this kind of turns kind of upside down. for people who think that awareness resides in their control tower, it's in the head, that it's kind of a cognitive knowing of the mind, to the idea that awareness resides in the body. The body is awareness. The physical body might not be in some abstract way, but the way that we experience the body, the way that we can know we have a body firsthand, from the inside out,

[17:48]

directly in the immediacy of now is through the awareness that courses through the body that's here. The body is an organ of awareness, of sensitivity. You know, we can touch things. We can feel all kinds of sensations and warmth and coldness in our bodies, all kinds of sensations, like nerves that spread out through the whole entire body. And they give birth to rise to something that I like to just call embodied awareness, a radiant awareness of being present. And it's a very different kind of awareness than the awareness which some people have from the neck up or from the eyebrows up, wherever the centers might be. And in fact, it's a kind of awareness that if we're too much in our world of thinking and noting and being aware and having commentary we actually separate ourselves from the whole, from the whole thing, the wholeness that's here, the completeness.

[18:55]

And the body is one of the ways to become whole or full, complete, present. So the body is awareness. And one of the nice things about this is that mindfulness, if we hear about being aware of the body, that sometimes activates awareness The control tower activates the agency. I'm the one supposed to do this. I'm supposed to now be aware of the body. The body's awareness suggests that there's something we can relax into or open to. It's not so much that we have to be the doer of awareness as it is we allow for the awareness. Allow it to bubble up. Allow it to surface. Allow it to be there. And you might wonder, is this okay? Are you safe going through the world, resting, composed in your body, aware of what's here, letting the body be the center of gravity, letting the body be the source out of which your awareness, your life, your cognition, your experiences of life arise from, rather than from your mind, your cognition?

[20:10]

Is it okay to do that? There's another story from the early tradition. Another disciple of the Buddha is Sariputta, Sariputra. And he was living in the monastery with the Buddha for a while. And then he decided to go traveling around the countryside. So he packed up his few things and headed out. After he headed out, another monk went to the Buddha and said, Before he left, before Sariputta left the monastery, he hit me. That's the usual translation. The word also means offends me, offended me. I suspect that that's what his original was. He just offended me. Hard to imagine Sariputta punching him out. But he offended me. So something like that. So hearing this, the Buddha said, well, asked another monk and said, go get Sariputta and tell him to come back.

[21:15]

So Sariputta came back and the accusing monk and Sariputta and the Buddha were all together. And the Buddha said, this monk says that you hit him. Is this true? And Sariputta doesn't answer the question, yes or no. Rather, he starts a long kind of little explanation. I'll try to keep it short. He begins by saying, for someone who who is practicing mindfulness of the body in such a way that their mind is like the earth. When the mind is like the earth, all kinds of people can spit on the earth, people can pee on the earth, all kinds of, you know, back then kind of, you know, bad things can be put in the earth. At least back then, the earth didn't mind. In the same way, for someone who practices mindfulness of the body, they will be incapable of hitting someone else.

[22:28]

They're not going to be offended. They're not going to be caught up in that kind of reactivity. For someone who practices mindfulness of the body, their mind will be like the air. The air doesn't care if you spit in it, if you throw rocks in it. It's not affected by it. In the same way, someone who practices mindfulness of the body is not affected by words that people speak and things that go on. So there's a kind of stability and equanimity and non-reactivity that mindfulness of the body arises. And then he goes on to say, and for someone who practices mindfulness of the body this way, they're incapable of hitting someone else. And he goes on, keeps saying this, for the fire, for water, and for other things. And after a while, the accusing monk says, you know, stop. I have a confession to make. And I lied. Sariputta did not hit me.

[23:30]

Please accept my confession. And the Buddha says, yes, when someone transgresses and confesses their transgression, their confession is... acknowledged, accepted, and please continue with your practice. So this idea that mindfulness of the body somehow has an ethical component to it, that certain unskillful activities, like hitting people or offending people, is not going to happen intentionally if someone is centered in their body, is part of the strong ethical teaching of early Buddhism. There's something about being here. rooted in the wholeness, this awareness of the body that makes us more sensitive, ethically sensitive. We're aware of other people. There's more empathy. We're aware of ourselves. And we're less likely to give into some of the unskillful impulses that might arise. There's like space or like the earth.

[24:34]

We're stable. So all kinds of thoughts. The mind is capable of all kinds of thoughts and impulses. But how do we not fall under the control of of the impulses we have, of the desires, the diversions, the hates, the fears that we have. And for this early tradition, this mindfulness of the body is one of the primary ways, important ways, of really staying grounded and centered so we don't get carried away and caught in these controlling forces. The Buddha said that... If a person does not practice mindfulness of the body, then they're kind of like a lump of clay. And if you take a big rock and throw it in a lump of clay, it gets all squashed. But if you do have mindfulness of the body, then it's like being a heavy, solid wooden door made out of heartwood

[25:41]

So it's a pretty serious, strong door. And you throw a ball of yarn at it. The door is not affected at all. So when there's mindfulness of the body, there's so many things that are not going to affect us. We're not so fragile if we're composed and centered, is the idea that it's being said here. So Dogen said, mindfulness of the body is the body's mindfulness. And I think for Zen practice, this is a very important idea, that within us, there is awareness. And there's an awareness that's in our body that can operate if we allow it to be there, if we relax into it, if we make time for it and space for it. It can seem very inefficient for people who want to get things done quickly and want to accomplish things, to allow the body to speak, let the body unfold, let the body show itself to us in a deep way.

[26:48]

That happens when we start composing ourselves or settling ourselves into the body. The zazen posture, sitting in this way, cross-legged, upright, or some other variation of it, is a wonderful way to awaken the body awareness. Because the idea when you're sitting in Zen meditation is for the duration of the meditation, you sit in a dignified, alert, balanced posture where you're not leaning forward into the world, literally and metaphorically, and you're not pulling back. You're not collapsing out of the weight of your challenges of your life, not collapsing out of self-pity. I once sat right there and collapsed in self-pity. Isn't that great? I remember that very well. Many, many years ago, I was sitting in so much pain, and we couldn't move until the abbot came into this room through those doors.

[27:55]

And so it was longer than the usual 40 minutes, because he wasn't coming, and he wasn't coming. It was the end of the day, and my legs were burning. So finally, I just kind of collapsed in self-pity, and curled in the most unbecoming Zen way, kind of collapsed and curled over. And at that moment, the door opened. And the abbot walked in. Not one of my most inspiring Zen moments. I've never been sitting here. Sorry for the memory. I have so many memories in this room. So sitting in this posture and staying in a balanced, alert, composed, upright way, and then not giving in to these different impulses we have, but also not losing our relaxation, staying relaxed and upright.

[29:07]

and allowing the body to begin to do its relaxing, its opening, beginning to show us what's there, show us the tensions that we maybe carry for a lifetime, show us the emotions that are there. But then, as everything arises, let the body hold it. Let the posture hold it. Let it kind of move through us. Try to step out of the way of being in the control tower, being the one who has to fix it, adjust it, make it different, understand it. But to just maintain this place, stay here, and let it just kind of come up, come up. And one of the wonderful things that can happen through this kind of awakening of the body's mindfulness is to understand a very important aspect of Zen practice. And that is that... Zen practice is less about something that you do actively, like you're trying to meditate, trying to focus your attention, trying to accomplish something, trying to get something, trying to get... It's more about letting something inside be expressed.

[30:22]

And so the idea that it's not a goal-oriented practice is partly because we want to allow what's in here already to express itself, to come through us, to be here. And one of the things that sometimes is said is what's here within us, waiting for us, is our Buddha nature. That inside of us there is wisdom, there is awakening, there is an awareness that can support our life in a dramatic way. Within us there is powers and forces of compassion and love that can be there. That can be awoken, can surge through us. can come out of us because Buddha nature, we say in Zen, is our nature that's within us. And we sit and practice, so what's here can be expressed. And so how do we relax, how do we settle into this Buddha nature, this truth, this sense of tremendous value, tremendous dignity or worth or wisdom

[31:33]

that Zen practice celebrates that's here with you, in you, not outside of you. And a big part of it I'd like to suggest is being composed and settled, relaxed in your body, so that the awareness that resides in the body can begin shining forth. So it begins to show itself. At first it might be like a light bulb, which is on, but it's been covered with black paint. So nothing comes through. And at first, it's just like a little scratch in it, and a little bit of light comes through. And slowly, the paint begins to fall off, crack off, dry off, and fall off. And then the light shines completely, 360 degrees. And that process of awakening, of allowing the inner light to... shine and radiate is one of the functions of Zen practice that is best accomplished by kind of getting out of your own way.

[32:43]

When you're in the control tower, you're too often in your way. But to get out of your way, so a lot of Zen practice is just sitting here and learning how to get out of the way, get out of the way. A lot of it has to do with a deep trust, a deep trust in the present moment that if you can stay here, fully present, composed, open, relaxed, with the body as open and present as you can, that your experience that you have in the moment is trustable. That there is a path, there is an unfolding, there is an evolution. But the Dharma knows what that should be better than you do. The Buddha nature inside of you understands what your evolution needs to be, what you need to work through, what needs to arise. much better than your mind does, your thoughts. Be careful with reading all those books. Be careful with listening to Dharma talks like this one that gives you all kinds of ideas of how it's supposed to be.

[33:46]

But if you can trust and relax and allow it to arise from within and let this luminous awareness and presence that has no conditions to it, has no dependency to it, has no resistance to it, has no separation from anything in it, then you'll experience a wonderful gift of your Buddha nature that's here, always here, but sometimes it's a bit covered over. So mindfulness of the body is the body's mindfulness. you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support.

[34:54]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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