First, if you come to Sashin with your usual state of mind, you'll view Sashin as a test or interruption or some kind of idea like that, a relief. But the best if you can come with no comparative mind, just a continuation of what you've been doing, except now you have less distraction and your legs are more sore, etc., and you're tired.

[01:01]

So it will become an extension or exploration of your tiredness or consciousness, soreness. And just practically, we need such a workout, kind of workout of our consciousness, like your body needs a workout, Your mind and consciousness and the emotions need a workout. Our life here would become kind of creepy if we didn't have something like Sashin regularly. mostly what you... what's sitting. When you're sitting, mostly what's sitting is your attitude. Like the precept, do not harbor ill will. Precepts are... the precepts in Buddhism are interesting. They always point to the most obvious troublesome part of

[02:34]

something. Don't harbor ill will or don't get angry. But root of that is the irreversibility of time. stagnation which occur when you harbor attitudes. A lot of you are sitting with your ligaments and muscles and bones and when I touch your back Many of you have backs of steel. Sometimes it'll be soft partway, and then there'll be a steel band around you. And you can't... I can feel it. I don't even have to touch your back. I can feel it coming off your back. When we sit, our muscles and ligaments and bones

[04:02]

I don't know if your bones can be soft, but feelings should be soft. We're not holding ourselves. We use attention to support our posture, but not muscles, really. And muscles are kind of like a harboring of ill will. the kind of prediction. You decide you want to do something, and so you predict how you're going to sit, and you decide to lock in that prediction with your muscles. This is harboring ill will. You know, we don't keep this posture by muscles, and we don't keep this you know, when you were walking with Kenya, by muscles. You don't say, oh, that's the posture, and then you lock it in. We want to have some posture which requires your attention to maintain it. So we want to do something that requires you to have some attention there. I don't... You're not... The idea is not to train your hands to rigidly hold this posture.

[05:30]

Because we're really talking about your thinking, your consciousness. So, same with your chin. You're not training your neck to, you know, like, calibrate. Calibrate everything, block yourself. And then you stay there. That's not sitting. You should be quite soft and movable. So, if someone touches you and straightens your posture, you're quite soft and your muscles are soft. So your attention and attitude, because if we think about our posture, there's an attitude there, your attitudes or attention should be directed at your, what I'll call your organs or areas of consciousness. not towards your muscles and bones, ligaments. It's these muscles and ligaments and things that yoga and roll thing and such things try to get at. And we're trying to get at them too, but in an entirely different way, quite different.

[06:57]

your organs of consciousness or areas of consciousness are roughly speaking your head and your throat and your lungs and your stomach and intestine, anus and genitals. And these are areas of consciousness. If you feel some emotional feeling your throat will feel something, dry or something like that, and your breathing is very reflective of your state of mind and feelings, and your stomach and etc., intestines and genitals. Your intestines will bubble. Your food will not feel good, according to your state of mind. So when you're sitting, what's sitting? What I'd like to emphasize now is these areas are sitting.

[08:29]

So you want these areas to have as much space as possible. And you don't want to have your head in some way so your muscles are having to hold your head. You want the weight of one right on top of the other. And maybe the feeling is your weight goes toward your stomach. So your posture comes... When you're holding your back, it's not so good. Your posture comes together after a few minutes of sitting. Usually there's a shift forward, kind of forward, but it's both a shift where everything is on top of each other and it feels like you've come forward and you don't have to hold yourself anymore. Then your muscles and ligaments, et cetera, tendons can relax. Now, I'd like to equate heat and consciousness today. When you lose consciousness, you lose heat. And it's true, when you're sleeping,

[10:18]

quite unconscious. You have to have more covers on you. You'll start to be chilled, if you're certain, like you're dressed just as you are in a room when you're awake. And you can experiment with this kind of thing with your hands. If you can put your consciousness in your hands, your hands will be warm, or will more likely be warm. As soon as you start thinking, your hands will get cold. This is one of the reasons we leave our hands out in the cold. We don't cover them. Now, if you're a person with chill blames, etc., you know, you're going to have to manage, maybe cover your hands or sit this way. But still, to feel something cold in your hands is very useful practice. Now, one of the

[11:19]

most common recommendations in Zen sitting for beginners is to put your mind in your hand. And I think we have a problem in knowing what to do with that suggestion. Should your hands be cupped? Will it fall out? If your hands are like this, can you put your hand... There's no place to put your mind, so it has to be this way. We have various ideas. How do you put your hand and mind together? But your hand is also an area of consciousness. As is every part of your body, actually. We tend to forget about that and, you know, stuff our feet into shoes and forget that they're there, almost, until you have a foot massage, and you find out, as shaktsu and such techniques know, how interconnected we are.

[12:40]

So your hands have their own consciousness, and each area of your body, especially the ones I'm talking about today, have their own consciousness. And you can, in practice, awaken the consciousness to yourself of these areas by putting your attention there. So I would suggest you start with trying to put your attention in your hands. And also, you can, you know, as you're adjusting your posture for sitting, move your attention up and down this area of consciousness, being more aware of your various organs.

[13:52]

Actually, when all of your parts of your body are conscious, you can't lose consciousness anymore. There's no place for it to get lost or hide. It's a very simple idea, but it's actually practically true. Most of our far-out ideas are not so far out, just mutations. Most dreams are not some revelation of truth, but just mutations. When we've lost our consciousness, lost our attention, then you can produce some mutation. your throat can start to think for you, or your intestines can start to think for you, because you are identifying your consciousness with your usual thinking. You know, the sixth patriarch, it's said, was enlightened, hearing, mind unsupported anywhere.

[15:11]

Konsei translates it as a thought, an unsupported, unproduced thought. This means not consciousness attached to thinking, consciousness, which includes at least all your areas of consciousness. Those on the other toes, the famous con he is asked, what is Buddha and toes on said six pounds of flax. Now, the commentary on this koan says, don't bring any thoughts to six pounds of flax.

[16:31]

Our body is very complicated. And, again, talking about heat, if you want to make your hands warm, say, you can concentrate your attention in this knuckle, at the joint of this knuckle and this knuckle, and in the palms of your hands. Hold. We only have one knuckle, in the knuckle of your thumb and in the palms of your hands. If you concentrate and can put your attention and concentration, there's some interplay in here between concentration and attention, you'll find, usually, body, your hands will produce heat. Now, this heat, it's not exactly the heat. You know, we have a, you know, in ancient times, not so ancient times, people talked about the spleen and the heart and etc. as areas of consciousness. And this was

[18:24]

the experience of people throughout the world, not of physiology, you know, but of their experience of their body when they didn't depend on professionals to explain their body to them. And this kind of attention or awareness is very much a part of a meditation practice. in which you are aware of the consciousness of your body. Not being conscious of your body or attention on your hands just, but your hands themselves having their own consciousness. Your spleen or heart or stomach or throat having its own consciousness. Now, attitudes and ideas are extremely powerful, and a very low-priority strategy or low-priority use of them is to predict the future, which most of us use our thinking to adjust or predict the future, to harbor ill will or to harbor

[19:53]

plans for the future or to harbour the future. But your idea or the level of consciousness which we call thinking or ideas can be a very powerful aid to awakening our consciousness. Another thing you can do, for instance, with your anakhis, this isn't just an idea, but when you're breathing out, and I'm talking about heat now, when you're breathing out, you imagine your breath is like a bellows and you're fanning a fire with it. And even flames are coming out with your breathing. And you can direct that heat at your hand or at your back, or wherever you want heat to be. If you actually can concentrate on your breath without distraction, you can use such an idea or attitude. Very powerful. But most of us can't do it. We can't bring concentration and attention together. Our attention wanders or... etc.

[21:19]

This heat, you know, which usually we think that we get warm by our heart beating and blood going and coming to the surface and etc. This must be true, but this kind of heat is, I don't know, maybe electrical or chemical? I don't know exactly. But you know when you get angry or something or nervous, suddenly some part of your body may itch or become heated immediately. This kind of heat doesn't come from your heart speeding up. So you may notice sometimes if you put your hand, either over the surface of your body, like that, or touching it, you'll find out there's different areas. It feels differently. You've come to here and it feels differently than there, if you're sensitive enough to feel it. And on your shoulder or legs, someone else's back, you can feel

[22:59]

different areas, and those areas will be different at different times. And sometimes you can feel something coming from it, and sometimes you can feel something going into it. And this is very closely related to this pattern of heat. Now, I'm not suggesting you figure this out. We don't need to figure it out. Just I'm trying to break your usual attitudes about what your body is. You think, in the usual sense, I've come to Sashin, I don't have enough sleep, I can't get through the period, or my legs hurt, I cannot do it. But you don't actually know what this body of yours is that's trying to do the Sashin. This body and consciousness, you know, has unusual ability to do session. And to stay warm in the cold. And the difficulty of staying warm

[24:27]

of keeping your hands warm or body warm, without forcing it into some kind of test, gives you some direct experience of consciousness and your attention, not just your mind wandering, but you find your hands get colder, and so you bring your attention back to your hands, and you find you can be warm again. So, Sashin and Zazen practice are merely an opportunity to see the relationship between concentration, consciousness, attention and such things, which we cannot usually do in ordinary activities because we are too distracted. But this unconditional being that Suzuki Roshi has talked about, unconditional being, that Buddha existed and you existed. Unconditional now means unconditional stomach, lungs, mind.

[26:00]

A mind which doesn't rest anywhere. doesn't possess harbor, attitudes, etc. So in this session, please allow your stomach to sit, lungs to sit, throat to sit, etc.

[27:19]

And notice how attention, not musculature, keeps your chin in or hands this way. If you just sit like this, you know, your mind will mutate. And if you sit rigidly, you'll just be rigid and angry and wondering why it isn't perfect. or tougher, or something. But we're just here, nothing special, just sitting here, hopefully relaxing on our cushion, letting your stomach sit, and maybe, since it's a little chilly, putting your consciousness or mind in your hands, and noticing whether your hands are warm or cold, if you can keep them warm or cold, by your attention to your hands, by your ability to not wander off,

[28:51]

to have your hands concentrated. Some people, by their muscles and will, they can display great attention on something, but no concentration. Their body is always... the mind is always trying to go off somewhere else, and you bring it back. so they can maintain their mudra. But it's not the mudra maintaining itself. So increase your companions from your breathing to your stomach, intestines, anus, genitals, lungs, throat, mind.

[29:56]

into the consciousness, consciousness of the sashi and all your areas of consciousness as they're sleepy, as they're sore. Don't stray from this consciousness within the sashi. Creating some harboring, some idea when the session is over, what you'd rather do, or what you'd rather have the session even be. There's no event that can be added greater than just your existence right now. When you can penetrate your consciousness through and through, when your body is penetrated with consciousness, then you penetrate the lineage, the consciousness of the lineage.

[31:44]

your friend and each person you meet. But first you must find out the consciousness of your own body. Unlock your attitudes. When your consciousness is in your thinking, attached to your thoughts, you will feel some emotional anxiety, often, some jittery, But when you just exist in the consciousness of this moment, feeling of this moment, you won't feel much anxiety.

[33:07]

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