This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. And welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. Are any of you here for the first time tonight? One, two, three. A particular welcome to those of you who are new. I hope that you get something out of this and enjoy yourselves this evening. So this is the final Wednesday night talk of the practice period. And the theme of the practice period is the body as...

[01:02]

great vehicle practice, and I want to talk tonight about body practice. So I have been very much appreciating the practice period theme, and I especially have appreciated its inclusiveness. because it attracted many people who were working with physical body issues. People who want very much to sit zazen comfortably and have some special needs or need to make some accommodation. to their posture or the way they sit in order to be able to sit zazen comfortably for a long period of time.

[02:10]

And I think that Vicky's meditation posture Fridays, which were an element of this practice period, were a real boon to some people. So... I think when we first start meditating, we probably think that meditation is about something we do with our minds. But we very quickly find out that zazen is a very physical practice. And yet, we are taught that Sansan has nothing whatever to do with sitting or lying down. This is a very famous line in Dogen Zenji's Fukan Zozen Gi. And it's a little paradoxical that right after that line, right after he says that Sansan has nothing whatever to do with sitting or lying down,

[03:20]

he launches into a very detailed description of the posture of zazen. So I think we're used to this kind of paradox in our practice and that we have some sense that the essence of zazen is something that we do with our whole body and mind. and yet it's not dependent on any particular posture. So one physical practice that we did almost every day during the practice period was to chant the Fukanza Zen Gi for noon service. And through this activity, we were able fairly painlessly to internalize and memorize large chunks of this description of how to sit zazam.

[04:32]

And I think it's very valuable to have all those bits and pieces of Dogen's fascicle on this subject in our minds so that they float up to the surface when we need them. they're there for us when they're useful. So I've appreciated this very painless way of internalizing the Fukanzo Zengi. It has been helpful for me to notice some of the effects of impermanence on our collective zazen. I'd say more of us than maybe some years ago are sitting in a posture other than the cross-legged lotus positions.

[05:38]

So for example, I'm sitting on a seiza bench right now. And our new abbess, Christina, has one just like it. And I've especially appreciated the accommodation Blanche has made to her aging body. She sits upright on the meal board with her feet flat on the floor. And I very much appreciate that she's able to find a posture that enables her to participate in this practice period and lead this practice period. It's very inspiring for all of us. I'm guessing that sometimes that posture isn't perfectly comfortable for her, but I hope it is. I also was reminded last Friday at Della Gertz Memorial Service that I should sit zazen while I can because you never know when you may not be able to sit anymore.

[07:08]

Della Gertz for many years after she retired and was elderly, sat in the gaitan in a chair. She came to zazen every morning, never missed it. But then there did come a time when she was no longer able to come to the zendo and sit zazen. So I really feel that as... a sort of motivation to sit while I can. And the fukansa zengi admonishes us, you have gained the pivotal opportunity of human form. Do not use your time in vain. I'm... interested in and want to talk about how we practice with our bodies and also how we work with our minds through our bodies and how our bodies help us to see reality as it is.

[08:28]

And in particular, our intimate interconnectedness with each other. and with all things. I have always loved the lines in our full moon ceremony. To expound the Dharma with this body is foremost. The virtue returns to the ocean of reality. It is unfathomable. We just accept it with respect and gratitude. And another favorite line of mine is from the Ehei Koso Hotsu Ganmon, another fascicle by Dogen about his great vow, which says, in this life, save the body, which is the fruit of many lives. And I've been thinking about that line.

[09:34]

and the many lives it took for my body to be passed to me. And I wondered how far back that ancestry goes. So I googled to see how old the human race is. And I got numbers that were somewhere in the range of 50,000 years, to a couple of hundred thousand years. So that's how old the ancestors of my human body are, how long ago they lived. And I think that gives my body the status of something sacred, something truly venerable. Even though I don't like everything about my body, I have to be grateful to have received such a body from such ancestors.

[10:46]

And I feel a great responsibility to expound the Dharma with this body. I think we come to practice and we... begin our lives, we live our lives for the most part thinking that the mind and body are two separate things. But once we begin to practice intimately, we learn that the body and mind are one. It appears that the body has boundaries. We have this skin. that appears to separate us from others and to form an outer edge of our being. But these boundaries are actually very porous.

[11:52]

In fact, they're literally porous. Our skin is full of little holes called pores that allow substances to pass through, such as sweat. So when I sit zazen, when the person I sit next to in the zendo exhales, I inhale some of the air that she has exhaled. So her exhalation becomes part of my bloodstream and is absorbed into my tissues. And similarly, she absorbs into her tissues the air I exhale.

[12:56]

So my body actually becomes a little different. on a cellular level, because I sit next to her body. We change each other physically, although it would be very difficult to trace what that might be, what difference that might make, as well as in other more obvious ways that we change each other. So we turn and are turned by everything. When we eat, we take food and put it into our mouths, and some of it gives us energy, and some of it passes through us. But also, some of it is absorbed into our tissues. So our food doesn't remain separate from us.

[14:04]

it actually becomes part of our body. We literally are what we eat, as well as what we breathe. This is one of the reasons we take such good care of the food in our kitchen. It is literally our lifeblood. And I think it's why Dogen Zenji lavished such attention on his instructions for the head cook. The people who work in the kitchen practice with their whole bodies while they prepare the food. They engage wholeheartedly in the physical activity of preparing the food. taking good care of everything involved.

[15:10]

The food, the other cooks, the pots and utensils, the sinks, the water, the people who will eat the food, and themselves. And they do their best to view all these elements as of equal importance. to not be biased in any particular direction, but to see things as equal. They put love and wholeheartedness into preparation of the food so that the community will eat and be nourished by their love and wholeheartedness. We practice the middle way with our bodies.

[16:12]

We practice eating just enough, not too much and not too little. We eat nutritious vegetarian food, partly out of kindness to animals, but also to avoid taking into our bodies and minds. the fear of animals that have been slaughtered. We also know that the planet can produce enough food for everyone if we eat plants directly, but not if we feed plants to animals and then eat the animals. If we do that, we know that some people... will go hungry or be malnourished. So in this case, we include in our caretaking of our own bodies, the caretaking of the body of our planet and other people's bodies all over the world as well.

[17:29]

We know that what we eat also affects our mind. For example, some people choose not to eat sugar because they experience mood swings and depression from the cycles of high and low sugar in their bodies. We may have habits or even addictions around food and drink that affect our moods and how we think. Our eating practice includes cultivating awareness of the relationship between what we eat and drink and our state of mind. so that we know how best to nourish ourselves. We have many traditional practices around handling our Oryoki bowls.

[18:42]

And these traditions go back to the time of Shakyamuni Buddha, when monks went on daily begging rounds for their food. We call our oryoki bowls Buddha's bowls. When we enter the zendo, we lift them up a little bit. So we carry them at chest height while we're on our way to the zendo. And then as we step across the threshold, we lift them to eye level. So we literally elevate them. We take a set of mundane bowls made of ordinary materials and make them sacred by treating them as sacred objects.

[19:46]

And when we make the objects of our life sacred, we make our lives sacred. When we actually use our bowls in the zendo for eating, we continue this way of handling our bowls. We use two hands to pick up and use our utensils. And through this activity of treating our bowls as Buddha's bowls, we enact Buddha's activity. we enact being Buddha, eating out of Buddhist bowls, which I believe helps us to believe in our own Buddha nature. The same is true of our zazen posture and activity.

[20:51]

We sit zazen, we're taught to sit zazen not in order to gain something or to accomplish something, but because it's the activity of Buddhas. Sitting zazen is what Buddhas do. And we try not to move. When our bodies are still, it's much easier to still our minds. Our physical movements are always... preceded by mental movements or thoughts. We think about moving before we actually move. So to quiet our minds, it's very helpful to quiet our bodies as much as possible and to sit still as much as possible. Attention to our bodies brings us into the present moment.

[21:59]

When we're mindful of our breathing, we're present in this moment. When we receptively hear sounds, we're present in the moment. Our physical sensations are always in the present moment. And so when we're present... with our sensations, we're actually living in our body, and our bodies and minds are in the same place. Thich Nhat Hanh often advocates sitting zazen with a half smile. And I believe what he's suggesting is that we lift our spirits and brighten our mood and state of mind by letting our faces express some calm happiness.

[23:05]

He says if it doesn't come naturally to do this, if you don't just naturally feel like smiling, then just put your face in that position and think of it as face yoga. I really do believe that it's possible to change our state of mind by adopting the outward appearance of having that state of mind. It may be a form of whistling in the dark, but I believe it works. When I'm feeling a little below par, if I can muster the energy, I try to pay some extra attention to how I relate to people. To smile and say hello and ask them how they're doing.

[24:12]

And then really pay attention to what they say and actually listen to them. It always helps me. For one thing, people respond, and my world feels friendlier, and I feel more related to people, and I feel like there's more caring and connection in our relationship. And also, it helps me to focus on other people instead of my own glum mood. A really simple, trouble-free version of this that's very easy to do is that I try to make contact with people and smile when I'm out for my daily walk. They usually smile back at me and look very pleasant, and I notice how pleasantly everyone is looking at me

[25:23]

And pretty soon I think, oh, I must be a nice person. All these people are smiling at me. And then I feel even more like smiling. And it just makes me much happier. I think whatever mood we put out there in the world tends to be contagious and to grow. I'm enrolled in a three-year priest training program called SPOT, which is an acronym that means Shogaku Priests Ongoing Training. And this is a program that was originally devised for priests in the Suzuki Roshi lineage who practice in small sanghas. and therefore don't have quite the range of priest training opportunities that we take for granted here at Zen Center.

[26:33]

But ironically, it really caught on with Zen Center priests, and... I and other Zen Center priests are now part of the program. And the reason, I think, is that its curriculum is very different from what we get here at Zen Center. There are about 30 of us in the program, and we spend six weekends a year together. Part of the time we spend in the Sierras. and part of the time in Berkeley. But we have wonderful, intensive, long weekends. And the curriculum is designed to help us as developing teachers learn the skills of leading a Dharma group so that we'll be prepared if we're called upon to do that at some point.

[27:36]

And one of the areas that we've studied recently is nonverbal communications, and I want to talk about that. So we enacted in various ways role-playing and fishbowls and all kinds of imaginative, creative things. We enacted and mirrored and observed and watched many different kinds of nonverbal behavior. that was very communicative. And much of this behavior not only had a strong impact on others, but also on oneself in the course of enacting it. It became very clear through doing some of these exercises that our nonverbal behavior

[28:39]

not only expresses something important and significant that needs to be understood and observed, but it also influences how we ourselves actually feel in an interaction. Everybody involved is affected by nonverbal behavior. which happens all the time, and not least the person who's enacting it. Sometimes we meet people who are tormented by their minds, who can't seem to stop playing some tape in their heads. it can be really helpful for such people to take refuge in their bodies.

[29:46]

If such a person can manage to focus on breathing or physical sensations, it can help them stop the metal loop that is driving them crazy and be present for their actual life. I had an opportunity during this practice period and the one before to experience my body showing me what I needed to work on in order to be healthy. Last summer, just before I was invited to become Tato, I developed a very painful back problem. that the doctors said was degenerative, and it caused me to suffer a lot, and I had to really cut back on my usual activities.

[30:57]

Even taking my daily walk was excruciating, and I usually didn't do it. It was the first time in my life anything like that had ever happened to me because I've really been quite lucky. with my body. And I was afraid that I might not be able to sit zazen just at a time when I was being invited to take a position where I would want to sit a lot of zazen. So I was pretty stressed out about it and discouraged. I took pain medicine, and I went to physical therapy in the hope of avoiding surgery, which the doctors had said might be necessary. But I was really discouraged at the amount of pain and its persistence.

[31:59]

A friend of mine here who does a lot of yoga told me that he had had pain similar experiences a number of times where he had a lot of pain and worked through it with yoga and came out the better for it, learned some things about how to work with his body and how to heal himself. So I found that very encouraging. And fortunately, it turned out that exactly that happened for me. I had wanted anyway, I had taken a yoga class, which might or might not be where this problem began. And I had taken this yoga class partly because there was a particular postural change that I wanted to make, mostly for appearances.

[33:02]

I felt like I didn't have very good posture and I wanted to improve it. So in the course of my physical therapy, I was shown how to make a very small adjustment that relieved the pressure on a certain place in my back and made the pain disappear instantly. And it was a very direct correlation. I could do this movement and the pain would go away. So it was really easy to learn how to do this habitually and to heal myself. I was very fortunate. I didn't even really work that hard at the physical therapy. I was just kind of lucky that I was able to make the pain go away. And so I stopped having hardly any pain at this point.

[34:05]

I have just a tiny bit of residual feeling that kind of reminds me what it felt like at its worst. Thich Nhat Hanh said that when you have a toothache and you get rid of it or it stops hurting, you really treasure your non-toothache far more than you did before it began. And that's how I feel about this experience I had with my back. I'm so grateful that it mostly doesn't hurt anymore, and I can do all the things that I've been in the habit of doing. And it feels like sort of a new lease on life or borrowed time that I didn't think I was going to have. So I appreciate my non-backache so much.

[35:10]

I guess in general, and this has come painfully at times in different ways, I feel that the things we need to learn or to practice are apt to show up right in front of us, demanding our attention, just like my aching back did this summer. And I've been fortunate in that, and I've also really appreciated this practice period and the opportunity to hear how things are going for you at the T's, to hear your physical experiences. And I'm so grateful to Blanche and Vicki for this wonderful time to practice with the body as a great vehicle.

[36:16]

So I'm going to see what time it is. Time for a couple of questions. Yes. Is it possible for you to show us? To show you what? I still didn't hear you. Oh, well, actually, I'll tell you about it. And it was something that Paul had said to me a couple of years earlier in a priest meeting. We had a priest meeting. I think Vicki was teaching yoga. Paul and Vicki together were teaching some yoga. And Paul said, pull your navel towards

[37:23]

your spine. And every time I would sort of tuck my rear end under, I would stick my stomach out. And he would say, no, you do that to relieve the tension, but that's not right. Pull your navel towards your spine. And that was the movement. For what it's worth. Oh, dear. Yes. I tend to see my body as a burden and pain. So I was wondering, how can you make friends with your body? Well, I think that you can be grateful for what it tells you. the information that it gives you that might help you to make it better, I guess would be my suggestion.

[38:33]

It's hard if it's really causing you pain. I can tell you that at the worst of that problem, I did not see my body as my friend. But I did, in the end, learn something from And that is what pain does for us. It directs our attention to something that we need to pay attention to. Yes. I've been practicing with some pain and more. more specifically restriction of movement it's been going on now for a while almost five months and i just remembered in the course of you just just now that for me the pain tells me okay i went too far and you just stop and go back and there's a little bit of

[39:37]

you know, to be able to not worry about this, to have a full range of movement back. And then I remembered something that someone told me, and they said, you know, to concentrate on or to also make that you feel what you can do. Yes, that's very good advice. Thank you, Mimi. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:35]

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