This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I got to bed very late last night after 12 and I, uh, I haven't had a nap yet. And the reason I was up so late was because there was something that I made a priority to attend, which was a women's group that I'm in and have been part of for the last 25 years. And those 25 years have gone by.

[01:03]

Have they gone by fast or slow? I don't know what to say. But one of the members of the group, who many of you know, is a Zen teacher, Darlene Cohen, is... has been given by her health professionals between a couple weeks to about two months to live. So it was really important to come together last night. And I'm not going to talk about what an incredible... person Darlene is or what a marvelous teacher she is or how funny she is or how truly innovative and I'm not going to talk about that or how inspiring she is.

[02:19]

But I want to convey the quality of the meeting last night which because everyone was clear that this, there's a tea saying which is Ichie Ichiri, I think, which means one moment, one gathering, one time, I think it's one time, one moment. Is that the translation, tea students? But this quality for a tea gathering, that this time, this group, this season, these flowers, this scroll, it's just this time and never to be repeated. And, of course, each time, each moment is just like that. But, of course, we...

[03:28]

we get distracted from that, I think. We get distracted from the reality that each moment is just like that. But last night, nobody was distracted. And so to talk about what's hard to talk about and to access Sorrow, accurate sorrow, at the same time as thoroughly appreciating life, the life that's being lived right now. That combination was hard to describe. So before the meeting yesterday, I went for a swim in the bay, and I hadn't been swimming for a couple months.

[04:58]

And I'm often literally frightened, terrified, scared to go into the water, which is cold, and there's creatures swimming there that bite people. or hypothermia, or panic. Anyway, but my practice upon entering the water is very similar to getting up in the morning. Don't think. Just don't think. Just each step, each moment, each moment, and pretty soon I'm in the water. And I usually rub my tummy, too, which helps me to not think. Kind of rub my hair a little bit as I'm heading down the sand. So that don't think is, don't think about, it's going to be really cold, it's really going to be terrible, it's going to be... It's to not leap ahead into...

[06:20]

what's going to be, what might be, what could be, but just to stay with each step on the cold sand and don't think. And I think spending time with this group, it wasn't so much, not to leap ahead into what could be, but to talk about right now, what's going on now? How are we working with this now? What are we feeling now? How are we accessing right now our feelings? with eyes wide open.

[07:22]

My cousin, a third cousin, lost her mother and her older sister to breast cancer within like two years. And she told me when they would, they'd go to the hospital, she and her other sister, and they could never actually say to each other how they felt. It was all about numbers and blood count and measuring things and that was their conversation. It was very hard to get to what really mattered between them. A kind of monkey mind almost. you know, oh, let's look at this chart and what does that say? Keeps keeping busy, keeping busy so we don't have to feel.

[08:30]

So in our Zazen practice, there's the phrase, you know, monkey mind, you've probably heard that and have experienced that a mind that's leaping about, that can't settle, that's restless, that's looking for distraction, that's looking for a way out of the zendo or life, one's circumstances, and swinging from tree to tree. So... This is acknowledged in our practice that there's this quality of restless leaping about, and yet the practice isn't, well, just go leap around and follow your distractions, but we create a space to quiet down and to sit down on the ground, on our cushions,

[09:46]

And I just recently read a very interesting description of this by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, talking about setting a trap for the monkey, which is very interesting. And you set a trap, according to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, by making a place that looks like earth, just a lovely piece of earth, solid. And then the monkey steps on that and falls down into the trap. And it's then held in the trap like a tethered colt, like a trapped rat. The ancient saints pitied them and just bestowed upon them the teachings. So I was turning this image of this... this camouflage, you call it a camouflage trap.

[10:56]

So we might say that the forms of the meditation hall or the forms of a practice period or the forms of mindfulness practice are a way to bring the monkey take care of the monkey, actually, by creating a nice place. If we chase after the monkey and run after the monkey, the monkey gets very anxious and fearful and defensive. And if we start demanding and coloring the monkey into a situation, but to create a very quiet and peaceful space that looks like a good place to rest. So we take our seat, we take our posture, and we take very good care of the body.

[12:10]

We find the most stable posture. where we can stay still for a long time. And even when we feel this jumping around or leaping or let me out of here feeling, we still take this outwardly still while inwardly moving posture. We take a still posture. This meets the restless energy in a deep way. And it doesn't matter so much. It doesn't mean that that energy is supposed to be gone in an instant. We work with it, with body, mind, and breath. Breathing in, I know I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know I am breathing out.

[13:13]

This kind of attention, it doesn't mean breathing in any particular way. Just paying attention, breathing in, I know I'm breathing in, I'm aware. Breathing out, I know I'm breathing out, I'm aware. And however the breath comes, whether it's shallow or deep or rough or smooth, Breathing in, I know I'm breathing in. Sometimes we feel, I want the breath to be a certain way, and that in itself is agitation, is agitating the mind, to want something to be other than it is. Already, is disturbing.

[14:15]

The way to work with something that we feel isn't conducive to our awakening is to study it. Breathing in, I am aware of that with mindfulness, with shmirti, with rather than, it shouldn't be like that, get rid of that, I should be some other way. That will guarantee agitation and a disrupting quality. So we take the posture of stillness, not just in sitting, but in our kinhin, in our walking meditation, which is a different kind of stillness.

[15:29]

It's the stillness of movement and the rhythms of stepping and shifting weight, lifting, moving, exhale, press the foot down, or... The weight of the foot goes down, you feel it. Inhale, up comes the heel. The foot glides through the air and meets the ground and shifting of your weight with exhale. This rhythm of breath, body, breath, movement, unified is another thing. another way to completely take good care of the monkey, the monkey mind. And as we... As we move through space, everything changes as we're...

[16:45]

shifting from side to side like a ship as we glide. The room shifts. Our perspective shifts each step. Nothing stays the same. If we think, oh, I'm walking through the zendo slowly, that's the kind of concept of what's going on. Are we present with all the differences, all the sounds, all the shifts in our body and the bones of our feet and breath. This is peaceful abiding, peaceful dwelling. This is ango practice. The one definition of shamatha is the development of peace, development of tranquility and peace, which won't come just because we're Gee, we sure wish it would come.

[17:46]

We create conditions. So with mindfulness and attention, not grabbing hold of each moment, but bear attention, Gentle attention. Walking, Suzuki Roshi says, walking like an elephant. Gentle, or at least an elephant that's walking and not stampeding. So I wanted to mention two or a few things about our zazen, something that I want to pass on that was very helpful for me from my yoga teacher, Patricia Sullivan.

[18:53]

We, in the yoga zen workshops, we always, after doing the more active asanas, we have restorative poses and sitting zazen. And she mentioned something that I found extremely helpful because I have... a tendency, and I know a number of you do, to raise my chin up. And the admonition, of course, is ears in line with shoulders and this back part of your head being the top part and the chin dropped. There's many ways this is described. I think Katagiri Roshi says, have the back of your neck parallel with the wall behind you. flatten the neck. You hear sometimes the back part of your head holding up the heavens. And Patricia's admonition or instruction was to think at the base of the skull, right where the skull meets the neck, to think, to imagine an eye right at the base of the skull and that that eye is open.

[20:09]

Now, If you go like this or push your chin up, you close that eye, right? So having this eye open at the back of your skull. And I found that very, very helpful to remind myself of the position of the head in zazen, dropping the chin, and the way in which that works with monkey mind and thinking mind. And discursive thinking. With the chin up, there's a tendency to produce lots of thoughts that run around. Discursive is to run, right? Coursing. And this, it's a yogic posture of dropping the chin. And in lots of yoga asanas also, the chin is dropped. But to imagine that eye right at the base of the skull as open. So that's been, I've been appreciating working with that, not just in zazen, but kin-hin and walking around.

[21:17]

It also brings a lot of attention to the back. You know, often we're very concentrated on the front and not so aware in a full 360 degree circle body. But of course, we're in the round, right? So to bring attention in our sitting posture to our backs and the feeling of our backs, which are vertical, with the shoulder blades going down the back and vertically, not diagonally, with the chest vertical. The front of the body is diagonal and the back is vertical. So this eye in the back of the skull can help wake us up to the whole side of ourselves that we may not pay so much attention to.

[22:26]

When we inhale, the body makes a teeny tiny backbend. The way the breath moves in the body, the vertebrae's... If you exaggerate it, you can have a kind of backbend it while you're maybe doing rocking at the beginning of a sitting. When you inhale, you can feel a kind of baby backbend, and as you exhale, there's the cow shape, this concave and convex, whichever angle you're thinking of. So imagine and feel as you inhale that backbend going through your body, and exhale, this little mini stretch in the front.

[23:42]

Stretch in the back, stretch in the front. Another small detail to help stabilize our posture and work with our posture, which is an endless practice and an endless study. We never come to the end of working with our posture in subtle ways because, of course, as we change and grow, the more we sit, our body changes, becomes a mountain-shaped sitting body. And as we grow old, different things change, so we're always working with it. One thing that's another thing from Patricia, this area of the body tends to, as I was saying, collapse sometimes and be vertical rather than diagonal.

[24:49]

And there's also emotional reasons sometimes why we collapse in. So one thing almost a visualization as well, similar to this eye, is thinking of the collarbones rolling back. The collarbones rolling back. Now, do they really roll back? Well, in a subtle way, if you imagine them rolling back, you might feel a subtle change in this whole chest area. rib cage, heart, shoulder, back area. It's a tiny movement. Almost a visualization rather than a movement of rolling the collarbones back. Someone mentioned that they found in the Ino's notebooks a note written, I think, by Tenshin Roshi from 1982 or 83 that said, Zen Tatsu Baker, Baker Roshi at the time, says in Zazen instruction, we should not bring up the breath.

[26:24]

And I think that admonition has... been passed on. And I think the reason for that, because I certainly, my first sazan instructions, they brought up the breath, and Suzuki Roshi brings up breath. But I think what was happening at that time was there was an overemphasis on the breath. And as a concentration, object of concentration, and a kind of grabbing hold, in a way, of breath practices before or at the expense of or without the body, without minute attention to the posture. And, you know, if you're not stable in your body posture and you're somehow concentrated on breath or... or even manipulating the breath in some way by trying to lengthen an exhale or do kinds of things with your stomach and so forth.

[27:37]

But without being stabilized, you can create unstable states of mind, actually, mind and body. So we made this switch to not bring up the breath. And it's pretty hard. And I, in my own, when I offer sasana instruction, I come to the breath, but only after very careful attention to the body and posture. So today is such a wonderful day to sit with the rain and this quality of light, of autumn light, and no place to go, nothing to do.

[28:42]

And these hours stretched in front of you where your only activity is to be... aware of body, breath, and mind. You don't have anything to produce, no deadlines, no... You know, leave all your projects at the door and your... Whatever they may be, work, family, whatever you're tracking... And give yourself this gift of just paying attention to your actions in silence. And this will help you to, as much as possible, except for a little functional speech here and there, observe silence and...

[29:52]

Be aware of where you are in space, what you're doing with your hands and your feet and your body. And listen without leaping ahead. This morning there were the raindrops. and the spaces between the raindrops to listen to. So developing this peace, each one of us has this great capacity beyond belief capacity to settle and find our way and allow the forms of the practice, especially of a one-day sitting, to help you with this.

[31:09]

We often have a lot of fantasies about practice. And we read about people who've done three-year retreats or they've lived in caves or even people in the city who follow the forest monk practice and they don't eat after 12 and they don't handle money. And it's so inspiring. And, oh, that would be so wonderful. Meanwhile, we have a discipline. We have just, it's just hard enough. that we can completely throw ourselves into. We don't have to go to a cave in the snow and eat nettle soup. If that becomes your path at some point, may you be happy. Meanwhile,

[32:17]

If you're here for the day, we have something that's being offered that you can enter and with meticulous care and gentleness follow through without leaping ahead to, when is this thing going to be over? Whether you're in the practice period or here for the day. And we can bring everything to each moment. We can bring our sorrow, our feeling for impermanence, our unmistakable truth, the unmistakable truth of impermanence, we can touch that with our body-mind.

[33:27]

without being frightened or trying to run away, we can be there for the unfolding of moment after moment. And within each moment are so many moments that we're not aware of within, you know, a finger snap. There's 75,000 kshantas within a So this flowing, ever-flowing life that we are, can we slow down and bring ourselves to these moments, to each moment? And to each breath with awareness. Breathing in.

[34:37]

I know I'm breathing in. Breathing out. I know I'm breathing out. You don't have to add anything. You don't need to add anything to being alive up until the last breath. when we seem to call that not being alive anymore. What is that? Darlene was talking about, she's just talking about the basics now with her groups, and she's saying goodbye to these different groups that she started over the years, and she's not going to be teaching at Crystal Springs,

[35:39]

So she described a ceremony where she did a jundo, you know, where you go around and bow to everybody, and she bowed to each person in the group, and then they said something, they had a chance to say something, almost like a shosan ceremony, where each person asks a question. What a... What a gift to be able to meet all the people of your life and say goodbye and have them say something. Ask you something and you exchange words body to body. is each encounter, could each encounter be like that?

[36:49]

I don't know. So as I was saying, Darlene's just talking about the most basic things now, and we said, well, what we, she gave us her mini Dharma talk, five most basic things, which were very different from the five most basic things that I came up with once in a talk. Her first is body-to-body practice, which she felt that she has gotten from hearing of Suzuki Roshi and how he spent time with students and they went to Golden Gate Park and they did things together, which she's been doing for many years, having time with students cooking and rafting and spending time together, not just in the Zendo. And the second is having a personal koan, which might be another way of saying that is one's, what's the most important thing?

[38:00]

And turning something, realizing there's something you need to get to the bottom of. And her third most basic practice is concentration. And the fourth is virya, or the energy, she said, that comes from concentration and vow, an energy, animating energy for life and practice, virya. And the last, number five, was, she said, the third noble truth. Third Noble Truth, there is a cessation of suffering. And I think what comes along with that is the Eightfold Path. But, you know, her emphasis on pleasure and joy, especially for people who are in a lot of pain and have a lot of pain, why add more?

[39:08]

Why kind of contrive to make more? And her finding pleasure is in the pleasure of, you know, one foot landing on the ground with full awareness. And inhale, up comes the heel. And exhale, the foot sailing through the air and down. that kind of pleasure in each moment, in the warmth of your bowl when it's returned to you with warm soup, in the silence of this Zen-no. So let's make this day a day of abiding in peace, dwelling in peace, and accessing peace, using the forms of the practice that are there to help us.

[40:43]

And we may feel, I'm just going through the motions, but the body-mind going through the motions, something is... brought alive by taking the posture and really taking up the practices. Whether you feel like I'm faking it or not, it doesn't matter, actually. So thank you very much.

[41:44]

One last thing about our Zalzen posture, not the last thing. One other thing. In the Fugansan Zengi it says when you arise from sitting, move slowly and quietly, calmly and what? Deliberately. So there's no need to fly off your cushion. In fact, to wake up after being still, after sitting pretty still, whether you were unmoving or not, you still were pretty still.

[42:55]

And the body, it is taken care of very well by rocking the body right and left, right? A little bit, and then get bigger and bigger. And carefully on crossing, if your feet are asleep, massaging your feet, pulling up on the toes, you know, good way to wake up your feet and your legs. And I've read some meditation texts where it says to rub the legs. I don't know if we have to do that particularly, but to take the time that you need to come out of this yoga pose that you've been in, this yoga posture, and then turn around, step, you know, stand down. Give yourself that time. That's part of your zazen, is rocking your body. And when you arise from sitting, move slowly and quietly, calmly and deliberately.

[44:00]

When you hear the bell ring, you can even recite that to yourself. When you arise from sitting, move slowly and quietly, calmly and deliberately. I think, and especially if you're moving into kinyin, this other practice, it's one unbroken, seamless Zazen mind. So when we arise from this lecture, let's move slowly and quietly, calmly and deliberately. Thank you very much. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[45:04]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[45:07]

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