This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the Wednesday night talk at City Center. My name is Shundo, for those who don't know me. I see a lot of familiar faces in the room, and thank you all for being here. And I have my very own slogan for the evening. Thank you, I'm going deeper. I will see if that works, see if that happens. I want to thank Rosalie for giving me the opportunity to give this talk tonight. I know she's just got back from Tassajara, so I wasn't sure if she would be here or not, but very grateful to be up on the Dharma seat. And also I want to thank Ed for his encouragement since he became abbot. And thank various teachers of mine, Setsuan Galen Godwin in Houston, ten years ago gave me the name Shundo in my Lei Jukai and to Ryushin Paul Haller five years ago ordained me as a priest and also Myogen Steve Stuckey with whom I practiced as Shusawa Tassahara a year and a half ago so thank you to all of them for helping to get me here and also thank you to the person who left me chocolate outside my door at lunchtime after I complained that I didn't have any I think I know who that might be but it was very helpful

[01:26]

I'm going to say I'm very happy about this weather, at least until I put on four layers of robes, and I'm sorry. I'm sympathizing with all the priests here who have to suffer along with me. And it reminds me that I arrived in San Francisco in May 2014 years ago, and it was this kind of weather. People were going, don't get used to it. But I do enjoy it, except when I'm sweating. So Rosalie asked me to give this talk a couple of weeks ago, and... It's been an interesting process, seeing how different strands and ideas fall into place, and how my room gets remarkably clean while I'm procrastinating as well. I spent a lot of time cleaning this weekend, and I'm very happy about that. But little things come up, and I found in my sleeve a little note that I wrote one morning, which is probably the title for the talk, which I'll bring in later. And two weeks ago was the day of the full moon ceremony. One of my favorite parts of the Four Moans Ceremony is the commentaries and the precepts, and many of them are very inspiring forms of words written by Dogen.

[02:36]

And my particular favorite one is the commentary on the final precept I vow not to disparage the three treasures, which goes, to expound the Dharma with this body is foremost. The virtue returns to the ocean of reality. It is unfathomable. We just accept it with respect and gratitude. So I've always kind of resonated with this phrase. And I like the idea of expanding the Dharma with this body, because I always felt that meant I didn't have to talk about it. And when I was thinking about that just now, I remembered when I left here to go to Tassajara in 2002, and I had a departing student ceremony, which if you haven't witnessed, is when a student does a little tour of the Zendo and everyone bows to them. And before they leave, the teacher generally asks a question. And so Paul said, so, you've been practicing here for two years, you've picked up a little bit, so what do you understand about the Dharma? And for some reason, during Zaza, knowing that I was going to be asked a question, I kind of had the thought, I don't know anything about the Dharma, at least not that I can put into words.

[03:41]

And so that's what I said. Of course, being Paul, he asked a follow-up question. Oh, how would you express it? Then, of course, I was stumped. I said, well, I did three bows a minute ago, how about that? I can do them again if you want. So the embodiment of the Dharma, what does that mean? How do we realize that? I'm just thinking about the other lines too. The virtue returns to the ocean of reality. So the way I see that is whatever we do, it's not about us. It's just about the present moment. And it is unfathomable we just accept it with respect and gratitude. To me that means we don't have to worry about it so much. Just let it happen. And while I was doing some research for this, I was looking online at the different comments, because I know the Bodhidharma also wrote comments on each of the precepts. And I found a different translation of the Dogen comment from the Village Sender website, actually.

[04:43]

And it said, the teaching of the actual body is the harbour and the weir. Which is a little mysterious to me. The harbour and the weir. And one... site I looked at said, well the harbor is where the boats are safe and the fish are safe at the weir. Maybe there's some kind of poetic Chinese thing that I'm not getting that Lucy might be able to explain for us. And of course it ties in with a lot of the analogies that Dogen uses in the Genjo Koan where he talks about boats and fish and things like that. But it also reminds us that looking at the different translations, so to expound the Dharma with this body is foremost. And the teaching of the actual body is the harbour and the weir, two very different pictures. And any time we're thinking about anything in this practice, we're slipping between the words, especially the words that come from other countries and other cultures, other ways of expressions. So among the other things that have been coming up for me recently, I've been rereading the...

[05:48]

I read Pine Commentary on the Diamond Sutra, which is an amazing book, and I've read it three or four times over the years, and I thought I'd go back to it to see if I understood any more than I did the last time I read it, and the answer was no, I don't. But there's one bit that I've always appreciated, which is his commentary on the very first section. So the very first section of the Diamond Sutra, which we chant here on a Friday, although we don't chant the first section, we just pick up the sutra book and chant wherever we land on. which is a way of getting the whole sutra read in one go, although I imagine that not many people actually open the front page. So the first section goes, Thus have I heard at one time. The Lord dwelt at Srivasti in the Jetta Grove in the garden of Anatta Bendika, together with a large gathering of monks consisting of 1,250 monks and with many bodhisattvas, great beings. Early in the morning the Lord dressed, put on his cloak, took his bowl, and entered the great city of Srivasti to collect alms. When he had eaten and returned from his round, the Lord put away his bowl and cloak, washed his feet, and sat down on the seat arranged for him, crossing his legs, holding his body upright, and mindfully fixing his attention in front of him.

[07:00]

Then many monks approached to where the Lord was, saluted his feet with their heads, thrice walked around him to the right, and sat down on one side. So what happens then is Sabuti gets up and asks a question, and just to paraphrase rather than reading the whole section... And the question is basically, what's a bodhisattva supposed to do? And Red Pine in his commentary said, well, he's just demonstrated what a bodhisattva is supposed to do. Why does he need to ask the question about it? And I was browsing through Andy Ferguson's wonderful book, Zen's Chinese Heritage, which is a practice I'd recommend to anybody just to open it up at any age and start reading. It didn't take me long to find a koan version of the same kind of story. Da Wu, called Long Tang Chong Xin. One day Chong Xin asked Zen Master Da Wu, since I've come here, you've never taught me about essential mind. Da Wu said, since you came here, I've never stopped giving you instruction about your essential mind.

[08:05]

Chong Xin said, where have you pointed it out? Da Wu said, when you bring tea to me, I receive it for you. When you bring food to me, I receive it for you. When you do prostrations before me, I bow my head. Where have I not given instruction about your essential mind? Zhongxing bowed his head for a long time, which I guess means he's thinking about it. Dao said, look at it directly. If you try to think about it, you'll miss it. Upon hearing these words, of course, Zhongxing woke up. Zhongxing then asked Dao, how does one uphold it? Being enlightened is one thing. How you carry on with enlightenment is another thing. Dao said, live in an unfettered manner, in accord with circumstances. Give yourself over to everyday mind, for there is nothing sacred to be realized outside of this. And the this is italicized in here, so I'm assuming he means this present moment, this reality.

[09:10]

Maybe we can imagine he like this kind of thing. since they like to do that. And this story actually reminds me of Blanche, who has also been very instrumental in my learning here since I've been at Zen Center. So Blanche was the abbess when I arrived. And my first impression when I came to Zen Center was, wow, there's a lot of grown-ups here. And some of them are kind of nice, which coming, as a lot of us do, from somewhat dysfunctional families is a little bit of a relief. And it's very reassuring that I felt I was in the right place because there were such great people around. And Blanche and Lou, particularly, for me, were great examples on just how to live every day. So not necessarily what they said from the Dharma seat, but just the example of their actions, how they behaved every day and how they responded to circumstances. So Lou, particularly, you know, those of you who remember him, always cheating in altars, always stepping up to do dishes.

[10:14]

always putting the newspapers straight. These are great examples of expounding the Dharma with this body. And as I remember, he had that written on his rakasu, which I think, Blanche, you said you did the calligraphy of that on his rakasu, the rakasu that he always wore around the temple. So just showing up and doing what is needed. That's how we live our lives here. And a bodhisattva is someone who pays attention to whatever is needed. And Fu on Saturday was also talking about this when she was talking about tea ceremony, but also about Zen, and just learning the forms with our body, learning the more ritual and formal parts of the practice here with our body, just learning to do them over and over again. And the one part of that is that we never necessarily get them perfect, but that we just make that wholehearted effort to do what it is that we need to do, even when we're making mistakes, also called mistakes. And what I've really appreciated in doing this practice and living in this community over the last 14 years, and especially at Tassajara, where you get to do a lot of this in silence, is just noticing the connection.

[11:26]

And we often talk about the body of practice, or the monastic body, or this container of the body, like we're all practicing together. And particular examples of this that I like at the moment is in the morning, after the morning service, when the priests go up to the Kaisando to do a little service for Suzuki Roshi. It's just a silent, five-minute thing. And we all just bow together, fold up our zagus, step outside, bow together, and say good morning. That's all it is. But it's one of the sweetest moments of the day, just because we're just doing that one little thing together. And I'm a particular fan of chanting during morning service. This is probably quite obvious, those of you who go to morning service. And what I've found and appreciated over the years is that, you know, coming as it does after two periods of zazen. Sometimes in zazen, I'm kind of off in my head or a little bit sleepy. Not necessarily very present, even though, of course, we're supposed to be. It doesn't always happen. And when I get to service and we've done our prostrations, we start chanting.

[12:27]

There's that just kind of one body sound of everybody chanting harmoniously in this amazing monotone that we do. And even though I've memorized many of the chants, it's not a mental activity. And when we were doing the Sandokai this morning, I was trying not to think about what was coming next, because I was worried that I wasn't going to remember what was coming next. But it was just coming up naturally, just from years of having done it. And it's a body practice. It's a breath practice. It comes from here, and it comes from here. So for me, it's a great antidote to too much thinking. And then the more we do that, and as I say in Tassajara, when we do it in silence, you get to notice the smallest things. when I was at Tassara a few years ago, reading an amazing book that was written about the charterhouse monks, the Carthusians. And these are people who lived their whole lives in a monastery. And they get to, I think, talk one day a month, if I remember rightly. And the book is called An Infinity of Little Hours.

[13:29]

And little hours are the kind of private services they do in their cells. And there's also an amazing film called Integrate Silence, which kind of reflects the same experience, although for my mind it was a little bit faster moving for the monastic experience. But the one story I always particularly remember from that book is, you know, once a month they get to go for a walk outside the monastery and they get to speak to each other. And obviously in the book they're kind of relating, I think it's monks who have left the order who are relating these stories. And the story went, one monk saying to another, well, Brother Philip definitely doesn't like me. Did you see the way he passed me that chant book? So he just... Even without talking, we get to notice all these little things about each other. I'm never going to get very far in a lecture without quoting some Dogen. So this is from the Self-Receiving and Employing Samadhi. And the title, I have never really understood what the title actually means. And the way I think of it now is, it's a virtuous feedback loop of presence.

[14:34]

and attention. And the particular phrase I'm thinking of is, grass, trees, and lands, which are embraced by this teaching, together radiate a great light and endlessly expound the inconceivable profound dharma. Grass, trees, and walls bring forth this teaching for all beings, common people, as well as sages. And they, in turn, extend this dharma for the sake of grass, trees, and walls. When I first heard this, I thought this was kind of an environmental statement that he was saying, you know, the earth is valuable too. I think the way I see it now is really picking on the interconnectedness of everything. So if we are paying attention to the present moment, we get to see what is offered by everything around us. And so a couple of weeks ago, I was at Tassajara, and I love being in Tassajara, as most of you know. And when I was there... During my Shusei practice period with Steve, what I noticed was that, as wonderful as all the Zazen was, what I really appreciated was actually getting to hang out with the trees.

[15:40]

There were a lot of trees down in Tassaran. I was really kind of just enjoying their presence. And when I was down there, and there were some people in the room here who were down there with me that week, there was a lot of physical activity going on. We were outside all day, and I got to work with rocks, which is just about my favorite thing to do, building walls and steps. and various other things. Very physically demanding work. And I was completely exhausted every day. And then I also went running up the road after work a couple of times, which is even more tiring. But I felt so alive. I was very invigorated just from this complete physical exhaustion. And it's partly because I had no responsibilities that week except for moving rocks and showing up to Zazen and eating meals. So it was a very relaxed time for me. And then I came back to the city and, like, I don't know if it was the eclipse or the planetary alignment, but suddenly everybody wanted to talk to me and offload their problems to me. And as director, I have to have opinions about everything from trees to carpets to chairs to rent to scholarships to people's jobs, people's housing, all kinds of things.

[16:49]

And it all seemed to kind of land on me right at once. And so it was very, and this was just about the time that Rosalie asked me to give the talk, and so I was thinking about the contrast between the Tassajara body of, like, complete physical exhaustion, but great happiness, and what I call the city body, which is this kind of, like, mental crowding and kind of stress and tension in the neck. But even if we don't get the grass, trees, and lands here, we do get each other, we do get the Sangha, and we do get to appreciate each other. and notice each other. For me, this phrase of Dogen, you know, grass, trees and lands expound the Dharma, points to how do we receive the teaching? And in each moment, what are we paying attention to around us that allows us to access the teaching? And how does this moment manifest? So sometimes the moment manifests as being at Tassajara and moving rocks in the creek. Sometimes the moment manifests as

[17:51]

wearing four layers of robes and sweating. Can we manage without having preferences around that? Of course, it's always the harder thing. Another Dogen quote that came up for me as I'm assembling strands, hopefully into a coherent whole, or maybe not a coherent whole, but maybe just like a sketch or a skeleton for you to go and think about, from the Genjo Koan, which is, If you're going to read one Dogen thing, read the Genjo Koan and then just keep reading it until you're dead, basically. Frankly, I think as far as I'm concerned, the Genjo Koan is, you know, it starts there and it ends there and everything is contained in there. But the phrase that kind of popped up for me, and I was actually walking back through the panhandle the other day and kind of hanging out with the trees there, the phrase goes, when you first seek Dharma, you imagine you are far away from its environs. But Dharma is already correctly transmitted. You are immediately your original self. And I think we kind of resonate with this idea when we first come looking for the teaching.

[18:55]

It's like, well, somebody's got the teaching. Blanche has got the teaching because she's been here forever. And Ed's got the teaching. And we're kind of looking to see what it is. And actually, they're expressing it in every moment. And this is what the Buddha was doing in the Diamond Sutra. He was getting up. He was putting on his robes. He was going and collecting alms. He was eating his meal. He was sitting down. That's expressing the Dharma in every moment. But we're not trying to go and get the Buddha's dharma. The dharma is already correctly transmitted. We are immediately our original self. So we have to access our own dharma. So we have these wonderful examples to follow, but that's not your dharma. That's not your own enlightenment. You have to find your own enlightenment. So the title of the talk, which I wrote down in this little slip of paper, is Again, just a phrase that popped up into my mind while I was not actively thinking about this talk, but obviously it was bubbling away. We're all vessels of enlightenment. So enlightenment does not, you know, it's not everybody else gets to be enlightened and we don't.

[19:59]

We're all vessels of enlightenment and we just have to be able to access for ourselves. So we can practice together and we can notice all these little subtle things in other people. And I was reading this great... article in The New Yorker from last week about these people who are creating digital simulations of actors, these 3D computer simulations, and how hard it is to get a convincing human face. They can do orcs and they can do avatars and all these other things. But a human face is so difficult to reproduce because we're so attuned to paying attention to the slightest little detail, maybe just the curve of the mouth or the way the light bounces off the skin. And if that isn't rendered correctly, It stops being convincing and starts being really creepy. That's what we're saying in this article. So, you know, we're so attuned and we don't even know that we're doing that. You know, I'm kind of looking around the room and there's all these amazing different faces looking at me. But, you know, if there was a robot in here, it's like, whoa, wait a minute. You know, we're so attuned to watching people's expressions and noticing what's going on with other people at the moment.

[21:04]

But then can we notice that in ourselves? Can we pay attention to the things that are going on inside ourselves? Again, Genjo Koan Dogen talks about studying yourself. So how do we do that? And here's where I get to thank Christina, who earlier this year recommended a book by Reginald Ray, who is a Tibetan teacher, whose teacher was Chogrom Trungpa. And he's been studying for 20 or 30 years, I think. And the book was called Touching Enlightenment. was having a dokusan with her and experiencing some physical difficulties and stresses and strains. And she said, you should read this book. It would be very helpful for you. And thanks to Stacy, who is, she's at Tassara, isn't she? Stacy managed to get it from the library for me. And I read it. And I found it incredibly helpful in outlining some of the ways that I've been thinking about mind practice and body practice. And I've shared some of these passages in Young Urban Zen. But I wanted to share.

[22:06]

Some of them. So the first passage that really struck me is he's talking about meditation. He says, in the West, meditation is often practiced as a kind of conceptual exercise, a mental gymnastic. We often approach it as a way to fulfill yet another agenda or project, that of attempting to become more spiritual, according to whatever we happen to think that is. We may try to use meditation to become peaceful, less confused, sharper and more clear, more sane, more effective in our lives, even more conceptually adroit. The problem with this is that we are, once again, attempting to be managers, to supersede what is given, to control the other. In this case, the other is ourselves, our bodies, and our own experience. Ultimately, in our meditation practice, it is often our own somatic experience of reality that we're trying to override in the attempt to fulfill, once again, our ego aim.

[23:12]

In a Western context, this might not sound like a bad thing. We talk about people taking responsibility for themselves. We have to have a life, have boundaries, proceed with our plans, become an adult, and so on. But if that is all there is... then what often ends up happening on the meditation cushion is this. We have an ideal of what meditation is or should be, what we like about meditation, which might be some experience that we've had somewhere along the line. We then end up using our meditation as a way to recreate that particular desired state of mind, rather than being open to whatever needs to arise right now. So we're basically trying to recreate the past instead of stepping out of it towards the future. put the matter in bold terms, we end up using meditation as a method to perpetuate and in many cases increase our disembodiment to separate ourselves further from the call and the imperatives of our actual lives.

[24:15]

So I think there are different strands of this that really speak to me and how I approach meditation. It's like, oh, I want to do this. This is what I want to get from meditation. And then when you have that lovely, peaceful feeling, it's like, oh, I want to have that one again. I want to go back to the cushion and have that experience again. But that is divorcing us from the experience at the present moment. So the present moment might not always be comfortable. But we have to keep practicing until we find it. And I think for the first few years I was meditating, I kind of felt like I was just parking my body on the cushion and just getting to work on some of these mental processes and not noticing how much... was the interconnection between whatever was going on in my head and what my body was doing, or what my body was doing and how that translated into my head. There's another section I'd like to read from the book. And he says, for Buddhism, concepts which are memories of past experience are always superseded by what is occurring now. The conceptual abstractions constantly need correction and reformulation in the light of unfolding experience.

[25:24]

This is why in Buddhism conceptual versions of reality are called dreams. Finally, in relation to the actual immediate concrete fullness of reality, they have no substance. Why then do most of us take the conceptualized abstractions, the conclusions we come to, to be reality itself? Because our non-conceptual life is ever unpredictable and open-ended. It can leave us feeling uncertain, insecure, and unprotected. When we are able to pin things down and put them in definite and definable terms, we suddenly feel more safe and secure. We know who and what we are, or so we think. In taking our conceptual versions as reality itself, we have lost touch with the substance, the reality, the abundance, and the freedom that is always available in the present, pre-conceptual moment. The process of meditation involves gradually shedding our multitude of opinions built upon opinions of how things are, and becoming more and more aware of the literal, non-conceptual substratum of all our thinking, the substratum which is reality itself.

[26:34]

Reminds me of Daigaku Rume, a teacher who is in Los Angeles. He used to live here. He would always quote his teacher, Seki Harada Roshi, saying, you can't think about the present moment. I don't know if we're thinking about it. It's already gone. And so I think when we become more used to our own processes, and I think continued meditation is a way, if we can get past our conceptual frameworks, meditation is a great way to try and access those. And Reginald Ray talks a lot about how fear is one of the things that kind of blocks us from really accessing that, because fear kind of evokes this freezing response that stops us really responding to bodily sensations in a moment. But if we can get past that, then we can really start paying attention to what our deepest intention is. I was thinking about this when somebody came to see me the other day, and they were a little bit agitated.

[27:38]

And when they first started speaking, their breathing was kind of a little bit labored as they were trying to express themselves. And then as the conversation went on, and the person said more about what was really going on for them. And when they actually finally articulated something that felt like a much deeper intention, there was this kind of like just stillness and settledness that came out. And that agitated breathing had completely gone away. So it was just like a whole different settledness and groundedness. So becoming familiar with our own processes, even if they're not comfortable. And in that, I think, especially when we do that in sangha, also feeling how this happens for other people. The feeling that our experience is not different from other people's experiences. Other people go through the same fears, stresses, anxieties, and problems that we do. Everything is just a web of interconnection. And then as Dogen says, once we study the self, we forget the self, the small self, that is. We're actualized by myriad things.

[28:42]

So for me, being actualized by myriad things is just what he says with the grass, trees, and lands bringing forth the teaching for all beings. And all beings extending the teaching for grass trees and walls is just a virtuous feedback loop of presence and attention. So how do we physically respond to those feelings? And when those feelings are uncomfortable, it's often very difficult. And I find the phrase that comes up for me is just being in alignment with them. It doesn't mean that you necessarily like them. So if I'm getting a lot of direct-related stress coming at me, I don't necessarily like it. But it's much easier if I try to align with it, try to make it smooth, a little bit less stressful. And if we're in alignment with what's going on for ourselves, that is really meeting

[29:46]

the manifestation of each moment, the actualization of each moment. Dogen is always talking about practice realization, which is just manifesting what's going on in each moment. It's not somebody else's enlightenment, it's your own enlightenment. So be the vessel of your own enlightenment. Really means spend the time to Be familiar with these processes. Come into alignment with them. And alignment, one reason I like the word alignment is when I looked up the, and this was not for this talk but some time ago, I looked up on Wikipedia the definition of dukkha, suffering, the word for suffering, and came across this great etymological paragraph. In ordinary usage, the Pali word dukkha, or Sanskrit, dukkha, I don't know, actually, that's... diacritics here, I'm not sure how to pronounce it, dukkha, means suffering, pain, sorrow, or misery, as opposed to the word sukha, which means happiness, comfort, or ease.

[30:52]

Contemporary scholar Winthrop Sargent explains the etymological roots of these terms as follows. The ancient Aryans who brought forth the Sanskrit language to India were a nomadic horse and cattle breeding people who traveled in horse or ox-drawn carts. Su and deuce were prefixes indicating good or bad. The word car in later Sanskrit meaning sky, ether, or space was originally the word for a hole, particularly an axle hole of one of the Aryan's vehicles. Thus sukkha meant originally having a good axle hole, while dukkha meant having a poor axle hole, leading to discomfort. It's a very concrete image you can take with you, like rattling along in a badly constructed cart or rolling along in a nice smoothly cart. So when you're in alignment with physical processes, it keeps coming back. I don't know what's going on. It keeps coming back. Yeah.

[31:56]

Atmospheric interference. So being in alignment with our own processes, even if we don't like them, Just getting to hang out with them. Just getting to watch what other people do and how they deal with the everyday situations. Using those as examples, but not leaning on them as solutions to our own problems. I think that's all I was going to say, and there is time for questions. Connect. Can you be in a blind bad condition? Be abstated. So I don't see that you're lying. Are you resisting your action? Does it matter if you resist your action?

[33:00]

That's the donkey axle. I'm going to be here. We just say, I am agitated. Being aware that you're agitated helps come into alignment with the agitation, I think. That's how I look at it. It doesn't necessarily help you being agitated, because you're still going to be agitated. But you don't get upset about being agitated in the same way. Did you talk about the fine line between complacency or cassivity and the kind of engaged inquiry into whatever the discomfort is? The difference between complacency and cassivity and engagement with the discomfort. That's funny because I'm kind of thinking of like leaning back.

[34:07]

I'm kind of leaning back. I don't want to deal with this. And kind of leaning forward, like if there's a wind blowing at you and you have to lean forward into it. So I think it's an activity thing. It's that wholehearted thing. I'm trying to be wholehearted in the moment. So I think if you wholeheartedly meet your agitation or your discomfort. Tova. Talking about the body of practice, and I wonder if you've noticed changes in your own body, probably the years you've been practicing. Well, I used to think I sat up straight. I'm not sure I do anymore. I definitely got, I felt like, I mean, this was part of this whole inquiry at the beginning of the year. I felt that I was out of alignment in my sitting. And when I was talking with Christina about it, it kind of felt like it was the way that I was absorbing stresses and particular things and not necessarily coping with them or even meeting them properly. And it was just manifesting in my body as a lack of alignment.

[35:08]

So generally speaking, I think I'm a little more relaxed than I used to be. There's a kind of openness right here. When I do zazen instruction, there's a kind of a line right here that I always try and bring people's attention to. And it's very subtle. And just if you're listening to the audio recording, this is right across the ribs, just above the diaphragm. I think we spend a lot of time hunched over like this in our lives. And it's a self-protective kind of way of being. And a lot of the times when we're out in the world, we have to protect ourselves. So at a certain point, I kind of noticed that you could actually really lift up And the instruction I give is when you breathe in, lift the top of your ribcage, and you can kind of feel a little stretch here, right in front of the heart. And if you can keep that open, I mean, for me, there's a very different kind of experience that's going on just from that. And so, you know, when I do nyam zen meditation instruction, I'm always talking about upright sitting, but upright, I mean, kind of like open. So like open here in the lower belly, and open here in the heart.

[36:13]

And that, for me, makes a huge difference. So actually just getting to notice that was really helpful for me. One of the things that keeps surprising me about my practice is that there's always more to work than notes. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's ever-developing and obviously ever-aging as well. Although I'm actually more flexible than I used to be when I started sitting, which is nice for me for the time being. Yeah, I mean, it's the thing. Our body is never a static thing, so learning with the body is the constant learning process. We're always discovering new things, and new things come to light. Miguel. Okay. We've talked before, pretty much. I've told you that I live in my brain. Yeah. And I just have a thought and I want to verify it. You're already struggling again. Well, that's just it. That's just it. The exploration of one's own dharma.

[37:16]

I believe that my dharma is a mind dharma in discovering what my mind is. What I'm thinking is... Right now it is. Thank you. By ignoring the body and staying only in my head, what I've done is cut my mind short. It's a coping strategy. Yes, it is. It's not full spectrum, is it? No. But getting into the body means accessing the parts that hurt. You mentioned the flexibility that one develops or the flexibility that one loses. Even those spaces are memory. It's like I just realized that this holds thoughts, but this holds a lot. Both of them together develop a mind. So by not feeling your body... right with your head. By being in your head, you're not feeling your body. But once you get everything inside, you're back into your own mind. It's not making any sense. I think I can only give you my own experience around this, which is, you know, after a particularly stressful time, I was at Tassajara and I was just sitting there and I'd feel these like pings going off in my body, like in the lower back or in the foot.

[38:29]

It was just kind of a little releasing things, which felt like stored stuff was just... exploding or dissipating um and i wasn't intending it to happen it just sometimes did happen um but i think it takes a lot of hours of meditation to for the body to even want to be able to do that um and you know so in particular cases it could be really hard even just to allow you know that kind of opening and softening up but you just have to i would say keep plugging away at it plugging away at it There's a big heart in there and it's just waiting to pound out. Give it some room. Teresa. Thank you for your talk. So I have the overdue copy of Touching Enlightenment. Keep reading it. There's another section in here I didn't even read.

[39:31]

In that we said something to the effect of The body has no words. And so I wonder what that might mean to you in terms of starting to drop it into the body. The body has no words. So where does that leave us as vessels? So I have a hundred ideas floating around in my head, and none of them are the right answer, of course. And I was just thinking back to expanding the Dharma with this body as foremost. So if we listen to the body, are we using conceptual thinking to listen to the body? This is the thing. And I think this is what the first section was about, like we're using our mental and conceptual frameworks to...

[40:37]

control what's going on in the meditation process. So if we can continue meditating and just access what the body is doing, I don't think it's necessarily a conceptual thing, but the body will speak in its own ways. And it might speak by saying, this bit hurts. This bit really hurts. This bit is going to keep hurting. Is that pointing in the right direction or am I missing it completely? maybe many ways of coming to that but I just think dropping down into the body like as you're saying in a non-conceptual space paying attention maybe that brings us to the present moment by just paying attention to whatever body it's signaling without maybe without even labeling it you know the meditative practice of nodi so maybe in that sense A noty practice that has words.

[41:42]

It's still helpful, but it's another layer added onto reality. Yeah. Maybe it's just a question about technique. So I think labeling can be very helpful in terms of understanding your own experience. Understanding experience is not the same as experiencing experience, I think. Maybe. I see an arm over there. Lauren. Well, it's a body part, right? But what if you feel like your body is a burden and a thing, then you wish you could escape it? That's a thought. You don't want to sit with it. You don't want to feel it. Well, that's a good thought, sir. What's your body saying about this? Right now? Mm-hmm.

[42:44]

Oh, it just feels like a big lump. Can you start finding different parts of that lump? Mm-hmm. I'm breathing. I'm breathing. It is a lot of tension. And what happens when you laugh? Right. So these things aren't done then? Not what? Pardon? Oh. I have a feeling it's bedtime, but Devon. Thank you, Julia. Sometimes I feel like I'm going with the moment and I'm just experiencing.

[43:46]

Where are you going at this moment? Right now? Whichever moment you're going with. Where are you going with it? Maybe just talking to someone, just speaking in the moment, not thinking about the moment, just being present and being there. And then just as the moment's going, I say something without thinking about it first. Usually, my teacher sometimes puts it in trouble. And I say, oh, I should think about what I say before I say it, obviously. But then, if I'm thinking about it, I'm not any longer thinking. Speech is very difficult. Yeah, thinking about what you're going to say ahead of what you're going to say is often very helpful to keep us out of trouble, but it does overlay a few different levels on the present experience.

[44:47]

I think my guess on that is that if you're really kind of fully grounded and really kind of completely present, what comes up tends to be in alignment with kind of more skillful ways of speaking. So more deeply you can, not necessarily just going with the flow, but just like really grounded and present in the moment, then maybe there's room for a kind of wholehearted and skillful response. But in the meantime, just be careful what you say to your teacher. So hopefully nothing I've said has been too problematic. And thank you all for being here. Let's go to bed. 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.

[45:51]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[46:04]

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