Continuously I suggest that you have good posture. That is because posture is a sort of proof of mind situation, a reflection of the invisible part of your life which penetrates your body, your physical conditons, so it helps to start with good posture and let your mind ride on good breath, smooth deep even breath coming in and going out, which keeps you in the present moment. As soon as you forget the breath, mind-phenomena colors your breath, and all sorts of movies go on in that breath, and your body continuously reflects whatever goes in those personal movies. We like to just let them go and forget them, or maybe finish them, but I don't want to say just forget them. The one who keeps watching, keeps letting the whole thing happen, is a very important part of yourself. Not necessarily a judgemental function of that self, but just observing it.
In daily activities we have almost no time to be really alone. Day after day we are surprised that our activity created so many fantastic things, sometimes too many things which we cannot afford to take care of. Once in a while we sit a short time, and irregularly, rarely really look at ourselves. We wish to be very wise, and live this life very meaningfully and usefully all the time. We'd like our whole life to be so, really enjoyble and useful to whoever with us, but alas, we know it is so difficult to be wise. We are almost opposite to wise. It's hard to see what's going on. Even what's wrong with us, we don't know. What's wrong with others sometimes we can see, but what's wrong with each of us, we cannot see so well.
I really wish each sitting will make our perspective more broad, and let our mind and body be able to move in every direction toward what's happening. I think this is what is meant by transcending. The mind transcends and is able to embrace the reality and find out what's the best way to let blocked situations have an unfolding. I recognize when I'm very busy every day concerning so many things one after another, my effort gets very shallow, my work is not effective to each situation. And day after day whatever I am supposed to be concerned with appears, and day after day those concerns increase in number, so finally I come to realize I'm getting in a helpless situation, with no time to concentrate on what's most important for me, and what's the most important thing to do, which needs lots of time.
How deep your thought, your concern reaches to the actual situation or person is what we mean by expressing the content of sitting. We can sit in imagination, of course, but imagination sitting is so powerless. It's just like a dream, or image. If you love somebody truly, there is no doubt that image is within you, even if it is not expressed to that one. To have the thought in you is already expression.
Prayer will be the next process of expression. Physical movement toward it will be the next. But as you notice, how to show up to the one to whom you have concern is a very
big subject. With your best condition, as your finest appearance, you show up. To do that, we have to have tremendous practice. Physical presence is the final expression. So I am always very, very careful to receive people who come to my house. I receive them all as my master's visit.
Observing the mind with the mind is a part of you taking care of a part of you. In daily activity there is no time to really let this contrast of yourself and another self confront each other. Always we finish up things with the intuitive level of our understanding. We don't need to have indexes. It all sinks into our so called alaya vijnana.. Alaya vijnana is 'store consciousness', which is very deep and very dark, and extremely broad. For instance, it covers the edge of the universe which astronomers don't know. Whatever occurs, in terms of storage, our mind covers it. And yet, when every knowledge, every understanding, every capacity is oriented by yourself, it is still blind. It's like an incredible encyclopedia. You may find your memory of yourself in the encyclopedia, but present 'you' is not in it. But it comes from your present self, so the subject is: what is the self of no-self? This is a very important point. The whole alaya vijnana, with all contents in it, turns to something else, from which you see yourself. It may be compared to Plato's metaphor of the cave. You live in the kingdom alone. Every understanding and every tendency you act in the world is oriented by your presence. If the world is arranged from your self, this alaya vijnana is the continuous growth of the kingdom in which only you are living, and people and things are appearing, but it is not understood, really.
So it is a very big subject to come to a real understanding with one other person in this life, to really notice there is somebody who can see this world with you. We have this little body, but, as I said, it isn't so. It covers the entire universe as yourself. So by listening to others, from chatting about the weather to deeper levels of communication, you can go through an incredibly refined and deep understanding with another person. Living together, you share everything, you have a home together, or a community together, or a nation together. The thing to which alaya vijnana turns is called amala vijnana, ninth consciousness. The same thing is called Tathagata garbha, storage of Buddha's mind.