Anyone who'd like to sit on a cushion, Paul mentioned to me sort of doing a circle of cushions here on the tatami if you'd like. It's a brand new tatami, so there's that fresh tatami spraying we all learned. I think we may be trying to get a circle in this half of the room as much as possible.

[04:05]

We just lost track of our teacher. He's in the building somewhere. I didn't hear about the classes.

[10:55]

It's interesting to use this space. It's been a year out. It seems to be long. They didn't get to stop us. For an earlier, I will not. What were any improvements? L.A.R. was a big necessary group of people. Is this okay? Or is she speaking to you? Oh, whatever you want. It's just fine. Okay. Yes, sir. I might round it off or they can get... I think it's so cool.

[12:46]

I'm going to go over here here. Okay, great. Well, that one is probably not similar. I'll stick with it. Good afternoon.

[14:23]

What I had thought to do, I think it might be past tense now, was to go around and say our names. But given that there's 42 people online, let's just see if it can work that way. We'll go round the room and then we'll go across the screen. What I'll do is when we get to this screen, I'll just call your name because everybody is not presented with the same screen, so it's hard to know what your name is. But before we do that, Let me just give you what I thought we would do today. I would do a brief introduction.

[15:31]

Each of us will say our names and then we will have a kind of an opportunity to ask any questions if there's some part of the program, the course. not clear deal you can ask about it and then we will do some mindful stretching and then we'll sit for a little bit and then we'll talk a little bit about practice and then we'll finish probably about three so not so long this afternoon In case you haven't been able to figure it out from our descriptions, on Monday evenings there will be an on-site, so you can come here in person, or you can join online.

[16:46]

And then on Thursday morning, just before lunch, There will be a similar session to Monday night, mostly to accommodate people in a different time zone. And then we would invite you and encourage you to join a small group. David Chow, who runs the organization of it, of our online programs, he will send you a link and ask you your first, there'll be four options of times when the small groups meet, and he will ask you to say your first choice and your second choice. And if everybody wants to be in the same one,

[17:56]

Maybe we'll just have two at that time. So there is some flexibility in all of that. And then there'll be one group that will have their small group here in the building. I'm not quite sure where that's going to be. And this is Dan Gudgel back here. And he's, for want of a better word, the cameraman. But he may also end up telling us which rooms we're going to be in when we do stuff. I'm not quite sure whose responsibility that is. And then there will be an option in your small... There will be...

[18:57]

one of our teachers will lead your small group and there'll be an option to have a one-on-one meeting with them you know I'm not sure how frequently maybe it's probably a function of how many people want to do that and and I'll get back to that after we practice so that's the basic outline and and In addition, there will be, on Friday mornings from 9 to noon, 9.30 to noon, there will be what's called a Zazen Kai, which is just Zazen. You just come in, you sit, and we have periods of Zazen, but there isn't any other formalities. And when I leave it, what I do is we sit for 25 minutes, then we walk for 10 minutes, and then while we're standing, I just make a few comments about meditation, about zazen, and then we sit down.

[20:12]

And then we just do four periods, and then we're done. And then we will come upstairs, and we will have noon service. And you're welcome to join us, or you're welcome to just leave. I think we'll have noon service. We'll see. Any questions about any of that? for the sake of parting. It's just an offering that we like to make and some people will come and some people won't. The way the group is is something like this.

[21:15]

There is about 90 people in the group. 30 are in person. This is roughly speaking. A third are in person, a third are joining online on Monday night, and then a third are online on Thursday mornings. So that's how it is. And so I think only the third who are in person will have the option of sitting. Maybe we'll try to set it up if... If those of you who are online would like to join the sitting remotely, we'll try to facilitate that. And so maybe that was one thing you could think about giving us feedback on. Thank you for asking. Any other questions? If you're in the Thursday group, you're able to come on a night

[22:23]

For an in-person, can't you switch? Or if you pick those, say, your in-person? What a great question. I hadn't thought of that. And what I'm thinking is, if there isn't a big migration, you know, like everybody wants to join Monday, If it's just a few people, it'll be fine. It won't be disruptive. So if you want to do it, you can sort of do it until we say, well, see what you started. So if it's just a couple of people want to do it, I can't see a problem, really. Any other questions? I wonder if anyone needs as an instruction. Oh. We'll get to that towards the end of this session.

[23:28]

Any other questions? Let me talk a little bit about Zazen. Zazen is a It involves our physical being, and we're going to encourage you as best you can, sit upright, sit in an open way, in a balanced way. And this is one of the things we'll coach you on, like how to breathe from your hara. To put it in simpler terms, just to breathe from the abdomen. Let your body relax so that the breath naturally deepens. And then there will also be instruction on how to relate to thinking, which doesn't magically turn off when you sit cross-legged.

[24:52]

I mean, many of us wish it would, but... So it's more a matter of learning how to be skillful with it. And some of the pointers that you learn are kind of counterintuitive. One is that when you can experience yourself thinking... rather than try to suppress it, try to experience it as fully as possible. The counterintuitive part is that that often helps the mind to loosen its grip on what you're thinking about. And so these kind of details will give you over the eight weeks of the course and encourage you to try them on and also encourage you in your small groups and in the class to kind of bring up any questions you have about it.

[26:07]

Okay. Any other questions for now? The only experience What's the, where's the line between that and what do you think about? I feel angry with something and I want to feel the anger. I just have dwell on it. In the name of, I'm experiencing it, but that's the whole thing I'm passive enough to say anything. The difference between being hooked by what you're thinking about is, unintentionally, you're focusing on the content. And the content is stimulating and stirring up some kind of engagement.

[27:18]

And when we shift to experiencing it, We're shifting from the content's attraction to just experiencing the attributes of thinking rather than the content. And as we experience the attributes, our connection to the content starts to dissipate. That's the theory. And then sometimes it works. And then sometimes, despite your mind knowing that's the theory, you grasp the content anyway. And we will, because our minds are a powerful part of our being, we will examine this in a variety of ways. But it's in contrast to thinking, well, suppress your thinking.

[28:28]

I think of suppressing your thinking, it's a little bit like trying to push a ball underwater. The more energy you push into putting it underwater, it springs back with the same amount of energy. And initially acknowledging that there's thinking, bringing it into consciousness, and then deliberately trying to shift from the content to to the state of mind, to what kind of, what's it stimulating? Is it a whimsical thought? You suddenly think of something when you were four years old.

[29:34]

Or does it have a deep psychological significance for you? You think about something and you think, oh yes, and it stirs up visceral emotion and physical response. There's a way in which our thinking can influence our body, our breath, and our mental state. And so any one of those and a combination of those can be experienced. And we'll get into that in a more established way. Just hearing it, it's a little bit hard to remember, but as you practice with it, it starts to reveal the significance of it and the skillfulness of how it can be engaged.

[30:47]

Sure. Any other questions? So maybe rather than go around and introduce our all, everybody say their name, maybe we'll just break into groups of five and each person can have a couple of minutes. And if you could say your name and what would you like to say about yourself? Yeah, and it doesn't have to be your deepest and darkest secret. Actually, I would encourage you not to say that. Like maybe when you get to know your group better, then that might be a more appropriate thing to explore, but certainly not.

[31:54]

Just say something about yourself that... you think expresses it gives a description of who you are so the person can know you better okay so we'll break into groups of five and if you could do that online then thanks we'll count off one two three four five is that right mmm Now that leaves us with five groups. Maybe that'll work. Five, ten, twenty. We'll break into groups of five. We'll break into five groups. So we'll just count one, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. Until we go around the room. And then all the ones will join together in the twos.

[32:58]

Okay, you got it. Okay, so you can start. About how long? About 10 minutes. So would you like to start? One. Two. Three. Four. Five. You go back. Okay. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Okay. So if all the ones can go there and put up your finger one, the twos can go over there, put up two fingers, three fingers in the middle, four over there, and five over here. And about two minutes each. Yeah, it was interesting.

[42:03]

Yeah, it was interesting. [...] It was interesting. It was interesting. Paraphrase, I don't know. It's really nice. [...] I don't know. It's really nice. [...] It's like, you know, it's just, you know, it's just, you know, it's just, you know, it's just like, [...] you know, it's like, you know, it's like, you know, it's [...] like, you know, it's like, you know,

[43:16]

You can draw your discurse into a close and then just come back. Yeah. He's tossing him. He's tossing him. Michael, you don't happen to know how many yoga mats we have?

[44:22]

We should have. Okay. So I hope that even though it was just with two or three other people, I hope that gave you a sense of being able to bring yourself into this space. And maybe you can reflect later in the day on what you said. Of all the things you could have said about yourself, you said what you said. You know, there's really a way in which we have a notion of, oh, here's who I am.

[45:32]

But then if you watch yourself, you can get a more full notion, not just your conceptualization, but you can sort of watch yourself and think, oh, that's who I am. I chose to say that. And then sometimes it's, well, I said that because it was safe. Or I said that because I wanted to take a risk. And all of it, learning to trust and acknowledge who you are. It's not like, well, you didn't say the right thing. It wasn't that kind of exercise. It was kind of like a free-form exercise. You say whatever you say. And then just to watch how that turns out. In that kind of inquiry, so often we can impose upon the notion of practice, it's like, oh, I should be this way.

[46:48]

And then we get busy making ourselves that way. But actually, the notion of practice is more gentle and hopefully encouraging than that. It's like, just let yourself express itself and notice and acknowledge. Oh, I said that. Maybe I felt a little insecure and I wanted to establish myself as being a credible person. So I told everybody that when I was in first grade, I got straight A's. Or whatever. Can it have a lightness to it?

[47:51]

Can you be kind of charmed by who you are rather than rushing to improve it? Or demanding that interpreting practice as, well, I should be like that. I should always be compassionate. I should always be aware of I should always be thinking of others. Those are lovely attributes, but they can turn into a kind of burden if we get too caught up in them. So what we're going to do now is we're going to do some mindful stretching and When we take posture in Zazen, what we're doing is we are engaging in the physicality of being in a psychosomatically settled and open way.

[49:18]

And the other thing we're doing is rather than being caught up in our thoughts, which is usually the most dominant feature of our activity as a human, we're starting to give preference to the physical sensations in the body. And so, as we do the stretching, if you can keep in touch with what you're feeling physically, in the terms of physical sensation, from that stretch. And to remind ourselves that that's the primary agenda to...

[50:21]

connect to the physical sensations in the body, rather than accomplish some kind of stretching, rather than turn it into a goal. As we get in touch with the physical sensations in the body, You know, you can stretch in a way that is a demand. Or you can stretch in a way that's a kind of discovery. Like sometimes we stretch and then we have some clues about how to soften and let the stretch go even deeper.

[51:25]

And that's very different from the mind saying the body should be a certain way. It's like listening to the body and letting that inform how you're responding. And this is part of the basis of of taking a posture in zazen. We listen to the body and in our experiencing of it, we help it align. Okay, and you'll hear that many times. Don't worry about if it didn't all stick. So if you could stand up and take a yoga mat. And for those of you who are online, you can just stand up, and the camera will be on me, so you'll have some clues as to what it is we're going to do.

[52:33]

Thanks. So if you could start by just bouncing up and down on the bones of your feet.

[53:45]

Just letting your blood flow. Waking up your body. And then pause, plant your feet. And swing your arms. And then with your feet a little further apart, move your arms in a circle. in reverse direction. And then pause and bring your feet and your knees back together.

[55:05]

Bend your knees and move your knees in a circle. And then reverse direction. And then come up. And stretch up with your right arm, like open from the shoulder, up through the arm, up through the fingers.

[56:18]

And then as you stretch up like that, move your hips to the right. And your hand sways to the left. So you're stretching the whole side of your body. down in the same movement on the other side stretch up and then sway the hips to the left and your hand to the right so when you keep this stretch up you'll feel the stretch your whole way down the side of your body And as you feel that stretch, let it speak.

[57:22]

Let it say if it would be a good idea to go a little deeper or not. And go back and forth a couple of times. Now back to the right arm. Left arm. And then release. And one more time, side to side. Stretch up. Lean into the stretch. And then the left arm.

[58:44]

And with both arms done by your side, just check in with your body. any changes from just those simple stretches how does your body feel now then lower yourself down onto your hands and knees And then as you breathe out, arch your back up. And as you breathe in, arch your back down.

[59:48]

Then with the rhythm of your breathing, breathing in, arching up, breathing out, arching down. Just follow the rhythm of your breath without trying to make your breath longer or shorter. Then pause with your back in a neutral position.

[61:19]

And then as you breathe in, straighten your right leg and raise it up. And then as you breathe out, bring your right knee towards your face and your face towards your knee, your right knee. And then pause.

[62:30]

Put your both knees on the floor. And then do the same movement on the left side. As you straighten your left leg and raise it up, breathing in. As you bring your left knee towards your face and your face towards your left knee, breathing out. Pause again, both knees on the floor.

[63:48]

And then reach forward with your hands. And pull back with your hips so you can feel a stretch from your hands to your hips. And then lower your chest towards the floor. Then sit back on your heels or as close to that as you can.

[64:51]

Move your arms down to beside your legs, your thighs. Come back up. Put your right leg forward. Either put your hands, then let your hips sink down towards the floor. Either put your hands on your right knee to stabilize yourself, or if you feel quite stable, You can bring your arms up.

[66:01]

And release. And then switch legs. Either your hands on your knee or let you raise your arms up. Do what's best for your body. your shoulder down onto your back, your feet flat on the floor, your knees in the air. And as you let your body breathe

[67:35]

Just notice how the breath moves through your body. How is it when you inhale? Where do you feel the physical sensation? And how is it when you exhale? And then press down with your feet so you'll lift your hips up. And shift your hips as far to the right as you can.

[68:39]

Cross your left leg over your right. Bring your knees up to your chest. And then roll your knees to the left. Where do you feel the stretch in your body? Can you breathe down into where you feel the stretch?

[69:44]

And can you let something loosen? And uncross your knees, your legs, Straighten your spine. Bring your knees up to your chest. Put your feet back on the floor. Press down. Lift your hips up again. Shift them to the left. Cross your right leg over your left knee. Bring your knees up. Roll them to the right. can you breathe down into where you feel the stretch without forcing your body is there a way to loosen into the stretch and uncross your legs

[71:39]

Straighten your spine. Bring your knees up to your chest. And then bring your legs straight up in the air. And then stretch out through your heels. And then either with your legs straight or your knees bent, slowly lower your legs. And then you can either let them touch the floor or you can just let them hover over the floor and then bring them slowly back up. The psoas muscles are working hard in this movement, but there's other muscles that are not.

[72:50]

Can you let them stay relaxed? Slowly lowering, and then slowly raising back up. And then next time your legs come down, just lay them on the floor. And as much as those muscles were straining, let them release and relax. Just let your body sink into the tatami. Where you feel your shoulders making contact.

[73:57]

Where you feel your arms are making contact. Your hips. Each one of those points. Let your body soften and sink into the floor. And in that relaxed state, just notice the movement of the chest, the stomach, the abdomen as you're breathing. And notice the movements as you breathe out.

[75:03]

And slowly shake your arms and your legs. Bring them up in the air. Shake them a little bit more vigorously. Then bring your knees up to your chest. Roll over onto your right side. And push yourself up with your arms. Just come the whole way up to standing. Shake your arms and legs again. And then with as much attention to the physical sensations can you roll up your mat and put them back in the stack. Notice how you bend down

[77:19]

Just start rolling your mat. And as you take your posture, start with the position of your legs and take whatever posture works for you.

[79:30]

Let you, where you're contacting the floor, let it sink down a little. Are there any adjustments you need to make to be more stable? Favor stability. comfort over some more rigorous way of sitting. And slowly lift up through the sternum, lengthening the front of the body. And then on the spine, imagine your lower body, your lower spine, your spine below your navel, sinking down.

[80:47]

Maybe you can even feel your sit bones, the two bones in the middle of your body that rest on the floor. And then your upper spine reaching up through the crown of your head. Can you notice the difference between your mind telling your body what to do? In each suggestion, opening an exploration of sensations. Slowly bring your hands with their palms about three inches apart down at the level of your navel.

[81:58]

Can you feel any sensation between your hands? And slowly, carefully place the fingers of your left hand over the fingers of your right hand. Bring your hands in until your little fingers are touching, almost touching your abdomen or touching your abdomen. And then your thumbs touching. And your thumbs and your forefinger making an oval. And the touching point of your thumbs, not resting in your lap, rather your thumbs touching just in front of your navel.

[83:15]

scanning the physical sensations of sitting like this. And as best you can, allow your breath to find its own natural rhythm. And as you do that, notice literally how it feels physically. What are the physical sensations of the breath, the inhale, moving through the body. moving through the bay.

[84:29]

And as you sit, aware of your body, aware of your breath and your body, can you just gently bring your attention back to that awareness? God's interrupted. and noticing, letting the body breathe, letting the breath find its own rhythm, not dictated by the mind.

[88:16]

You know, when we're learning to drive a car, there's all sorts of instructions. This foot activates the brake. This foot activates the throttle. This mirror allows you to see what's behind you. and watch what's on the left and watch what's on the right. And then we take all those instructions and we engage them. And miraculously, our body learns something. And then, amazingly, we can drive without the body being told by the mind what to do.

[90:57]

And it's like the body knows how to drive and the mind is a passenger. Meditation's a little like that. You start with all sorts of instructions the body learns something, and the breath learns something. And initially, the mind says, no, but wait a minute, I'm in charge. I'll tell you what to do. And I will judge how you're doing it. And then as you continue, and the body and the breath learn to sit, the mind... is invited to soften and you know usually when we're driving we think okay well I'll listen to the radio I'll listen to a podcast now that I've got some free bandwidth and in meditation it's more like

[92:14]

oh, okay, now I can worry about that thing I was worrying about. Or I could, you know, use this free mental space to engage something. And can we... Can we relate to the body primarily, the breath primarily, so that whatever's relating to the mind is kind of secondarily? We're not going to coerce it into silence. But we're going to watch when we're disconnecting from our body and our breath and getting wrapped up in what the mind is conjuring up.

[93:28]

Often it takes a while to learn how to let that happen in that order. Physical sensation, sensations of breath, And then the mind is just, it's like we're not feeding it intentionally. Oh, I'm going to think about that. And when we find our mind is wrapped up in something, then we just return to the body and the breath. And they're just the very way we learn to drive with the body.

[94:30]

We learn to meditate with the body. And then, as you know, there's development of that. that over the weeks we will explore. And then we'll explore carrying that awareness into the different arenas of our life. How is it when I'm frightened? How is it when I'm amused? How is it when I feel connected? How is it when I feel disconnected?

[95:33]

So we're getting a more visceral relationship to what we are and how we are. And then we can start to invite into awareness the many endless aspects of being human. So that's what lies ahead. I think that's enough for today. Are we going to be in the Zendo on Monday? We'll be in the Zendo on Monday. Okay. The Monday class. And what time does that class start? 7.30.

[96:40]

I would have said 7.15. 7.15. Okay. So I'm not sure the Zendo door on the Maguna will be open at that time. Maybe we'll just make a point of it. Yeah. You can go to that door. And then come in, and then we'll set ourselves up in a circle. The dividers in the middle are easily set aside. And then we can make a circle. And we will explore it conceptually. embody it, and then discuss how that is. And learning to have a kind of purposeful but gentle approach.

[97:49]

Thank you. And if you would, put your cushion back on the rack. That would be helpful. Thanks for doing all that. Thanks. Thank you.

[99:06]

Thank you. Life's difficult.

[99:31]

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