Okay, good morning, everyone. I think we're ready to go. My name is Shundo. I think I know some of you who are joining. I don't know others, so good morning. Welcome to this meditation instruction. And the first instruction I'm going to give is just for you to close your eyes. Wherever you are right now, if it's safe to do so, close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. What do you notice? Is there something you can hear? What can you feel? Can you feel the air on your skin?

[03:15]

you feel your contact with the ground. Noticing internal sensations, maybe whether you're tired or awake. Maybe noticing your level of hunger or thirst. sensations are coming up for you. Even with your eyes closed, can you see how bright the day is? Just opening your eyes and taking in the visual information you have in front of you.

[04:29]

Just noticing colors and shapes. So this is the very basic practice of mindfulness. A good definition of mindfulness is choosing to pay attention to the present moment without judgment. So there are three parts to that, and we'll go through those. as we continue this session. So we have an hour to do this, so we'll have plenty of time for questions, hopefully, towards the end. But I want to talk, first of all, about the choosing part. So you've all chosen to join this meditation instruction. Under ordinary circumstances, you'd be coming to the Zen Center, and I would have gone to the Zen Center. And there's an intentional element of that movement to a place of meditation, which is very specific. The Zen center is a very specific kind of place. It has its own atmosphere. Even when you walk through the door, you can tell there's something special going on there.

[05:32]

So in the absence of that, in what ways can we choose to come into a meditative space? So if you notice behind me up here, I have my altar. A lot of Zen students, most Zen practitioners will have their own altar. You can't see very clearly on the altar, but I have my altar. monk's robes, I have my monk's bowls, I have incense, candles, and a flower, and flowers. And I've lit the candle, I've lit some incense, I've refreshed the flowers this morning. That's part of my intention, that's part of my choosing to come into a meditative space. So I'm doing a lot of meditation right from this very space I'm in now, in the past few weeks. So this altar has got a lot more attention than it usually does when I'm busy and out doing teachings in other locations so choosing to meditate a lot of that we're creating a space as well as a time to do this so thinking about what that means for your own space to have a meditative space that you can sit in that you feel comfortable safe that feels like a nurturing space so for me my altar is part of that nurturing space

[06:44]

And obviously, if we were in the Zen center, we'd have a lot of props. We'd have all the cushions and chairs and other things. It'd be much easier to show you some of the things I'm going to talk about now. So I've assembled my own variety of those. I'm going to be walking you through those as we go through this session. So we're choosing to pay attention to the present moment without judgment. That's the very basis of meditation. And in the present moment, is where our senses are, which is why I had you close your eyes, listen, feel, sense what's going on. We live most of our lives in our heads. Mental activity is where most of our energy goes. And that's not necessarily being in the present moment. We're all very aware of how much our thoughts are taking us back into the past and off into the future. And this is a very poignant time for doing that because we're in a very unique and particular time, which is unprecedented for many of us. of being in place and so our minds will naturally go back to that's how it was before that was normal or they're going forward to like when will it be back to normal again but we're right here right now in the middle of all of that so being present really means paying attention to what's going on in this situation not in the situation you want to be happening so just as this is not the same instruction as we would get if we were all in the same room together at zen center

[08:14]

Our meditation is the meditation that reflects who we are in this moment, in our own bodies, not in some ideal state. We're not pretending to be monks in a monastery or a hermit on a mountain. Wherever we find ourselves, this is where we meditate. This is the body we meditate with. It may not be a flexible body. It may not do all the things we want it to, but that's what we have. And so being in the present moment means being with the body, the life that you have right now. That's the second element. And the third element, without judgment, is really the hardest part and takes many years to even start to get on top of. So without judgment really means as soon as information comes in through the senses, light, smells, sounds, tastes, things you touch, the mind is evaluating, dividing those things into good, neutral, or bad. Always happening, constant process. That process separates us from the reality of the object itself.

[09:22]

An object isn't in itself good or bad. Our thinking about it is what divides it into a particular category that is true for us at that time, or is true to our ideas at that time. But it tends to separate us from what we're in the middle of. So the meditative technique is to not give all our attention, to the mental activity, to bring more of our attention to the physical life that we're living right now, the sensations that are immediate rather than the thoughts, which are the processes that go around that. So that's my stump speech for meditation. It's a practice that has been carried out by humans for several millennia across cultures, across continents. And at this point, if I was at Zen Center, I'd be turning around saying, this is the Buddha on the altar behind me. I have a Buddha, but it's a very small one, so you probably can't even see it. So the Buddha was a historical prince in India 2,500 years ago.

[10:25]

And he tried all the various religious practices or spiritual practices of his era, which during the Axial Era was the time that humans had enough time and leisure and organized society to be able to pursue... maybe the deeper questions of what it means to be alive. And Buddha tried many different practices, many ascetic practices, endured many hardships, went off into the forest, ate nothing, did a lot of very difficult practices, and then realized that wasn't necessarily the way to come to understand things. So he chose meditation because he had a memory of being a child sitting under a tree and feeling peaceful. And that practice that he chose, that he decided to do, led to his breakthrough of understanding, which as far as I can see is as good a picture as anyone has had of the human condition. And that's why Buddhism has survived and flourished through human cultures over the millennia.

[11:26]

So that's why we meditate. The Zen center is one offshoot of the teachings that Buddha taught in the same way that other religions have decided their own ways of approaching the teachings you know, in a way that made sense to them. Zen is a very particular way of doing that that has come from India through China and Japan and now to the West. But it has a very deep and long history. So there are many other styles of meditation and, you know, I encourage you to explore some of them. Maybe you find others that resonate more with you. But the Zen style is a very particular style and it's a style I've trained in. And that's what I'm going to be talking about. And a lot of what I'm going to be talking about is about physical posture. So I'm going to demonstrate that with different props that I have at home, which is not the same ones that we would have if I was in the temple. But traditionally, there are four meditative postures, standing, walking, sitting, and lying down. And sitting is the most widespread of those, and cross-legged sitting traditionally.

[12:30]

So I'm going to talk about those, but just remember that you can meditate lying down. I've had to do that myself in long retreats when I injured myself. You can meditate standing. I certainly know people in the Zen community who've needed to stand to meditate. You can meditate while walking. And that's a practice I undertake quite often. But sitting down is very traditional. But sitting cross-legged is not for everybody. So I'm going to demonstrate some of the other ways you can sit. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get up and fetch a chair. ordinary chair so the benefit of sitting in a chair if you don't have a lot of flexibility in your legs it's a very useful option and it also means you can do it anywhere you need no special equipment chairs are available everywhere you can meditate on the train under normal circumstances or at the airport many places you can meditate what I would say about this is ideally

[13:39]

You want to have your feet planted on the floor. I think you can just see my feet. Feet planted on the floor. Also, ideally, you want your hips a little higher than your knees. So I'm actually going to take a little cushion. Elevate myself a little bit. We'll talk a lot more about this in a minute, but this is all to do with tilting the pelvis. And the other thing I'm going to do and the reason why I'm sitting sideways is you want to be sitting upright. So most of us, and I include myself in this, I'm very used to sitting like this. I'm doing a kind of whistler's mother here. So this is what I think of as a comfortable position to sit in. And if I teach meditation to seventh graders, they think this is how they could be meditating. And I've been to other meditation instructions where they say, you can be sitting however you want. However, in the Zen style, we really do emphasize upright sitting. So if your back allows for it, allowing the back to be self-supporting and the head to be upright and i'll talk more about why this isn't ideal in a minute so sitting in a chair is always an option excuse me will i change props now what i don't have is a typical meditation bench such as you'll find at most centers and a

[15:07]

Zen supply places, which is a really wonderful way to sit, and it's one that saved my life when I first went to live at Tassahara, the Zen monastery, because I wasn't used to the amount of sitting that I needed to do, and I couldn't sit cross-legged for that amount of time. So this is actually a footstool from another chair, but I want to demonstrate the kneeling position. Again, maybe I can do that sideways as well. So here I have a forward tilt of the pelvis, because this is an angled thing. And I have my knees down on the ground and my feet, hips and knees are all in a straight line. This is actually a very comfortable way to sit. And if you go to the Zen Center, you'll find benches like this, which enable you to sit. Now, what you'll most often find at Zen Center is cushions. I have several cushions. I have a very firm one. And I had a very squishy one. This is my old cushion, and it's getting a bit flattened out. If you hear that making a noise, that's buckwheat hulls, which is a traditional filling.

[16:12]

This one is filled with kapok. I bought it from the Zen Center bookstore not so long ago, and it's very, very solid. So the kneeling position, now I'm going to move my screen down. So you can see my legs. So the kneeling position, you can just kneel down on your ankles like this. If you've done martial arts or tea ceremony, you'll be perhaps used to this. However, if you're not kind of trained to do this from birth, it gets very uncomfortable very soon because you're literally putting all your weight on your ankles. So you can use, if you don't have a bench, you can use a cushion to elevate yourself, which takes a lot of the pressure off. And this is a very comfortable way to sit. As you can see, I'm a little taller than I was before. So you're not putting a lot of pressure on. the shins or your thighs, or your calves, rather. But generally speaking, we use the cushions for sitting cross-legged on.

[17:13]

Now, you may not have a cushion like this, so you can also try this with a couple of pillows. I have some pillows here for my bed. You can sit back down on one of these. What we're aiming for is to be elevated with the hips above the knees. So this isn't very high. I'm going to try it with the second pillow. Now that would be a comfortable height for me to sit at. So you want to be, you know, finding ways you can do that. If you don't have your own meditation cushion at home, try, you know, sofa cushions or pillows. The rule of thumb is if you're pretty flexible, you can be pretty low down to the ground. So this cushion is very low down to the ground. I'm not feeling very flexible today, so I'm not actually going to use that one. I'm going to use this other one, which is much firmer, which is going to keep me a few more inches off the ground. And that's going to be a little easier for my hips and my knees.

[18:15]

Now, the first thing I want to emphasize here is that sitting like this with your knees in the air is what people do in commercials. I don't think it's a very viable way to sit. And the reason it's not a very viable way to sit is there is very little balance for one thing. And also, if I turn sideways, you kind of see that I'm Not really very upright. But the main thing is there's no balance because there's no stability. You have two sits bones on the cushions. If your knees are dangling in the air, there's nothing stopping you rocking forward and backward. So you're engaging a lot of muscles to keep you upright. So the very first thing you want to do is to try to get your knees down to the ground. Now, again, if we were at the Zen Center, we'd have these nice big black square cushions to support your knees on. I just have a yoga mat here, which helps. It's a little softer than the hard wooden floor. So you could put a blanket underneath you or something like that just to cushion the impact of your knees.

[19:21]

But really, you don't want your knees hanging in the air. If at all possible, get them down to the ground. So this is why the kneeling position is great. If you don't have this flexibility in the hips, this isn't going to be so easy. Also, if you have... very tight trousers on it's not going to be so easy either I have very stretchy pants if you want to wear sweatpants or something like that it's going to make it a lot easier to be like this you can also take a little cushion there are many square versions of this at Zen Center to put under your knees if your knees don't reach the ground but you want to have that support so that you have a tripod of stability you have your sits bones and your knees so that gives you a huge amount of stability I'm going to turn around One last time, because again, you see there's the elevation of the hips and what that does, tilting the pelvis forward allows the spine to be naturally curved. So there's less chance to be sitting like this.

[20:22]

So that's the very basis of a meditation posture. And the first thing you have to really be aware of is you don't have to cross your ankles if you don't want to. This is the kind of most straightforward position that puts the least amount of stress on the hips. It's usually called the Burmese posture. So literally one foot in front of the other. I can get both knees on the ground. I would encourage you, if you're going to try sitting for a long period of time, an extended period of time, to switch out from time to time. This hip is a little less open than this hip. My body is not symmetrical, as most bodies are. So this doesn't feel quite so natural to me, but I do work to try to make sure this hip stays flexible. So this is the very basic exercise. option now if you are feeling flexible you can go towards a half lotus position which is placing this foot on that thigh and i'm going to try this doesn't always work didn't always enjoy it and it's not necessary get the other foot on the other thigh and then you're in the full lotus position which was the traditional yogic posture she doesn't feel too bad

[21:38]

Now, if you're this flexible, you don't need to be as high as I'm sitting. This feels kind of high for me, and I would be doing that on my flatter cushion because with this amount of flexibility in the hips, you don't need so much support underneath you. And the only advantage to sitting in this way is that your lower back gets a little more muscular support, and that's beneficial in terms of keeping you upright and comfortable. And this is the reason why this is a traditional posture. And again, I'm going to switch my legs out here. So the reason this posture has been handed down through many human cultures is because it does allow, once you're used to it, it allows for a huge amount of stability and balance for an extended sitting. So that's the kind of prelude to the posture, getting yourself into this. comfortable position like this now if this doesn't feel comfortable for you then there's no you don't have to push yourself to do it the essence is you want to be comfortable because if you're not comfortable you're not going to want to continue to meditate and we do want you to continue to meditate so normally i'd be looking around the room and seeing how everybody was sitting and offering advice and suggestions so i can't really see how people are sitting

[23:05]

This is, you know, your starting point. Your tripod of stability, knees on the ground, sits bones on the cushion. Now, I have a problem with my legs going to sleep when I do this for a long period of time, and it's a very common thing to do. The easiest remedy for that, and I'm going to have to dodge away from my microphone, is to lean forward like this. If you lean forward, it pulls the muscles in your backside away from the sits bones, so it's less likely you sit back down again that you're going to be pressing on a nerve the sciatic nerve in particular is the one that can be impacted by this position so pay attention to that and anytime you're sitting it's always totally okay spring your legs up like this as a rest even if you're doing that in a meditation hall full of monks nobody is going to mind you doing that because it really doesn't disturb anybody So this is, let's say, the lower half of the body.

[24:08]

So if you're not sitting cross-legged, if you're sitting in a kneeling position or on a chair, really you've got the same stability. What I want to talk about now is the top half of the body, between the hips and the head, the crown of the head. And this is where maybe Zen sitting differs from other kinds of sitting. In my experience, paying attention to what the torso does and what the head does, makes a difference in the quality of meditation. That's my experience, but as Buddha said, don't take my word for it, try it for yourself. So having arrived in a seated posture like this, the first place I focus on, I'm going to have to move this aside, is my lower belly. So this is the Hara, the Dantien or the Tanden, depending on which tradition you're used to. So this is your focus of energy and your focus of gravity while you're sitting. So between the belly button and the pubic bone, there's an area. And if you go to Zen Zen and you look at the statues, particularly, you'll see that people are using this hand position.

[25:16]

And this emphasizes our attention to this particular area. So if you've seen old Buddhist statues, and again, if we were at Zen Zen, I'd be pointing out various examples here. But there are many different hand positions that you'll see in the statues, and all the hand positions have a particular significance. So it's not necessary to know about these, but the significance of having your hands like this is that as you breathe in, you're breathing in the entire universe through this area. And as you breathe out, you're breathing out the entire universe through this area. That's a visualization or a kind of mental picture you can have as you sit like this. I wouldn't say it's essential to sit like this, but if you spend time around Zen Center, you'll see a lot of people doing that. And what you're doing is taking the big knuckle of the middle finger of the left hand, resting it on the big knuckle of the middle finger of the right hand, laying the fingers on top of each other, and then just resting the thumbs very lightly and forming an oval shape.

[26:17]

And again, this is something you can give your attention to while you're sitting. If that doesn't work for you, and for some people it strains their shoulders a little bit, you can rest your hands down. You can have your hands held up. And again, there are particular energetic significances to this if you want to investigate that kind of thing. But really, the essence is to be comfortable. But this is our first, this is my first area of focus when I sit down. And part of it is I want to be breathing down into here. So if I stop for a moment and... Pay attention to my breath. My breath is very shallow. It's up here. And that's partly because I've been talking a lot and I'm kind of energized from talking a lot. So breathing from up here is a sign of the sympathetic nervous system, which is the fight or flight response. Now that's a very evolutionarily useful thing to be able to do. Short, shallow breaths in the chest, a lot of energy pumping around the body enables you to respond to any dangerous situation.

[27:21]

But we're talking about meditation here. This isn't a dangerous situation, hopefully. You can move into the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest and repose response. And there's a mutual feedback system between the breath, the body, and the nervous system. So that if you're not breathing from here, but breathing all the way down to here, your parasympathetic nervous system and the rest and repose mechanism start to kick in. And again, that's why people meditate to calm down. Because physiologically, you're allowing the body to do that. Now, this is where what we folks in Zen call upright sitting really comes in handy. Because if we're hunched over like this, we're compacting the area around the lungs. So it's not so easy to breathe in when you're slumped. So sitting upright, Again, just picturing the difference between that and that, that amount of space you're allowing into the lungs allows free movement of air in and out of the body.

[28:31]

So once you set it on your cushion, you're breathing in and out gently through the nose. There's no particular style of breathing that we use in Zen. We're not the yoga tradition like that. Just natural breathing in and out through the nose. You know, the only diversion from that is if you're really sleepy, you can focus on your inhale. And if you're really stressed, you can focus on the exhale a little more. But ideally, what we want to do is have the lungs filling, the diaphragm moving freely up and down, which it needs a little space to do, and the stomach expanding and falling and contracting with the breath. So this is why when I sit down, I first pay attention to this area. Am I breathing all the way down here? And to do that, I really do need to be upright. And to be upright, you need the spine to hold you up. You need the spine to be doing the work of keeping it upright. And that's why having hips higher than knees and a forward tilt in the pelvis really works because it allows the curves of the spine to manifest.

[29:39]

So it's a very physical practice that we're talking about here, really getting your physical body in a particular alignment. And if you're lying down, obviously you have that kind of space in the body. But any kind of sitting or standing, you really want to be paying attention to how balanced you are and how upright you are. I often say, think of your spine as the gear stick in the car. I'm like, what's the neutral position here? Because any time you're not sitting upright, and especially if you're doing, you know, television, I mean, meditation as seen in commercials, your spine is not holding you up. I can feel my abs contracting when I do this, which is going to impact my ability to breathe freely. So the abs don't need to hold you up when the spine is holding you up. They can relax, and the breath can flow down and rise and fall. So that's the very simple biomechanics of doing this.

[30:41]

And then from here, just checking, here's my solar plexus here and my collarbones again. the amount of space that you can create by sitting upright. And it's very easy as you get tired to kind of start slumping forward and decrease that space. And in the many hours of meditation I spent at Tassajara as a monk, I found that paying attention to this area, creating space around the heart and the ribs actually made a huge difference to the quality of my meditation. It's a difference between this openness here and a closing down. Now, when we move through the world, we often close down and lock up around here. It's a very natural, energetic response to being out in a crazy world. But again, during a meditation session, we want to focus on opening up this space. And again, this allows the breath to be deep and steady. And just one final word, the head, very heavy object. Maybe I will turn sideways again.

[31:43]

So if you're sticking your chin out, you're instantly creating a lot of tension around the neck and shoulders, which you're gonna take a lot of tension anyway while you're sitting. So sticking the chin out really is gonna impact a sense of relaxation here. So instead, thinking about moving, you don't have to do this quite in such a pronounced way, tucking the chin in towards the throat, allowing the neck and the weight of the head to be a little more here backwards rather than forwards. So these are all kind of interconnected things. You know, obviously your body is one whole mechanism that functions in the way that it does and may or may not be so easy for you to do these things. But I really suggest that the best you can, this kind of sense of uprightness and strength coming from the spine, openness in the front of the body and this kind of balance between being rooted by gravity so rooted onto the cushion and lifting up through the crown of the head to give you that sense of tallness and uprightness is again you know impacts the quality of your meditation as you're sitting there so that's my suggestion i have been talking for a long time and i think we should practice this so the other thing to know about

[33:13]

Zen meditation is there's nothing to keep your mind from going crazy. In other traditions, you'll have a body scan, a visualization or a mantra, which will keep your mind focused on one thing. And then we don't offer you one particular thing. We just say, be present with whatever is arising. So whatever that's sensations, I can hear a robin out of the window. We would keep our eyes open and gently gazing towards the floor to have little visual information coming in, whether that's just tuning into your posture, which is what I spend a lot of time doing, tuning into your breath, which is always available for you to pay attention to. Whatever is arising in the moment is where your attention goes. And you notice how your mind wants to take you somewhere else. And each time it does that, bring yourself back without judgment, Paying attention to the present moment. So I'm going to ring the bell in a minute.

[34:15]

So get yourself into a comfortable position, whatever that looks like for you right now. We're going to try this, which is really just sitting, paying attention to the present moment and noticing where the judgment comes up. Letting go of judgment the best you can. Not getting caught up in thoughts. The mind is always going to be active. Anyone tells me they stopped thinking during meditation, I tend not to believe them. But the activity of the mind is not your primary concern right now. It will continue bringing your attention and your focus to the other parts of being alive in your body through the senses. Okay, so settle down where you are. I'll ring the bell and then I'll ring it again in a few minutes. And I hope we'll have time to do a little bit more of that before the end.

[42:01]

We have about 20 minutes left for this session. I'm just going to go and change the view on my laptop screen so I can see people. And I think if people have questions, hopefully Kodo, who is moderating here, can unmute people so they can ask you questions. So if you have questions, please raise your hand if you're able to. Thank you for doing this. I appreciate it. I had a question in regards to the hands. Now, typically when I sit, I only have my pinky side of my hands touching my stomach. Should my thumbs also be pressed up against my stomach when I'm sitting? Great question. No, I generally just have the pinkies there as well. So the thumbs are, yeah, I'm actually basically looking down.

[43:03]

So my palms are kind of facing up towards the ceiling. So the thumbs are a few inches from my body there. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. And then also, it's hard to tell from the camera, but I also don't usually have my wrists touching anything, touching my thighs. Is that fine? Or should my hand be lower? No, I have my thumbs pretty much at my belly button level. And the pinky is just pressing against my bladder here, which I can feel. Okay. Um, so enough, um, yeah, I think if your wrists are resting on your thighs, then you're kind of, you're, you're just letting it fall apart a little bit. Um, so, and again, this, you know, this isn't always comfortable for people on a, in a longterm basis, you know, people can, can get a lot of stress and tension in the shoulder, but I mean, it's, it's also a very good kind of attention point. So one time I was meeting with one of the abbots at Tassajara and about halfway through the meeting, um, you know, where I was sitting like this for some period of time, said, what's happened to your mudra?

[44:04]

And I had, you know, kind of let it slide down my legs a little bit. And he had noticed that. I had noticed it. So he kind of encouraged me to bring it back, you know, to the correct position. So that's, you know, a part of the mindfulness you can develop as you sit. Perfect. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. My pleasure. I'm also just realizing that... In an ordinary situation, I'd be looking at the room and kind of seeing or feeling everybody's energy as we were doing this, and it's obviously much harder to do that on the screen. So I hope everybody's energy is okay. Daryl, yes. Yes. Hi. I've been told by a couple of teachers that it really doesn't matter how you sit, and yet I've been told again that it is important. how you sit. So I'm kind of confused. Which is appropriate, to sit correctly or sit in a way that is natural for you?

[45:08]

That is a very good question. Were the other teachers Zen teachers or just in different traditions? Yes. There were Zen teachers? Zen. Okay. Yes. The great thing about Zen is we don't always hold to one particular point of view. If you spend any time around this, then you'll notice that there's a very comfortable amount of like, well, you can do this or you can do that. Well, actually, you could do this or you could do that. So I'm going to suggest this because that's to a certain extent how I was trained. And as I say, my years of sitting at Tassajara, the thing I really noticed was that my posture impacted my sitting. You know, at least one time when I was down there doing an intensive training period, we had a monk who was sitting in a lazy boy because they had a bad back and that was the only way they could sit comfortably. And there was a part of me saying, well, that's not very traditional. And there's a part of me like, that's what works for that person. And these days I'm much more of like, well, that's what works for that person kind of, then you have to sit like this.

[46:11]

So I would encourage you to be comfortable. The reason I was talking a lot about this kind of posture is I do feel that physiologically there is a lot of stuff that happens in the body with that kind of uprightness that happens. So teaching a bunch of seventh graders, if they're sitting like this, they think that's super comfortable, which is fine. And, you know, there's other messages going on. And just, I'm not going to do my spine any good. There's another kind of element to that, which is like a modern element in that, I actually picked up my phone and threw it on the other side of the bed. But spending time looking down at our phones like this is very bad for our neck and head for many reasons. But physiologically, this is a kind of a posture of resignation and defeat. And our body knows that's a posture of resignation and defeat. And so sitting like this, there's kind of a feedback loop that goes on in the body of like, ugh, the world is too much.

[47:12]

And so every time we... looking at our phone down like this, that's the message we're giving to our body. Now, we don't necessarily, we're not aware of that, but I think our body gets that message. And so for me, the opposite, like when we're sitting upright, it's like whatever the world has, you know, I'm here. You know, whatever is coming at me internally or externally, whatever is coming towards me, I'm not ducking away from it. I'm not showing away. I'm not leaning this way to avoid it or that way to avoid it. I'm just going to sit right here in the middle of everything. And so there's a representative value to the posture like this as well, I would say. However, as I said earlier, and I do want to stress this as well, being comfortable is really important. So for me, I find it pretty comfortable to sit like this. Now I can sit half lotus. I couldn't when I started sitting because I wasn't very flexible, but now I can. So this is very comfortable for me. If it's not comfortable for you, then you're not going to want to continue.

[48:12]

If it's more comfortable for you to sit in a different way, I would encourage you to do that and experiment. Well, I've sat in a half lotus for years, and I switched back and forth. I've noticed that in your instruction, practicing these simple exercises, my breathing has changed just in the course of a few minutes. So I'm thinking that... Between the half lotus and raising my chin instead of holding myself up using my core like I had been doing, that it's actually simpler and more relaxed for me to sit with my chin up and my shoulders dropped with my core relaxed. Well, good. And I hope that you don't have to be in half lotus to have that. Excuse me. You know, that's where the bench is handy. Or even sitting on a chair, you can have that same uprightness in the upper half of the body.

[49:15]

You know, one of the key elements is having your hips a little higher than the knees, but you can also do that in a chair. So don't feel you have to be in half lotus to have this kind of uprightness in the upper half of the body. You know, what you're doing in the lower half of the body is in a way neither here nor there as long as, you know, as long as your spine is allowed to do its work. Does that make sense? Yes. Yes, it does. And thank you very much. My pleasure. Any other? I'm saying that right. Hi. Hi. So my name is Enes. I'm joining the call from Turkey. I've been doing Zazan for a while, like four or five months. And sometimes... First of all, there is a term which is called awareness. So we should have to be aware during Zazen. And there's also another term, please correct me if I'm wrong, Samadhi. So the concentrated, deep meditative mind.

[50:18]

So sometimes the time passes very quickly. And I think I'm very deep Samadhi in deep Samadhi. Or sometimes time is very slow. And I think maybe I'm very aware of everything. So is this a contradiction between these two terms, and how can I adjust this? Yeah, traditionally, I think meditation is divided into two sides, and the samadhi kind of, which is the correct word, is the concentration. So concentration is a sense of just being focused, and what you're focusing on is neither here nor there, but kind of a concentration. And then the other side is the vipassana, is the traditional word, which is the insight. So you're kind of like investigating. Now the samadhi, I think concentration can also be awareness. I'm never very good with all these technical terms because I just tend to sit here and see what happens. But awareness, ideally, there's a continual unfolding awareness of moment by moment what is happening.

[51:26]

I think it's very easy, and I've done this for many, many hours myself, to kind of be sitting here and just kind of relax a little bit, close your eyes and daydream, and go off, and the bell rings at the end of the session, like, oh, wow, that was half an hour already. But that's not quite the same thing as sitting here with the constant moment-by-moment awareness. Now, that constant moment-by-moment awareness is really hard. It's kind of taxing your mind to do that, and the mind's like, no, I'm done with this. Let's go and think about something. So if you drift off into a daydream, it's like, well, that's okay. But when you can come back, you know, if you spend two minutes out of half an hour with that strong focused awareness, that's great. You know, maybe next time you do three minutes, maybe one day you do a whole half hour like that. And then the next day is two minutes again. You know, that's just what happens. It's just, you know, we're human beings with... busy minds and tired bodies. So sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad.

[52:29]

So we want to cultivate, make stronger that awareness muscle. And it's a muscle. You can work the muscle. But yes, you will drift away and sometimes time will pass. At the end of that time passing, do you feel, oh, I was in a daydream somewhere. I was thinking about chocolate or holidays or the beach or whatever, soccer, or were you moment by moment like, yes, breathing, heat, thought, you know, were you aware of the processes that went through? And that's just a practice you keep doing. I hope that helps. Thank you. Any other hands there? Well, it's wonderful. Thank you for being here. So I know that the online Zendo continues into the next thing is the Zen Center's traditional Saturday morning Zazen.

[53:36]

And I know that the kind of session for that begins at 9.10. So we're going to have a few more minutes for that. After that, at 10 o'clock, there will be a talk, which you're very invited to sit and listen to. Today's speaker is Jay Garfield, and he's a very well-known Buddhist scholar. I think his specialty is the style of Indian Buddhism that moved China to become Zen. So it's kind of pre-Zen Buddhism. And I know that he knows that he's speaking to people who aren't scholars, who know an awful lot about these things. So I imagine it would be a fascinating insight into the philosophical side of Buddhism. I think I would characterize Zen as the less philosophical and the more embodied. kind of practice. But it came out of a very particular philosophical Indian tradition, I would say. And if you want to know more about that, I would encourage you to stay for the lecture. But if there aren't any more questions, I'm going to suggest that we sit just for a few more minutes, just integrating whatever you've heard, whatever you've taken away from this.

[54:44]

And I would encourage you to come back and attend another session with a different teacher to see if maybe you pick up different ideas. or notions or have a different sense of what the request is. But let's just take another moment to sit quietly and see what happens as we sit together. So thank you those who've joined me.

[58:17]

I hope you have felt encouraged to explore a meditation practice or deepen it or go further. So I'd encourage you to stay with Zen Center online as they transition into their main morning sitting and lecture. I'm going to step out of the way to allow the Zen Center organizers to do that. My name is Shundo and thank you for being with me. And I wish you all a very pleasant Saturday. It's a beautiful day here in San Francisco, and I hope it is where you are. Thank you very much.

[58:48]

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