Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / Turning Problems Into Wisdom pt.2 - Hogen Roshi

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Turning Problems Into Wisdom pt.2 - Hogen Roshi · Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks

• 0:00
  Jomon: Hello and welcome. This is the Zen Community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddhadharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.
• 0:21
  Hogen: This has been a very, very busy time in Great Vowel. Had last weekend, we had the end of the Dharma Gates retreat. So we had, it was between people of 18 35. We had people from all over the country at Great Vow and must have had a 100 and some people in the Zindo. And then had Plum Blossom Zindo, had an opening in Vancouver for that Vancouver group.
• 0:50
  We had, I don't know, just seems like there's this group, you know, waves of people coming. We just did a Jukai ceremony this afternoon, a precept ceremony, and the room was filled. We had 80 or so people in here a few hours ago. And now here we are. And one of the things that I'm appreciating is that when we're offering something and what we're trying to offer is both hope and a container for practice and a foundation of ethics.
• 1:25
  And as people appreciate those foundations, then it takes a larger and larger infrastructure in order to support people who come. More people are coming and rooms are getting smaller and more food is needed. So it's an interesting cycle that I'm just observing. And part of what we've been talking about, and this is the second talk in a series, on turning problems into wisdom. So in a way, we have have this plethora of human beings who are coming.
• 2:00
  And how do we how do we turn whatever happens in our lives? If people come, that's we turn that into wisdom. People go, we turn that into wisdom. How do we turn that? That's the the theme for this talk, theme for this next couple of talks.
• 2:15
  And the foundation for turning problems into wisdom, foundation is hope. If you have no hope, if you have no no possibility of something greater or better, how can you possibly what what is what is what is the wisdom then? So the foundation for this particular teaching is we have to have the recognition of the possibility. Not only will we change, but we have the ability to turn our attention in a way that is positive. To turn our attention in a way that enables us to grow inwardly towards some person, state, some human being that we are appreciative of, happy with.
• 3:13
  And so we all have made lots and lots of mistakes, lots and lots of problems, of course. But it is the ability to learn from those mistakes, to look at them directly, and to see where we thought was inadequate can be turned into wisdom. And then suddenly, our own inadequacies, our own failures become blessings. So one of the elements of this particular teaching is how do we turn all of those dead ends, mistakes, unskillfulness, blunders, confusion, failures, all that into a jewel, into wisdom. And if it's wisdom, then it serves us.
• 4:02
  If it's wisdom, then it serves others. So our that's our job. That's not not just the nature of the talk. That's our job as human beings, I think. So let's begin with prison.
• 4:20
  Now, there's lots of kinds of prisons. Some people feel that they're at the monastery, and they're in prison. Or in marriage. Or in marriages. Or in jobs.
• 4:36
  Or maybe you've seen the the news. Chose keeps showing me the news about the the snowfalls in Russia. 10 feet of snow. 10 feet of snow.
• 4:46
  hogen: Can you imagine that much snow?
• 4:51
  Hogen: Being in prison means being somewhere we don't want to be. I was talking to, or at least I read I have talked to Ajahn Brahm, and I've read this story. He had written in one place. Ajahn Brahm is a Theravatun monk in the Thai forest tradition who lives in Australia. And they have a very rigorous monastic program.
• 5:18
  Have a great valet, very lightweight one, but they get up at three in the morning and they sleep on the ground and they eat one meal a day and they have this very demanding schedule all day long. And Ajahn Brahm was talking to people in prison in Australia and he was telling about his schedule and he said, That's much worse than being in here. Being in prison, we get 3 bills a day and we have warmth and heat. Was saying, Prison is your state of mind. He said, I am free because I'm not trapped where I don't want to be.
• 6:03
  When we don't want to be where we are, we make ourselves into prisons. I don't wanna be here. I don't wanna be here. I don't wanna be here. This is the wrong.
• 6:12
  I don't wanna be in this relationship. I don't wanna be in this job. I don't wanna be in this climate. We imprison ourselves. Now, it is quite possible to be in a place that is very difficult, very difficult, very hard, and someone says, wow, I can actually be of help to people here.
• 6:39
  I'm actually be of the surface to people here. You know, the life is really rugged, and yet I feel like this is the place I'm called to be. We've all all had that experience, different ways.
• 6:52
  hogen: So
• 6:54
  Hogen: when we are encountering a situation and we say, don't want to meet this. I don't want to be here. I don't want to look at this. I don't want to recognize this. I don't want to.
• 7:08
  I don't want to. I don't want to. Every don't want time we say that, we put up more and more barriers, more and more walls. Now circumstances always change. You know, where everybody was this afternoon is different than where we are right now, even if you were in the same hall this afternoon.
• 7:30
  But when the story doesn't change, circumstances are always changing. They're always malleable. We're always shifting up, down, in and out. But when the story doesn't change, we can carry a prison with us everywhere. I hate this.
• 7:50
  I this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate I hate myself. I hate myself.
• 7:54
  I hate this self. I'm inadequate. I'm incomplete. I'm a failure. I'm miserable.
• 8:00
  And people can say that all day long throughout all the different realms of their life. I'm inadequate. I'm a failure. The story actually much more I mean, everything is changing. But the story that we keep telling ourselves over and over again can be a miserable, limiting, narrow, tight story that keeps us imprisoned.
• 8:31
  And if you want to work on some stories, talk to Cho An. She's a master at deconstructing stories. But it's like if you go out throughout your day, and you took a thousand pictures throughout one twenty four hour day, and then you picked out five of them and said, this is my day was like, was like these five pictures. And we ignore the other 995 pictures. The stories are like that.
• 9:00
  So to get out of prison, to get out of the tight bond, the suffering, to get out of that story, have to we have to first, as I talked about last week, we have to find some equanimity. We have to be able to sit down and be able to look at it. Because it's really hard to look at your own mind if you're just running around frantically. So you have to slow down, stop, take a look. And then we have to begin looking at what keeps us fixed.
• 9:31
  What are the beliefs and thoughts that do not serve us that we keep reiterating and we keep repeating. Self hatred is one thing. Some people grow up just saying, you're inadequate. You're inadequate. You're inadequate.
• 9:50
  You're inadequate. You're inadequate. You're You're inadequate. Inadequate. You're inadequate.
• 9:54
  And they don't even see that they're telling themselves that. And sometimes they have that voice and they say, well, I'm gonna overcome this, and they become workaholics. You're inadequate. You're inadequate. You're inadequate.
• 10:09
  You're You're Work, work, work, work, harder, harder, harder, faster, faster, faster, faster. And no matter where you end up, no matter what you achieve, it's always inadequate because there's that voice in there. So practice is about escaping from prison. It's actually about recognizing they were not in prison in the first place, but that's in a way deeper insight. But sometimes we go from prison to prison to prison.
• 10:43
  And what I see often is people say, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna go try this. I'm gonna go and do do dialectical behavior therapy. And they say, well, that didn't work. I'm going to go and start picking model railroad cars. That didn't work well.
• 10:59
  I'm going to go and make Barbie films. That didn't work well. I'm going to go and and we have all these solutions. We keep trying because we haven't looked at the core. What are the beliefs that keep us in prison?
• 11:14
  What are the beliefs that don't let us take the step beyond our problems, that keep problems as small limiting problems? Problems, dukkha, obstacles, difficulties, challenges. Now, everyone is familiar with Buddhism one zero one, first noble truth, everybody has got challenges. Right? Dukkha.
• 11:43
  That's just the way it is. If you've a human life, you've got challenges. But challenges can be something we thrive on or something that just grinds us down. Challenges can be people actually do things like jigsaw puzzles. Over the holidays we did some jigsaw puzzles at the monastery.
• 12:07
  Where there's this whole chaotic mess and people actually loved sorting out chaos and bringing it into alignment. People actually loved that. Believe it or not, chaos is a terrible problem, but the people love finding the right peace, putting it in the right place. So the fact that we have problems and challenges is is just the way it is. It's like the like the all the puzzles of a jigsaw puzzle.
• 12:35
  They're all thrown out. And we can either say terrible or possible. Hate it. Don't wanna do that. That's boring.
• 12:43
  Or we can say, Oh, I can work a jigsaw puzzle. Some people actually like to get really complicated ones, three d ones, all white ones. It is the solving. It is the solving of problems. It is the engagement with problems is the the the very avenue that allows us to transform this thing from an obstacle into sometimes a pleasure.
• 13:15
  Sometimes not much of a pleasure, but sometimes a real pleasure. So what are the problems that we have? We have problems with the government too controlling, as an example. Now I heard a very interesting thing from somebody or other, and they were saying that in terms of freedom, Americans are often modern people in this continent are often afraid of tyranny. Because they're afraid of tyranny, there's a certain reaction.
• 13:54
  And they're saying in China, people are afraid of chaos. And so because they're afraid of chaos, there's a different kind of reaction. So I was thinking, oh, it's not interesting. You know, it's not as though one culture is better than another, but but if you have a fear of chaos, everything just falling apart and and there being warlords everywhere and guns everywhere, then you want structure. You even wanna a fascist government as long as it has some predictability.
• 14:24
  On the other hand, if you feel like you've got a fascist government and everything is rigid and controlled and it's killing people, then you want more freedom. It all depends on our state of mind. It all depends on our state of mind. So it might be that we are getting old and sick. It might be that we are in anaphylococcus situations.
• 14:48
  It might be that our environment is really difficult. How do we sit down, look directly at the beliefs, What is and then enable us to have a freer response. We will respond to our lives. There's no doubt we will respond one way or the other to our lives. That's that's incumbent upon being human beings.
• 15:11
  You will respond. But if our responses are all predicated upon our old conditioning of I'm in prison, I'm in prison, I'm in prison, our responses tend to go around and around the same old circle. You know, we keep doing the same thing in a different situation, as I mentioned, the same problem. But when we sit down, we look directly, we recognize beliefs under there. We then can have a creative and potentially a new, a dynamic response to the chaos, dynamic response to the situation, to the problems.
• 16:00
  So that's the virtue of practice. We sit down, find some equanimity, find some calmness. And how we do that? We feel the body with the body. We relax on the exhalation.
• 16:14
  We come into a a community as a structure like we talked about last week. We can't do it without a structure. Know, as I kept mentioning, you can't make a meal unless you have plates in the kitchen and the stove. If you just have the ingredients and the idea, but nothing to hold it in, you can't make a meal. You can't serve a meal.
• 16:33
  If you have a great kitchen and you have no food, it's hard to make a meal. If you have a great kitchen and you have food but there's nobody in there with the ideas, it's hard to make a meal. So you've to have a structure. So we have the practice of coming into the container, and there's lots of containers, slowing down, looking directly at our state of mind, looking directly at our mind, and whenever we have friction there's a belief in there. Whenever we find ourselves frozen, stymied, full of self pity, there's a belief in there.
• 17:10
  I begin identifying the belief and begin seeing through and beyond the belief. And in this way, not only do we loosen our tight prison, But again, as I say, we have a flexible, even novel relationship to reality. That it becomes not a problem to be solved but a big puzzle to be engaged in, a game to be played. So this is the next principle here. So we do meditation, sit down, clear calm mind.
• 18:04
  Now, I think I mentioned last week also, one of the elements of turning problems into wisdom is to decide, is this really my problem? Did I talk about that last week? Yeah. Okay. If it's not my problem, and I'm busy trying to solve it, you know, good luck.
• 18:25
  So is it your problem to solve the the enormous refugee problem or to solve the the wars or to solve the mental illness, to solve the the the shortage food shortages in The Congo or Chad or wherever. It may be. It may be or it may be. So it's impurely important to know what is my responsibility? What is mine?
• 18:53
  Homelessness is a vast problem and there are people who it is their their calling. They they need to deal with this particular challenge. But most of us don't. There are people who the of banana trees is their problem, but most of it is not. So identifying which is our problem and letting go of the rest is also one of the ways that we can transform things into wisdom.
• 19:26
  We let go of what's not important and something important for all of us. So what else here? The number one element that we if we boil it down, we we calm the mind, we sit down, we begin looking at here, we see what disturbs us, often there is fear at the root. What is that? And say, okay, I now have to really deal with fear.
• 20:02
  Because in each of our lives, there are touchstones of fear. It might be fear of chaos, or fear of tyranny, or fear of violence, or fear of shortage, or fear of of being trapped, or fear of never being loved. So when we have the ability to calm down, be in our own body, let go of what's not ours, and then we begin saying, okay, what is the fear? What is the belief that I have around fear? What are the beliefs that keep me scared?
• 20:46
  Sometimes we need to deal with things externally. Know, if there are if we are deathly allergic to hornets and suddenly we have an invasion of hornets, just get out of the get out of the way, move to Alaska, where we don't have hornets. Sometimes it's that we're ignorant, and so we go to school. Of course. Whatever the the fear is, but the fears that bother most of us are not so much the external fears, but the internal fears.
• 21:22
  So most of the deep fears that we have in this particular culture right now, actually every culture, there are really scary things outside. We are going to get old and get sick and die. That is true. But the terror that's at our root, we can transform that terror into wisdom. Can transform that terror into skill.
• 21:44
  We can transform that terror into running away and getting tight. We can transform that terror into reaching out and helping others and opening the heart. Then again, our relationship to those problems begins to change. Let's see. Now if we are gonna actually work with our fears, the nature of fear, I find, is it often makes us smaller and harder.
• 22:15
  We become more defensive. We start defining and defending territory. We we But if we're actually facing fear, then I find the opposite happens. That we align with other people, that we reach out, that we begin to relax, that we begin open becoming more open, That we are meditating, we slow down, we look directly, we begin seeing our fixed beliefs, we begin seeing our fear, we begin facing it directly, we soften and open and become more inclusive. And in this way, we begin changing these obstacles into benefit.
• 22:58
  Now, the last piece, which I'll probably say over and over again, is when we are appreciative of this life right here, the only life we've got, there's no better life than the one you've got right now, This is the life you've got. When we are deeply appreciative of that, thinking, Oh, of all the zillions of places and things, could have twenty hours, I only have two. When we are appreciative of this life as it is, it transforms our relationship to our history. We could have had a hellish history, and people do. But when they come into this moment and they say,
• 23:44
  hogen: oh, I'm so glad I'm alive. I'm so glad.
• 23:51
  Hogen: Suddenly, everything that happened to them is part of that joy. So we have someone who's often online, they're not online tonight, who had cancer of a tongue. Half the tongue was removed, came back, the whole voice box and larynx was removed. They can't swallow. They have to breathe through a tracheotomy.
• 24:15
  They have to get food through a peg tube in their stomach. And they say, I'm so glad I'm alive. I'm so glad. And that joy, that joy that they have, that appreciation they have includes their whole life. Includes their whole life.
• 24:35
  We can transform our histories into blessings with loving kindness starting right here. And when we do that, we transform all those problems into wisdom. Some people have a PhD in suffering. If they use that PhD in a way that benefits themselves and others, hey, that's hard won education. So please have hope.
• 25:13
  Liberation is possible. You need a practice. You need a place. You need to have the techniques and the tools. And, you know, that kind of ongoing investigation, is based in part on deep appreciation of this life, the only one you've got.
• 25:37
  It'll be gone like that.
• 25:47
  Jomon: Thank you for listening to the Zen Community of Oregon podcast, and thank you for your practice. New episodes air every week. Please consider making a donation at zendest.org. Your support supports us.