Mark Foote

thanks, all- like that ecstatic commons lead-in! somewhat incestuous, composing off my own line, but here goes: roll the pants down - dance! pull the socks up, bottle gone waltz all the way home

jing>>>qi>>>shen, prostate ready...set...hike the skirts up, roll the pants down- dance!

a nest full of chicks wary, and hungry, and loud not unlike Tao Bums

cooking with chaos oreos in cheek, full moon rises on flat backs (flat backs, or small hills, the translation of Petaluma- from the Miwok language, and indeed they are!)

Here are some lines from the Stanford project (at zazenshin), translating Dogen's words, and here Dogen continues the story about polishing a tile: Daji said, "How can you produce a mirror by polishing a tile?" Nanyue replied, "How can you make a buddha by sitting in meditation (zazen)?" Daji asked, "Then, what is right?" Nanyue replied, "When someone is driving a cart, if the cart doesn't go, should he beat the cart or beat the ox?" Daji had no response. Nanyue went on, "Are you studying seated meditation or are you studying seated buddha?" "If you're studying seated meditation, meditation is not sitting or reclining." "If you're studying seated buddha, buddha is no fixed mark." "If you're studying seated buddha, this is killing buddha." "If you grasp the mark of sitting, you're not reaching its principle." In Dogen's Manuals of Zen Meditation, at least the first edition, Bielefeldt offered "if you're studying seated meditation, meditation is not sitting still", which I kind of prefer. I love Bielefeldt's book, because it makes clear that Dogen rewrote his zazen instructions many times, and borrowed much of his original content from a Chinese manuscript. Still amazing. Of course Dogen got the famous bit about dropping mind and body from his teacher in China. Yet his description of shikantaza says "attained the way through their bodies". My understanding is that the necessity of breath and the necessity of the cranial-sacral respiration move consciousness to effect carriage and posture; to move the cart, is about the place of occurrence of consciousness. Place in the occurrence of consciousness creates an impact on the stretch already in existence in the body as consciousness takes place. The impact generates activity (not sitting still), and the activity generates ability to feel; the sound of water or the sight of blossoms is about an ability to feel, hence "attained the way through their bodies".

Toward the end of the Majjhima Nikaya, there's a sermon on the six-fold sense field. The Gautamid is quoted as saying that all that is necessary for the eight fold path and all the other elements of enlightenment to develop and come to fruition is knowing, seeing as it really is sense object, sense organ, consciousness associated with sense object and sense organ, impact (associated with consciousness), and feeling (associated with impact). Consciousness only exists because of contact between sense object and sense organ, in other sermons in the Pali Cannon, and there is no continuous consciousness (the description is that it's like a forest fire jumping from tree to tree, it appears as though the fire has a separate existence but really there is no fire without the fuel that it burns). Mind is one of the six senses, so in this context the physical experience of mind object/mind sense, mind consciousness, mind consciousness impact, and mind consciousness impact feeling is emphasized. Shikantaza. I think your question was intended to be rhetorical; since we are all teaching ourselves here, I have taken the opportunity to clarify a point to myself, and I don't know if we are still in conversation or not. If so, feel free to make a note- crazy people, talking to themselves, or is it a cellphone or a blog, god knows... thanks.

(Yay, Apepch7!) All is nought for four inside, outside, left, right, fall winter summer spring (hey, Drew- don't forget to use the last line previous as your start- nice haiku, totally inscutable, ha ha!)

I think maybe fundamental to this discussion is the notion of whether or not you obtain enlightenment with your body, or your mind. I mention this because most of the people I talk to about my experience with zazen find my approach repugnant, because I am concerned with physical experience, and they usually question why I am so concerned with the body if in fact there is reincarnation. In other words, if an individual can be reborn, then the particulars of the physical body must be secondary in the quest for enlightenment, something like that. I think the Gautamid was clear in the Pali Suttas that there is no soul, although at the behest of Ananda he often described the fate of those who had died, returning or not to this world. Strange, to my way of thinking. I can only speak from my own experience, and I haven't had a lot of psychic experience; to me, the connection with the universe at large is physical, primarily. Dogen also spoke to this, you can find the Dogen quote in my guide referenced below. Equanimity yields a kind of timelessness, and that I'm convinced is the Taoist immortality, and the heaven that Jesus spoke of. We have samsara, we have enlightenment, the Gautamid only knew the dharma without fault (nevertheless he talked a lot about social hierarchy and occasionally about fairies and ghosts, I believe he was mistaken on some of these counts as to the real nature of what he described). He did explicitly describe hell realms. Have you seen "Jacob's Ladder", the movie?- I like the quote from Meister Eckhart, I believe it was, about hell just being a place where your attachments are broken down. As soon as you relinquish your attachments, the devils become angels accompanying you to heaven. I like this because the emphasis is on letting go and losing, which seems closer to the truth to me spiritually than gaining (enlightenment, heaven, what have you). hope this is on topic.

of sand, eh Hamlet and do they always smell so e'en so, lord, e'en so e'en so, lord, e'en so like an upset cart set right the norm expounded (didn't want to leave it in Denmark)

a trace of egg yolk just egg yolk, actually a small one at that (so bad! for this you healed the chain, Artform... ha ha!)

(apologies, Stigward, don't know how that happened!) Carmen Miranda Jesus on the veranda ay, dios mio!

energies field friend are you really there, or not? rain on the window

I had some excellent experience on jury duty, sitting in a chair. Two things are important to me, sitting in a chair: sit on the edge of the chair, as I believe you describe (a chair with four legs solid on the floor); then, one foot flat on the floor with the knee at about a 90 degree angle, and the ball of the other foot resting on the floor under your tailbone, approximately. I sit this way all day at the computer, and have done so for the last twenty years. My back is not straight, especially the lower back, for the most part. Workman's comp came out to review it at one place I worked (management requested it, they were nervous), and they said fine. I can find absorption in this posture, which to me is like talking to the one who made this shell and letting it take me wherever. So to speak. Cranial-sacral theory provides an excellent explanation of the importance of the crossed-legged postures, as far as I'm concerned, and that would be: they isolate the motion of the cranial sacral system at the sacrum so that it's apparent. Activity in meditation is involuntary, but for me it's important to remember that the fascia and ligaments can generate muscular activity without conscious intention, as they stretch. Allopathic and cranial-sacral medicine both use dermatones, the areas on the skin where the nerves from the spine end up, as a means for diagnosing spinal dysfunction; standard testing is to run a pin head down the leg or arm, and see where there's a lack of feeling, and there are charts that will show you between which vertebrae the nerves are pinched if you have a lack of feeling in a particular location. What this says to me is that if you have feeling to the surface of the skin all over the body, your head, neck, and spine are aligned pretty much correctly, regardless of how it looks. At the same time, it's my belief that in the lotus, motion of the cranial-sacral system at the sacrum results in activity in the muscles of the legs and pelvis, as feeling is opened or extended throughout the lower body. That activity ultimately returns to the bones on either side of the skull through the extensors, which travel in three sets behind the spine to the temporal bones on each side of the skull behind the jaw. As the temporals move the parietals on either side of the crown of the head, and the nerves that determine the cranial-sacral fluid volume rhythm respond to pressure at the saggital suture, it's possible that a feedback develops in the cranial sacral rhythm. John Upledger talks about "still points", when the cranial-sacral rhythm appears to cease momentarily, and the fascial support for the body rearranges subtley; he found that maintaining a slight extension on the bones of the skull was conducive to still points, but the individual's own psychie and need were the real determining factors. We all have anxiety around falling down, especially backwards. Look for motion side to side, around, and forward and back wherever consciousness occurs; that's a sense of a physical place, the "wherever consciousness occurs", which the zen masters aver we should attend to 24/7. Relax the activity in the three directions. Let it sink, if you feel good with it, remember that the stretch that generates activity doesn't necessarily feel pleasant, but it doesn't have to go all the way to painful if you can relax the associated activity and let the mind move. Single-weighted postures have a built-in activity from the stretch involved as well. & blah blah blah as somebody so eloquently said!

right on, as far as I'm concerned; the posture is bringing me along, not the reverse.

lucid dream to here there we go, swig the bottle out on the front porch

I agree that the object is not to hold an excruciating posture beyond the limits of endurance. My understanding is that the Gautamid walked as much as he sat, originally; he would walk between villages, about 20 miles usually, almost on a daily basis. I think I got that from one of Rhys David's books, not sure. In the Pali Suttas, the setting up of mindfulness description always begins with sitting down cross-legged and setting mindfulness before. The actual description of the practice begins with in-breaths and out-breaths, of course, and there's the sermon in the samyutta nikaya volume five where Gautama describes his practice before and after enlightenment as the "intent concentration on in-breaths and out-breaths", but I am just as fascinated that he began by sitting down cross-legged and setting mindfulness before. I think it was probably the lotus; I think that was his genius, myself, to couple that posture with a practice associated with the truths about suffering.

Do you dance- just curious. I've tried to learn to play rock on an acoustic guitar, and I think I have a tune or two now; I guess I learned to do that by dancing to live bands in small clubs in S.F. long ago. Seems like as the posture comes along, so does the beat. Hope your parents get well, if they are ill. Wonder what witch meant when she said she is doing what you are doing, raising energies through the spine to the third eye?

No, can't say that I can feel the gland, or even the movement of the sphenoid, particularly. I have had a clicking like knuckle clicking around the occiput, which seems to be receding as I develop more feeling for the action out of the sacro-iliac joints as the sacrum pivots forward and back. Can't really develop feeling for that without feeling for the side-to-side at the hips, and the angle motion from the stretch of the sacro-tuberous ligaments, but as I look for that feeling of walking in the legs and walking over the bridge, as Fuxi described it, I come back to the bounce off the stretch of the ilio-sacral ligaments. No clicking, now. I am so focused on developing that jing, so to speak, and its translation into a center that informs the length of a breath in or out, that I only check the mind to overcome my anxiety over a precarious balance, and accept the sensation of stretch that is close to pain that results in activity. Now and again I notice that I am drawn out, and my thoughts are like some kind of secretion, as Uchiyama described it; the rhythm in my body builds up, the stretch enfolds me, I think for awhile. I love one of the Gautamid's sermons where he talks about two ways of setting up mindfulness, and the second one was just to think some pleasant thought, after which one finds mindfulness is already set up. I admire your ability to feel the third eye, and I believe you said something about the perception of light or daylight; awesome stuff, maybe if I get ready and my finances permit, I'll try a sesshin and see what happens when I'm really strung out. For the most part, my focus that way is on suffering, and why knowing, seeing as it really is sense organ, sense object, consciousness out of contact, impact (in the stretch already in existence), and feeling (out of impact) was said by the Gautamid to develop and bring to fruition all the elements in his teaching. Not that I can do anything about anything. yers Mark

Taomeow awakes opens one eye lazily back to sleep again

Pineal is on the sphenoid, which moves with the occiput in the cranial-sacral rhythm (that's part of cranial-sacral osteopathic theory). The Gotamid's practice for developing psychic powers was four-fold: before as behind & behind as before, above as below and below as above, by night as by day and by day as by night (sign of the meditation), sharpen the wits to brilliance and cultivate an awareness of daylight. As I said in the guide below under "the gotamid offers a practice", I don't have any experience with miracles or psychic powers, yet I can appreciate that there is likely a way to that, and I think it has to do with feedback between motion at the sacrum out of the cranial-sacral rhythm and the generation of the cranial-sacral rhythm by nerves at the sagittal suture. Maybe it's all about a rhythm that innervates the pineal through the movement of the sphenoid? I did what Little1 described, too, working into the lotus over a lot of years. Also true that if you can put your legs up, take them down, and go again it's easier. I find that rocking side to side is useful to me getting in and out of the lotus. There is no substitute that I found for recognizing stretch and the activity out of stretch, especially in the three sets of ligaments between the pelvis and sacrum and in the ligaments between the lower back and pelvis; also no substitute for letting go of the location of mind, and feeling what's there to feel.

bottoms as they ride the ox rock and roll, legs walk, into the narrows

yet energies ease as the dawn breaks and the sun rises as mind full

As the small group approaches the park, the sage is startled to see a crowd of people gathered in a corner of the park, seated around an placid individual in the lotus and engaged in some discussion. The sage shakes his head, and there is only mist in the park and his group of followers, muttering among themselves in the chill morning air.

Vewwy Intawestin', that T-STRETCH post and thread. I do stretch my hamstrings. Sat 50 minutes this morning, no numbness; this is the year my theory meets my practice, evidently- it's been a long time coming. The real stretching is involuntary, I think, occasioned by activity which is set in motion by the stretching itself. The trick for me is to recognize the motion at the sacrum, and at the hips, and in the muscles under the pelvis from the inside of the pelvis to the hips and the sacrum. There are bursa to allow the obturators to slide under the sciatic notch, and to allow the psoas to slide over the pubic bone. The obturators will "hammock" the pelvis off the hips slightly, as Blandine-Calais points out in "Anatomy of Movement" (an anatomy book for dancers). The piriformis will rotate the sacrum opposite the rotation of the pelvis initiated by the sartorius, which then sends the activity up the extensors in three sets to move the parietals (the bones on either side of the crown of the head), largely because the fascia behind the sacrum restricts the expansion of the extensors there (and forces the sacrum to move). The sacrum won't rotate unless the lower vertebrae of the spine find support in the two sets of ilio-lumbar ligaments, alternately with the breath in and out. Drew, sounds like you are truly an adept with this stuff; I like the flow of your description. If anybody wants a little more organized version of my anatomy above, in the context of a description of how the pulmonary and cranial-sacral respirations use the place of occurrence of consciousness to open feeling in the body, see the "the mudra of zen" at www.zenmudra.com (and also see the essays at the bottom of that page). I think our struggle is to find accurate and understandable ways to share the basis of the practice based on tenacious strength (standing or sitting), and I appreciate Tao Bums very much as an avenue for us all to express ourselves and move toward the integration of East and West.