Okay. Well, good morning, everybody. Those who are joining, we're going to wait a little bit. It's just coming up to five past eight. We'll give it another five minutes before we actually start the meditation instruction. So in the meantime, just get comfortable, relax, and enjoy yourself. And you can assume a meditation posture if you'd like to. Just sit, relax, slow down, get ready. I'm going to just fiddle with the screen a little bit. I won't necessarily get to see all your names. I'm just seeing my view options. such a distance that I can't read the small print on the screen with my reading glasses.

[01:16]

So if you see me lunging towards the screen that's all I'm trying to do is read what the information is. While we're waiting to begin, you may just tune into whatever emotions you might be feeling as you sit and wait for the session to start.

[02:46]

Sense of curiosity, anxiety, whatever it is, just see if you can notice what your body is feeling. I realized I did not have my bell to hand, and it's good to have a bell to hand for teaching me.

[05:09]

So good morning, everybody who's joining. Thank you for coming along to this meditation instruction on a Saturday morning through the San Francisco Zen Center Online Zendo. My name is Shundo. I'm a priest who trained at the San Francisco Zen Center for about 15 years, including about five years of living at Tassajara and 10 years of living at City Center. These days I live out in San Francisco, teaching in different forums. And I've offered this instruction many times over the years, but mostly in the Buddha Hall. And I did this online version a couple of weeks ago, so this is not my debut at trying to do it at home. But if there are any rough edges, please forgive me. So the first thing we can do is really just close our eyes and pay attention to what is happening. outside you and what do you notice inside you? What sounds can you hear?

[06:18]

Even with your eyes closed, can you tell the quality of light around you. What is the temperature of air on your skin? And internally, What kind of thoughts do you have rushing around your head right now? What kind of level of hunger or thirst are you aware of?

[07:19]

Do you feel awake or still sleepy? Do you feel energy in the body? Do you feel tension? And what kinds of emotions can you tune into? So these are the very basic practices of meditation. A very simple definition which is commonly used is that we're choosing to pay attention to the present moment without judgment. And there are three elements to this. There's a choosing part. The first part is the choosing. So where we're directing our attention. Our attention is not necessarily very disciplined.

[08:29]

In Buddhism we often use this phrase monkey mind. which I think really aptly describes how our mind can very easily jump from one thing to another. And as we pay attention to that, even just that aspect of what our mind is doing, we notice that the mind is often going off to the past or off into the future, very frequently, in fact. So it's very hard for the mind to stay absolutely right here in the present moment. So choosing to pay attention to the present moment. And then without judgment, because while we're living in the present moment and experiencing it through our senses, judgment from the mind comes up all the time. So we're always categorizing, sorting, and giving judgments on our experience moment by moment, categorizing them into good, bad, indifferent, giving whole vocabularies to what it is that we think is going on.

[09:31]

And that process takes us out of the present moment. It takes us out of fully experiencing the present moment. So we fully experience the present moment as living bodies. Our senses, our actual physical being lives in the present moment. And our mind is like a processor that's taking all the information that our bodies are giving it and letting us know what it thinks about that. And our minds have developed that as a way to keep us safe, to keep us moving through the world, to stop us getting run over by trucks. And that's really great. But it also means that the mind is constantly on high alert. And that means the body doesn't really get to relax. Our nervous system has two modes. It has the sympathetic nervous system, which is the fight or flight response, where we're breathing up high in the chest, we're on constant alert, chemicals rushing through our body, and we're ready for anything. And that's a pretty exhausting place to be.

[10:33]

Most of us know what that stage feels like. And the opposite place to be is with the parasympathetic nervous system, where we're in rest and repose mode, where the body slows down, calms down, and if you see what my hands are doing, my hands are going down to the base of my belly. This is an area we'll talk about in a little while. So through meditation, we can take ourselves from this constant alert, flight or fight, monkey mind state into a state of calm, present awareness of what's going on. Now, adding the Zen part of that means that we do things slightly differently to other styles of meditation. We often say there's no sense of attainment. We're not meditating in order to become calm. It's a happy byproduct of being in this meditative state. And we also don't give you any particular method for meditating other forms of meditation you'll have a mantra or a visualization we'll be doing a body scan like a very disciplined kind of way to keep your mind focused on one thing at one moment the zen style is much different to those and it's actually a lot harder for a lot of people probably took me about five years to figure out what i was doing but i was kind of a slow learner all that we're asking you to do in zen meditation is just to be aware

[11:56]

of the unfolding reality at the present moment. There's good, bad, but there's nothing happening. Whatever is happening, you're just sitting there in the middle of it and letting it happen, being aware of it, noticing where the judgment comes up, noticing where your mind goes. So it's quite an amorphous style of meditation, but I find it's very, very valuable. And it's a way of stepping back from the way we usually engage in the world the way we're usually interacting in terms of what can I get out of this situation? What are my feelings about it? And just stepping back into what I call radical non-doing. We're not trying to do anything. We're not trying to be anything. We're just sitting here. And one thing that I'll talk about a lot as we go through this session is posture. And this is something that I found very helpful to pay a lot of attention to in the many hours I spent doing meditation. in the Zen style which we call Zazen. And we also call it Shikantaza.

[12:58]

We use a lot of Japanese words in the Zen tradition because Zen has come to the West from Japan. So we still use those words quite frequently. But Zazen literally just means seated meditation. So I'm sitting on the floor here. And Shikantaza means just sitting. So we're not sitting in order to do something else. We're not sitting and trying to calm our mind. We're not sitting and trying to calm our body. We're just sitting. Whatever happens is whatever happens. So I'm going to talk about posture and I'm going to offer different suggestions for posture. I'm sitting right now. You can't see my bottom half, but I'll change the screen angle in a minute. There are four traditional postures for meditation, standing, walking, sitting and lying down. So I know of people who've lived at the Zen Center who practice standing meditation. I do a lot of walking meditation myself these days. And if you spend any time doing extended sitting, there'll be walking meditation periods interspersed with the sitting just to give your body a rest.

[14:02]

Lying down meditation is also pretty great. I had to do that at the monastery one time when I hurt my leg and I couldn't sit cross-legged at all and I couldn't even sit on the chair comfortably. So the Abba said, come and lie down in this endo. It would be great. And the time passed very quickly. The only difficulty with lying down Meditations, it's much easier to go to sleep. But mostly what I'm going to talk about is seated meditation. So I'm seated on the cushion, which you can't see now, but again, you will see in a minute. But I want to demonstrate some other options because sitting cross-legged doesn't work for everybody. So first of all, I'm going to fetch the first of my props, which is my kitchen chair. So this is just an ordinary wooden chair. I'm actually going to kick it back so hopefully you can see my feet. I'm going to be disappearing off mic a little bit. The good thing about sitting in a chair is you can do it anywhere. So I'm very fond of meditating at airports under normal circumstances. And I also make my commute when I was commuting across the East Bay.

[15:06]

I make that part of my meditation practice as well. So sitting in a chair, you can sit anywhere. What I'm going to suggest, if it's physical, physically possible for you, is to sit in an upright kind of way. So many of us, and I include myself in this, enjoy sitting like this. It seems like a comfortable thing to do. It's relaxing. You've got your head down and down. It's actually high on the organs in your torso. And I'll talk more about this as we go through the session. So what I'm going to suggest is that you, if you can, if your back allows it, to sit upright. Ideally, you'd want your hips slightly higher than your knees. So this chair isn't ideal for that because my hips, my knees are almost as high as my hips. And keeping your hips, knees and ankles in pretty straight line, like this, you're not man-spreading or splaying out at all. You want to be in fairly close alignment. And you want your feet planted on the floor if at all possible.

[16:10]

This gives you a sense of grounding and stability. So this is my, if I was going to be meditating in the chair, this is what I would aspire to be doing. You see the spine is holding me upright here. I'm not using the chair back to hold me upright. Another option for meditation is kneeling. meditation or a kneeling seated position now if you go to the zen center you'll be aware they have many meditation benches which are really great ways to do that i don't have a meditation bench at home so i'm improvising with my footstool from my armchair and what i'm going to demonstrate is this sense of having your feet below your backside and kind of a kneeling in a position like this so as you see it's very easy for the spine to be upright here And what the kneeling position is great for is it doesn't put any pressure on your hips if your hips are not very flexible.

[17:15]

That bench gives you a kind of a lateral stability so you're not leaning one side or another. I'm going to demonstrate this again with a cushion. This is also possible to do kneeling meditation with a cushion. So hopefully now you can see where my legs are going to be. Now if you're trained in martial arts at all, you might be used, or if you've done tea ceremony, you might be totally used to sitting like this on the ground with your backside resting on your heels. It's a very nice way to sit. Unless you're trained to do that, it gets very uncomfortable very quickly. So that's what the bench does. It gives you a little bit of elevation like that. So you're not putting pressure on the lower part of your legs. And you can also do that with a cushion. I grabbed this from our bench out on the deck. any kind of home cushion you have, you can either place it underneath you like this, or what I'd be tempted to do is actually place it between my legs like this.

[18:19]

So I don't have a lot of elevation with this, and there's also the possibility of sliding off from one side to the other, but it does stop your legs going to sleep quite so quickly. And if you don't have a traditional Round meditation cushion. This is one I got from Zen Center bookstore a few months ago. Any kind of cushion or pillow that you have at home can serve for a seated meditation. So this one, because it's kind of squishy, I might be tempted to double it up if I wanted to sit cross-legged. So that gives a certain amount of elevation, which is something you're looking for. A basic rule of thumb is if you're... relatively flexible you don't need so much elevation and if you're not so flexible it's good to be a little bit higher up so i actually have two cushions here at home i have this fairly fat cushion which is very solid and very new i also have my very old original sitting cushion from about 20 years ago if you can hear that sound that's buckwheat hulls which make it pretty firm and that's also a lot lower so if i sit on this i'm much lower to the ground

[19:30]

I don't always feel like doing that. So if you're not super flexible, this would not be enough height for you. And what I'm going to go through next is the basic sitting posture on a cushion because you have potential of stability here. And what you don't want to be doing, I always like to say this these days, is this kind of thing where your knees are hanging in the air. The only place I really see people meditating like this is in commercials. So I think it's commercial-speak for meditation. See people, they're looking very serene, their fingers are doing this, or whatever their fingers are doing, knees are hanging in the air. The difficulty with this posture is there's no balance and stability to it. It gets tiring pretty quickly. So what you want to do, and I'm going to trade out here for my hard cushion, is to have your sits bones on the cushion. and your hips here higher than your knees and gives you a chance for the knees to land on the ground.

[20:34]

Let me scoot back so you can. So here my knee is hanging in the air and here my knee is on the ground. So this gives you a tripod of stability with your sits bones and your knees. And this is a very stable balance position to be in. You can also, if you need to, use a little support cushion or a blanket or anything else. to tuck it under your knees to give you that same sense of stability. So this is a very basic cross-legged sitting position. And you don't have to contort yourself with this. When I first started sitting, I wasn't very flexible. I spent all my life running and cycling, and I didn't have a lot of openness in the hips. So this was what I managed most of the time. So the very straightforward posture is just to have one foot in front of the other. There's no crossing that happens at all. You can also, and I recommend this, switch from side to side. Have the other foot in front just to see which feels better for your body.

[21:35]

This way feels a little more natural to me because my body is slightly asymmetrical, as I think most people's bodies are. So I find this is the way I would naturally default to sitting. And it's good, every now and again, to switch it out. So my left hip doesn't open quite as much as my right hip. So this feels a little stranger to me. But the essence here is that I have stability from the sits bones and the knees. Now, if you're feeling flexible, if you have that capacity, and this is not something you have to force yourself to, but if you're able to, it gives you a little more lower back stability. You pick up your leg, put the foot up on the thigh. So it gives you a little tighter kind of bind here. And again, it's well worth If you're able to do that, switching around and trying the other side. So again, this is my less natural combination. So I spend less time sitting like this. I can feel this hip stretching a little bit.

[22:38]

Now, if you look at statues of the Buddha, quite traditionally or traditional depictions of people meditating, you'll notice it generally sitting in full lotus position where you try this, not always guaranteed to work. Again, both feet on both sides. Now I'm sitting on my tall cushion here, which I don't need to if I'm sitting in full lotus, because you don't need quite so much elevation with this kind of stability. So this is a very traditional way to sit. It took me about 10 years to manage that, and I don't do it very often. So it's not an essential component to sitting meditation. It does give you a little more balance, a little more stability in the lower back muscles. So what I'm going to default to is my... normal position, which is this. Now, what I have to pay attention to is that my legs don't go to sleep, especially this leg, which tends to go to sleep after about 20 minutes. What you can do for that, as you settle yourself on the cushion, lean forward, keep your chest elevated.

[23:43]

If you do that, you feel the butt muscles moving away from the sitz bones. So that makes it less likely that you're going to sit down and compress the sciatic nerve. is part of what your thought going to sleep is. So this is my stable meditation posture that I sit in quite often and it's very comfortable for me to sustain for a while. Now you want to find whatever position is comfortable for you because if you're not comfortable when you're sitting you're not going to want to do it very much and it's good to feel comfortable enough that you want to keep going. So if you want to experiment, I can't see you on your screens at the moment, but if you want to experiment with getting into a position like that, if you want to be in a chair or if you want to be in a kneeling position, if you want to be lying down, that's totally fine. As long as you can still hear what I'm saying and maybe look at the screen every now and again. Or if you want to be sitting in a cross-legged position, however much works for you, take a moment to do that, get into a position that's going to be comfortable for the next 20 minutes or so or half an hour.

[24:48]

Now, the next parts that I'm going to talk about are all to do with the upper half of the body. And these apply no matter what the lower half of your body is doing, whether you're sitting in a chair, whether you're kneeling, whether you're sitting cross-legged, whatever it is, you're just giving yourself a stable platform for your body. That's why this position, this, this kind of posture has continued through thousands of years of human history and across cultures and continents is very well suited to kind of stability of sitting. extended sitting. And then there's also physiological benefits to this posture, which I'm going to go on and talk about. And this for me is kind of the secret of meditation. And I don't know that people always talk about it in this way, but this is how I found it personally very beneficial. So when I settle down to sit, anytime I settle down to sit, the first thing I'm doing is paying attention to this area once i've got my legs straightened out the first thing i'm doing is paying attention to this area here so between the belly button and the pubic bone is what's traditionally called the hara the dan tien or the tanden depending on uh which culture you've heard talking about that and in the zen school we use this very particular hand position that actually helps um focus our attention there now if you have a look at buddhist statues

[26:19]

And again, if we were in the Buddha Hall, I would be pointing out all the different statues and all the different hand positions. All the hand positions have a very particular energetic significance. And the energetic significance of this hand position, which is called the cosmic mudra, the cosmic hand position, or the universal mudra, is that as you breathe in, you're breathing in the entire universe through this space. And as you breathe out, you're breathing out the entire universe through this space. So this is your energetic center while you're sitting. Think of it as your center of gravity. And again, if you've trained in martial arts, you'll understand the principle of moving from this place, that this is your core. You know, we talk about this as the core in modern gym parlance, but this really is the core of your energy and your movement. And it's also when you're sitting still, it's the core of your energy and gravity. So I pay attention to this area to see if I'm breathing into it. So right now I can tell that I'm breathing pretty fast and shallow because I'm doing a lot of talking.

[27:22]

If I start to settle, I'll notice whether I'm breathing into this area or not. And there's one key component that really helps that apart from stopping talking, and that is relaxing the abdominal muscles. Relaxing the abdominal muscles happens when your spine is doing the work of holding you up. So this is why... If you talk about upright sitting, we really mean upright in the spine. So you can imagine that your spine is the gear stick in a car and you're trying to find what the neutral position is. It's often suggested you do a little bit of rocking to and fro and just let your body tell you what is upright. It may not be telling you the entire truth. You may be leaning slightly off to one side or another, but really try to listen to your body. And when your spine holds you up, You don't need to be engaging these muscles to hold you up, to keep you balanced. And that's why this commercial meditation posture is actually really unhelpful, because as soon as I do that, I can feel my core engaging.

[28:28]

And as soon as my core engages, it constricts my breath. So with the hips higher than the knees, as we've been demonstrating in the chair and on the bench and on the cushion, the spine is naturally tending to be upright. the curves of the spine are naturally manifesting. So this allows all these muscles that might otherwise try to keep you upright to relax. When the muscles relax, the diaphragm can move freely up and down so the lungs can fill and empty more easily. And this is a kind of a crucial physiological mechanism that I think we know that we're aware of. It is actually a very useful component part of a karma meditation experience. Like I said, I'm going to allow my breath to slow down for a moment. So just picture your own breath right now. Breathing in. And if you're a little sleepy, focusing a little more on the inhale.

[29:30]

Breathing out. And if you're a little stressed, focusing on the exhale. Really moving energy out of the body. When we settle, we're getting into a steady... You know, we're not controlling the breath, just a steady inhale and exhale through the nose. If you need to, as you sit down, as you start your meditation, to kind of work a bit of stress out of the body, it's okay to do some long exhales. So if you're sitting with other people, don't make that too audible. That really does help settle the body in the moment. This is what we're going for. It's in the moment realization of how we are. Okay. It's starting to feel a little better. So now I can feel this area of my body is relaxing a little bit. So that means that the diaphragm is going to be moving up and down more freely. The stomach is going to be rising and falling. Now then on a slightly more subtle level, but I think also very important, between the solar plexus and the collarbones, again, creating space and openness and sitting tall without stretching or trying to pretend that you're in the military.

[30:40]

So again, there's a tendency to hunch over. This is how we spend a lot of our time. When we're looking down at our phone, we're doing this a lot. But actually physiologically, this is a posture of defeat and resignation. So anytime that we're looking at our phones like this, we're actually giving a message, a subtle message to our body that everything's too much. So concentrating between the solar plexus, which is about here, and the collarbones, really Lifting that area and thinking about space there. I often like to picture the ribs and the muscles between each rib kind of expanding as you breathe in, giving you more space, opening up around the heart. And we move through the world, we're often kind of armor-plated around here energetically. It may not be something we're aware of, but it just happens anyway. So in a meditation space, can you open that up a little bit? Can you soften? everything in here because the spine is the only work of holding you up all this stuff can just relax and then finally just checking in on the head because the head's a very heavy object and it's balanced on the neck which is quite a long way back excuse me so if you're sticking your chin out like that you're going to be adding a lot of tension to neck and shoulders so really thinking about lifting tall from the top of the head

[32:07]

Maybe even imagining or picturing or visualizing, tucking your chin towards your throat, which helps to move the weight of the head back over the neck. So those are the three things I've done. Once I've set my legs, focusing on the higher of the lower belly, focusing on this area here around the heart, focusing on the head. And so that is my upright balanced and a pre-flight check. And again, if I stop talking, I'll kind of find my place and settle into that kind of posture for the sitting. And this is a really valuable thing to do. Each time you come to sit, to take the time to listen to your body and be upright. And because, as I said, we don't give you a mantra, we don't give you a visualization, we don't suggest you scan your body. Really, your mind has very little to do And that's going to cause it some stress and anxiety.

[33:09]

But one thing that I do as I'm sitting is continually checking in with my posture. Has one shoulder lifted up, which quite often happens. Is my head tilting off to one side, which when I sat at the monitor for a long time, I got that feedback that my head was slightly off to one side. I didn't notice that, but it's helpful to get that kind of feedback from somebody else. So just continuing to monitor your own posture. And it's just a constant. Very gentle work to keep yourself upright. So that's a lot of talking about how to set yourself into a meditative posture. And then really what you do is nothing, which again is hard for the mind to deal with. So the mind is always going to be busy. We're not shutting the mind down. I don't think that's actually possible. The mind is an organ that is functioning to produce thoughts. Just like our heart is functioning, the liver and kidneys are functioning, everything is functioning, doing what it's supposed to be doing.

[34:12]

So the mind is there producing thoughts. But as opposed to the liver and the kidneys, which we don't spend a lot of the time, time of the day worrying about, we spend a lot of time thinking about what's in our heads. So during this practice, we're going to try to keep our attention on other parts of our lived experience. So as we did at the beginning, tuning into our senses. When I get quiet, I can hear a Robin somewhere out in the yard. I can hear the cars passing behind me. Tuning into the light. Now, traditionally in the Zen school, we keep our eyes very gently open and softly gazing at the floor in front of us. They're just giving us visual information to keep us present and grounded and less likely to drift off into daydreams. So if you want to try that, I'd encourage that. You don't have to in the same way you don't have to hold your hands like this if you want to just rest them. comfortably on your lap, that's totally okay. If you start training seriously at the Zen Center, there would be an expectation that you keep your hands like this, if at all possible, and you keep your eyes open.

[35:16]

But what you do on the cushion is entirely up to you. We can't tell what's going on for you. You can only know that for yourself. And so because the mind is so used to being in charge, it's helpful to at least rest your attention on one particular thing if an open awareness feels a bit vague to you. So I would suggest that you focus on your breath because your breath is always available. You're always breathing in and out. You don't have to think about it because the body is doing it automatically. Pretty lucky that you don't have to think about that because most of us will probably forget to breathe some of the time. So I'm going to ring the bell, having been talking for an awful long time. We're going to sit for between five and 10 minutes and just notice what arises for you. when we go into silence. Where does your attention go? What does your mind do? What does your body do? Just notice these things for yourself. And again, remembering the third part of the definition after the beginning, do this without judgment.

[36:18]

So you're not failing to meditate because you think. You're not failing to meditate if you're not completely upright. That's just the way things are happening in the moment. As I said to yourself, Dan, And I'll ring the bell and I'll ring it again in a few minutes. So maybe if you've been sitting still all this time, give yourself permission to move a little bit.

[44:35]

I'm just gonna adjust the view on my screen so I can see who else is here. And then if you have any questions, I think the Zen Center host can unmute you and you can ask a question. So let's just take a moment to rearrange yourselves. All right, now I see you. Next one, I can see some of you. Anyway, I can't see everybody's picture, but I can see who is here. And thanks for joining us. So does anyone have any questions? You might need to raise your hand. Yeah, Enes, hello again. Joining your coach from Turkey again? Yes. My question this week is how high should we keep the cosmic mudra in front of us in your laps or higher than that?

[45:36]

Yeah, just I find if it's resting down on your heels, that's a little bit too low. So I usually with my thumbs go for my belly button and then the fingers, the little fingers actually rest against the body and the thumbs are a little away from the body, but they're at the height of the belly button. So it's a little bit higher than resting in your lap, ideally. And just watch out how that affects your shoulders, because some people find that's quite hard on their shoulders after a time. And it's quite easy to kind of let it droop down and rest it like that. So just notice what happens with it as you sit with it. Thank you. Because I generally sit in a Burmese position, so that's why I don't have any support, like my feet to carry on my cosmic mantra. That's why I prefer to let it on my laps, but not so really relaxed, but still alive, I think. That's why I ask you again.

[46:40]

Right. And for everybody else, Burumi's position is the first one I demonstrated where you have the feet in front of the other. So obviously then the heels aren't quite so close to the hands. But yeah, if you have your trousers kind of resting there, you can rest in there. It's good to be a little bit relaxed. I can't remember if I told this story last time, but one time I was speaking with the abbot at Tassahara, so I was sitting across from him and I had my hands in a mudra and... In the middle of the conversation, he said to me, what happened to your mudra? And I think I had just kind of let it slide down like that. And he'd noticed that I was, you know, maybe being a bit, you know, not paying enough attention. So he called my attention to it. And so, yeah, but that's, you know, that's a strict monastic training interpretation. I would say as you're developing your practice, you know, remember to stay comfortable. Thank you. Thank you. if I made two questions, so one also with the mudra, is it okay to put like a pillow underneath your hand or is it kind of hard for me to keep it like right against my stomach?

[47:54]

Yes, I know a number of people who actually do that. So yes, that's an okay thing to do too. Yeah, if it's difficult for you to hold this position, don't feel compelled to, unless you're going to go and live at the monastery where they might have higher expectations but yeah having a pillow or cushion here um yes i've definitely seen people doing that as a way to make it easier for themselves okay i mean to be honest a lot of the time when i'm sitting these days i've just had my hands down like this or even up like that depending on what kind of mood i'm in you know this is it's a very traditional posture and it's i say encouraged in a more serious practice but don't don't feel compelled to do that Thank you. And then also, that was really helpful as you kind of stepped up through the different zones. What's going on for you with your back? Because I have a lot of trouble with that, with kind of like maintaining, you know, curvature without making it be, you know, like too tense. I'm generally hoping that it's just doing what it wants to do naturally.

[48:57]

I know when I've taught this to, you know... sixth grade school boys going, oh, man, it really hurts to sit like this. But, you know, I found that especially over the years, it's actually been very beneficial for my posture to spend this much time sitting upright. And so, you know, in the rest of my life, I'm very happy to do this. But I think there is a lot of benefit to sitting like that. And I think I have a slight scoliosis as well as a slight imbalance in my pelvis. So I'm not necessarily the most symmetrical and properly aligned person. But to the best of your ability, using the natural strength of your back to do that is great. But I would encourage you to notice what you feel. If there's a continual pain, don't push yourself through that. But just notice what your back is capable of and how it feels comfortable. Thank you. Are you feeling that you're kind of like, if this is kind of the small of your back, are you...

[49:58]

maintaining kind of like a tension back there? Or just does it naturally flow? That's a very interesting question. So I know, I remember in my early years of practice, it's a question of whether you tuck the tailbone under. Maybe I should turn sideways to demonstrate this. Let's see, you know, tucking the tailbone under or kind of sticking it out a little bit. I have a lordosis, which means that this lower part is more curved than it would be otherwise. So I think when I was instructed to tuck the tailbone under, it was actually quite painful down here because it was stretching that part more than it wanted to be stretched. So I think I've gone much more to sticking my tailbone out because that felt more natural to me. And I think, again, there's maybe a gender difference between you know, men and women's pelvises, which you might need to take into account too.

[50:59]

And I was given that instruction, I think initially by one of the women teachers. And then she saw, you know, when we talked about it after, she said, oh no, maybe, you know, find what's more comfortable for you in terms of, you know, the sticking out or tucking back in again. So I'm kind of, you know, if I do that, I'm just kind of feeling all the different muscles in my pelvis again activated from doing that. I think Vicky, who was doing the instruction i think last week you know she's a yoga teacher so she has a lot more information about all the all the ways all the different muscles engage when when you're sitting like this and this is something you just start learning that you know it's amazing how interconnected everything is and you know even halfway through that short sitting we were just doing i started thinking about riding my bike which i love doing and i could feel my body responding to like riding bike yes My body just immediately started pumping all those chemicals around the system just from having that one little thought of riding my bike. So you just get to notice the very subtle things that happen physically and connected to whatever mental processes are going on as you sit, which I find absolutely fascinating.

[52:10]

Thank you. Thank you for the questions. Let me see. Is there any other questions from anybody? Just a small one, Shundo. Is it okay to close the eyes sometimes for a couple of seconds because I feel it supports or strengthens my concentration or coming back to the center sometimes? Is it acceptable or okay? Again, you know, I would say, I would encourage you to do what feels right. Again, nowadays, if I sit with my eyes closed, I can focus much more easily on my internal sensations. Yeah, you know, I can visualize it. you know, my body, my muscles, things much more easily. The downside is that you do start drifting away into daydreams. So I would say if it helps you to close your eyes to arrange your body or to settle or to focus, that's okay. If you start feeling sleepy, then open them up again. Okay, thank you. And so there's... The things I'm saying, we do this at Zen Center, it doesn't mean that it's the right way.

[53:19]

It just means that as a part of the training, those are the kind of things that are suggested. I mean, sitting in half lotus isn't the right way to sit. It's helpful to sit like this if it's comfortable for you. You know, when I first went to the monastery, there was somebody who was sitting in a lazy boy reclining chair because their back couldn't do the amount of sitting that we had, and that was what was comfortable for them. So they meditated. in a reclining chair, which was great. And they fell asleep occasionally. Anybody else have a question? We have a few more minutes to sit. I think I just want to encourage everybody to, first of all, you know, help Zen Center survive this difficult time. If we were in ordinary times, there'd be many programs going on at Zen Center because the building has been closed for two months now.

[54:19]

There's not so much happening there and they're making a great effort to offer things online free of charge as much as possible. But please, if you can do anything to financially support Zen Center to help us continue offering the teachings as we've been doing for More than 50 years now, almost 60 years since Zen Center was incorporated. That would be really great and much appreciated. And I know that after this, ordinarily it would be in a different space and at a different, you know, we would be doing this at a different time and there wouldn't be the opportunity to move from one to the other. But after this, there is a 35 minute period of meditation, which you're very welcome to join. Nobody will be talking the whole time, which is nice. There'll be lots of bells and instruments and things. And also at, 10.15, Erin Merck will be giving the talk, and she's a contemporary of mine. I trained with her at Tassajara and at the city center over the years. And she'll be speaking on the theme of the current practice period, which is the Lojong Tibetan training phrases.

[55:23]

And you might say, well, why is Zen Center talking about Tibetan training phrases? And... I don't know so very much about Lojong, but obviously all Buddhist traditions came from the one source, which was the historical Buddha in India. And Norman Fisher, a previous Zen Zen abbot, has done a lot of work to bring these phrases of kind of compassion and good advice into the kind of a good context with the Zen way of teaching. And I think Erin and... who's leading a practice period, are very interested in bringing these kind of compassionate practices into our Zen world. So I'd encourage you to listen to that if you're able to. Let me see. There was one other thing I was going to say. Oh, Shundo. Yes, please. I've just seen that there's a question in the chat from Sarah who's having some connectivity issues. Would it be okay to ask here for you? Please.

[56:23]

I'm ready. Okay. The question is, is it common to yawn a lot? The more I focus on my breathing, the more I yawn. Could I be breathing incorrectly? I don't think there's an incorrect way to breathe as long as you're still breathing. I think yawning happens because, well, my suggestion might be that as you sit and get quiet, the body is thinking, oh, it's time to relax and go to sleep because often that's the only way that we... think of relaxing is on our way to sleeping. And I know when I've taught meditation in the jail, when you get people into a relaxed meditative state, they fall asleep right away because it's the only time they can switch off their kind of fight or flight alert mechanism. So it could be your body just thinking or taking it as a cue to get sleepy and relaxed. And it's also, it's kind of natural if you're slowing down to start feeling tired because we spend a lot of time pushing ourselves through.

[57:24]

And when we stop for a moment, it actually gives the body a chance to say, hey, this is actually how I'm feeling. I think that's the other thing I was actually going to say a moment ago is that I'm finding my meditation practice incredibly helpful right now because even though I'm not as busy as I might be otherwise, I'm still kind of moving through the day. And it's only when I get to sit and not have an agenda that that I can actually listen to what my body is telling me. And right now my body is telling me, oh, there's a lot of grief right now internally. And it's great to be able to hear that. So I would say if your body is yawning, that's your body's message for you right now. There's nothing to do with right or wrong. It's just paying attention to what the body is suggesting. And I might also add that I've known many meditators who've meditated for many years who fall asleep regularly during meditation. So it doesn't mean you're a bad meditator. So I hope that answers the question a little bit. So, Coda, do we have still the time to sit for a few more minutes before we need to switch over to the other Zendo realm?

[58:30]

We do. We've got about five minutes. Okay, excellent. Well, let me ring the bell and just, again, settle into a comfortable posture, remembering that every time is a fresh experience. You're not going to have the same experience you had last time. It's like water flowing under the bridge. but just tapping into that sense of quietness, centeredness, seeing what your body does, seeing what your mind does, and if nothing else, just paying attention to your breath. Well, thank you so much for joining this session.

[62:23]

I would encourage you to come back and tune in again and hear somebody else offering the instruction as people do bring their own ideas and their own approach to it. And you might find a different approach resonates with you differently. I'd also encourage you to stay tuned to the online Zendo as it flows into its next thing, which is, as I say, a 35-minute period of Zazen. And I do hope that you're able to develop a meditation practice through this. As I say, I've been meditating for 20 years now, and I'm finding it very helpful at this time to kind of really keep me grounded and keep me tuned into the reality of what's going on for me. And conversely and paradoxically, not to feel isolated from what's going on out there. So even though we're not in the same room, there's this kind of imperfect intimacy that happens over Zoom that I'm really coming to appreciate over the weeks. So thank you very much and I hope to see you all again sometime. Please enjoy your practice.

[63:20]

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