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. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the first day of our seven-day sushi. the last of the Ongo. And I want to extend a special welcome to our Sushin guest, Khan, Sefu and Tin. It's a joy to have you here and also to have you stay on to the Shisō ceremony. Looking forward to our practice together. So, all of us together. I just want to again acknowledge and celebrate the fact that here we are together, engaging in sashi, engaging in touching, gathering and uniting our heart-minds, bringing our hearts and minds together in unison, in stillness, in silence, and as a means for touching the core of our being.

[01:24]

And it's such a precious opportunity to have this gift, to make the time and the space to allow ourselves to register the treasure of this human life, and without having to do anything, but essentially bear witness to the truth of our being, to rest in that, to observe it and rest in it. Kazanahashi once said, by participating in sashin, we awaken our mind and body simply through the posture of zazen. Sashin is a gift that frees us to face ourselves. Now, not everyone necessarily thinks that's a gift, depending on what you see when you face yourself, but it is essentially a gift in the mind of the Buddha Dharma. So, as you may have guessed, this sushin will be continuing our study of karma, and sushin is a wonderful opportunity to see your karma more clearly.

[02:39]

For example, when you have a negative reaction to something or someone, and you're basically left alone with your reaction. For the most part, you don't get to express your feelings or your opinions or change anything in your environment. And so you're deprived of your usual ways of maybe distracting yourself or coping or making yourself feel better or trying to manage the situation. And all you get to do is kind of watch your reactivity reverberate through your mind and body for maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours, maybe a few days. And so, like it or not, you get more familiar with your habitual energies.

[03:42]

And maybe you might reach a point where you kind of finally make a choice to do something differently. Rather than acting out of those energies, continuing to perpetrate, perpetrate, perpetuate, continue the energy. You decide to stop and do something different. Withdraw the energy, the impulse that keeps it going. probably recall that the Japanese word for practice period is ongo, which means peaceful dwelling. And ongo and sushin and zazen are all invitations to arrive and abide in the peace of this moment. And, you know, some of you may ask, how is this possible?

[04:44]

Or maybe even justifiable in the face of world circumstances in the face of what's happening now in the wider world? How can we calm our anxious minds and hearts and come home to an abiding peace when home for so many is under threat? And yet our practice turns the question around how with the world in so much turmoil, in so much pain, can we even consider refraining from practice? Why would we miss the opportunity to offer our practice and our zazen for the peace of the whole world? What if sitting in silence, resting in the breath,

[05:47]

returning again and again to the here and now, there is just one zazen, one all-pervading stillness and silence. What if arriving fully in the peace of this moment, the whole world is sitting with you? To arrive fully in this moment, is not only the taste piece, but to be it, to embody it. So this is the invitation of Ango, of Zazen, of Sushi, as well as the invitation of each moment of our lives to be who and what you truly are. for the sake of all beings.

[06:50]

So I'll just mention now that besides the three talks that I'll be offering this to Sheen, Kodo and Lauren and Tim Kroll will each offer talks. And we'll also have one silent day this time, day five. So this will be kind of the flow. of our morning dharma offerings. This morning I want to take up the study of karma and somatic awareness. As you've heard me say a few times now during this practice period, to study the Buddha dharma is to study karma. And Dogen famously taught, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. So to study karma is to study the self. To study the self is to study karma and our intimate relationship with all beings.

[08:01]

Karma is fundamentally about relationship. To study karma is to see that karmic web or matrix of interrelationships in which you and I and all beings coexist and co-create through our activities of body, speech and mind. Dogen tells us in this fascicle, Shinjin Gakuro, which can be translated as mind-body, study of the way, that there are two approaches to studying the Buddha way, to study with the mind and to study with body. The study with mind means to study with various aspects of mind, such as consciousness, emotion, and intellect. And then he also says in the fascicle that mountains, rivers, earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars are mind.

[09:06]

And then after focusing on the study of mind for a few pages, he then moves on to speaking about the study of the Buddha way through the body. And he says, to study the Buddha way with body means to study the way with your own body. It is the study of the way using this lump of red flesh. The body comes forth from the study of the way. Everything that comes forth from the study of the way is the true human body. The entire world of the ten directions is nothing but the true human body. The coming and going of birth and death is the true human body. So according to Dogen, we study the Buddha way not only through our own body, but through the body of the earth and the entire universe.

[10:10]

The entire universe arises and passes right here in this body. Our true body is the Dharmakaya, the natural state of reality, the truth body of all Buddhas. In the Yehe Kosavatsukamon, which we just chanted, Dogen quotes the Channastalunya, who said, Those who in past lives were not enlightened will now be enlightened. In this life, save the body was the fruit of many lives. So not only is he counseling us to study the body as a means to study the Buddha way lifetime after lifetime, or maybe you could say moment after moment if you don't resonate with the idea of rebirth, but we should save the body. That is, we should take good care of this collection of flesh and blood and bones as is both the vessel

[11:21]

which we can personally awaken in this life. And it is the entire body of interbeing through which the universe awakens to itself. Much of our study of karma, this practice period, has focused on the mind. Given that the mind through mental formations and volitions or intentions, is the primary initiator, if you will, of karma. But as the body, as the Buddha taught in his body, in this namanakaya body, way back when, karma is also produced through the actions of body and speech. Of course, having a human body means that we always have some karma.

[12:22]

Actually, we could say that we are literally a body of karma. Our volitions have an effect not only on our minds, but also on our physical body, leaving energetic traces or nodes, knots, if you will. So, for example, when we act with fear, when fear is our intention or the volitional impulse, coming forward, then it produces tension. And what happens? The body contracts. Anger and immersion also contract the body. If you live chronically trying to protect yourself from the world, if that is your intention at some level of your being, or if you live chronically in a state of greed or ambition in which your mind is always wanting, then the physical body is affected.

[13:33]

You will notice this when you start meditating because some of the holding patterns of the body get revealed and they show themselves. And many, many folks I spoke with don't realize until they begin as awesome practice how much tension they are holding in their body. For example, in their face, in their shoulders, their back or their belly. Zazen reveals this karmic body. However, our karma is in many ways collectively created. It includes all the ways we as both individuals and as a species have been shaped and internally wired by our experiences, physical as well as mental, emotional. So in this sense, our karmic bodies are not just our own, but are deeply entangled with others.

[14:42]

Our bodies also often tell stories that we ourselves are not willing or maybe unable to quite understand or readily share. In many ways, they also tell the stories of our ancestors, which have been passed down somatically for generations and now to us through epigenetics. Unfortunately, many of the stories housed in and shaping our body minds are profoundly traumatic Even our most ordinary life can be rife with traumatic residue or imprints in the body-mind to varying degrees. As a consequence, much of our embodied karma and trauma leaves us losing touch in one way or another with the present moment.

[15:48]

recently came across an interesting interview with a Buddhist psychotherapist, Dr. Miles Neal, in which he spoke about the interplay between karma and trauma in a more direct way than I've read before. In an interview, he spoke about how traumatic experiences, particularly unprocessed trauma, is often stored somatically as fragmented imprints in memory, as well as in shards of what he describes as disassociated affect latent in the body, awaiting reactivation by some unknown trigger in the future. And he also says that the contemplative science of karma, I've never heard that phrase before, contemplative science of karma. So just something very similar.

[16:50]

He notes how real-time events are filtered through our distorted perceptual lens. That, again, is our karmic consciousness. The real-time events are filtered through our karmic consciousness. And these events subsequently activate stored latent inputs called seeds. You might know the technical term baija. that can trigger painful sensations and afflictive emotions, which are wired to what he calls routine maladaptive behavior reactions. Routine maladaptive, meaning poorly adapted, behavior reactions. So these maladaptive responses leave a residue of emotional reactivity that will color our perception in a future moment and bind us to repeated automatic response patterns.

[17:54]

And these patterns then condition us to a compulsive life of distress. Dukkha, what the Buddha called in this case samsara. So Nio notes that one could say that Both trauma and karma can keep us feeling trapped in an endless cycle because we're not completely free to perceive things clearly in the moment beyond what we have already experienced in the past. And we're not completely free to respond freshly in the moment because we are compelled by what we have always done. So, in so many ways, we are seeing the past imprinted onto the current moment and reliving the past by responding to the present moment through the coloration of the imprint of past experiences.

[19:02]

So what is it to actually see the present moment, to taste the present moment as it is without the karmic coloration, without the past some way conditioning what it is that we experience and how it is that we respond and react. Of course, the good news is that neither karma, that both karma and trauma is neither fixed. And just as karma is fluid and changeable as we've kind of explored in our classes, so are our nervous systems flexible and trainable. Both meditation and modern psychotherapy often tenders to intervene in the cycles of stress and trauma. And an opportunity for change in both karma and trauma is particularly available to us in what is often called the gap.

[20:11]

This is, if you recall, the moment between emotional sensations and reactive behavior. And remember that the emotional sensations we feel are mostly the release of stored potential energy from the past, triggered by an associated event in the present. There's really nothing you can do about feeling angry when a Sangha member hears or a co-worker, appears to disrespect you in some way. And the feeling of anger in this instance is a karmic effect. It's the ripening of a seed from the past. But between the feeling of anger and the urge to react, there's a fraction of a second, a gap, to consciously intervene in this cycle. If we refer to the Buddhist model of the 12th old chain of causation that we've studied earlier, this is essentially the same gap that we noted could be introduced and accessed between the seventh link of Vedana, the pleasant or unpleasant feeling to an experience, and the eighth link of Tama, craving, wanting more or less of a particular sensation.

[21:37]

So the gap is a gap of freedom. It's a space of discernment and choice. So in both terms of karma and trauma, I agree with Miles Neal that the key is to recognize and to stay present with an unpleasant karmic effect, as best we can, while resisting the hook of its habitual reaction pattern. And so the effort is to learn to slow down, interrupt, and recondition our reactivity. And then we can intentionally choose, in the space that's made available, to think of it as to relink whatever uncomfortable feelings we might be having, including those of fear, pain, shame, with what Neil describes as a more adaptive,

[22:41]

sustainable response. It's called a healthier response. One that's based on mindfulness, compassion, and wisdom. And so in the language of karma, we can speak of depositing or planting a positive or wholesome cause or seed that later ripens into a favorable fruit. effect. It's in this way that we can combine both the mind and the body in the process of working with challenging and transforming habitual patterns for the purpose of both emotional healing and liberation. I expect it's obvious to many of us that as a result of our modern lifestyles and environments, we are losing touch

[23:42]

with the actual semantic experience of being human. The price of this increasing modern disembodiment, if you will, is that we are losing our felt sense of being grounded. We no longer feel rooted in our bodies, connected with our feelings, our experience in our lives, or even nourished and supported by the earth. When we have lost our sense of embodiment in this way, the human feelings and emotions we do have become problematic and difficult to handle. If we're not grounded, our human ego is less able to tolerate, much less manage, a great deal of our human experience. As Carl Jung observed, when you are not grounded in your body, you will simply be unable to tolerate most of the emotional life of being human.

[24:55]

Then your only option for survival would be to repress what you feel and then project it outside as a threat to be managed. Does that sound familiar to anyone? I think this is what contributes to much of our contemporary social ills, violence, and conflicts. You see the root of that. So unless we can find a way to reconnect to our sense of embodiment and live from a place of somatic awareness, I don't think there's much hope. that we'll be able to really address our ancient individual and collective twisted karma, body, speech, and mind. We're just going to continue living out these eddies of suffering over and over.

[26:01]

So I want to spend the rest of this talk focusing on the practice of somatic awareness as a means to encourage us to stay embodied during our meditation this week. And as I understand it, the meditation taught by the Buddha and practiced by Buddhist ancestors is deeply somatic, fully grounded in sensations, sensory experiences, feelings, emotions, and so on, all found in the environment of the body. Even thoughts are related to a somatic, as bursts of energy experienced in the body, rather than non-physical phenomena that disconnect us from our physical or neurological network. What the Buddha offered was that systemic process that will result in profound awareness in your body rather than in your head.

[27:16]

He didn't speak about awareness as a head thing. It's an embodied experience. Now, well, Dogen and other Zen teachers give instruction for zazen. They tend to offer brief directions for attention to our external physical posture, right? How to place the limbs and the torso, etc. But they don't really say anything about what we might call the internal posture. That is, giving attention to the vast interior of the body, which is just as important. And their instructions for what to do with the interior landscape of the mind, they are even vaguer. direct attention to the breath, and then think not thinking, learn not thinking. Okay. I'll do that. I think that's a koan for another Dharma talk, another time.

[28:21]

As a way to support us in entering more deeply into the body of Sashim, is how I'm thinking of it. Here we are in the body of Sashim. and we're entering into the internal wilderness of our own bodies. I thought I would share some somatic meditation practice points. And these practice points are based on teachings by the Dharma teacher Reginald Ray, who comes out of the Tibetan tradition, and he was a student, once a student of Chogyam Trungpa. And Reggie Ray, focuses a lot of his teaching on what he calls somatic meditations, or meditation for awakening the body. And I've offered these points before during the sushina. I got a lot of good feedback that many people found them very helpful. The approach of somatic meditation looks at the body from the inside.

[29:29]

It's a process called interoception. or looking from inside, from the inside. And according to Ray, somatic practice involves two aspects. The first involves paying attention to our body, bringing our conscious intention and focus to and into physical form. And sometimes we pay attention to individual parts of our body even very minute parts. And other times we're attending to our whole, our body as a whole, what Reginald Ray calls the soma, or the ultimate body. And the second aspect of somatic meditation is exploring with openness and acceptance and without any prejudice or judgment

[30:31]

or conscious agenda whatsoever, what we discover when we are paying attention to our body in this manner. So step one in somatic meditation is to come to and into the body and attend. And then step two is to open our consciousness to the, think of it as the interior wakefulness, that is going on under the surface. Are you in contact with the interior wakefulness that's going on within? These two aspects of somatic meditation I've just described respond to what are traditionally called mindfulness and awareness of vipassana. These are found in virtually all forms of Buddhist meditation. So the following are the essentials of an approach at Ridgewell where he calls pure awareness practice.

[31:41]

And he acknowledges that there are similarities between his emphasis on the importance of posture and the same emphasis that's given in postural instructions for Shikintaza or just sitting. And Ray's training has included the study of Zen. And so he acknowledges learning a great deal about somatic essence of meditation and how to approach the body as a gate to sometimes called the unborn or the unconditioned. He describes the posture of pure awareness as one unified, organized way of sitting. It is one all-inclusive somatic feeling and natural process of unfolding while also being composed of discrete elements. And then he offers 17 elements, all together for how to unify and gather the body and mind, sishin, gather and unify body and mind.

[32:48]

And so I want to walk these two with you now. But before we do, I just want to say that you might feel these elements to be maybe rather obvious, maybe in some cases elementary, especially if you've been doing zasana for a number of years. However, I'm still quite surprised, actually, when speaking with people in dokka-sao, often people are not actually in their bodies doing zasana. They're more floating around in their heads and forget they even have a body, unless there's some pain, and then they're like, I wish I didn't have this body because I'm having pain. And so some people have even told me that they're not sure what it means to be embodied. That the whirling clouds of thoughts and emotions keep them from really connecting, being really connected with their somatic being.

[33:49]

I don't know if that is an experience you have, but I want to offer these as an encouragement for all of us to practice. in an embodied zazen. So here are the 17 elements for somatic meditation of pure awareness. And as I described this, I'm going to invite you to follow along and if you wish to kind of, as if you were receiving a guided meditation or a form of zazen instruction that's focusing on the internal landscape of the body. So here we go. The first is sitting position. You're kind of already there, right? It's vital to find the right position at the outset of each period. So really take your time to set up and arrange your seat, your cushions, and then settle in.

[34:54]

In whatever position you end up taking. And the second is coming in our body. So bring your awareness fully into your body. And you can start this by simply feeling the outer sensations of the body, the surface of your body, where your body, for example, is making contact with the environment, with the meditation seat or the floor, feeling the pressure of your clothes, maybe the room temperature, et cetera. And then you can come further in by also attending to the inner sensations. They kind of communicate between the external and the internal. For example, following the breath, the sensation of breath, entering in externally, and also the sense of the heart beating and the flow of the blood. Then the third step, grounding in the earth.

[36:02]

So connect with the sense of the earth beneath you, the mountain beneath us, the body of the mountain, as I think of it. And so if you're sitting present in your body, try to sense the earth under you. How often do you do that? You actually try to feel your embodied connection to the earth beneath you. Feel yourself resting on the earth. Feel how the earth is supporting you. And then try to feel deeper down to the presence of the earth below. So feel the embodied presence of the earth beneath you. What is that presence like? And then the fourth step, breathing into the lower belly.

[37:12]

So the outer breath into inner space. So imagine that you are slowly and gently breathing directly into your lower belly, what we call in Zen the heart. And to do this, visualize a spot about several inches below your davel or your center line. So roughly between the perineum and maple. Now imagine yourself bringing the breath directly into that space, that place. Keep breathing in this way until you begin to feel some kind of sensation in the heart. And as the breath enters, it can be subtle, or more obvious. Just note the way it is. The point is we're working with the inner breath.

[38:15]

It's also called the prana, the chi. And not the breath coming through the respiratory system, which is more an outer breath. So keep breathing in this way until you can sense the space opening up within, and what that space feels like. And let the space open further, expanding slightly as you breathe. According to Chan, Zen, and Tibetan Buddhism, as well as Taoist Yoga, this space of the heart is an entry point, but actually it's kind of beneath the heart, is an entry point or a portal to primordial reality with a life force. Kind of think of it as a trapdoor within to the universe.

[39:24]

And that's where breath really comes from, within, from that universe, that door, that portal within. If you bring your mind to that eternal portal where breath, the universal breath comes in and out, then stay there. Feel the space, feel the flow of life, the universe entering in, breathing and exhaling you. Keep awareness with this lower belly openness. There's a sense of openness when you focus there. That's developing as you breathe. Feeling the life force entering in through this inner spaciousness by way of the breath. Then the fifth point, straight back.

[40:34]

Direct your awareness to your spine. So going from the heart, back to the spine. And allow the spine to come into the movement upright and relaxed alignment. Feel your spine. Allow the spine to express what is a perfect and relaxed balance for it. Rather than kind of forcing it into a posture that's kind of ego-directed, find the natural balance of the spine. Traditionally, it's thought that the core element of the posture is found when the back is straight with a feeling of relaxation, alignment, and rising the spine. So rising here means a subtle feeling of upward flow and starting in or rooted in and emerging from the space of the lower belly. So that energy entering in through that portal

[41:38]

The breath, the universal breath within, that energy is going up your spine and alivening your spine, bringing, drawing you upward. And this kind of leads us to an awareness of a sort of a central channel, a corridor of awareness and breath that runs from a perineum up to the top of the head. And speaking of head, imagine the top with the crown of your head lifting toward the heavens. And it might be helpful to direct your attention to the back part of your skull, kind of two-thirds back, where the sutras of the skull bones have knitted together. You can kind of visualize, you bring your awareness there, a cord attached there, gently pulling your head up. Then the chin, the seven step.

[42:45]

At the same time, allow your chin to drop gently, almost implicitly toward your chest. Now remember the grapefruit analogy that I offered previously? Like your head is a grapefruit that's been kind of sliced from side to side, and the back half slides upward, aided by the cord, and the front half slides downward. And just feel when you do that, you know, that kind of the way that the back muscles respond to that. It's almost kind of a sense of releasing and enlivening. And then your ears, the eighth, the ears over the shoulders. So imagine your ears kind of traveling straight back, bringing them in a plane with your shoulders. Sort of feeling that the ears are continuing drifting or moving backwards.

[43:46]

So this is kind of with that same kind of tuck of the chin and the rise of the back of the grapefruit. Your ears are kind of moving backwards. And this is important because it balances and it corrects any tendency of the head to tilt too far down, too far forward. Especially from the chin dropping forward, right? So I often, when I find myself kind of drifting, I quickly go to the back of my head, in my ears, and find where are they in the plane of space? Can I align them again over my shoulders? Assuming my shoulders are also a break for it, right? And then also, the step ninth step, open the back of the neck. To put your attention to the back of the neck, the cervical spine between the top of your torso at the shoulder level, and the base of your skull. And notice if you feel any tension or restriction there.

[44:48]

So give that area attention. Attending to it and seeing what it needs. And feeling into it. And allowing it to open and to elongate and to relax. So opening the back of the neck. And this feeling will translate all the way down the spine and to the top of the head. So again, this is kind of connecting, becoming aware of the back channel, a way to energize the back channel with a sense of rising and opening. And when we focus on that, it's kind of basically allowing the rest of the body just to hang from our skeleton, with that energy. enlightening the skeleton in the back. And then the tenth step is alignment. Having practiced these aspects, now you can refine the alignment of your body.

[45:57]

So in the Phukhan Zazengi, Dogen says to rock your body right and left and to settle into a steady, immovable sitting position. However, there is some more subtle attuning that we can do with our upright posture. in order to find the spots or the balance where the front-to-back alignment feels the most upright, open, and unimpeded. So you can begin with the rather large movements from the midline, rocking and moving incriminately back and forth across the midline, noticing the center space where it feels completely empty and open. I look for that space when I'm doing this, when I'm rocking right back. You can feel that space within as if you're kind of lining up the body with that open space at the midline.

[47:01]

And then rest in that open, empty, effortless midline space. So you can do that rocking back front and back. You can also do that rocking sideways to sideways. And as you do, visualize your nose arriving in that direct line over your navel. So again, lining up. When I'm offering postures, I often notice people are leaning toward one side or another, often obscure in the cushion, which is kind of basically how their body has been set over time. And it's amazing when you adjust the body. And I walk away. A few minutes later, people go back to that kind of off-kilter body. It's so conditioned in you that anything other than that kind of contorted body posture feels unnatural.

[48:02]

Not realizing that it's unnatural is the way that the body has kind of been fixed through distortion in some way. Thank you, Kitchen. And then the eleventh step, the mouth and the jaw. So the jaw should be relaxed with the lips just touching. The tongue either rests slightly at the roof of the mouth or floats inside the mouth. And this kind of enhances empty open awareness. So there's actually something doing with the tongue that's important, that it encourages this kind of sense of open awareness. So really take this time to see where there might be tension residing in the jaw and explain what it is that helps to soften and relax it. So notice we went from the center, the hara, we're going up the back, up to the neck, to the head, and now we're coming down the front to the jaw.

[49:06]

Also include the heart. This is a 12 step. So in the journey that we've been making so far through the posture, we can't leave out what is most central, the heart. Our heart and all of its subtle feelings needs to be included in our posture. So we turn our attention next to the heart center, in the middle of the chest. Allow that area to have the feeling of softening and opening. from relaxing into openness and spaciousness. And this spaciousness will make room for all kinds of subtle feelings, intuitions, and sensations, perhaps ones that we haven't previously noticed, allowing them to be included in our field of awareness. Whatever we may be experiencing now in the heart, regardless of how seemingly random, explore allowing those feelings to be included, those sensations, acknowledged and felt.

[50:31]

Even if there are difficult and strong feelings that we can't quite name, which is often Explore softening, allowing the experience to rise in the warmth and the light of awareness, without fixing on it in any particular way. And if anything feels too intense or threatening, then simply step back and return awareness to the sensation of the breath in the heart or in the nostrils. You're kind of titrating your relationship with experience in a skillful way. And thirteenth, the eyes. Allow the eyes to be resting downward at a 45 degree angle. They get perhaps half closed. And with a soft focus that reflects the inner intention of our practice.

[51:35]

You can feel the central channel space, that open, empty awareness as it passes behind your eyes. Let the attention of the eyes gently surrender backwards. So relax the attention of the eyes. Relax and open your gaze backwards as if it is the back part of your eyes that is seeing. rather than the kind of habitual frontal focus. So much of our eyes we focus outward. There's this kind of tension projecting outward. So allow awareness to kind of go back the back of your eyes and just rest there. Fourteen. The hands. So in our traditions, the form is to place our hands in the cosmic mudra, one hand resting in the other, the thumbs touching, forming an open circle in front of the lower belly, the hara, and kind of think of it as a way to magnify a hara.

[52:50]

So the portal within, the breath of the universe within, is being magnified through the hara, through the hands, outward, into the room. Of course, some of us may have physical circumstances where holding the mudra doesn't work for us. Then just find a posture for your hands that works for you. And often the hands are great to observe because when they crumple, that's often what kind of our mind has gotten slack. But when they open up, it's often because we're thinking. That's what I notice. My hands do this. I'm probably thinking away. And if it collapsed, my mind has gotten unfocused. And then 15, the breath. So attending to the elements of the breath, both the inner and outer, while also becoming aware of, or sorry, attending to the elements of the posture, both the inner posture and the outer posture, while also attending to our breath.

[54:00]

So noticing breathing in and breathing out. The way you practice with the breath is to not do anything with it. Allow it to be. So it doesn't matter how fast, slow, deep, superficial, or relaxed it is. Simply know as a developing experience what's happening with the breath. And leave it alone. Leave it in its own place and how it wants to be. Perhaps as you sit, you'll notice the breath arriving in your lower belly and moving almost indefinitely up your central channel. And being with the breath, allowing it to be as it is, and not interfering or meddling with its natural process, we enable a relationship with the inner breath to deepen. The breath begins to trust us.

[55:03]

when we allow it to be as it is. That's something to tell us. We can listen to the breath without needing to change it in any way. And then two more steps. 16. Be in the soma. Allow awareness to pervade the body. So allow awareness to inhabit and pervade your body as a whole. You can imagine the breath throughout the whole body, the breath in every cell of your body, and awareness. The whole field, the whole body is a field of awareness. Allow your awareness and the field of your body to merge both the sense of exterior and interior environment or space to come together. So there's no exterior, interior. You're just resting a kind of open, spacious, embodied terrain.

[56:11]

It's as if you're kind of newly arriving and coming to know this terrain for the first time. Taking in the landscape of the present moment as you're feeling it in this embodied awareness. for the first time. And then lastly, don't move. Commit to remaining in the posture of pure awareness without moving for the duration of the period. And while resisting the demands of the impulse, the calming impulse to fidget, to squirm or shift around on your meditation cushion, Resist the impulse and just explore the experience, whatever it might be. And take great interest in the play of the mind whenever you want to move. But don't give in to the impulse.

[57:18]

Remain unmoving. This last element reminds me of something that Suzuki Roshi once said during a period of Zaza. And apparently he didn't speak very often during Zaza to give instruction. But one time he offered the following. Don't move. Just die over and over. Don't anticipate. Nothing can save you now because you have only this moment. Not even enlightenment will help you now. because there are no other moments. With no future, be true to yourself and express yourself fully. Don't move. Briefly run to the 17 points of somatic awareness again.

[58:32]

One, find a subtle sitting position. Then come into your body. Ground in the earth to bring the awareness of the body, connecting to awareness of the earth, the earth body. Then breathe into the lower body, the heart, or actually from the universe, Into you comes the breath from the doorway within. And then going up the back, maintaining a straight back, energized back, the head lifting up, the chin down, ears over the shoulders. Open the back of the neck. And we find your vertical alignments, front and back. side to side. Find the place where there's open space in that alignment. Relax the mouth and jaw.

[59:40]

Include the heart. Allow awareness in the eyes to rest. Form the cosmic muja with your hands. Tend to the breath of inner space. Be in the soma. Whole body awareness. And lastly, don't move. Just rest in that whole body awareness. So I encourage us to keep these 17 elements of somatic meditation practice in mind where we're sitting throughout this week. Letting our awareness cycle through them occasionally as a way to kind of check on where our attention is.

[60:41]

Is our awareness on and in line with the experience of embodiment? Of the experience of both internal and external or internal posture of the body? Or has it gotten lost in the clouds of a distracted mind? The way into the portal of spaciousness is through the body, not around it. By fully committing to being with our embodied experience, we're able to enter into the soma of our own being. which as Dogen reminds us over and over again, is none other than the body of all reality. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive.

[61:45]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[61:59]

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