Mark Foote

Ready, get set... wait! look between the eyes, for whites shoot the moon, then some

Throughout your body itsy bitsy little poke a dots eat ivy

Looking down, I only see the underwear I usually find myself sitting in, so I guess I can join the thread unless something comes up. I am very grateful to have a thread where people talk about their experiences, of any kind, having to do with the body and spiritual practice. Happiness practice. I think we've all lived long enough to know that there's a happiness associated with being that we are not in control of, I am that I am and quite nicely too thank you, as it were. I like that voice. Here's one I was sharing with a friend earlier tonight, from Foyan in the 12th century I think: "You should not set up limitations in the boundless void, but if you set up limitlessness as the boundless void, you encompass your own downfall. Therefore, those who understand voidness have no concept of voidness. If people use words to describe mind, they never apprehend mind; if people do not describe mind in words, they still do not apprehend mind. Speech is fundamentally mind; you do not apprehend it because of describing it. Speechlessness is fundamentally mind; you do not apprehend it because of not describing it. Whatever sorts of understanding you use to approximate it, none tally with your own mind itself." (from Instant Zen by Cleary, "Keys of Zen Mind" is the essay) And to bring it back to something more Taoist, perhaps: "People nowadays mostly take the immediate mirroring awareness to be the ultimate principle. This is why Xuansha said to people, 'Tell me, does it still exist in remote uninhabited places deep in the mountains?'" (ibid) this is what free speech and the pursuit of happiness are about, to me, and most of all compassion. Thanks, witch, you inspire me even if I have only a practice of settling my weight low to know my breath sometimes, and I only imagine it to be a meeting ground neither male or female. My girl friend is back, hope my heart is good- love ya!

food for the belly warm bed at night- I think of Geronimo's fate

Babette's Feast: soup's on and flavour's good, dip right in scoop up some heartbeat.

my god what a laugh you gave me, apepch', and for no apparent reason! Ah, the splot plickens...

for my summer soup this thick head of fall cabbage geese honk past the moon

Thank you for asking. I thought it would just come to me for a long time after I first had the experience of "zazen getting up and walking around" You can read about it in the anecdotes at Kobun anecdotes (under Mark Foote), if you're interested. I finally started to study physiology and kinesthesiology, when I realized I still couldn't sit the lotus five years later. I read the pain series books by Dr. Rene Calliet, some materials at UCSF library, and eventually discovered the books of Dr. John Upledger on cranial-sacral work. A book from Dr. Raymond Richard on "lesions of the sacrum" (I think?) was also amazing, talking about the pivots of the sacrum. The notion of reciprocal innervation based on the sense of location in the occurrence of consciousness is the basis for my practice now; I think the description I give in translations of motion in the lotus is mostly correct. Hard it is to recognize all this and still let go, but probably that's like layman Pang's family, in "Zen Letters: the teaching of Yuanwu", by Cleary; dad says is really difficult, like climbing a greased tree; mom says it's easy, like the dew on 10, 000 blades of grass; and daughter says it's neither difficult nor easy, it's just eating when your hungry and sleeping when you're tired. Yuanwu says often we pick one or the other as right, but they are all true. Forgot to mention that I also purchased the sutta volumes from Pali text society in 1985, and read them. That's my grounding. No formal student-teacher relationship, ever; my idea was that I should find a way to teach myself, that others could benefit from as well. Help develop a vocabulary that everybody could relate to, to communicate the gist. Open source wisdom? ... he he, as Marblehead is prone to say.

Ga Ga ooh La La! an eye-full of mind boggling wind and sand- hey! hey!

You came back with salt you left to buy something sweet tell me a story

This morning a second question has occurred to me, and that is: why do they sit 40-50 minutes in the lotus, when most hatha yoga postures are only assumed briefly? My answer would be, because we work loose, first the sacrospinous ligaments, then the sacro-tuberous ligaments, and finally the sacro-ilial ligaments. We work loose by settling in and accepting the stretch that already exists as consciousness takes place, relaxing as we breath in and out. When we have feeling over the surface of the whole body, then the impact of consciousness and feeling sits, the hit in "just hit sit", or shikantaza. Equanimity toward pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feelings is a part of this. Equanimity and relaxation in the face of the involuntary reciprocal innervation of muscle pairs around the pelvis and the sacrum and throughout the body takes a little time to come on, after the humdrum of our daily habit. I would remind everybody of Cheng Man-Ching's description of the fourth stage in the development of chi: chi penetrates to the skin and hair. Likewise, the Gautamid described the fourth of the initial jhanas as purified equanimity, the cessation of volition in in-breaths and out-breaths, and as feeling like "a strip of cloth wrapped around the head and the entire body". For me, I walk on my feet sitting down, until I feel the exchange between my upper legs and my sacrum under the pelvis, kind of the forward angles of "the ox crosses the wooden bridge". With luck I can let go and ride the wind, as it were. The wind gets up, when it's time; that's how it goes for me, and I usually sit between 30 and 50 minutes. A little numb in the top foot when I get up. Answering questions people don't ask, for myself, of course! Thank you; Mark

An old man shuffled over and sat down on the chair next to the stage. "Young man", he said, "you should quit eatin' dem stinkin' mushrooms; sittin on air, is dat what a public education is worth. When I was your age, I just phantasized about women; take my advice, stick with your ass and get happiness while you can. By da way, you dropped this..."

I like the suggestions that everyone has given; I haven't tried the machine. If I really can't sleep, I sit the lotus for awhile. Stretch my legs & sit. The space of falling asleep is the same space as waking up, actually; the mind moves freely, the rhythms of the body use the mind instead of vice-versa. So try to wake up with your mind, relax, and see what happens. 'Course, this is waking up by letting the mind go, and making the inside like the outside. Hope I can sleep tonight!

(sorry for the repeat!)

Hi, effilang (hey, bums), Are you familiar with cranial-sacral osteopathy? Allopathic medicine has yet to acknowledge that there is a significant respiration in the changes of fluid-volume in the dural sac (around the brain and spinal cord and all the way to the tailbone), but I think Sutherland was onto something. Upledger convinced me, through his writings. ok, cut to the chase, the volume of fluid changes in the tissue sack that surrounds the brain, according to Upledger about 14 times a minute. Pressure changes in a closed system are instantaneous throughout the system, per hydraulics. The spine flexes and extends with the changes in fluid, and the arms and legs rotate inward and outward. The sacrum pivots on the pelvis, forward and back, side to side on the diagonals, and even around the vertical axis of the spine. The sphenoid and occiput in the skull flex and extend. The nerves that control the changes in fluid volume are in the sagittal suture, at the top of the skull. When you sit the lotus, you isolate the movement of the sacrum on the pelvis. You can observe the stretches in the ligaments between the sacrum and the sit-bones of the pelvis, between the sacrum and the tuberosities of the pelvis in front on either side, and between the sacrum and the pelvis. You can observe actions in the muscles of the legs and pelvis that occur involuntarily as a result of these stretches, and the reciprocity of actions between paired muscles. You can observe action initiated by the cranial-sacral rhythm through the stretch of ligaments between the sacrum and the pelvis. "The empty hand grasps the hoe-handle Walking along, I ride the ox The ox crosses the wooden bridge The bridge is flowing, the water is still." Fuxi, approx. 500 C.E. Yes, consciousness is the bridge, yet the right amount of openness to feelings of pain and the right amount of detachment from the pleasant is necessary if we are to sink and realize our involuntary motion; I myself needed a way to say, yes, this is part of the stretch in existence as my consciousness occurred just now, so that I could relax and stay open. I can sit the lotus, usually 30-40 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night. Sometimes my feet go to sleep, less so as I realize that I belong to these respirations and this consciousness, they do not belong to me. So to speak. I think my explanation is more straightfoward at the website below my signature; thanks, all, have a good night- yers Mark

you've landed us in the muck; another nice mess you've gotten me in! (Stan's the man, Ollie!)

You guys are making me laugh, and the school teacher loaned me the Harry Potter book, and I don't have to give it back! Nyah nyah! happiness has no sense of time... thanks.

Picking up a volume of long forgotten lore, the man from Mars pondered, nearly napping; like the tapping of a librarian on his skull, he suddenly realized what his eyes had read, although there were no pictures: "Whatever happiness, whatever joy, Ananda, arises in consequence of these five strands of sense-pleasures, it is called happiness in sense-pleasures. Whoever, Ananda, should speak thus: 'This is the highest happiness and joy that creatures experience'- this I cannot allow on [their] part. What is the reason for this? There is, Ananda, another happiness more excellent and exquisite than that happiness. And what, Ananda, is the other happiness more excellent and exquisite than that happiness? Here, Ananda, a [person], aloof from the pleasures of the senses, aloof from unskilled states of mind, enters and abides in the first meditation that is accompanied by initial thought and discursive thought, is born of aloofness and is rapturous and joyful. This, Ananda, is the other happiness that is more excellent and exquisite than that happiness." (Majjhima-Nikaya volume one 389-399, Pali Text Society edition volume ii pg 67) Quoth the librarian, softly: "shhh!- snore no more!"

chasing the ol' cat the child at last comes to rest the cat at rest still

Remember the Alamo When help was on the way It's better here and now, I feel that good today. I'd like to take a walk But not around the block I really got some news I met a man from Mars. He picked up all my guitars And played me traveling songs. And when we got on ship He brought out something for the trip And said, It's old but it's good Like any other primitive would. (from "Ride my Llama" by Neil Young)

'Damn, Rene, didn' you say the library was just right here? Walkin' for miles now, I ain't seen no library! Man, how we gonna define happiness if the library be closed by the time we get there...

Hi, Marbles (and all you bums out there)- line 4 is poetic license. Not flag, not wind, mind is moving- you know, that one. Interesting that the pine and bamboo draw a breeze; if we are wild and rooted, I think sometimes we draw a breeze as well. If you blow on a tinder fire, you do indeed feed the flames- but if a draft catches a sputtering candle, likely that's that, over and done. I agree with the unlearning part, yet the danger is in assuming too big a role in the process. The muscles of the pelvis move in response to stretch, the very place we rest on is in motion if we relax and sink into the stretch, yet the mind must be with what is uncomfortable as well as with what is comfortable before we ride and our legs feel as though we walk.

from Fuxi (500 C.E.?): An empty hand grasps the hoe handle Walking along, I ride the ox The ox crosses the wooden bridge The bridge is flowing, the water is still From Wuzu (1100 C.E.?): ... Charmingly, the pine and bamboo draw a clear breeze. Nother favorite, from Alexandra David-Neel: Nirvana means an extinction, or rather, the action of a breath which blows upon a flame and extinguishes it. So "an empty hand charmingly draws a clear breeze that blows upon a flame and extinguishes it". Rene was not there, in a very real sense. Ha ha!