This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening, everybody. Thanks for coming. I've been... studying Japanese a lot this summer. And there's an expression that's used a lot, which is something like, oh, tired ones. Oh, tired ones, a great compliment. Great tired ones. How wonderful to be so tired. The good that you must be doing is in proportion to your fatigue. So, oh, tired ones, thank you for... Holding on for another 35 to 40 minutes.

[01:02]

My name is Jiryu. I'm also known as Mark. I lived here for about five years of the last 15 or so. Currently live at Green Gulch with my wife and the little boy who you've maybe seen or heard. Hopefully not too early in the morning. So I'm here this weekend teaching, co-leading a retreat workshop with Rosemary Garrison, a Zen and Yoga breathing workshop. So we're enjoying breath in yoga and Zen, and it's quite wonderful to work with Rosemary and be part of that little circle. I lived here for a number of years before I... before I participated in a workshop and realized how special it is, these little worlds, all these little worlds happening at Tazahara.

[02:10]

So it's wonderful to be in one of those other orbits. And it's fun also. I'm enjoying being back in thinking about and teaching and working with breath in breath. meditation in our zazen practice. And I wonder, my feeling is that when I say breath, breathe in meditation, breath meditation, I'd say, I haven't done a formal survey, but I'd say about 50% of the people in the room kind of lose their breath a fair minute. Some people might feel like, oh, breath, I can settle. settle into oh there it is old friend my breath but a lot of us hear that there's going to be some instruction about breath and the breath kind of goes away where'd it go like we're like we reach for it and it gets scared it gets scared off we move too suddenly towards the breath so they say just breathe naturally it's a little bit like telling someone to relax you know relax

[03:29]

So it's hard. Thinking of a raccoon that was stuck in a cabinet in the dining room one winter. It's a tricky situation. How you deal with skittish beings. How we encourage each other that it's safe. That it's okay to breathe without letting that it's okay be some signal that there's something wrong. So this old question for me in Zen practice is how to use the opportunity of breath, how to enjoy and work with and deepen my practice through breath without with a light enough touch that I feel that there's a room for me to be who I am with the breath that I have.

[04:31]

So that's part of what I think we're exploring as we stretch and still together. But I've also lately been thinking about a way of understanding Buddhist teaching, a kind of system that has occurred to me. that I find that I keep referring to in my own thinking about Buddhism, about how to understand the different kinds of Buddhist teaching. This has always sort of been a problem for Buddhists, that there are so many teachings, and they seem to say so many different kinds of things, that to get a handle on them, you have to find some way of organizing the teachings or thinking about the teachings in a way that... that gives them some kind of coherence that they might not otherwise have. So I've been thinking a lot about Buddhist teaching in terms of three kind of aspects, and I wanted to raise those aspects and also tie it into how I understand working with breath in 22 minutes or so.

[05:52]

Don't worry. So these categories of teaching that I've working on recognizing and kind of teasing out of practices and doctrines that I come across is that there's teachings about what to do, teachings about what a person should do, what you should do. There's a lot of Buddhist teachings about that, and there's a lot of teachings of Tassajara about that, actually. Ino probably offers many of them. What to do. What do you do? There's also a kind of category of Buddhist teaching about how you do the stuff that you do. So on one hand, there's everyone, all of the Buddhas and ancestors have clear ideas about what you should be doing at all times. But there's also teachings about how, how you should be doing what you're doing.

[06:55]

And... those different kinds of teachings can be harmonious or they can feel a little disconnected. And then a third kind of category of teaching that I'm thinking about is the teachings about who we are, who it is. So that for Buddhism, all three of these aspects are need-tending. They all need-tending, and they all support each other in a way And they all undermine each other in an even better way. What we do and how we do it and who we really are, those three layers or levels. Part of this kind of self-correcting mechanism that Buddhism has, that as soon as a practice is offered about what you should do, then at the same time, there's a deeper or a higher practice offered about how you should do whatever you're doing.

[08:05]

So you don't get stuck, you don't get too freaked out by the instruction that you're supposed to do something. Because you can also just work on how you're doing whatever you're doing, whether you made it to the Zen or not, you can practice mindfulness. So a little bit of lightening, lightening the touch. And then underneath these teachings of how you should be doing what you're doing are the teachings about who you are. Who are you anyway who didn't make it to Zazen or did? So a big problem for Zen is that anytime somebody says something, then someone's going to get tangled about it. Someone's going to get tangled up in anything that anybody says. So then it's good to have another perspective ready. to untangle them, and then another perspective to untangle that. That's why the Zen literature is so vast, actually.

[09:11]

Because somebody just said one thing at the beginning, and then somebody had to untangle it. And say, well, that, you know, okay, that's a piece, but, you know, if I'd been there, I would have, you know, this kind of thing. But then two things are written, so now somebody has to take that away. So then it keeps going, and now there's, you know... is gone out of hand. So this first kind of basic and critical aspect of Buddhist teaching and Buddhist practice is this insight, or Buddhist insight really, is this profound spiritual insight that what we do really matters. I think the mark of an immature person is the feeling that what I do doesn't matter. It's just going to affect me. There's nothing really at stake.

[10:14]

There's no real weight behind my actions. Whereas for a mature person, there's this feeling that there's something at stake. There's a kind of deliberateness or a weightiness. the things that we do. And I think that weight, that matterness of what we do is intertwined with this insight that in this interconnected world that Buddhism describes, everything is affecting everything else. There's nothing that doesn't matter, actually, nothing that's outside of this web of total consequence of So everything has a profound consequence. This is called karma. So everything we do has the power to create and maintain suffering for ourselves and others and has the power to relieve suffering.

[11:27]

So to take very seriously our choices about what we do is an old... and persistent concern of Buddhism. It matters what we do. In terms of breath, breath teaching, it matters actually how we breathe. So there may be some Zen student who thinks it doesn't really matter how I breathe. As long as I'm in the Zen though, you know, three minutes before the scheduled time. It doesn't matter how I breathe. But that would be the mark of an in my view, of an immature person who thinks that the world won't notice how I'm breathing. Only I'm affected by how I'm breathing. Whereas someone really sensitive to the inexorable law of karma understands that how you take this breath has a profound consequence for all beings. So that being so, Zen emphasizes a deep, deep deliberate

[12:31]

breaths grounded, based deep in the belly. The hara. The ocean of energy and field of elixir a couple of inches below the navel. Dogen Zenji, the Japanese Soto Zen founder, says... In the zazen of patch-robed monks and in the zazen of brightly clad laypeople as well, first you should sit correctly with upright posture. Then regulate your breath and settle your mind. This is Dogen. Dogen says, the breath reaches the hara, the deep belly. and comes up from the deep belly. Although exhale and inhale differ, both occur depending on the tanden, on the belly.

[13:38]

Dogen says that when we breathe in this way, by breathing in this way, impermanence is easy to clarify, and regulating the mind is easy to accomplish. So there's a consequence to deep breathing, and the consequence is... awakening to impermanence and settling of the mind. Suzuki Roshi also talks about Hara, that in Zazen, we should put energy in our lower belly. He calls it the main office. That's the main office, and this is the branch office. So who's in charge, you know? When there's, you know... Maybe the little decisions, you know, can be delegated to the branch office. But generally speaking, it comes home to the belly, everything we do. Former Zen Center Abbot Mel Weitzman said that a Zen student, every breath a Zen student takes should be from the Hara.

[14:50]

Is from the Hara, actually, insofar as they're a Zen student. That's my addition. That's my gloss, as it were. And he says even their last breath, the last breath of a Zen student is also from the hara. So what we do matters. What we do with our breathing matters in Zen, in our meditation practice. I have many old friends here at Tazahara, so I feel the joy of being sort of laughed at by my friends. I may be laughing at myself for still being on this Hara trip.

[15:52]

After all of these years, I haven't shaken this attachment to deep breathing as the core of our practice. And so people who don't know me so well maybe think that it's something that it's like a current trip. But it's an old trip. But I want to say more. So that is the main point of Zen practice from the standpoint of what we do, which is the main point of Buddhism, that what we do matters. So we should also exhale completely. We should exhale completely. We should breathe from our hara. We should always move. We should always act from our hara. And we should come to the schedule and we should follow the schedule and come to the zendo on time and we should do a lot of different things. So you feel the shoulds start to get a little weighty.

[17:04]

It's a little bit more should than I had in mind. There are things we should do, but when we get into should, we're also kind of creating a new sort of problem. And this is the problem that always comes when we emphasize what we do. As soon as there's a teaching about this would be a good thing to do, then people like me say, I should do it, and start to get worried. So Dogen says, Dogen says so much, it's really wonderful. Whatever you want Dogen to have said, chances are he has said. Dogen says that even if, he essentially says that it's better to have the mind of a leprous wild fox than to practice breath control. So he says, you know, you should regulate your breathing. But he also says that to do so is to be worse than a leprous wild fox, which is not a good thing.

[18:08]

So when we're regulating our breath, when we're pushing our breath into our hara, and when we're forcing ourselves to make it to the zendo on time, chances are we're getting into some control of our self. I'm controlling myself. And behind that, there's a little bit of attachment to what we do. I have to do the right thing, and I've heard that this is the right thing that I should do, so I'm going to now control myself to make that happen. Sometimes I think I'm actually the only person with this problem, but I think other people have this problem, too. There's higher-strung people and lower-strung people, I think. So maybe this is more a high-strung person geared talk. That's where I'm coming from. So I get tense, and I hear a should, and I try to control myself to do it right. So instead of using my energy, my precious limited energy, to focus on how I'm getting to the zendo,

[19:27]

I'm worried about that I'm getting to the Zendo because I'm supposed to be in the Zendo. So this shift of my own energy from all this concern about what am I doing? Am I doing the right thing? Am I breathing the right way? To this emphasis on how am I doing what it is that I'm doing. It's medicine. It's medicine. That that is as deep or a deeper well of insight and peace and ease and joy. how I'm doing whatever it is I'm doing. I've sometimes thought I could retract 99% of my energy from the what. What am I going to do today? I could take almost all of that energy back and pour it instead into how am I doing. How am I doing whatever I happen to be doing? I'm going to be doing something. Don't worry about it. That's just what I'm doing. How am I doing it? So Dogen says,

[20:29]

this is all actually from a very short section of Dogen so even in a very short section from the Eegoroku one little speech he says it all or he says everything at least that I need to force him into making my point he says in the Mahayana there is also a method for regulating the breath this is a method he's saying you don't want to control your breath But there is a method for regulating the breath in the great vehicle. In Zen, there's a way to do that. And that way of controlling the breath is knowing that one breath is long and one breath is short. So this is called breath control, according to Dogen, for the Mahayana. The great vehicle controls the breath by knowing that a long breath is a long breath and a short breath is a short breath. An inferior, a lower teaching is to always have a long breath.

[21:36]

And it's a good teaching because someone with always having a long breath is going to be a fairly settled person. They may or may not be a kind person, but they're probably going to be a pretty settled and strong person. But this other approach of not worrying so much whether that breath was long or short or whether it came from the chest or from the belly, but simply knowing, attending to, caring for the breath that you had. So that was a long breath, and I was there. I met it. And that was a short breath, and I met that. Or I didn't. But anyway, that's my work, retracting 99% of my energy from my idea about how I should be breathing and putting all that energy into meeting the breath that I actually have right now. How I'm breathing, not what I'm breathing. Not the way that I'm breathing, but my attitude about my breathing. So this, for Dogen, is great vehicle, breath control, which is a little cheap of him, actually, because it's the Buddha's teaching.

[22:46]

The Buddha's basic teaching on breath from the Pali Canon, which is the so-called lesser vehicle that Dogen slanders endlessly. is the first thing the Buddha says about breath and the thread through all of his teaching, basically, is that you know a long breath is long and you know a short breath is short. That's the emphasis. I find... refuge in this teaching about how I'm doing what I'm doing because I'm very aware that I can't always control what I'm doing. I can't always control my breath and I can't always control my life circumstances.

[23:48]

It's good to get to meditation frequently and sometimes we can when we have the privilege to then we can. And sometimes we can't. So is Buddhism just a matter of effectively controlling our life, you know? Or having the privilege to do a weekend at Tassajara or a retreat, a sushin or a practice period? Wonderful if we have that opportunity. But how could our spiritual life really be about that? How could it be a matter of This is also an old problem for me, or an old question for me. Does Zen practice take time? If this thing takes time, and it requires me kind of getting in the right circumstances, then it's something I can do if I can swing it, but it's not so available to someone who can, or to me when I can't.

[24:55]

So Zen, rather than... emphasizing that you should always come to meditation, emphasizes that whatever you do, chopping wood and carrying water, is the great activity of awakening of our practice. I want to tell a story that I think is related. about a time I was practicing here at Dal Sahara in my more sincere days with Norman Fisher, was the abbot. And I confessed to him one day that I was eating a lot of sandwiches. It was during practice period when the food is very tightly controlled. What you should eat becomes a critical matter of Buddhist practice.

[26:03]

What you should eat is what's offered. How you should eat is also important, and who eats is the main point. But anyway, I was very concerned that I was missing this point about what I'm supposed to be eating. So, you know, the back door, which is also available during the summer, is also available during the winter, and I was frequenting the back door and feeling not very good about myself for that. And I told Norman about this in a kind of... confessional kind of way you know forgive me Norman I have been visiting the back door and the first thing he said was yeah we don't really eat enough do we okay well that's a good starting point I got the idea at that point that this wasn't going to go how I thought it was going to go and then he said Oh, so you don't have any discipline.

[27:04]

Who cares? I thought that the abbot of Zen Center would care that one of his students in his practice period lacked discipline. But he made it very clear that he didn't care that I lacked discipline. And that if anybody cared about a lack of discipline... and thought that discipline was the way and that having the discipline was Zen practice and not having the discipline was not Zen practice, then I could think that, but that was kind of my deal. He certainly wasn't putting that on me. So in Zen we talk about the golden chains, the golden chains of discipline. They're pretty, but they're heavy, you know. So... And it has its place, you know? It has its place. But if we make it the whole of our practice, we're getting off balance.

[28:07]

We're getting confused. Eat sandwiches all day with the mind of the way, you know? Those are separate things. They're related, but they're separate. They're related in that actually what I find is that when I really attend to how I do something, I kind of find myself doing the right what's. So long breath is long, short breath is long. I attend to that, and after a little while, I feel that I'm breathing deeply. There's a kind of relationship. So how wonderful. We can't always control what we do, but we always have the chance to effect to work on how we do something, right? We can't always control our external conditions, but we can always control our attitude. We can always generate a heart of love and compassion and acceptance and ease and appreciation and mindful awareness, right?

[29:13]

So it turns out how, this how, this great how, liberating how we do something, for me, someone like me is instantly a trap again. And now I'm supposed to be Aware that my breath is long and my breath is short. Do you see how a person like me lives? There's a new should. There's a new should. And now it's not an external should. So I have the illusion that I have a little more control over it because it's my mind and I should be able to control my mind to have compassionate, warm, affectionate attention for my breath in all things. But it turns out I don't, actually. So no, now I've invested my spiritual life again in something that I can't control. And I've again set up that if I can control myself to do this thing, then I can be a spiritual person. And if I can't do that, then I'm not. Who am I?

[30:32]

Who are you? What is breath and who breathes? What is that basic being, that basic life that we have and that we are? that isn't a matter of succeeding and failing, that isn't touched by getting it right or getting it wrong. This who for me, is the deepest refuge and is the referent of the most profound Buddhist teachings.

[31:41]

Simply this person, simply being alive. Whether you're aware or not aware, whether you're doing the right thing or doing the wrong thing, who's doing that? And what is it that's doing it? And what is it to do? Who are we? So the more I practice, the more I feel. that just to be alive is enough. That just to be alive is it. And that the more I'm open to that, the more I want to take care of everything. I want to take care of what I do and I want to take care of how I do it. But I can't go wrong.

[32:48]

I can't slip off of that I'm a person, that I'm alive. We can't slip out of the basic value of being alive. I set up these tasks, these spiritual tasks, and I assign my value to my success at them. Their true value is beyond that. My practice now to share with you is to make a real effort to breathe from my hara and to practice exhalation in meditation.

[33:51]

And I ground that intention in a feeling of non-judgmental awareness of whatever breath I have. So I protect myself from my own intention by this deeper intention to take care of how... And I protect myself from that, from this weight of needing to have nonjudgmental awareness by practicing or asking or opening or just knowing somehow that who I am is basically okay, is in fact Buddha. So in that way I'm able to protect myself from myself. and protect myself from Buddhist practice, and protect Buddhist practice from Buddhist practice and from myself. So may all beings be protected. And realize beyond realization or non-realization, beyond success or failure, realize that just this person has total spiritual value.

[35:09]

And from there, doing great work to bring benefit and ease and joy to ourselves and all beings. So may our practice fulfill that vow. Thank you very much for your time this evening. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[35:58]

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