All-Day Sitting: Breath, Religion, and Absolute Trust

KOBUN: Your inhalation is taking care of your body. I tend to forget time. You keep time. You don't hesitate to question.

One more little thing before we part. It's inside of your mouth when you sit. How is it? It relates with breathing, so I'm going to talk a little bit.

It can start from entering meditation place. Exactly no air in your mouth, no air stay in your mouth anywhere. It's idea. Only fresh air go through your nose, and all the air comes out through your nose. When you are sitting, finally you come to that breath.

Several breaths you use mouth — air go out through your mouth like you are blowing hot food or something — and then fresh air go through your nose and it starts to fill your belly, and finally you cannot breathe anymore. This you repeat about seven times. If you don't feel enough you go about ten times, twelve times. And when you feel the air is going smooth, coming out smooth, then you close your mouth.

At that time end of your lip slightly goes up, not go down. Slightly go up, like a little smiley face. Important part is a tension on the end of your lips. And inside of your mouth, teeth touch together, upper teeth arrangement and lower touch. Sometimes crunch hard is nice — if you are very drowsy, you crunch your teeth and encourage you, what are you doing, sleeping or awake. So you don't crunch that hard usually, just a touch. And then tongue go toward inside of your upper teeth range, and tip of your tongue touch behind teeth. So no air is remain in your dome. Some air might be remaining underneath of your tongue. That's why I said smile a little bit. Now air go through only through your nose.

And it is good you clean your holes of nose in the morning, every morning, with warm water or with blowing. Sitting is main business of you, so you try to take a quick shower or bath before you sit, and put fresh clean clothes every time you sit. It's like a destination — you are visiting somebody's home, and it's very formal state, it is. You can pass away any time. So clean your life, put the order in your life, and then finally you sit. That is point.

If nothing happens, then you get up. If something happen, remarkable or fantastic thing happen — but not talk about it, at least three days. We tend to run back to your friend and start to preach, and get in trouble immediately. So you don't talk about the experience. You found it, and when it become real knowledge, then you start to share it with others. Thank you.

Good afternoon. All of a sudden you got many sitting today. How are you doing?

Something useful to help your practice. You know, Christianity is one, Buddhism is another, Judaism, Islam, Taoism, anything else. I'm not interested in talking about doctrine of world religion. I'm rather interested in mentioning what this basic concern of religious mind — we all have.

The word religion we are familiar with is rather difficult concept for Oriental people. We don't have that word, religious, reunite, like in Christian concept. Christ is one of the example who reunite human to the God, Absolute, since Adam and Eve departed from God. It was promised to enjoy eternal life without any suffering, without any limitation. Nothing to even think about, just causing happiness in full body and mind. What caused Adam and Eve — they had to take a long journey. You say original sin, or a first mistake, or something like that.

If I am a minister I would put emphasis on this sinful action, or something which caused unlimited drive to the limited life. Something made them to leave the realm of God's care and love, and hardship started. They had to find food, they had to produce food to survive. They supposed to be not this country, not this earth, somewhere else. Many generations followed after, according to Genesis.

As you know, Aryan race — one of the branch of Aryan race came into India, Northern India along Indus River, and another branch went to Iran, western Asia.

The Buddhism we are familiar with is Mahayana Buddhism, which arose from old Theravadin tradition. About five hundred years of Buddhist tradition again went down, kind of decay in terms of spirit. There are advanced teaching, but in terms of real religious activity, real force which can lift you from suffering reality to ideal — Mahayana Buddhism, about Christ time, it arose in India. And up to today most Buddhism is seen as Mahayana, except Zen and Vajrayana you practice today. They think Zen and Vajrayana is not quite fitting to Mahayana — which means it has something to do with going beyond the concept of Mahayana, or even Buddhism. That's a little problem here.

I do not prefer to talk things generally. My concern is personal question — whether this sitting practice relate to accomplishing your innermost concern, accomplishing your religious life. What do you think? You have been struggling on this subject up to today, I think. And so much pain on your legs and body and head, everywhere. Still you don't give up. If I say sitting doesn't accomplish this basic subject, you might be very discouraged.

Q: For me, my practice helps me establish a framework to understand the events that I've lived through in my life. Which is exactly what I push. I want to live. It helps me facilitate feeling that and understanding that.

KOBUN: Thank you.

Q: I find sitting on a cushion easier than living in the world. Seems a harder place than sitting here, even with pain. It's a different kind of pain. And I was thinking that when I sit on a cushion, I realize much more about what life really is than when I'm in my life. And that's hard for me — to find out how to see what I see when I sit, in the rest of my life.

KOBUN: Thank you.

Q: Better to assume that sitting doesn't really satisfy our innermost concern. If we practice with that idea, then somehow we're not really sitting.

Q: This is kind of a corollary to what you just said. I feel like I bring my life to the cushion and sit here and get to live my life on the cushion, thinking about all the things I think about when I'm out there. It feels the same to me. And I wonder why I am sitting here — except that every so often things feel right. Everything feels in its place, and I feel very at home here. Feels like the place that I should be. It's a good place to be.

KOBUN: Okay. Thanks for asking.

You have said sometimes you feel this is easy. I'm about only over fifty now. And only one subject for me up to today was whether this is a way or not. Nothing else was a problem. Study, reading, meeting with teachers, meeting with so many students — all relate whether this is a path or not.

There are many confirmation, many encouragement, from the past around me in this life. The subject I have been carrying was, sitting and enlightenment — it's identical or not. And few masters in the past confirmed it is exactly identical. I mean, transmission of Dharma is nothing but to sit properly each period. Then, whether you recognize whole view of enlightened world or not, you have been transmitted.

This is a way. And proof is more important — proof is what you do after sitting, among people. We naturally express the result of practice. It is much harder work than anything else, to express your achievement.

Then what is the enlightenment? Ah — I never experienced it, so I cannot tell you. You might say so to me. Because we haven't experienced enlightenment as it should be recognized, we cannot talk about it. Something similar we all experienced, I think. That's why we are here.

Enlightenment is not always peaceful, ecstatic. It is within human experiential, and it goes beyond realm of human experiential. That is how and why it is difficult to talk about.

Another word of enlightenment is truth itself. You say Dharma, or in English you say truth, which is only one. No two. Only one. So when someone speak of it, you sense it — it is only one, isn't it so, and nothing else is rarer than that. Essence of your existence shows what truth is. It is not the knowledge. It is the thing which gave you life to live on this earth. It's hard to say what it is.

And usually we object to that boundless life go through with us. Not your created — thoroughly, totally given to you. And you have a new opportunity to take care of that drive. And then we waste it totally, most of the time. The more we try to manifest it, better every day, for other than yourself — the more we are conscious about it, we cannot do good job about it.

Another nature of this is, you cannot talk about it to your neighborhood so often. That is a problem. If you start to tell about it to somebody, maybe once a year someone might hear you. Most of the time people don't want to hear about it from you. Occasionally we meet someone who can share same topic and talk quietly about it. Problem is you cannot make it as a general knowledge. If you want to make it general knowledge, you have to make some kind of theory, to let other people understand and convince that there is something you experienced.

That Christ offered his life on the cross is not a big matter. Many many many people lived similar way and offered, sacrificed life. That is not a big subject. What the subject is, is in relationship of his life to the absolute. Absolute include everybody, so that through absolute you relate with others. You don't need to relate with others essentially. You and absolute alone. It's essential relationship, and no second person you can bring. And the problem is, even a speck of ego you carry, you cannot relate.

What shall we do? It means you are utterly surrendered in front of this absolute. Then something you receive.

Surrender — we don't like that at all, especially today. Surrender doesn't mean much. If you surrender to somebody you are stupid person. What I'm talking about is complete faith, complete confidence in somebody. That is related to your recognition of utter ignorance. It uh two sides of one thing. You are standing this side and completely confused, and barely know you are impossible. The one who accomplished, and absolute confidence about truth, stand other side of it, as you become it. So this channel is absolute trust.

And it is not just attitude or gesture, I'm not talking something very difficult. Absolute trust means you go to McDonald's and order a double hamburger or something when you are very hungry, and you just bite on it, it is served. That's absolute trust. If you say, oh, this grease is so greasy, this tomato has a black dot, this salt is not sea salt — if you say that in your mind, and you start chewing it little by little, that shows your less trust, so to speak. However you have a very empty stomach, your head is causing problem.

When you go listen to teacher, like this evening, you have the same problem. Maybe, maybe not. I have a same problem toward the student. Maybe one among a hundred, one among a thousand. Otherwise I lose entire effort in vain. But good thing is, we can sit together a few period. That's the best part of meeting.

I was so glad when I found that early morning Shakyamuni Buddha was in the lotus position, when I met with manuscript that he was sitting. At that time I was so happy. And then when I came to see Dōgen's statement that Buddha Dharma and one period of sitting — whoever sits, it's identical.¹ Nobody else confidently spoke about it, unless occasional experience — maybe one, twice, two period during intense sesshin, you feel that this is it.

Every day sitting is like warming up exercise. Feels somewhat you are getting close, but a lot of more important things to do, so you have to get up. As soon as you get up to start doing something, you completely forget what you have started. You work hard, and then before you start to cry for exhaustion you find yourself in bed. That's the truth. When you brush your teeth and wash your face — maybe sitting today — no, I don't have any more time, I have to go to office now, and you run to the car without breakfast, something like that.

I want you not to miss the moment of sitting. That's why I say today, go with breath. Three breaths make you feel already sat. Breath has that kind of power, connection point between your physical state and your mental, emotional state of mind. So you don't need to force your breathing to reach the perfect one, but just to blow your exhalation out.

Notes

1. 1 The engine heard "dog and J". Dōgen's position — that zazen is not a means to enlightenment but its full expression, so that one period of sitting is already the whole of it — is what Kobun is describing, and it is the claim he says he had been carrying his whole life.