So welcome. Good morning. This is the online Zendo Zazen Instruction for San Francisco Zen Center. My name is Shundo. I'm a Zen priest who trained at the temple and at Tassajara, the monastery. But nowadays I just live out in San Francisco. But thanks to the miracles of technology, we're beaming out through Zen Center to all parts of the world. And it's an untypically gray and rainy day here in San Francisco. It's not the... kind of whether we expect at the end of May, but that's what we have. So the first thing I'm going to have everyone do as we start is just as we were doing just a couple of minutes ago, just sitting quietly, maybe closing your eyes. Whatever posture feels right to you at the moment. And just notice how it feels. to be who you are, where you are at this very moment. What is it that you notice in silence?

[01:14]

So we can choose to pay attention to different aspects of the present moment. We can choose to focus on our breath, which is a very basic meditation practice. We can choose to focus on sights and sounds and smells, the sensations that we're taking in every moment in our bodies. You can focus on internal markers, how warm we are, how cool we are, whether we're awake or sleepy, whether we're hungry or thirsty. So whatever it is that arises that is drawing your attention, just allowing your attention to rest on that further moment. So a very basic definition of a mindfulness practice, which meditation is, is that we're choosing to pay attention to the present moment without judgment.

[03:10]

So we're directing our attention, which is often scattered and unfocused, allowing it to come to the present moment, this very moment we're living in, rather than constantly thinking about the past or the future, as we often tend to do, but really coming back to this moment that we're existing in. And then the third part seems kind of simple, but is the hardest part to really manage is the route judgment. Because as soon as we take in any information, whether that's physical information or emotional information, our brains are busy sorting that out. So I look out of the window and I see gray skies and the possibility of rain. And so I think, oh, that's not the kind of day I want it to have. Last week we had a beautiful day. blue skies and heat wave in San Francisco. And I was like, yay, this is my favorite kind of weather. So at any moment, we're liable to come into judgment about anything that's presenting itself to us.

[04:11]

And this is great. It keeps us alive. It makes us understand that we don't walk out into the street in front of a bus. And it's also slightly an overused property of our brains. Excuse me. our brains are very often busy they're so used to doing this work that they really apply it to just about everything so any sensation that comes in it's very easy to divide it up and this is a good feeling this is a bad feeling this one yeah we can let that one go and so all the time our mind is constantly processing this information that is coming to us in the present moment and what that really means is that we tend to focus on the workings of the mind and we don't focus quite so much on the actual experience of being alive in the moment. And so meditation is taking a backward step. That's the phrase we use a lot in Zen. So really instead of just moving through the day and just dealing with whatever comes up, we just slow down, we get quiet and really take the time to pay attention to what is happening.

[05:21]

And then often what happens is that our body gives us or our mind gives us messages that we didn't have time to listen to. during our busy days. So during the last couple of months, as we've been locked down here in the States, I've noticed every time I sit down a fair amount of grief that arises. Now in my day-to-day life, I'm pretty happy. I get to do a lot of things. I'm still touch wood, healthy and earning money. And yet there is grief arising in the body. So meditation allows space for whatever our experience is to come up. And then within that arising, we also practice the non-judgment. So we're like, oh, it's not that I want to push the grief away or say grief is inconvenient or I don't want to be grieving. I'm a happy person. We allow these things to come up and we try to remain curious, open and kind towards our own experience. So this is a wonderful practice that we can do

[06:26]

pretty much forever. Once you start doing it, it's very, I think, hard to give that up as a way to live life. So this is, you know, this session is designed to help you cultivate a meditation practice, and I hope some of you are already meditating or keen to know more. And there are many different styles of meditation, and the Zen style is one particular style. But every meditation style has as its base choosing to pay attention to the present moment and also giving methods to occupy the mind in such a way that we remain present rather than getting caught up in the mind so in other meditation styles you'll have a mantra to work on maybe you'll have visualizations to help keep you grounded or in some traditions you'll be doing a body scan very particularly paying attention to parts of the body Now, the Zen School is a little different to that. It doesn't really give you any one particular focus. It allows what we call open awareness.

[07:28]

So just as we were doing at the beginning, allowing whatever arises to be the focus of your attention at that moment. And that may be constantly changing. And so that can encourage the mind to just swirl off into different realms. So it's a discipline and a practice to cultivate. to keep our attention back on the present moment. Our mind is often running off and we gently, kindly bring it back. And again, without judgment, we don't label ourselves as bad meditators if we're thinking too much or if we're thinking at all. It's impossible to stop thinking. The mind is designed to produce thoughts. But we just don't let that be the foreground of our activity in any moment. It's just a component of the activity. Now, what I've experienced in my Zen training for the last 20 years is that because there isn't another explicit focus to our attention, breath is a very important component and posture is a very important component.

[08:38]

And actually those two components work very well together. So I'm going to spend the next little bit of time talking about posture because that helped my meditation practice to really understand why know traditionally over human cultures for several thousand years people have been sitting in a cross-legged position in an upright way there's there's beneficial reasons for that and at the same time we know that cross-legged sitting doesn't work for everybody so i'm going to demonstrate a few alternatives that we can practice all of which are equally beneficial in terms of meditation So I'm going to get up and pull in a couple of props. This is where not doing it in the Buddha Hall at Zen Center is a little trickier because they have many more props that are easier to use than I have here at home. First of all, I'm going to go and fetch a chair. So this is just one of the chairs we have at home.

[09:40]

It's a pretty basic solid wooden chair. I'm just gonna move this down, I'm gonna do this a couple of times now. So most people can sit in a chair, which is great, because it means you don't need any specialized equipment. And it also means that if you want to, you can meditate under ordinary circumstances. If you're sitting on a train or a bus, or as I like to do, if I'm waiting to get on a plane, I like to sit and meditate. Now, what I'm going to suggest is if your back allows it to be sitting upright. So I'm sitting sideways for a reason because I want you to see the kind of upright sitting when my spine is holding me up rather than leaning back into the chair and sitting like this. And this is a very comfortable way to sit. And I spend a lot of time sitting like this myself, but it doesn't benefit our organs. And I'll talk more about this in a little bit.

[10:41]

So unless you have back issues that prevent you from sitting upright, I really encourage you to scoot slightly forward on the chair, because that helps you not slide back into it, but to really allow yourself to be upright. And then ideally, you want your hips slightly higher than your knees and your feet firmly planted on the ground. So that's why I wanted you to see that I have my feet here on the ground. So if you don't have enough elevation in your chair, put another cushion underneath you. get that slight elevation. And I'll be talking a little bit more about that with the other postures. But sitting in a chair is something that I think just about everybody can do. And it allows you exactly the same vegetation experience without any fancy equipment. So I always wanna demonstrate that position first. The next one, Having to improvise very slightly, this is a little foot stall I have for my armchair in the living room.

[11:44]

So if I was, actually I could just about sit like this, because it's an angled thing, I can still sit with an upright spine, even though my knees are pretty upright. What I wanted to demonstrate here is a kneeling posture. So at Zen Center, there are a lot of benches which are much better designed for sitting than this is. But you have the opportunity to sit Again, with your hips, knees, and ankles pretty closely aligned, and a forward tilt to the pelvis, which allows the spine to be upright. So I can sit like this more or less for a while. This is a little too high to be ideal for this kind of sitting. But it's an option that doesn't put any pressure on your hips in the way that cross-legged sitting does. Bring this down even more. I don't have a fancy floor cushion like we do at the Zen Center. But you can also do that kneeling posture.

[12:49]

Now, if you're used to doing martial arts, maybe you're used to sitting in a kneeling position like this. It's very hard on your legs because they'll go to sleep very quickly unless you're used to that. What you can do, if you have any kind of cushion, and this is a meditation cushion I got at the Zen Center bookstore, You can place that underneath you, and that elevates your backside off your calves, and that stops your legs going to sleep. So this is a very comfortable and sustainable meditation posture. I'm going to turn it around. I'll actually use my other cushions because that's a little bit high. sure I'm still visible. Excuse me for bashing the microphone. So with my other cushion, I'm again just kneeling down. And I have that upright posture, but it's very gentle on the hips and pretty gentle on the knees too.

[13:54]

Your knees might get a little tired from being flexed like this for a long time. But I find this a very comfortable way to keep sitting. And it also allows the uprightness that I'm going to go into a little more detail in a minute. So those are options other than sitting cross-legged. Now you notice I've used two different cushion setups here. This is my very old meditation cushion that I've had my whole meditation career. It's made of buckwheat, which is very solid, gives you a nice support. And this one is quite low. And so I often use a little extra cushion on top of that to give me some more elevation. If you're not flexible, you want to have a little more solid cushion. So this is made of Kapok, and it's a little more solid. So when I sit on it, I'm a little higher off the ground, which is a little easier on my joints. So most days at the moment, I'm sitting on this one. And when you sit on that, you want to sit at the front edge of the cushion, almost as if you're going to fall forwards, because what you want is for your knees to arrive at the ground.

[15:00]

I'm just going to scoot back just a tiny bit. So that your knees get on the ground. Now, this is an important factor for me. And I always like to stop at this stage and say, I know that you see in commercials, people are sitting like this with their knees way off the ground and their hands like this and they're looking completely blissed out. That's a commercial depiction of meditation. It's not a very comfortable or sustainable posture. So I don't recommend sitting like this. If you want to do that, that's totally fine. But I don't think it's a good way to actually develop a good, strong meditation practice. So historically, what has been used is this elevation of the backside to give you a stable tripod between your sitz bones underneath you and your knees. Now, if your knees aren't super flexible, you can use little cushions like this to place under them so you still get that same stability of having three points of contact. So that's an important step that I really try to encourage that you have this

[16:07]

stability with your legs. And if you notice that I have one foot in front of the other, this is called the Burmese posture. It's a very simple way to sit if you don't have a huge amount of flexibility in the hips. I'm also going to switch sides because I know that this hip is less open than this hip. And so this feels like a slightly less natural way for me to sit. I feel like I'm twisting a little bit. So I sometimes encourage myself to sit with the other leg in front. just to make sure that I don't get too imbalanced. So you don't have to do anything more than just putting one foot in front of the other. The important thing is to have the stability between your sits bones and your knees that allows you to be upright. And again, I'm gonna come to this whole upper part of the body in a minute. Now, if you are feeling flexible, I'm gonna switch around again, you can rotate your hips, and put your foot up on your thigh, which is called the half lotus position.

[17:11]

So this gives you a little more lower back stability if you're able to do this. I couldn't do this when I started sitting because I'd been running and cycling for too long. So it took me quite a few years of sitting in the monastery to develop the flexibility to do this. And then it took me even more years. I'm sure I can always guarantee to do it. Put the other foot up on the other thigh and sit in the full lotus position, which is how Buddha is and many other yogis are traditionally depicted, which gives you a more balanced and stable feeling. I don't think it's balanced because this cushion is actually a little high for doing this. But that gives you very strong lower back support and a kind of a balanced ability in the legs. Again, this is an optional position to take up if you're flexible enough for it to be comfortable. So I'm going to come out of that now. And I switch around to my normal, what I call my normal position, which is half lotus with the right foot up.

[18:16]

Now when I started sitting, I had a yoga teacher who explained a good way to get into half lotus, which is picking up the back of your thigh. You let your foot dangle like that. And then you take both together and rotate from the hip. Because your hip is a rotating joint and your knee is not a rotating joint so much, because if you just grab your foot and put it up there, you're liable to put a bit of pressure on your knee. So you wanna make sure the movement comes from the hip, if you feel comfortable doing that. But again, the main point is to have sits bones and knees on the ground. And because you're elevated, it allows the spine to be upright. I'm going to scoot back around again. And this is something that we can cultivate in any of these positions, cross-legged position or sitting on a chair or kneeling, is with the forward tilt of the pelvis from the hips being elevated, the spine is naturally curved and elongated in a way that keeps you upright.

[19:30]

And this is the foundation of our kind of cross-legged posture. The legs are just kind of there to support you. What really matters, what I find really matters, is what the top half of your body is doing. So whether you're in a chair, whether you're kneeling, this is what we're going to be focusing on for the next little while. My experience is that when you are sitting like this with elevated hips and knees on the ground and spine is upright, you don't need to be doing work with your muscles to hold you up. So this is the downside of sitting like this with your knees way off the ground, is that you have to tighten the abdominal muscles to keep the top half of your body balanced. There is no intrinsic balance in this position. It's very difficult to kind of stay still and relaxed.

[20:34]

Whereas as soon as I do this, if I picture my spine being upright and supporting me, because the spine is a very strong element of your upper body support, these muscles can all relax because they don't have to hold me up. Spine is holding me up. has a kind of a chain effect in your body when these muscles relax and i'm not quite relaxed because i'm talking so much but when these muscles relax the diaphragm which separates the lungs from the stomach gets to move more freely so as we sit in meditation hopefully one of the first things we notice is that our breathing becomes slow steady and easy So we have different modes of breathing depending on the circumstances we find ourselves in. So when you're stressed, when you're anxious, you'll be breathing from the very top of the lungs. It's very efficient in terms of dealing with a crisis, having to move fast.

[21:38]

But it is part of your body being in kind of fight or flight response, which is not a restful place to be in meditation. Now, if we are upright, if our spine is holding us up, if our stomach muscles relax, diaphragm is moving up and down, we can breathe more fully into the whole extent of the lungs. So if we're hunched over like this, that's not so easy because we're compressing the space where our lungs go. So this is why the upright sitting is very important. So as I sit down, once I've arranged my legs, and however you arrange your legs, once you've built yourself into your seat, The first thing I do is pay attention to this area down here, the base of the belly, between the belly button and the pubic bar. Because if I'm relaxed, I can feel my breath coming down to this area. Obviously, the breath isn't actually coming down because the lungs stop here.

[22:40]

But the lungs filling, the diaphragm sinking into the stomach, the stomach expanding. It feels like you're breathing into this space. And in the Zen tradition, we have a hand position. like this, which actually visually kind of complements that notion of breathing down into this area. So this becomes your energetic center and your center of gravity while you're sitting. And again, if you've done martial arts, you might understand the idea of moving from this place as a way of kind of a strong grounded movement. So for that hand position, if you want to practice that, it's we do at Zen Center that I encourage if it works for you. Take the biggest knuckle of the middle finger of the left hand, place it on its equivalent on the right hand. So all your fingers are lying together like that. And then just touching the thumbs very lightly together. And then just slightly pressing the little fingers against the body.

[23:41]

So my thumbs are right at the level of my belly button here. And My hand's actually resting on my trousers very slightly. And then paying attention to how much tension that creates in your shoulders, because it can be that this posture exacerbates kind of a shoulder tightening, which is not what we're wanting to do. So in Zen Center, we use, or in Zen training, we use this posture pretty regularly for sitting. If it doesn't work for you, then, you know, just put your hands down your thighs, up on your thighs like this, whatever feels relaxing to you. But I encourage you to do this as a visualization that this is your kind of center of gravity right now, not up here and down here. So as I sit, this is the area I focus on, getting my abdominal muscles relaxed and really allowing the breath to settle. Because when the breath settles like that, our parasympathetic nervous system comes in.

[24:42]

which is rest and repose. It's the opposite of fight or flight. So just by sitting upright, letting the spine do its work, letting the abdominal muscles relax, we're giving our body a message that we're slowing down and relaxing, which is why people fall asleep during meditation, because their bodies know that it's time to relax. And for a lot of people, time to relax means time to sleep. So if you find yourself falling asleep in meditation, it's not your fault. It's just what your body is designed to do. And I know many people in the monasteries who've sat for many years who fall asleep pretty regularly during meditation. So don't feel it's a thing you can't do or it's bad. So having focused on that area, here's my solar plexus. I then think about this area between the solar plexus and the collarbones because, again,

[25:43]

We often hunch over. If we're looking at our phones, we're definitely hunched over. We're compressing this space around the heart and the lungs, which is not super beneficial. And the more I sat, especially the many hours I sat at the monastery, paying attention to this area here and lifting the collarbones. We're not kind of trying to be like we're in the army or anything, but the difference between being slumped and being kind of tall and open here, That made a big difference to my meditation. So I encourage you to pay attention to your ribs, your lung area, to really open that up. As you breathe in, imagine your ribs expanding. Imagine your collarbones lifting. Giving that space. I'm just doing that. I can feel my back, my spine kind of responding to that movement that I'm making in the front. Keeping that space in the front of the body, it's very easy as we sit to kind of fall down and slump over again.

[26:45]

So as I'm sitting, I spend a lot of time paying attention to this kind of space, not letting it sink down, but keeping it pretty tall. And also just finally, just checking in that your head is not causing too much tension in the neck and shoulders. So if we stick our chin out like this, which a lot of people do, even when they're sitting, it's going to tighten up around the chest and shoulders. So really bringing the head back. You can imagine, oh, it feels pretty good when I do that, tucking the chin towards the throat. I'm going to turn sideways again just to demonstrate that. So difference between this and this. So you can see how sticking my chin out is impacting the whole upper half of my spine. Now I'm exaggerating that, but I often see people sitting like this. And it can't be very relaxing. So really imagine going in the opposite direction. Imagine really lifting yourself back upright. So these days I'm on Instagram and I keep seeing these adverts for a little device you can put in your back to shock you into being upright.

[27:53]

Luckily, I don't feel like I need one of those because from years of sitting, I feel like I'm more upright than I used to be. So that's a lot of talking. That's a lot of time. So I would like to actually practice that. So wherever you are, however you're arranged, I want you to find a comfortable seated position for you, whether that's in a chair or even lying down or standing up or walking, whatever works for you as a meditation posture. But focusing really on this part of the body, the torso, focusing on having a spine tall and straight, I often like to visualize the gear stick in a car, you know, as you're moving a gear stick around you. You want to find the neutral position, or it is neutral for your spine and your body. When you find that, if you pay close attention, you may feel a relaxation happening as muscles disengage, which is a pretty nice feeling.

[28:57]

I may not be doing that myself this morning because I feel like I keep leaning forward to be closer to the microphone. So I'm having to. weigh that for myself right now and it is a dynamic process we're not kind of locking ourselves into place we're starting from this upright place and as we continue to sit we'll notice maybe one shoulder will move up maybe our head will go forward we're just continually paying attention to that and again without judgment so i'm going to ring the bell and we'll sit for a few minutes um and then If you have questions or comments, we can open that up for discussion. So just finding a position you're comfortable in and just letting what arises arise. And mostly that's probably gonna be mental activity, but don't get caught up in the mental activity. See if you can stay in the realm of being in your body, being with sensations, being with your breath, which hopefully is slowing and settling all the time I've been talking.

[30:02]

So if people have questions they would like to bring up or other comments or observations, I can just about make out people's names on the screen. So I think the host will unmute you, or maybe you can unmute yourselves. Hi, Enis. How are you doing? Thank you. My question is, is it acceptable to change our position when there is pain or when some part of our body goes asleep or there is a small deterioration, is it acceptable? Yes. It's always acceptable. I have different answers for that myself because I often find that this leg goes to sleep if I'm not paying attention. After about 20 minutes, it will often go to sleep. Now, I know that I can sit there with my leg asleep quite some time it's uncomfortable but it's not going to do me any damage i don't think um so i will often just maybe i'll you know scoot my my backside forward on the cushion a little bit um but otherwise i will usually just sit there um if you're feeling uncomfortable the simplest thing to do is just do that so wherever you are if whatever kind of monastery you're sitting or any any other place you're sitting it's always okay to do that and

[39:45]

Because in Zen, we like to say both and rather than either or. It's interesting to notice what your reaction is. So if you have a little bit of maybe a pain in your knee, you know, pay attention to it for sure, because it's your body giving you a message that it doesn't feel good. And there's a difference between a pain that's, you know, going to cause an injury or problem or something that's just a little bit uncomfortable. So maybe you noticed that when I finished sitting, I was scratching my eye. So my eye had been itching a little bit while I was sitting, but I didn't want to do that in the middle of the meditation because I know that I can sit there with an itch for a few minutes and that's okay. So it's kind of working with your own mental processes. Like if you think, oh, I don't want to do this anymore, I'm going to give up, and you move, then I would say, well, maybe try to sit a little bit longer and see what happens if you do. But that's not a reason to cause yourself pain and discomfort. So it's a fine balance between, oh, it feels okay to continue sitting if my leg is asleep, as opposed to like, oh, wow, that's really painful.

[40:57]

I need to get out of that. So, yeah, trust your own judgment. It is always acceptable to move. I like to say this is not an endurance sport and it's not a competition. How does that sound? Yeah, very explanatory. May I ask another question if it's possible? Please do. Is there any special physical meaning of cosmic mudra? Because sometimes I feel more relaxed to put my hands on my knees. I get centered then when I do that. Or sometimes I feel hard to keep the cosmic mudra until the end of my session. So is there any physical meaning or function of cosmic mudra? physical meaning no but all the hand positions have an energetic kind of meaning so the cosmic mudra is the for other people is the one I was demonstrating here so energetically and kind of visually you know as a visualization practice it means you breathe in the entire universe through this space every time you breathe in and you breathe out the entire universe through that space every time you breathe out so that's

[42:11]

kind of a buddhist visualization of your body and the universe and your breath in each breath visualized through this space um so that's the energetic significance of that now if you look at any buddhist statues you know you'll see different hand positions you know there's there's there's many that you know i can demonstrate and i don't know the meanings of many of them myself it's a wonderful thing to investigate you can look online to find the different meanings of ones Um, so I, I personally find that, you know, if you have my hands down like this, it feels a little different from having my hands up. Um, and again, if you do Qi Gong or any other martial arts, you know, you'll kind of, you'll have a sense of like, oh, energy is coming in through my hands. Um, or, you know, oh, I'm closing the energy off. You know, there's another hand position we use, um, around, you know, in our daily activities is then center where you wrap, um, your fist around your left thumb and put your right hand over it and hold it like this.

[43:12]

And to me, that always feels like you're kind of like you're closing the door on yourself a little bit. You're not kind of like, woo, I'm out here. It's like, okay, here I am. I'm kind of bringing that energy down. So there's a kind of a physical energetic component to some of these hand positions, which may feel subtle. It may feel a little bit, these guys are talking crazy, but it's an interesting thing. tradition that's been handed down to us. And it's very interesting just to feel how those things are in your body as you do them. So again, you know, I encourage you to investigate and see what you feel. But this position can be difficult. I say it can cause a lot of stress in the shoulders. So if it doesn't feel comfortable to hold that for a whole session, I would say it's totally fine to do that or do that. you know, do this, you know, whichever feels natural to you in the moment. I think I've, have I lost anything on the screen?

[44:14]

But I hope that, I hope that answered the question. And please, if any, anybody else has a question they would like to ask. Yes. Kale, hi. Kale, hi. Hi, hi. Yeah, I'm in London, England. So hi. Right. I think your weather is better than ours right now. You sound as if you're from in these parts as well. I was born near Reading, yeah. Okay, that's not far. I'm in Harrow. I want to ask you, will you be covering Kinhin at all today? In this one, I don't. But if we were in the Buddha Hall in San Francisco, I would certainly be doing that. I can say briefly what it is, and I can maybe demonstrate very quickly. So kinhin is a Japanese word because we use a lot of Japanese words for walking meditation. And it's done because sitting like this is hard to do for an extended period. If you're doing an extended sitting, it's very often to have 30 or 40 minutes of sitting or even 50 and then 10 minutes of walking just to give your legs a break.

[45:17]

Let me stand up and I'll demonstrate very quickly how I can do that. Thank you. That would normally be a part of the session in the Buddha Hall. So, let me just kneel down for a minute. So that hand position I was just demonstrating is the one that you would use for kinking. So making a fist around your left thumb, placing your right hand over it. Now, I've got my little priest robe here on, so I would be carrying that behind the robe. Otherwise, you'd have it here, right about solar plexus level. And now some Zen traditions, they turn the wrists up, which is a different, for me, it's a very different energetic feeling doing that. It feels much more kind of dynamic. This feels a little more restful. But you'll see people, and I hope you can still hear me if I'm doing this, walking around like this, especially if you have the robes with the long sleeves, it's very practical to walk around with your hands at this level. Now I think you can just about see my feet. So the point of Keenheim is you're literally taking a half step with each breath.

[46:19]

I'm gonna move this this way. So on the in-breath, literally half a foot length, in front, so the big toe is right where the arch of the other foot is. The out-breath, bring that front foot down, lifting the back foot. In-breath, foot half leg. You notice I'm not even putting my toes down there. The out-breath, I put the toes there and I lift the back heel. Do that again in the other direction. You can still see me. In-breath, half foot forward, out-breath. Front toes come down, back heel goes up. And so I'm going to put the heel down, lift the back heel up. So it's very much a breath practice. And it's designed to be a continuation of the meditation. So you can do it, you know, without losing your meditative concentration. At the same time, if you're in a room full of people, you also need to be aware of the spacing between you.

[47:21]

And that's one of my... One of the things that used to frustrate me a lot, they're like, come on, pay attention. You're supposed to be like equidistant from the person in front or behind. But, you know, that says something about my meditation practice. So that's the very basics, and I hope that helps a little bit. That's great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Great. Cheers, Karen. Anyone else? I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit about eyes open versus eyes closed. Yes, thank you. It's a great question. And in the Zen tradition, we're different to a lot of other traditions. So we recommend keeping your eyes open. I'm going to take my glasses off just to kind of demonstrate a little more physically. So the idea is your eyes are kind of looking down at about 45 degrees in front of you. Now at Zen Center and other Zen traditions, temples, you'd be sitting facing the wall. So really you're looking down at the wall with a very soft gaze. So you're kind of unfocusing your eyes, which personally I find very difficult to do.

[48:25]

And just allowing visual information in, in the same way that your ears are taking in visual information. So right now I can hear my neighbors, whose kitchen is very few feet away from here, chattering as they make breakfast. So your ears are taking in that information because you can't stop the sound coming in. Your eyes are also taking in just the information that's around you, which in a meditation hall is a very limited amount of information. Here I've got my bookcase. I've got things around me. There's a lot of information coming in. So the reason for doing that is to help keep you present and keep you with your senses surrounded by where you are. You're not cutting yourself off. And isolating yourself. You're not blocking your ears. You know, in San Francisco, we have the garbage trucks. We have car alarms. We have people shouting in the street. We're not trying to close our ears to all of that. We're allowing it in. And the same with the visuals.

[49:26]

We're allowing visuals in. So it helps keep you grounded. It can help keep you awake as well. Personally, I find if I close my eyes, I can focus a little more on my internal sensations. especially in my posture, I can kind of visualize very subtle posture movements more easily if I have my eyes closed. And with my eyes closed, it's much easier to fall asleep. So if you were doing extended training at the Zen Center or sitting there, you would be expected to keep your eyes open. And also because you're sitting facing the wall, nobody knows whether your eyes are open or not. They'll notice if you fall asleep, but that's about it. So, again, I encourage you to try the different ways and notice what happens when you do. That's very helpful. Thank you. And I had one more question. I accidentally logged on an hour ago because I'm in a different time zone, and I stumbled into what seemed like a group practice of sorts with the San Francisco Zen Center. There was chanting and all sorts of stuff, and I was wondering if that's open to all, and if so, what would I want to know before I log into something like that?

[50:34]

Oh, very good question. I think on the Zendo page, online Zendo page, there is a kind of a list of etiquette of, you know, things to pay attention to. I'm thinking that would have been the morning service. So after sitting, there's generally chanting, which, again, is another breath practice. It's a great thing about the way the Zen chants go. It's done with the breath very strongly. It's not as particularly tuneful. thing to do i i found it a little challenging at first and then i grew to love it um so i think in that situation you know the simplest thing to do is just to listen you know if you don't know the tunes if you don't know what you're expected to do just to listen along um people come all the time you know under normal circumstances to zen center who really don't know what the what the instructions are what the form is or what they're supposed to be doing and there's always room for you know for people to be there in attendance and kind of be learning by picking things, you know, by just watching and trying to follow what people are doing as best they can.

[51:38]

It's a very Japanese way of teaching you how to do something. It's just like pay attention and see what other people are doing and then do it yourself. So I would say, you know, it's totally appropriate to be there. And if you don't know how to join in, just watch what other people are doing. And, you know, eventually you pick it up and kind of make it your own practice. Does that help? That does help. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Any other questions? Shindo, may I ask a question? Please do. Is there a difference between sitting on a chair and sitting on a cushion in terms of quality, deepness, concentration of the meditation? Nope. I've fallen asleep on both and I've had wonderful experiences on both. I think, you know, a couple of thousand years ago in India, there weren't many chairs around, but it was very easy to sit on the ground. So I think that developed as part of the yogic tradition.

[52:39]

And as Buddhism and meditation moved around the world, people adapted according to circumstances. So in the West, we're much more used to sitting in chairs for sure. And I know some of the teachers who came to America in the very early 20th century There's a teacher called Nyogen Senzaki who was in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s. He didn't have cushions. He made everybody sit in a chair because he thought that Westerners would find it difficult to sit cross-legged. So he wanted them to feel more at home by sitting in a chair. There are some, I think, Japanese teachers who will say, if you're not sitting full lotus, you're not really doing meditation, but I don't believe that. I think there's a particular quality to sitting in full lotus that is energetically and physically interesting. And I think you can do that all in a chair. Because for me, I say all the magic happens in the top half of the body. How you're arranging this part of the body and how that influences the nervous system, how the nervous system influences the mind, the kind of states you can get into just from that kind of quietness and balance and uprightness.

[53:51]

That you can do anywhere, definitely. So, and also thinking about it, as some of the teachers in the West have grown older, you know, many of those who sat for full lotus for many years now longer can do that, and they're sitting in chairs. And I doubt that the quality of their meditation has gone down from that. It's a lot to do with, you know, your whole being, arranging your whole being. So, yeah. Thank you, Anish. Thank you. Shinda, or a link to that, if I may ask, when you sat in a chair, You didn't put a cushion underneath your butt, or is that not necessarily? I didn't personally. I mean, that's a chair I sit on quite a lot. If you want to be a little more comfortable, then certainly, yeah, having a cushion in the chair would be good. Yeah, you don't want your butt to go to sleep, definitely. Since I knew I was only doing a short demonstration there, that was okay for me. But also, the cushion would give you a little more elevation so that you're...

[54:52]

Hips will be higher than your knees, which is, again, something you want. So, yeah, again, it's a comfort thing. Yeah, if you feel better with a cushion, that's fine. But you also want a little bit of firmness. You don't want to be kind of sagging down too much. So I think that would encourage you to your legs to go to sleep, perhaps. How many times in the day would you do Zazen? That depends where I am. If you're living at the Zen Center in San Francisco, you do... two or three periods a day, like an hour in the morning and 40 minutes in the afternoon. If you're living at the monastery, you do six periods a day at least. And then once a month, you do an extended retreat called the Sesshin, where you're doing 13 or 14 periods a day for five or seven days. What about someone like me who's busy, I guess, once a day is good enough? If you can aim for 20 minutes a day, I think that'd be pretty amazing. depending on whether the morning or the evening suits you better or another time when you might need a break.

[55:55]

Whatever works in your schedule, since you're in England, I'm going to say schedule. Yeah, early morning or late night is usually the easiest ones to find that space in. But I think regularity is a good thing. So if you can do it once a day, that's really great. If you can do it at each end of the day, that's really great too. And I say 20 minutes is a good kind of beginning time. You know, I sat for 20 minutes when I started and 30 minutes seemed really long at the time. Now 30 minutes seems kind of short and 40 minutes seems pretty good. You know, just notice your own tolerance for length on that. And that's where, you know, meditation timers on your phone and stuff like that are really great because it takes that out of your hands. Like, okay, I'm going to press the button and when the bell rings, I'll stop. Rather than kind of like after five minutes thinking, yeah, I'm done with this. I want to get up and do something else. But speaking of which, I think time is against us now. And we have to hand over the online Zendo to the actual next period of Zazen, which, of course, you're very welcome to stay on and join.

[56:57]

Zendo host. Yeah, it's about time to transition. Thank you very much, Shundo. And I forgot to ask who is giving the talk at 10 o'clock, which, again, people are very welcome to stay tuned into. And here's some wonderful Dharma from... Charlie Pokorny is visiting from Stone Creek. Fantastic. Charlie Pokorny is a wonderful guy. I practiced with him at Tassajara a long time ago, and he's a wonderful, very, very human, very human person, if I can say that. That's stupid. He's a very deeply kind person, yeah, so that'd be a great thing to listen to. Well, thank you all very much for joining this session, and, you know, please do join other weeks because other teachers will bring different aspects to the fore, and you may find things, you know, landing differently with other teachers. But thank you for being here this morning. Best wishes to you wherever you are in the world and enjoy the rest of your day. And I'll see you again soon. Thank you, Kodo, for hosting, sitting in that seat.

[57:58]

Appreciate that very much.

[58:00]

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