Good morning. Last week, we had an experiment and for the seventh day of our seven-day session, we did not have a public lecture at Green Gulch, so the last day of the session was pretty much like the other six days with a very regular schedule all the way through to the end. It was very calm, very quiet, and I hope it worked. In the summer, but each week to have some days that are, you have a more relaxed schedule.

[02:04]

And also every day, there's breaks, you might say, in the schedule after meals that are good times to rest. So within the day, finding times to rest and relax are important, and I hope that you're finding time each day. Which brings us down to each minute. There was a theme in the sashi that Tenshin Roshi brought forth for us, which was to relax, to relax in the moment, just to relax whatever is happening, to relax. Now, I realize that I've had this difficulty, and maybe you have too, when you hear, when someone tells you to relax, just relax, you may

[03:13]

find that you have the opposite response, which is, well, what do you mean? I am relaxed, or kind of holding on maybe tighter. Or maybe this, if someone says relax at the right time, you can respond very fully and find your relaxation. So I've been working through the sashi and also after the sashi with what this means to relax. And right after sashi, I was sent something, and there was an article, which I just opened up this book, it's kind of a journal from the Guruji Foundation actually, comes out every couple years. And I opened it up, and there was an article called From the Mat to the Street, and it was about judo. And it starts off by saying, my judo teacher was always yelling, relax. Now, I found this very interesting because during the sashi, Rem in

[04:20]

particular was bringing up judo and relaxing. So right after the sashi, to open this book, just glancing through and come upon, my judo teacher was always yelling, relax. I just wanted to, I found this article very interesting, and I wanted to say a few words about it. So this student felt that he wasn't a very good judo student, and his teacher kept saying all the time, relax, relax, and he didn't know what this meant, what he was trying to get at. And during a match, he was, his opponent was a very, was a strong fellow, and he was right in the middle of this engagement with this person, and he heard his teacher in the sidelines yell, relax. And he found himself somehow responding and just softening and relaxing and being able to throw his opponent and win the match. When this

[05:25]

attack came, he just relaxed in some way and went with the energy and won the match. And he was, he ran to his teacher and gave him this big embrace. And his other fellow students didn't quite understand because they had seen him win matches before, so what was the big deal? Why was he running and giving his teacher a big hug? But he and his teacher understood that he had won this match through understanding something new about relaxing and going with the energy in a different way. So this was the first time that he had actually understood. And from then on, he said he, he saw his teacher in a different way and responded in a different way. And also all his other opponents, he could tell something different about them as well, and was able to see which ones really had

[06:25]

this softness and this relaxed quality, and which ones were coming from a different place. So what does this mean to relax? And I wonder what dog that is. It's a new dog. In Judo, he also tells a story about this person that he met who was very, very good at Judo. And he had been very good as a young, a youngster in his village, but was a kind of prodigy, a child prodigy. But when he went to the big city, and there were all these other Judo people, he found that he wasn't that good. He wasn't as good and was defeated in match after match. And he studied afterwards each time this happened, and what he could have done, and what they did, and how he was

[07:26]

defeated. He used this as an opportunity to really study his, his own weaknesses. And finally, after being defeated in a hundred different ways by all these different people, and studying each time, he was not able to be defeated anymore, and he got very good. But the problem was, he had a kind of streak of arrogance, you might say, that colored the whole, his whole practice. So he ended up hurting people sometimes. And the three parts of this practice are non-harming and mutual benefit, so that the practice itself mutually benefits both the, both opponents. And then the third part of Judo, the principle is self-improvement. So with all these three working together, and they all balance each other, if you're working mutually for someone, but not improving yourself, you may

[08:38]

inadvertently, because you're not studying yourself early enough, you may do harm, even though you're trying to benefit. If you're not working with what's going on with you and your own tendencies, you may harm someone. Or like the case with this fellow who actually did harm people, he was very good at mutually working, so the other opponent learned something, and improving himself, but he, he was harming and had a kind of cruel streak, kind of unconscious part that wasn't being looked at. And if you're improving yourself and not harming, but don't benefit other people, then you're not repaying the debt to your teachers and all the other practitioners who are carrying forth this way, you don't repay your debt that you owe, your debt of gratitude for your own, the benefits that are happening to you. So each one of these feels like a tripod, and each one balances the

[09:43]

other. And I think it's similar in Zen practice, we sometimes talk about the tripod of Zazen, working with a teacher and studying, or hearing Dharma talks, or studying the Dharma. And it's the same way, it's balanced like a tripod. So if, if you're just sitting Zazen, but you never talk with anyone, you never go to a teacher or have practice discussion or doksan, you may get, or never study the teaching, or maybe you do study, but if you're never talking with anyone, you may get very off and into your own standards and your own sense of what practice is. If you're studying a lot and maybe taking a lot of classes and discussing Dharma philosophically, and maybe even with others or going to a teacher, but you never sit, then that gets very lopsided as well,

[10:45]

because it's not experientially that you understand, it's just through words. And if you're sitting a lot and talking with the teacher, but you never study and don't reflect on the Dharma intellectually or through the words of the ancients, the words and phrases of the ancients, then that's also lopsided. So there's this balance of all these three things. So relaxation, what is it to relax? Another, the word relax itself comes from the word, the word lax or untied or loose. To relax

[11:51]

means to be, to make less severe or strict, to reduce in intensity or slacken, to relieve from effort or strain. And it comes from this word to re, which means back and lax or loose. And it's interesting, the root of the word, the word for hair, rabbit, that part of the word means to droop, I thought this was interesting, with drooping ears, like the rabbit, this loose and lax, drooping ears. So relaxation, in the dictionary it says the art of relaxing. There's an art to relaxing. And I want to talk about that a little bit, because it's been so important for me right

[12:54]

now, looking at what it means to relax and feeling the parts of my body that aren't relaxed, like the diaphragm, diaphragm area, shoulders, neck, the kind of contraction that you can almost feel internally, in the internal organs, like I can feel sometimes pulling in and contracting, tightening up, being strained and a stressful, strict feeling. Ah, just talking about it makes it, makes it happen actually. So right now, are we relaxed? And, you know, there's this movement, you might say, in the States, Western, in the world, I think, about stress reduction. And I know I find myself feeling like, I have a little bit of aversion, maybe, to stress reduction. You know what I mean? It's like, it's,

[13:58]

maybe that's not the real thing, you know, real practice is something else, but stress reduction is a kind of diluted form of real practice. But just want to talk about stress a little bit, relaxation and stress. This is the time of year when, even though it's a relaxed schedule, you might say, or you might have time off work, one doesn't feel necessarily relaxed and able to enjoy it. There's a rushing and deadlines and post offices and crowds and family members, you maybe would just assume not spending time with them. So there's this stress and we, our bodies receive the strain, the stress and strain of these non relaxing times. And this has enormous effect on our health and well being, not to mention our relationships with others. So the art of relaxing, the relaxing is refreshment of body and

[15:08]

mind, body and mind. And the physiology of stress and how relaxation counters that, I just wanted to say a few words, if you'll bear with me. So when we're stressed, due to all sorts of different things. And it can be something as, you know, straightforward as a traffic jam, or, you know, crowds and not finding a parking place, or, you know, loss of job, loss of a loved one, big changes, big transformations. Even though they're happy things like a marriage or a celebration or something, these things are stressful and how the body reacts to it is certain hormones are released from the adrenal glands that are on top of the kidneys. And these hormones, there's certain physiological

[16:13]

changes, including more rapid heartbeats, higher blood pressure, certain systems that are not needed to take care of the stress, stressor, shut down. And those are digestion, the processes of elimination, reproduction, and certain immune responses, all that just shut down so that you're ready, because energy is then released from the cells through these hormones to fight or run or do something like that or take care of what what the stress thing is. So this, this is all very wonderful for preservation and through our evolution, this has allowed us to survive through countless difficulties. But now, you may know all this very well, the stressors, there's no relief of the stressors,

[17:19]

you know, they don't go away. They're ongoing, you know, certain stress at work, and so these hormones are released and continue to be released and these processes, normal processes get shut down and make it difficult for growth and healing and refreshment of body and mind. And all sorts of troubles, right, and illnesses happen because of this. And I think you all know this is very, it's now very common knowledge. And there's specialists now in stress, the ailments that have to do with stress. So along with this, I wanted to, we had a members meeting yesterday at City Center,

[18:20]

San Francisco Zen Center members all met, not all, many came to a meeting at City Center and next year hopefully it will be at Green Gulch. And I gave a talk Saturday morning and I was mentioning the study that was done that showed that connection with not only people but various ways that people connect is a mitigating factor. In fact, it's the one thing that they found, this is the key in this particular study, and it was replicated in all over the world actually, that those people who are the most connected with other people, with their church or synagogue or temple, if they had pets, they were in connection with their family members, had friends, did volunteer work, any of these kinds of connections, if there were a certain number of connections that had a far greater

[19:31]

effect on health than things like whether you're not at high blood pressure or ate well, wore your seatbelt, there's smoke, or any of these other things that we feel are health-enhancing things, but the main key factor was connection, was being connected. And those people within the study who had these connections, a certain number of connections, they were three times as likely to, the study was over nine years, three times as likely to be alive, maybe that isn't the right statistic, anyway, they lived longer and had less health problems. So that to me is a very interesting study. The word connection means to tie or to bind or to unite, and it comes from the root net, a net, and this points to this net of

[20:40]

interdependence, this net of connection that in truth we live within, and yet if we're not actively living it, we become isolated, and these stress factors that we all have take a huge toll. So very simple things, being connected, having a pet, you know, going, even it said going to your, I say this because here it is Sunday and we have a wonderful group of people here, many of whom come every Sunday, even if they said about going to church or place of worship, even if you're not a person of faith particularly, don't really believe in it, just going and sitting there for an hour has this effect, has this wonderful effect. So just joining in with people, connecting, even at that level, even if you're not a believer or think of yourself as a very religious person,

[21:47]

didn't matter so much, just this way of connecting. So relaxation also has been known to be the greatest antidote to the stress in our life. So the Judo teacher or the Zen teacher says relax, you know, just relax. Can you relax right now, in the middle of the stress, in the middle of facing an opponent who's bigger and more experienced than you are, and right there, are we able to relax? Or in the middle of a traffic jam, difficult family situation, loss of a loved one, in our grief, can we find some deep way to relax, deep relaxation? Can we make that effort?

[22:52]

So the art of relaxation. So there's a wonderful book by my yoga teacher, Judith Lasseter, called Relax and Renew Restorative Poses for a Stressful Life or something. And she has a relaxation, what she calls invisible relaxation pose that you can do anywhere, and while you're speaking with someone, you know, sitting at the dinner table, in the airport, you don't have to have blankets and bolsters and eye pillows and mats. Because many of the relaxation poses have to do with, you know, laying over a bolster, putting your feet up. But she talks about the invisible relaxation pose, where you can do it right now. So I thought I'd just mention what it is. So it starts out with breathing, and maybe I'd like to say something about breath as well. You know, during the session,

[24:12]

I've seen the diaphragm, my diaphragm, that very contracted at various parts, very unrelaxed. And, you know, try as I may, I couldn't force it by commanding it to relax, you know, just relax your muscle, you know, it's too deep, you know, it's too, what's going on, what the grasping that's going on, or the contraction, it's too deep. So the practice of just relaxing around that, to relax in the middle of having a tight muscle, or tight neck, or back, can we find a way to include relaxing, even in the middle of our unrelaxed state, the effort to just be with ourselves, just the way we are. So one thing about the diaphragm, the word schizophrenic comes from the

[25:16]

same root as diaphragm, the phra, part of it. So it, schizophrenic is divided, you know, to be divided in two, and the diaphragm divides us in two, it's a big muscle that really divides us in two. And when the diaphragm is not moving freely, our breath, our inhales and exhales, cannot be refreshing and relaxing, actually. So in breathing, we have the inhale, the exhale, and the diaphragm moves with this breath, but if we're clamped down on it, we can't actually inhale and exhale freely. So the rib cage around the diaphragm actually moves when we breathe, and the intercostal muscles in the rib cage have to be able to expand and relax, and expand and relax. So as we inhale, there's the diaphragm expands, but it's also the rib

[26:25]

cage and the intercostal muscles that have to move. And not only that, but the thoracic spine, or the middle of the back, actually when we breathe, when we inhale, it does a tiny little back bend. Not a huge opening up like that, that's way too much, but actually the thoracic spine does a teeny back bend as we inhale, and as we exhale it goes back. So if our back is tight, and if our diaphragm is tight, and if our rib cage is pulled down, because, for example, if our shoulders are pulled in and tight, then the rib cage can't do this opening and closing, and the back can't do its little back bend. So when we quiet ourselves and are sitting there, we see that there's an enormous amount of movement, subtle, but movement that goes on in each inhale and each exhale. So these shoulders, Judith Laster says the shoulders, we often say relax the shoulders, but to say relax the shoulders maybe isn't an image that we can work with, it's more conceptual, what do we mean relax, and she says have the shoulders

[27:44]

fall away from the ears. So to me that's a very helpful image, the shoulders fall away from the ears. What does that feel like to have those shoulders fall away? And the spine, when the spine is elongated, it turns out when the spine is elongated, it is very difficult to tighten up the abdominal muscles or the diaphragm, to contract and hold on. So as you elongate the spine, this diaphragm breathes more freely and can expand and contract more freely. You can test this yourself as you elongate your spine, let the shoulders fall away from the ears, and then feeling the difference in the breath, in and out. And the arms also feel, you can do this standing or sitting, the arms feel very long and kind of heavy, maybe, and you relax, your hands naturally then curl, rather than clench or, they just curl. And if you're in Zazen, of course, they curl naturally and form the cosmic mudra, but if you're at,

[29:08]

you know, some festive dinner table, they just might curl in your lap or quietly at the table. And the abdomen softens with this falling away of the shoulders, elongating the spine, it's very difficult to hold on to the abdomen. You see, as soon as you hold on, the shoulders go up and there's tension, dropping away the shoulders, the abdomen softens. And if you're standing, feeling the feet on the floor, if you're sitting like right now, you can feel the weight of your body on the cushion or on your chair, the feeling of the surface of your clothing against your body. And your eyes, this is all very close to Zazen posture, the eyes soften and just gaze down during this invisible relaxation that she talks about. And as, and you just inhale and exhale in that relaxed posture and accept whatever is going on. You just accept it and stay present with it, but with this relaxed state.

[30:28]

And know that all that's going on is included. You can include it. You're actually able to include it with this relaxation. And of course, when we are relaxed this way, we can receive what comes to us, whether it's scary, full of grief, bad news, you know, to be able to have our body ready in this way, not shut down. And we can then, just like the Judo fellow whose teacher yelled relax, he was ready to just move with whatever came next. So we don't make a fortress of ourselves to wall ourselves off from what's going on. But in this posture, we can receive what it is and respond accordingly, respond appropriately, respond fully, even if the response is, I don't know what to say, you know, to respond fully.

[31:47]

Not really knowing what is the best thing to do. We respond from there. So I invite you and I invite myself, knowing that this is something that I'm working on, to find this posture. Find this posture throughout the day as your invisible relaxation posture. And this is restorative. This is, you know, it's restorative to everybody who's around you, all those who live with you and speak with you, as the sutra says, will feel this. And it will be mutually beneficial, but also on this very deep level of, you know, in a cellular level, to have your body be taken care of in a deep and thorough way so that we can continue to practice and continue to live for the benefit of all beings.

[33:01]

Because, you know, when we're stressed out, and stressed out is a very, this is a very cliche term, right? But physiologically speaking, it means we can't, it's pretty hard to take care of anyone else or respond appropriately to anyone else, because we're very closed down in lots of different ways. I wanted to say something more about the breath, and this is, so in this breathing, inhale and exhale, this is part of my study recently about breathing and about my own, what I find my own difficulty is in breathing and finding my relaxation. So when we inhale and exhale, there's, as we know, we inhale and exhale through the nose, and this is bringing oxygen into our body. And I think that's a very basic understanding.

[34:15]

When the air comes into our lungs, there's these little sacs, these microscopic sacs, alveoli, alveoli sacs, that are like little grapes, and they're microscopic and very thin membranes, and there's so many of them. I think this is a great, to visualize this, if we were to take our skin, which is another organ, and lay it out, it would be about three yards square or so, all the skin surfaces and have them all laid out. But the alveoli, these little sacs inside our lungs, if we were to spread them out, they would cover half of a tennis court. There's many, many, many of these, and when the air comes in, inside the sac is both oxygen and carbon dioxide. So as the air comes in, the oxygen goes, within these sacs, goes into the blood through this membrane, because they're very thin membrane, and the oxygen goes into the deoxygenated blood, to the blood that needs oxygen, and the carbon dioxide is exhaled.

[35:37]

So in these little sacs, there's this event going on, each breath of the oxygen going into the blood and the carbon dioxide being exhaled, into these millions of little sacs. And then, when the oxygen goes into the cells, the blood brings it throughout the body into all the cells, then there's enzymes in the cells that interact with the oxygen, and energy is then released from these cells, so that we can do this. So this is all going on as we inhale and exhale, and so we talk about at a cellular level, this is not just the ear of speech, this is at a cellular level, to have this energy at our disposal, through our relaxed intake, and exhaling, inhaling fully, and exhaling fully our breath.

[36:44]

You know, after Sashin, sometimes, after sitting seven days, and I don't think most people, some people may go for walks, you know, kind of being constitutionals, but most people don't do exercises, especially not run, because the knees are a little delicate during, with all that sitting, but they're just sitting day after day for seven days. But after Sashin, and during Sashin, one finds there's enormous energy at our disposal, I find, and I think others would corroborate this. And what's, how does this, it's kind of mystery energy, you know, where does it come from exactly, and somehow reading about this oxygen coming into the cells, and the enzymes, and the release of energy, I actually don't know physiologically, but just, I had some intuition that this, this relaxed Zazen posture, and breathing,

[37:44]

in and out, basically that's all that's going on, has enormous effect on just energy at our disposal. I remember Catherine Fannis, who's the teacher at Santa Cruz, said what she likes to do after, the day after Sashin is something like clean closets, clean her drawers, you know, just have this endless energy for sorting, and arranging, and putting in order, and just untiring energy at your disposal. And I think sometimes we find that we can kind of blast that energy, and just talk to your friend for, I remember I did this after one Sashin, yakity yak with a friend for about four hours straight, and then I, I depleted the whole thing all, kind of in one fell swoop. That's how I'm laughing, and having a grand old time the day after, and then realizing, oh, you know, so now I take care of that energy, and savor it, and say, use it at will, treasure.

[39:00]

But I didn't have a physiological kind of understanding about this energy, and maybe it has to do with this, aside from the Buddha's grace, you know. So this, just in and out breath, and then in the lungs, what happens, and then at a cellular level, this is our, our respiration, this is our inhale, and our exhale. And these restorative poses include this time for breathing. Do we have time to breathe? Can we find our breath now? And even in very difficult situations, can we have our shoulders fall away from our ears, find our body, find ourself in our body, even with the contraction, find, hold ourself carefully and thoroughly, even not trying to force ourself to relax, like yelling, relax already, relax.

[40:14]

But a relaxed feeling about the fact that we can't relax, that's okay too. So, so we have plenty of time, plenty of chance to practice in this way during this time of year, especially, and what I was saying about these stress reduction classes, you know, I have great respect for people who understand about these areas and bring this, these practices all over to all different places, in the prisons and hospitals and drug rehab places. And yesterday at the membership meeting, Paul Haller, who's our outreach coordinator, was talking about different activities that Zen Center is doing, including meditation in the prisons, and how this, what we're doing, it's now spreading across the states, these different kinds of programs that,

[41:31]

he seemed to be saying that what Zen Center has been working with is now being copied by a lot of different people in a lot of different places. So I find this very encouraging, and I think through this practice, people, many different people in very stressful situations find their way to, there's a chance for people to find their way to Zen practice and formal practice that they may not have been able to be exposed to or have access to. So this is just one other gate, this is just a different gate. So I encourage you to make connections and find connections, and at this membership meeting, being a member of Zen Center, is this a connection that you value and want to celebrate?

[42:48]

And include in your life, you don't have to be a member of Zen Center, but connecting up with Zen Center and participating in all the different ways that there are to participate is a way of connecting. You may not want to find yourself in a seven-day session next week, but there may be some way that you do want to connect, and there's a lot of different avenues, different ways. So I encourage you, for Zen Center's benefit, and for your own benefit, for our mutual benefit, just like that principle of Judo, that for mutual benefit. I just want to end with a story. Suzuki Roshi in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind was saying about calmness, and I understood this as this kind of relaxed calmness, the meaning lies in the effort itself.

[43:52]

Trying to do something itself is enlightenment. So we often think that the meaning lies in the accomplishment of, and the full-blown expertise. There it is, that's where enlightenment is, that's where the meaning is. But just as in this Judo story, the meaning is in the effort to understand, the effort to follow the teacher's instructions, the effort to, even though you don't understand, to make an attempt, the effort, making that effort, therein lies the meaning of the whole thing. Not in the accomplishment of it, this end result. Trying to do something is itself enlightenment. So yesterday I was listening to NPR as I do, driving home from the city actually, from this membership meeting, and there was a story, some of you may have heard it, about this couple who had a baby that had a birth defect.

[45:02]

Did any of you hear that? The baby was born with this skin disease, very, very, very terrible skin disease, where the skin isn't able to slough off and make new cells, and so it thickens and cracks, and breaks off like in bigger pieces and chunks, very rough and red, and cracked all over. So the baby was born with this disease, or chronic disease, and it was the mother talking about her love for this baby girl, Kate, and her just love for this baby, but she described what she looked like, and that she was in a lot of discomfort and pain, but her eyes were really bright, and everybody talked with this mother about how sad they were for her, and one mother said she must have had a very bad karma and done something terrible in her past life,

[46:11]

and she kind of went through the litany of what people attempted to say by way of, she didn't know, by way of helping her, maybe, or keeping it at bay for themselves, but people say things that are very cruel, sort of in some attempt to say something. Anyway, lots of different things, and people coming over in the grocery store and going, you know, and they saw the child, and all these terrible things, and her love for this baby, and her toddler years, and then they had the child who was maybe about six or seven years old, and this little girl was, she was, well, you know, everybody's different, I mean, you know, I go down the street, everybody looks at me, but everybody's different, I mean, people should just remember that they're all different too, she was talking like that, and if I had to answer these thousands of questions all the time, what happened to you? Were you in a fire? Well, gee, if I was in a fire, I'd heal by now, wouldn't I? She's talking like that, just this little, little ball of fire and intelligence, and, well, I like this cream best, she has to wear cream on her body.

[47:33]

I really wish I could get up in the morning, just get out of bed, but you've got to put this cream on me, and the new one I tried, its name is so long I can't even pronounce it, but it's really helpful, and it seems to be really good, and just like that, talking, and you had this feeling that, I had the feeling that she had accepted her life, this is who she was, and she was relaxed about it, and she loved reading, she loved doing things with her mom, and she understood something about full acceptance of herself that, you know, many of us, me included, struggle with, if only, if only, if only I didn't have yada yada then I'd be happy, but here she was, this perky little thing, and the last question they had, what would you wish, if you could wish anything, and she said, well, I'd like to live in a medium-sized house in the country, with a lot of land around me, and my mom and dad there, and I'd like to have a pet, and my little brother,

[48:54]

and she went on and on and painted this picture of this lovely kind of country living, and doing things she liked to do, not once did she mention, or allude to, or did you feel like it even crossed her mind that she wished she didn't have this skin disease, she didn't even come close, you know, she just went on and on about what she would like in this medium-sized house, so the meaning lies in the effort itself, trying to do something itself is enlightenment, I felt like this kid, she had the key somehow, there was this, don't let me idealize her too much, forgive me if I do, but her happiness was so palpable, and her comfort level with who she was, and just making an effort to live in the world, present, accepting, ready for anything, trying to do something is itself enlightenment, just trying to do something.

[50:10]

Thank you very much.

[50:27]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ