I moved the platform because I wanted the people in this row to be able to see my body. Today I'd like to do something quite different, and that is more a demonstration than what you might call a talk, but I will talk. Basically what I'm going to try to demonstrate is how I sit. I'd like to talk about how I sit as I'm doing it. As I mentioned yesterday, Dogen Zenji teaches that if you do one thing completely, you do everything completely.

[02:36]

He calls this the total exertion of one thing, itpo gujim. As I mentioned also throughout the week, the six paramitas are all included in the practice of sitting. And as I talk today, I may comment about this, but also perhaps you could be aware of how what I'm talking about is the focus of all six paramitas. Perhaps you will be able to see how working on your posture is giving is ethical conduct, ethical study, how it is to avoid wrong action, to do good and to benefit all living beings.

[04:13]

and how it is patience and how it is... I think you'll have not a difficult time seeing how it's effort and how it is concentration and how it is perfect wisdom. Zen practice is, excuse me, Zen, the wonderful Zen.

[05:25]

Zen is completely free. But Zen training is immersed in forms and tradition. When I first heard the stories about Zen monks, I thought, how wonderful the way they act. I want to be like that. Also, when I heard some stories about Jesus, I thought, how wonderful. I want to be like that. But in both cases, I had no idea of how I could be like that. And then later I heard that the Zen people had an actual practice that they did, a form called sitting that you could do, that they trained themselves at.

[06:30]

And I heard how to do it and I tried it. And I was sold. And I became a disciple of the practice of sitting. And with the aid of the kindness of innumerable living beings, occasionally I'm able to sit. The sitting which I'm going to try to do today is Something like walking on a tightrope.

[07:39]

Does everybody know what a tightrope is? High wire? So I think, especially for us, if any of us got up on a tightrope, even a few feet off the ground, even three feet off the ground, or not to mention 15 or 20 feet off the ground, if we walked in the tightrope, if we actually were able to stay in the tightrope even for one minute, during that one minute there would be no question about concentration. we would be totally concentrated on the task of standing on the tightrope.

[08:44]

We would be totally occupied with the task of balancing. Maybe some tightrope people are so skillful that they can walk on a tightrope and daydream and be angry at their friends and think about what they're going to have for lunch, and also even think that they're doing a lousy job. They say, oh, I'm not really tightrope walking very well, and so on. Some people are that skillful at it. But for us, unless any of you are professionals at this, for us, if we could stand on a tightrope for one minute, during that one minute, we would not have time to be impatient. If you were impatient, you would fall off. We would totally give ourselves to the task. If we didn't give ourselves to being on the tightrope, we would fall off.

[09:47]

We would have to make total effort. We would have to be totally concentrated. We would not be able to violate any precepts. The slightest deviation and we would fall. So I'm trying to tune into a sitting practice, which is almost like walking on a tightrope. And the key factor in this practice is what I've told you already, and that is to is this hand mudra. The hand mudra, if it's held properly, you have to balance constantly. Now I'd like to go a little bit more into detail about what I mean by properly.

[10:59]

People are sitting in various ways But basically, whatever way you have your legs, what I'm talking about is holding the hands so that they're not resting on anything. Right now, my hands are not, are barely touching my, what is it? It's my left heel. My right hand The back of my right hand is barely touching my left heel. Actually, right now it's not touching it at all. What I'm suggesting, the way I'm trying to sit is to touch my left heel only as a locator, only to help me position my hand in approximately the right place. not as a place to rest my hand.

[12:08]

If I rest my hand there, I am not on the tightrope anymore. Then I can start leaning on my foot with the back of my hand. So my hand, my mudra, and my arms particularly my forearms are actually floating in mid-air right now, except that my wrist is sort of, my wrists are sort of touching my abdomen. I have not yet done what I told you, what I suggested, which I will now do, and that is to bring my hand, particularly my baby fingers, into contact with my abdomen, which I now do. I am now sitting in such a way that I feel kind of like this.

[13:19]

That's kind of how I feel, except my spine is a little bit considerably more stable than this. And I've been practicing sitting up for so long that I'm better at sitting than I am at doing this. But that's sort of the way I feel. As soon as I put my hands, if I put my hands on my knees like this, it's another world. It's a nice world. Swell, you know. But I'm back in the ground. I'm on a three-point stool now. But when I put my hands here against my abdomen and not putting any weight on my hands, I mean, I'm not letting the hands rest on anything below them, I'm balancing now. When you're balancing, whenever you're balancing, you're constantly going off balance.

[14:27]

slightly. When you're balanced, you are, every moment, you're paying attention. If you don't pay attention, you lose balance. Or, which is more likely when you're sitting, you don't lose your balance, you just start leaning on something. And you come out of the world of balance back into the world of laziness. You come out of the world of impermanence. Your balance is always impermanent. The world of balance is the world of impermanence. And you come into the realm of permanence and laziness. This is where most of us spend most of our time. Now, when I put my hands here, in a little while, I run into some other problems.

[15:42]

For example, my shoulders, my upper back start to hurt. They start to get sore. I have several problem areas. And if I do certain things, I can make this pain go away. But when I do one of them, then it causes another effect. Other kinds of balancing things start to happen. For example, below my scapula, does everybody know what scapula is? The scapula, my my left scapula below there, I have a pain in my back right now. If I go like this, put my hands on my knees, it goes away. When I hold my hands like this without resting my hands on anything, pain starts to form there.

[16:50]

I have a fractured disc, I mean I have a fractured rib or something. Yeah, I have a fractured rib at thoracic vertebra number four. And because of that fracture, it's a hair fracture, it's been there for many years, it never heals, but it's my friend. Because if I don't sit straight, it hurts. The muscles around it start to hurt. And what I do in order to make that pain go away is I need to bring that rib into the body a little bit. it comes in a little bit the muscles that are hold that are around it sort of fall backwards and let it go and it lets them go so what i have to do is i have to go like this which just turns out is straighter brings my spine into my body up in that area and relieves that pain

[18:04]

Now another thing that I've told you about is that if I bring my baby fingers in and touch my abdomen, it brings my arms away from my body. So there's another balancing thing here. It's the arms away from the body and now the shoulders. If I bring the arms away from the body and my shoulders curve forward, that relieves the shoulders, but it eventually will start hurting my back. I have to find a way to keep my shoulders back and my arms to my side. And if I can find that place, that pain in my back goes away. If I sit a long time, I have to find that place. That pain forces me to find this balanced place. If I get lazy back there, I can go for a little while before the pain comes. But then my friend comes and makes me look for that spot again.

[19:12]

So I try to bring my upper spine from T4 up to the base of my, to the cervical area into my body, which also then straightens the back of my neck. Another area of laziness for me is hard to describe, but it's on my right side, and it's on my right side, just above, in the muscles just above my pelvis, or my, right back here. I don't know exactly where that is, but it's in the fleshy area just above the bone back there. And again, I have a laziness there where I tend to keep it curved like that a little bit. And what I need to do, particularly on the left side, is pull this in like that.

[20:20]

Not way in so it's curved, but just straight. And when I do that, it hurts. It hurts me to go through that space because it's a lazy spot. It's a lazy spot in my body. But once I get in there and get it just right, once I start making the effort, it doesn't hurt anymore. But it slips back. So I have to keep reiterating that effort. This laziness also is related to the pain in the upper back and the roundness in the upper back. When I bring this in here, I even have more ability to straighten the upper back. So I've just told you about there's several things going on here.

[21:28]

There's one is the usual things of posture, all those old friends like keeping your eyes open and so on, mouth shut. But now we have this inter, I've described my effort to work with these interrelated things like not letting the hand rest, constantly, constantly the hand you know, it can go down and start resting. Constantly the little fingers can lose contact with the abdomen. And constantly this laziness in my lower back can reassert itself, which means I just stop paying attention to that effort. And again, with the little fingers coming away, the arms slip into the body, the eggs under the armpit gets pressed, and the shoulders start hurting.

[22:36]

So I have three pain areas that guide me into the right posture. The lower right back, the upper left back under the scapula, and the shoulders. Unless I find the right posture, I have pain in all those areas if I sit for a while with my hands not resting. If I rest my hands, then my little friends, my little pain friends, don't go off. And then I can sit in a pretty lazy posture, which looks good to most people, so I probably wouldn't get hit, but I can sit in a pretty lazy posture and be pretty comfortable, because after 20-some years, I don't have much problem with my legs. But if I hold my hands like this, I'm always, excuse me for saying this so emphatically, I'm always a beginner.

[23:43]

Because every moment I have to make an effort, just like a beginner. It's a very impermanent state. It's a balanced state. And in a sense, I'm almost constantly moving. But the more constantly I move and the more I'm aware of how much I'm moving, the more frequently I notice something that I have to make an effort on and make a slight adjustment, the more still I sit. If I go for 10 seconds or 30 seconds or not to mention a minute or five minutes and don't notice something to work on, then in order to adjust my posture back to where balance would be and to re-enter the world of balance from the world of entropy, then I have to make a big movement.

[24:56]

If you watched me, you'd probably see me moving. Even while I'm talking to you, you know, I have trouble taking care of the efforts and my shoulders are starting to hurt. What I'm trying to say is that when I'm working on all these things, one after the other, when I enter that realm, I'm making constant effort. And as I also confessed the other day, I don't always sit like that. A lot of the time my sitting is lazy.

[26:00]

I take an easy posture where I don't have to pay attention all the time. Such sitting is not zazen because certain paramitas are missing. For example, which ones do you think would be missing when I'm sitting in my lazy posture? Patience, concentration, and effort. I'm still not violating any precepts, maybe. Can't be sure. Because in that state, when I'm sitting like that, I actually can daydream. When I'm sitting, when I let my hands just rest down here, I can daydream pretty easily. Generosity is missing too, yeah. Huh? How is generosity missing? Tell her. Because you're not giving back. That's right. I'm not giving. I'm not giving myself. I'm holding back.

[27:03]

Huh? That's right. That's true. If you violate one of the six, what? Yeah, there's some patience there, and there's some patience, there's some giving, there's some concentration, there's some wisdom, okay? So once you start turning into that, then you start turning things around again, okay? But I don't have to be very patient when I'm sitting in this posture. But when I'm sitting in this posture, I have to be quite patient, particularly with that pain in my upper back. I have to be quite patient. I can get easily irritated with it. It is irritating. It's painful. But it's an irritating pain. It's been there for 20 years or so. Before I started practicing, I didn't know about it.

[28:06]

I spent two and a half years one time, every sashin, after the first day or so, that tuned in and it stayed there the whole sashin. two-and-a-half years every session until finally I found how to sit to take care of that and I tried everything I tried impatience too I'll tell you but to work with these things takes patience because I keep slipping I have to keep forgiving myself And being joyous about this. You can't work on patience unless you've got some problems. Well, if I sit this way, I've got problems. I've got irritation. And if I get angry at myself, if I don't forgive myself, I fall off the rope. I can even be asleep and sit pretty still if I have my hand down here.

[29:15]

I can even sit up straight with my eyes shut and be nicely asleep with my hands down here. I can sit just like this. I think maybe I snore, though. I'm not sure. So that's sort of the realm. This is my body, not your body. You have other problems. Each of you have your own set. And I'm telling you about my practice. If you can't yet put yourself in such a terrible situation as you get into by holding your hands against your abdomen, particularly, like I say, those little baby fingers against the abdomen, and not resting on anything. If you do not want to enter that realm of intensity, I understand. I don't want to be in there all the time either.

[30:19]

But actually I do want to be in there all the time. And each of these paramitas, particularly patience and courage, and I guess all of them anyway, They allow us, they support us to enter the realm of the intensity of reality. Reality is very intense. It's as intense as our children when they're playing. It's as intense as standing at the base in a Giants game and having somebody throw a ball at you at 95 miles an hour. That's reality. that they're actually there living that way. And the people who are willing to stand up at the base and hit the ball, you know, thousands of people go and clap for them because it's so wonderful to see people who, at least for a few seconds anyway, will enter into reality.

[31:24]

And as Lee pointed out, if you can really center yourself in the hara, the ball gets bigger, it's easier to hit. And then other subtleties are, I sometimes, although I'm not leaning with my right hand on my foot anymore, sometimes what I do is I lean my left hand on my right hand So this hand's making an effort, but then I get lazy with the other one. I find this one's not resting on anything else, but at least the left one can rest on the effort of the right one. So then the pressure builds up there. Even though one hand's held lightly in the air, the other one's going to sleep on top of the one that's making the effort.

[32:31]

So then I feel this tension there. Do you understand? This tension between the left and the right fingers. Yes? Right here. Huh? You lose your navel? Yeah, that's why it's useful to have something like a heel or something that you can touch. Because actually when you enter into this realm, in some sense you don't know where you are anymore, like you don't know which leg is which or anything. So it's nice to have a little, in this world of the conjunction of the six paramitas, it's nice to have something to touch, like your abdomen's nice, fingers against the abdomen, little baby fingers against the abdomen, and something... underneath so you can gauge the height.

[33:36]

So a heel is nice, but if you don't have your heel up that high, then try to find something else, but don't lean on it. Cloth is nice, too. You can just drape a piece of cloth across there such that you can just touch the piece of cloth. But it is nice to have a forward and backward measure and an up and down measure that you just keep contact with but don't lean on. That's okay. He'll collapse to the lower back? I think in your lower back.

[34:44]

Yeah. I think you have a similar area to work on in the lower back that I do. I don't know where exactly, but... I can look at your posture later, but for me anyway, it's particularly on the left side that I have to push that in a little bit and keep it there. And I have to do that many times a period if I'm going to stay there. Not so many, not as many as some other things, but it just looks to me from here that that's where you're sleeping, down there. Yeah, there's all kinds of muscles in here too, like on my right side there's a muscle in here called the psoas.

[35:51]

muscle which unless i get this in the right place particularly if i cross my i also cross my legs opposite directions by the way i try to alternate the way i cross them particularly when i cross them when i put the the right let the left leg on top and then the right leg on top of the left leg That's the way I've done it less in my life. Particularly in that way, this muscle hurts. Unless I make this effort in my lower right back, there's a place I can make, when I get it just in the right place, this muscle in here relaxes. And I think that's the problem that you have. I think that's the muscle that hurts because that's the muscle that connects across the front of the thighs and so on. Yes. I agree about this idea of making effort. Maybe beginning to just check the body if necessary.

[36:57]

Run through the body in a certain kind of way. Begin to see this effort, because this ties. When you reach, you really balance the posture of the body. There's no need to make any effort at all. Just feel that the body sits by itself. I always think about a very famous saying, the glass glows by itself. The body sits by itself. Even to put so much effort in the hands, you just forget to do it. You forget to do it. and that thought can sit for hours. Yeah, we disagree. I think you must make effort. I think that without effort Buddhism does not happen.

[38:06]

I believe you must make joyous effort. I think because I believe that a living being, the way living beings are, is that every moment they make an effort. I think that that's really the way we are. I think we're very effortful things. Yes, effort does exhaust itself, but still you have to make an effort for it to exhaust itself. We say... No, it exhausts itself every moment.

[39:13]

Every moment it exhausts itself. It's impermanent. It just, for just a fleeting effort, just effort, effort, patience, patience, giving, giving, concentration, concentration, wisdom. Just all fleeting, fleeting effort. Just like bubbles. My state is like this, that after a while, I'm sitting like this, my body sits itself, and my breath breathes itself, and my attention then goes to the objects of the mind, and I begin to see things more clearly inside, so I'm like washed, I'm in that state of beginning to watch something that's not lost. What's the origin of thought? What's the, you know, the issue become more precise in the inner realm of the mind object?

[40:16]

And he put in, he first of all, you know, body object. And I met each aspect of my body object, each aspect of my thought, with nothing in my body other than my thought. And then I could see the interaction. You know, would I put a cloth behind us going to war? Would I go into an even deeper state of concentration? It's a different relationship with life and life. And I believe what I can do to watch. That's my question. That's my answer. I just left home. I can't remember exactly, but I said something like, there's nothing like the people, the people, the girls in the sky, or the little girls who don't die. There's nothing like the peace they want. They die. They walk, they die, they're killed. They're killed, they die. They're trying to show us that.

[41:17]

It's supermighty. It's such an effect. Yeah, we all desire the clear moon, unobstructed. That's Kazon's engine. For me. The first few days of sitting, the pain was so unbearable. I had to sit for a long time, 12 years. And it's so unbearable, and I knew it was going to be hard. It was nice to not become one with the patient. It was bad. It was bad for me to wake up with the pain. At some point, I just felt like I really couldn't get to the bottom. And it was very, very important to do that, because But if I become a woman, I can't say something like that. I'm a great person. I'm a mother.

[42:18]

I'm a victim. So, this would be weird, but, you know, that's the way it is. I thought for about years ago, Ferguson Shady talked about pretty script. He was a real hard worker. He could explain that more. Well, I guess I just mean just put attention in your mudra. Just bring your attention there. Well, your body is a thought. When you're aware of your body, what you're really aware of is a thought.

[43:32]

So, as I sit here and concentrate on my posture, I can see the origins of thoughts. Yes, if you concentrate on the posture, if you don't concentrate on the posture anymore, then thoughts will come through you, and then a, well, Well, what I'm trying to teach is the Zen of Dogen Zenji. And today I'm emphasizing his teaching of the total exertion of one thing. And the one thing I'm choosing is posture. And the posture I'm talking from and about is this one, to give you an example of how I work with my posture. And when I work with my posture this way, I feel like I'm taking care of my life.

[44:36]

And I see the origins of thoughts and so on in that context. You notice I didn't even mention my breathing, just my posture I'm talking about. I'm not saying I'm, I'm actually not even, yet even talking about following my breathing. Yeah. Well, I actually, I do have pain in my legs, but it's so familiar to me that I don't worry about it. I just have pain. I mean, I know that it won't hurt me. After so many years of sitting, I know what pain, the pain I have is a certain, there's a certain range of types of pain that I know. Anything in that range, any of those varieties, when they happen, I know they don't hurt me, so I don't worry. I just have the pain. But when it first happened to me, I worried because I thought, well, maybe I'm hurting myself, or I thought of the future.

[45:43]

What if this keeps going on for another 10 minutes or two weeks? All those things I used to do. But now I know I don't worry about it, but it's pretty much the same pain. It helps me a lot because I can keep my breath, I can keep my mouth open all of the time. Sometimes I can even crack some bones just with the cracks. And we use it a lot potentially. But I'm not sure about that. I'm not sure if it is. I think it's, you know, I would like to allow that. I think it's all right to do that. And then in the meantime, before the breath does release the tension, then practice patience with the pain before the breath releases it.

[46:48]

But breath and attention, pretty much the same thing. So if you bring your attention to a certain area and the pain goes away, that's okay. Also, you can keep yourself up to your life's attention. Unfortunately, keeping yourself up to your life's attention, you can't move. You can't let go of yourself. So, I think the word effort can solve that problem.

[47:51]

I guess if you're using it, it doesn't mean you can touch it more. before fixing. That's a new form of healing. The final concept that I want, watching the body respond to the effort. Don't watch my effort. Then I will give you a very beautiful balance point of that effort, which is what we will do now. and exclusive gifts from the fact of being here, then all of the things we saw in the company, and we talked about it with the body. It's beautiful. It's not very scary, but it's beautiful. Right? Do you want to do that? Well, what I'm also talking about is through the effort of sitting, working with the posture, I'm talking about that's a mode of modeling ourselves on the Buddha way by modeling ourselves on ourselves.

[49:11]

So I'm modeling myself on my posture. And when I model myself on my posture, I forget my posture. When I forget my posture, I'm awakened by everything. When I'm awakened by everything, body and mind drop away. And there's no particular attainment in that. There's no cessation of anything. I just go on to the next moment. Yes? You lose it? The more you sit like I'm talking about, you go to sleep?

[50:13]

effort makes you go to sleep? That's quite normal. Usually, when you make an effort, then the response to that is to go to sleep. The sleepiness goes right next to the effort. They're right next to each other all the time. So when you make an effort, then the natural thing to do is to go to sleep. What? Make an effort. Effort and sleep, they're pairs. So when the teachers talk about effort, they talk about the other side, the opponent of effort is sleep, is desire for sleep and laziness. So as soon as you make effort, you make yourself vulnerable to sleep because sleep is the resistance to effort. The bigger the effort, the more attractive sleep becomes.

[51:18]

The more still you sit, the more you want to move. The more generous you are, the more you uncover your stinginess. The more you care about the little details of daily life, the more you care about ethical conduct, the more susceptible you are to irritation. The reward of bodhisattva practice is more problems. Beings are numberless. As soon as you help one, you see ten more. As soon as you get strong, it's like, what's that story? Rumpelstiltskin again. She converts a room full of straw into gold, and so he gives her a bigger room of straw to convert into gold.

[52:22]

So your reward for your success is more work. I do think that it is natural for the sleepiness and laziness to be right near the effort. That's quite normal. And the fact that you notice that will be very useful to you. You feel like you're putting yourself to sleep? It is, yeah, and it is possible to make so much of an effort that you can even make a better excuse for why to go to sleep. You see, if you make just a perfect amount of effort, there's nothing much to say about it. But if you make a little bit too much, you can say, this is stupid. And you're right, this is too much. And you can see, you can see, if you come to Zen centers or any kind of practice place, any Buddhist center or any religious practice place, you'll see some people who are trying, who are making such, their resistance is to try too hard.

[53:41]

Right? There's two kinds of resistance. One kind of resistance is to hold back. The other one is to try too hard. The ones who are holding back are lazy. The ones who are trying too hard, other people will tell them to be lazy. Other people will say, you're trying too hard. You're ridiculous. You're tense. Relax. Knock it off, kid. But that's too much. They're going too much. But going too much is a form of resistance. That's why I'm recommending balance. Because balance has its natural rules. If you're too tense, it falls. If you're too relaxed, it falls. Balance is a balance between trying too hard and not trying hard enough. And when I propose such a thing, I'm really not proposing it. I'm just telling you that this is an example of how I totally exert one thing.

[54:49]

And when I practice that way, that's the way I feel is the best way. That's what I call zazen for me. I'm not saying it's zazen for you. But what people are saying makes me suspect that that is the case. That I would expect strong resistance to such a practice. Because I myself, I would never sign a paper saying I resist such a practice. Because I do not want to... My commitment is not to resist this kind of practice. My vow is not to resist this kind of practice. Not my vow. My vow is to do this kind of practice. But as a person, I resist this kind of practice. Because as a person, I'm lazy. I'm looking for an easy way. I'm looking for my way to continue my own trips. So when I hear about a practice like this, the self-clinging doesn't want to do it.

[55:54]

But the other side of me, my vow side, I do want to do this kind of practice. But my actual person that I am most of the time, in fact, he doesn't do it. Most of the time he's too lazy and so on, too scared, too distracted, too resistant to enter the realm of total exertion. That's the way I usually am. And once in a while, with the aid of hearing lots of suffering, with the aid of being with suffering people who are making a great effort, like I've been with you, I mean, the last two periods I was sitting there with you people, and you're very impressive, your effort. Even the ones who don't think they're making an effort, I see a great effort. So within such an environment and knowing how much pain you're in to see what you're doing, it's very inspiring to me. So I feel more and more ashamed of being so lazy like I usually am.

[56:57]

So I stop being lazy sometimes. And when I stop being lazy, I get very happy because I feel alive. But usually I'm pretty lazy. But this morning I wasn't lazy. This morning the last two periods I sat really nicely, like a good little boy. Just like I used to. When I first started sitting, you know, the first session I sat, I was very concentrated. I was really concentrated, and you know what I was concentrated on? Not my posture exactly, or my breath. I was concentrated on pain. I never got distracted from pain the whole session. Well, for the first few seconds of each period I did, but after I sat for a few minutes, I was very concentrated.

[58:03]

In those days, it was easy to be effortful. It was hard to be lazy. I tried to be lazy, but I couldn't be lazy because the pain kept saying, wake up, wake up. I didn't count my breaths, I counted the throbs. In one period of zazen I counted 270 throbs in my knees. It pulsates, it goes, with the breath. With the breath it changed, it pulsates. So in those days it was easy to be concentrated, it's easy to make an effort. Now that I'm more comfortable, I can be lazy. So I'm telling you how I put myself in a situation where I have to make an effort like I did when I was a beginner. And that's what I was trying to say to you today. And each of you has to find where you're, you know, where you,

[59:08]

where your heart is. I just told you where the heart of my Zazen is. That doesn't mean it's the heart of your Zazen. But where is the heart of your Zazen? I just told you about my bliss. This is bliss for me to sit like that. But that's not necessarily your bliss. When you're sitting, what is bliss for you? Not necessarily what it is for me. But I'm telling you about my path. and to give you some concrete details of how I get into my path. This is my practice of concentration that I was talking about. Okay? They are in...

[60:12]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_88.41