‘What kind of breathing you do while you sit is an important issue: how the inside of your mouth, your tongue, your teeth should be. You should keep no air in your mouth. It sounds strange to say this, but can you do it? When you tighten the upper and lower rows of your teeth, using your jaw muscles, the teeth firmly touch and press each other. Your alertness gets very strong. But don’t force the jaw muscles as some students do. Let your tongue touch the upper dome of your mouth. Let your breath go through your nose and straight to your lungs. This helps especially when you become drowsy. Naturally, saliva comes into your mouth, but you shouldn’t swallow it all at once. Little by little you should let it go down without noticing it. If you notice it, it comes more and more and you have a problem. Saliva is very important.
If you really sense the texture of the inhalation, when the air comes in and how you feel when the air goes out, you will have a different feeling. If you just count the breath, you miss it all. That’s too bad. This is a very important moment you are living. There really is no time to count.
Counting is a skill you use to quiet a restless mind, a fast mind, or a cluttered mind. It’s very helpful to finish up your breath just before you move into the zendo. “Finish up” means to take your finest breath for sitting instead of crashing into the room and starting to sit and beginning work on your breath. That’s too late.’
I never met Kobun, who died just after I started practising, but his name circulated a lot at Zen Center, and I knew people who had been very attached to him. There is a great collection of his words on the Jikoji website.
Shundo David Haye 