Greetings everyone. My name is Robert and this is the second in a series of four Dharma Talks as part of the Zen Mind Yoga Body Manifesting the Wisdom of the Body online course. In the first Dharma Talk, I introduced the essential practice of Zen, sitting meditation or Zazen. We talked about that practice from three different perspectives. from the perspective of awareness of the body, from the perspective of awareness of the mind, and then from the perspective of awareness of the breath. So this practice of zazen, just to kind of reinforce what I said in the first Dharma talk, is the practice of stopping, sitting. sitting down right where we are, right in the middle of our lives with the experience of our lives as they arise in this moment, returning to the experience of the body, the experience of the mind, the experience of the breath.

[01:18]

In that way, we access a more fundamental experience of ourselves, the experience of our true selves, just as we are. So this week's practice is about manifesting the wisdom of the body in the present moment. Being aware of the body and the mind and the breath in the present moment. Understanding why we do that and how we do that. So it's natural for us to wonder when we come to practice, how can I learn to calm this crazy mind of mine, this out of control mind. How can I learn to be more aware, more awake in my life? How can I learn to control my mind or my thoughts, my emotions, my feelings just enough so that they aren't controlling me?

[02:28]

Of course, we want our minds to stop pushing us around. and with our habitual reactions and responses to circumstances, to situations, our self-concerns, our fears, our anger, our impatience or lack of compassion. Most of us would like to figure out whatever's causing us our lives to be in some ways out of balance, maybe even a little bit out of alignment with our deepest intentions. So in the first talk, I mentioned that our body and our mind and when we sit is constantly teaching us. But this teaching that we're receiving from our body and mind is not learning

[03:35]

in the usual way. It's a different kind of learning. It is simply sitting down with the experience of the body, noticing, noticing the entire body and mind experience in this present moment, accepting our experience, meeting our experience with the full capacity of ourselves as human beings. This is a very extremely simple practice. As I'm sure you've been noticing as you've been practicing through the first week, it's very simple and yet very difficult. It's very difficult to just be with this experience right now and not do anything with it. not need to change it in some way, not need to make it a little bit better than it is, or maybe a lot better than it is.

[04:43]

But that's our practice, just sitting, noticing, moment after moment, and the key thing there is noticing without some kind of idea that I can change it, or I need to change it. In Zen we call this without a gaining idea. We sit down without a gaining idea, without the need to make it somehow different. Always focusing on the present moment because the present moment is where this happens. The present moment is where the training happens. The present moment is where the practice happens. Not somewhere that just happened or not somewhere in the future, but right now. moment after moment. This is where the practice is. So this is why this is so fundamental to Zen practice and so important for us to understand.

[05:53]

It's kind of a subtle point, this present moment, but it's key to understanding and laying a foundation for our practice, and especially as we extend our practice into every moment of our life, into our yoga practice, into our practice with our relationships, into our practice at work, into our practice, you know, whatever we're doing. So what is the present moment? How do we understand the present moment from a Zen moment? Buddhist perspective, and how do we work effectively with it in our practice? These are important questions for us as practitioners. And I'm going to look at the present moment from three different angles today. The first one is to be ready, to make ourselves prepared in some way to create the conditions

[07:03]

to receive the present moment, to experience the present moment. So to kind of lay the groundwork for receiving the present moment is the first way that we can talk about the present moment. The second way to talk about the present moment is from the perspective of acceptance, meeting it, engaging with it. embracing it. And the third way to work with or practice or think about the present moment is that it's always changing. It's continuous. In some way, we could say there is no present moment. It's always the next moment. It's always just this moment.

[08:06]

The present moment, which we notice as the present moment is now the last moment. And now the present moment is this moment. So there's a continuity to our practice, being with it as it's always changing. Suzuki Roshi, the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center said one time, to be ready to accept everything as it comes, moment after moment, is the Buddha's activity. So this Buddha's activity is our activity, our activity when we practice with the body. When I say to be ready, I mean that not in the usual way of making ourselves ready for a particular moment to happen, but actually creating the conditions which is more like a view, more like a view that is also maybe even more like an attitude, an approach.

[09:32]

for our practice. So I'll try to explain that. In Zen we say that the present moment is always perfect just as it is. Always perfect. But I think you'll probably agree with me that this is rarely our experience. We're constantly... weighted down by our thoughts and emotions, by worrying about what's going to happen sometime in the future or about what just happened in the recent past. We're consumed or our life is colored by our stories about the people around us and the circumstances we were in. And we oftentimes feel that things should be different than they are.

[10:33]

We don't actually, in our lives, day-to-day, moment-to-moment lives, often have a sense that things are perfect. We don't have confidence to trust that actually they could be perfect. For that reason we're constantly replaying what happened in the past and anticipating what might be coming in the future. For that reason we struggle. We struggle to live peacefully, settled, open, and just present for each moment. inevitably started thinking that there's something lacking about this moment.

[11:41]

There's something I need to do to make it maybe a little bit better than it actually is. That my life is somehow insufficient just as it is, imperfect. I should be something other than what I am. right now. So we live constantly either wanting something or fearing something. And we think that the purpose of our lives is actually to figure this out. Is to get less of what I don't like and more of what I like. And that for the people who are happy, that they've somehow figured out how to do that. You know, they've gotten enough money or enough power or enough fame to make themselves happy in this way.

[12:51]

But that's not how we think about it in our Zen practice. We think about it a little bit differently or maybe quite a bit differently. In Zen, we return over and over again to the experience of the body and clearly see and embrace that experience of the body in the present moment with no intention, nothing, no intention of making it anything other than it just is right now. No need to add anything on, no need to take anything away to make it perfect just how it is. As we practice, we start to increase and develop our appreciation that this present moment of life in this body fundamentally has nothing lacking or is not anything more than we need.

[14:19]

It's not something that we need to actually improve on. The present moment just is the present moment. This life of ours. This gift of life just is itself. There's nothing we need to do about it, really, except notice. But to notice, we have to make ourselves in some ways ready to notice. We have to be open and available. This practice is not in this way, it's not about getting something. It's not about making ourselves into something, some picture of our lives that we imagine we should be and setting ourselves on that course and getting that, achieving that, accomplishing that image

[15:31]

When we sit down, we sit down in a fundamental kind of receptive posture with the body, mind, and the breath. We sit down and we receive our life. We create the conditions to receive. And to actually receive, we need to be willing to accept. We need to be willing and able to meet, to embrace the conditions of our lives, the sensations of our body, the thoughts and stories and pictures of our mind. This doesn't mean this accepting, this posture of accepting

[16:38]

doesn't mean that everything is just fine how it is. I mean, we may not like what we see. This is a very common kind of experience in Zen practice. We start meditating or we start noticing, we start bringing more awareness to our activities, to our conversations, to our relationships. And it's almost like we start suffering more not less, because we see what we do. We see how we respond to circumstances. And we start to see how we create our own suffering with our attachments and our views. It doesn't mean that in this acceptance that everything is just good.

[17:41]

What it does mean is that we don't turn away from anything. Is that we don't abandon ourselves. We don't leave this experience of being in this body, in this mind. We stick with it. We accept it. Over and over and over again, we accept, meet, embrace our life. When we start practicing, it's fairly easy to think, oh, I can't actually do this. This very simple practice that's actually so difficult, this practice of just watching our mind. taking the backward step, experiencing the body and mind in this moment, it's easy for us to start drifting off.

[18:54]

And the next thing you know, we're thinking about the dinner party that we have to go to this weekend, what we're going to bring. And then eventually we notice and notice And very quickly we kind of add on to that, oh, I'm no good at this. I knew I couldn't do this. It's right there in that moment that we accept. It's right there in that moment of realizing that, oh, we've drifted off. Oh, I'm not actually paying attention to what I'm doing. that we just accept that. Moment after moment, we accept. And if we are truly just receiving, accepting, meeting the experience of our body and mind with a curious, open, ready mind.

[20:06]

Moment after moment, we start to see ourselves in a different way. We start to see ourselves not just as this collection of thoughts and I like this and I don't like that, but we start to see ourselves in a deeper, more fundamental way as this body. We start to reconnect with the experience of being in this body, being a human being in this body. I know I'm just repeating that over and over again, but it's important. That's what we return to, the experience of this body. This is a big, complete, blanket acceptance of that. This is the kind of acceptance that we have in our practice. It's an embracing of not only the experience of our body

[21:10]

but the experience of everything, the extended body. This is an embracing, this is a meeting, this is an acceptance of life. And this is a big practice. It's the practice of a lifetime, because it's not the usual way we are in the world. A Zen master once said, when you see it, you just see it. If you think about it, you miss it. So this practice of accepting is just seeing. It's just being. It's not thinking about it and deciding, oh, I can accept that. But this other thing, maybe I can't accept that.

[22:11]

It's not like that. It's like accepting, accepting, accepting, accepting. Receiving, receiving, receiving. If we try to do something with this present moment, not accept it, but actually accept start to mess around with it and say, well, actually it should be a little bit more like this and a little bit more less like that. We miss it. We miss it. And that's oftentimes how we live long stretches of our lives, just missing, missing the present moment. So let me remind you of what Suzuki Roshi said. To be ready to accept everything.

[23:12]

This is the other point there with that accepting, is that it's accepting everything. To be ready to accept everything in the present moment, moment after moment. is the Buddha's activity. So we sit down, we were prepared somewhat. We have the right view, not a view of gaining something, but a view of just experiencing, receiving. We sit down or we engage in our Zen activity to accept everything. Moment after moment. So this is the next aspect of this working with the present moment because the present moment never stops.

[24:19]

It's never like just anything other than now it's gone. So this kind of practice moment after moment in Zen relates to a sense of Zazen as not trying to achieve some kind of perfected state or matching up with a picture of our lives in which we're a little bit more calm or a lot more calm or more settled. We're kinder. We're more patient. Whatever it is that we're kind of working with in our lives, it's not to achieve some kind of fixed state, but it's to engage in the process, in a process that is continuous and going and going and going all the time.

[25:35]

So sometimes we... we liken this to kind of like entering a stream. Entering a stream, which is the fundamental nature of this body. It's just changing all the time. Nothing is staying permanent. It's moving, flowing, being, different, new, in every moment. So this is how we work with it with our awareness. We bring our awareness to this moment-to-moment change, constant change, constant movement, constant flow, constant newness. This is a a bit different than how we often look at our lives in terms of like discrete things or moments or events.

[26:45]

This happened like that. This is looking at it like a flow, a flow of interconnected events. It is said that when our mind is like this, We are like a dragon who has reached the water and entered it. We are like a tiger who is entering the mountain. You know, we are fully alive, fully alive in a moment to moment way. So the emphasis is placed on how we are. how things are, how things are in this moment to moment way, always changing.

[27:47]

And our activity is awakening, awakening moment after moment to the reality of the changing, always changing nature that we are and that everything is. The truth is, and the very interesting thing is and why this becomes our practice and why this becomes a practice for the rest of somebody's life, not just until I achieve enlightenment, but actually a lifetime of practice until we die is that because this can only be noticed, this can only be experienced in the present moment. We don't have this experience and then own it and then put it up on the mantle and say, okay, I did that or that was nice.

[28:53]

You know, In zazen, if our body is very still, but our mind is drifting off, that's not going to be so helpful. That's not the practice we're talking about here. That's not the practice that brings us into contact with the experience of this body moment to moment. And likewise, If our mind is settled, but we haven't really completely connected or aren't in an intimate relationship with our body and our breath, then we're not connecting with our true nature, the true nature of our being. So we need both. We need to bring together the body and the mind And when we do, this is the manifestation of our original being.

[30:26]

This is the manifestation of the wisdom of the body. Just like the trees and the mountains and the streams and the oceans all have their wisdom, all have their way of being in the world, the body has its own wisdom also. Constantly flowing, constantly moving, changing. So even if we don't completely understand what's happening, we sit down in our practice and 10 minutes later, we get up and we wonder, well, what was that all about? That's okay. Don't worry. There's nothing for you to achieve. There's nothing for you to make different.

[31:29]

There's nothing for you to get. This is just returning over and over again to the experience of the body, the mind, and the breath together as one. This is sitting moment to moment to moment. Returning to the experience of the body and seeing that in each moment, everything is new. So here we have it. This relationship with the present moment that we're cultivating in our practice. Being ready for it. Number one. Accepting it. Number two. And sticking with it.

[32:31]

Seeing a continuity of practice, moment to moment. Number three. So this is our zazen practice. But it's also quite easy for us once we get more familiar with this practice, it's quite easy and natural to extend this practice into every moment of our life. And that's what we do in Zen practice. And that's what we are suggesting you can do in this four weeks of our Manifesting the Wisdom of the Body course. You can make yourself ready. You can create the conditions to be ready to notice the present moment.

[33:36]

You can accept the experience of yourself wherever you are. Accept the experience of the body. Receive it, meet it, engage with it. In each pose, as you move this arm, as you extend this arm back this way, as you put this foot over here, we are doing just that. We are accepting this body for what it is. We are accepting this moment with this body and this mind and this breath. And we're not moving. Our body may be moving, but our intention to stick with it, to be present moment after moment after moment is there.

[34:38]

In that way, we're not moving. this way with no gaining idea, with no kind of letting go of our picture of what we'd hoped to be. Just letting that be. And kind of just coming into relationship with what is. Moment after moment after moment. Receiving it. Every time you do a yoga pose or you sit down or you enter into an activity, everything is different. You do yoga with the body that you have today, in this moment.

[35:43]

Not with the body that you had yesterday and not with the body that you want to have a year from now, but this body. This body and this mind, that's what we're practicing with. And not in a way that we're going to kind of create some kind of perfect body and mind, but in the maybe more difficult way of just meeting this body and mind. This is all we have to do. This is all we have to do is return over and over and over again to this present moment. You know, and when we do that, when we do this in our lives, when we kind of cultivate the confidence,

[36:51]

develop the confidence by doing it over and over again. When we have this kind of confidence that things are just fine, just how they are. Ultimately, in some fundamental way, I don't have to be improving this. That's not my job. And when we do that, and when we live our lives from that perspective or that kind of constant moment to moment engagement and acceptance of what's happening, not trying to mess around with it. Our lives are a little different and we can notice this. Our lives work in a different way. Our inner life is different and our outer life is different. It's sometimes a very subtle and small change But we can notice this slowly, slowly, slowly as we practice it.

[37:57]

Things start to change when we do this, when we just stay with the present moment. A little bit longer than maybe we're comfortable, a little bit longer than our usual habit. But just stay with it, the present moment, the experience of the present moment in the body. And life is different. this next moment will be different. That's all we have to do. That's our practice. So good luck with that. And so now we will do some meditation practice together, do some zazen together. So Take a few minutes or take a minute to set yourself up, put yourself in a nice seated posture, whether it's on a chair or a cushion.

[39:03]

And if you need to look at the other video that we've made that's an introduction to Zazen, please go ahead and take a look at that and follow along with that or just sit right now with me. We'll sit for about 10 minutes here. Thank you very much.

[39:22]

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