Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / Protecting Your Brightness - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei

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Protecting Your Brightness - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei · 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.
• 0:27
  Jogen: Good evening. It is excellent to be here with you. Really feels like we're in autumn tonight. Days getting shorter a little bit. Maybe that's why this topic, came up for me, but there are various reasons.
• 0:53
  I'm gonna do a talk tonight on protecting your brightness. That's my theme. The next week, I wanna do embracing your darkness. But I thought only one at a time. Lest anyone accuse me of spiritual bypassing, which I am guilty of, but, it's a dark time in the world.
• 1:22
  It's a time of dark and light simultaneously in the world, as it probably always has been. Both light and dark are fixated ways of seeing something that is really dynamic and mysterious. Even in our own lives, we can see what seems dark this year, five years from now, we might look back and see that that was a crucial actually first budding of something important, something vital. And as the cliche goes, light can be found in the dark and dark can be found in the light. And everything in our universe can be viewed and experienced in different ways.
• 2:16
  From a cup of tea to a civilization. It can be viewed in different ways, and in a way it's experienced in accord with how it's viewed because of how our attention filters and narrows and amplifies what accords with how we're seeing. And we tend to have a home based view and experience that has a gravitational pull to it. Right? And right now, it is fairly fashionable to view our time as, awful and terrible.
• 2:56
  Now, even a little bit of, historical education will show you that things have been a lot lot worse in different ways. And on the other hand, people are really swimming in and imbibing and reinforcing and maybe even enacting this kind of view. I have a client who is a teacher of sixth and seventh graders, and she says she's heartbroken because they have a view that the world is basically broken. She says she's seeing depression in sixth and seventh graders. Now, don't remember being that age, but I think I didn't get depressed till I was 15.
• 3:52
  I had a few more years. And my depression was about my stuff. You know, we were told that there was a hole in the ozone when I was a second grader, but I didn't know what that meant. And So I want to talk about protecting your brightness because, first of all, you can. And second, why not?
• 4:27
  So you can't save the world, in my opinion, but you could save yours. And one thing that awakening is, is awakening to our bright heart mind. To awaken to our mind when it's unshrouded by the psychological and also emotional crusts that have been there generally for a very long time. And you can do this. And that's what this lineage is about.
• 5:13
  And you're invited into it as you do this practice. Now, bright is not really a metaphor. Right? This isn't saying, you should just be happy. Why don't you just be happy?
• 5:27
  Choose happiness, which actually may be skillful. I mean, because you can have various views on your life, might be skillful just to decide if you know how to do that. I've never known how to do that, but some people do. Just choose to be happy. This is basically a good word for what one discovers in this practice.
• 5:54
  A luminous heart mind, bright, radiant, translucent. The emotional vibe of that is what I like to call transcendent okayness. That is for your rational mind, there's no good reason for you to be happy. And your mind will be happy to fill in the blanks about all the reasons that you don't deserve, or you shouldn't be, or you can't be happy. And yet this brightness and its resonance is so much deeper than that and there's a transcendent okayness.
• 6:47
  So we could say that Zen practice is a path of ongoing, unshrouding our light. I like the word shroud because, you know, if you think of a lamp and there's a blanket on it, generally, even with a thick cloth, there's still a little bit of light. You still know the lamp is there, and you can pull it off. You can unveil it. And you didn't create that light.
• 7:17
  You didn't even make it brighter. You just took away what dampened it. This practice, this lineage, many other traditions as well, are an ongoing unshrouding. Right? Because we are open systems.
• 7:40
  We feel things. We hear things. We take in the world. We continually have to work. We have to have some means to not get shrouded or else it will just happen.
• 7:58
  Generally, if we are passive about spirit, spirit will get dimmed. Generally, I know there are exceptions to this. There are people who that doesn't happen for. We should study them. We should probably put them in a laboratory and get their DNA or something.
• 8:27
  Now this bright, it's not separate from simple gratitude for life. A simple joy of existing, which everybody tastes. Everybody has some interval, some time where that just shines through. Right? You're just happy to be alive.
• 8:54
  You just are in tune with the giftedness of existing, of having consciousness. And then it tends to get covered over because it's unreasonable. Because something in us says, yes, but. Okay, but. Or just all of the habits of mind, cultural mind, personal mind.
• 9:26
  So this isn't separate
• 9:27
  Jomon: from that simple gratitude for life, this brightness that I'm suggesting you protect. This
• 9:35
  Jogen: And it also can't be reduced to just that. Each person truly partakes of a spiritual dimension. Right? It's not that you have bright mind. It's more like bright mind shines through you, as if somehow each of us have a portion of that brightness.
• 10:05
  And this body, mind, personality is a more or less clear I don't know. Vessel? Vessel's rather new agey. Let's put vessel aside. Channel?
• 10:23
  I also can't say that. It's kind of like placing a candle in some kind of a ceramic vase that has sort of holes in it. And the interior is illuminated, and the more holes there are in the opaqueness, in the hardness of that vase or that ceramic thing, the more that light shines out. Each person truly partakes of a spiritual dimension. This, I hope it doesn't sound like a bumper sticker kind of thing because this is in a way the most important message in the world.
• 11:12
  Doesn't belong to God, doesn't belong to holy people, doesn't belong to angels, can't be reduced to your brain, can't be experienced without one. So you hit the jackpot. There is a dimension of being that is luminous, that is more true than your personality, more true than your problems, more true than all of that stuff. And you can make this intimate. You can make this intimate.
• 11:57
  In some ways, our daily practice is a microdose of intimacy with that. And some people are quite okay with the micro dose of that. Right? You know, I've talked about this before, but, I've done and some other people in the community have done darkness retreats where you sit in complete darkness. Right?
• 12:21
  You seal a room so there's no light. And the first time I did it, what was most striking was that even the smallest pinpoint of light alters darkness profoundly. It's really interesting. So you would have to there was a heater in the room and I put duct tape over the light so that it would be totally dark. Even that was too much for it to be pitch dark.
• 12:50
  And so even the intimacy we have with this dimension in our daily sitting, that intimacy comes with being willing to let go of thought. That already is starting to bring some illumination in. But you may not be satisfied with just a pinprick of light. And why should you be? You can make this intimate and this intimacy can become more and more intimate with itself.
• 13:29
  An ongoing attunement with the unshrouded bright mind. As I'm saying this, I know that some people in this room have one reference point for what I'm talking about and some have a different. Right? For some people, this has blazed through them and they know it without a doubt. And for some people, this sort of like not that different than some ordinary, I don't know, preachy kind of thing, somebody getting up there and telling them what's real.
• 14:05
  Shrouds. You know, there's been times, and I think this is normal for everybody, whether it's your gratitude for life or it's this deeper source of gratitude that I'm talking about as the brightness. Everybody has a kind of a getting close to it and a getting further away from it. Right? There's a kind of oscillation.
• 14:32
  It's interesting if you read like Sufi mystics. They felt like their relationship with the divine was the divine would play hide and seek. Right? The brightness could flirt with them deeply and then withdraw. And in a way that was part of the romance and just part of how it goes.
• 14:55
  But the thing is, you can get distant from it and always it is there for you if you're willing to do the work of dropping in. It's the very thing that sustains your life. And yet there are the shrouds. Now, one of the good things about when we get remote from it, when we touch it and then we get remote from it, is it's a time when we can look at what actually gets in the way. What actually gets in the way?
• 15:38
  It's the kind of a psychological equivalent, though it's very different is, Wait, I had a really happy period in my life, or My relationship was going really well, and now here we are estranged. What happened? There's a time when you can actually look really closely at that and you have a kind of a fragile purview like, okay, I can see the habits that got in the way. It's true with this as well. Again, nothing actually covers this over.
• 16:17
  And also the most trivial thing can, just like with love, the most trivial thing can close the heart down. Sure doesn't seem trivial when it closes the heart down, but maybe later it does. In our time, are popular shrouds. Right? There are popular shrouds.
• 16:44
  Blame is a very popular shroud. To believe that my mind state is in its disturbance and the source of that, I don't actually have any power over that. That's other people's fault. It's the ultimate giving over of power actually. Alright.
• 17:11
  This is not some there aren't injustices sort of talk. No, there are injustices, but what makes it worse is giving the power of our mind away. And we do that through blame. Again, things have causes. People do things that ripple in our being because we're open systems, but right?
• 17:45
  Anxiety. Anxiety is a major shroud in our time. Interestingly, you can this brightness that is our basic dimension is not necessarily moved by any of the emotional things that move through us. It's just that that's what we attend to. That's what our attention gets hooked on.
• 18:16
  Right? It's like that is swimming through the water and we lose sight of the water itself. There are many shrouds. I could go on. I'm not sure how helpful it is.
• 18:34
  I'm not sure how helpful it is for me to say, this is a shroud. And then if someone goes, oh yeah, I'm doing that shroud. I'm gonna stop doing that shroud. This is my internal debate. I don't know.
• 18:44
  Mostly, I write this for myself. Mostly, I'm talking to myself. So, I'm concerned with tribalizing. Right? How everyone wants to get on a team so so easily.
• 18:59
  I don't see that as helpful at all. Especially not for a practitioner. People wanna be right. Yeah. Moral clarity is one thing, but settling and being right, that will definitely shroud your light.
• 19:25
  Protecting your bright heart mind. So how to how to do that? First of all, it has to be discovered and uncovered. Again, some people have a reference point for this and they know exactly what I'm talking about. And for some people, this is like, well, I'm not I'm not sure that's real for me or I'm not sure that's possible for me, which actually is something that's sadder for me to recognize, the sense that it's not possible.
• 19:57
  Now, one way of reading meditation traditions is they are saying it has to be discovered and uncovered, and you have to do something. Right? And the thing that's suggested to do because you happen to be in a zen temple is to meditate. Right? Meditation's medicine.
• 20:19
  One needs a strong enough dose to really get underneath thoughts and reactions and deeper than that, wantings to allow this mind to emerge in stillness. I used to be perplexed about why. Why is the realest thing in the world able to be obscured by the most trivial thing in the world? It's actually a deep koan. Right?
• 20:55
  And think about the message of many nondual teachers and other, awakened people who are like, it's true right now for you and me. You've heard that kind of thing. Yeah? I'm presenting a version of that, that a profound freedom is what you are right now. And sometimes you scratch your head and go, if that's true, then why don't I experience it?
• 21:23
  And they say it's attachment to your thoughts, your identity, your body. And you go, that's strong enough to overwhelm something so profound? It's kind of mysterious. We need a strong enough dose to get underneath thoughts and reactions and even wantings, the wanting to persist as a being that is stepping apart from life and saying that's right and that's wrong. Not even that, to temporarily set that aside.
• 22:10
  It's just temporary. So I think there's a taste of it in everyday sitting, and yet there's an overwhelm of the mind's karmic crust that's possible in retreats. It's a matter of dosage. In this time when we are inundated with unpleasant information, do we need stronger practice than in the past? Some people think so.
• 22:49
  Do we need a different practice than the past? Some people think so. So first of all, to know that that is actually the point of meditation, right? And it's phrased in different ways. Maybe all the varied language we hear kind of confuses the point, but the basic point is this unshrouding.
• 23:24
  This discovery of something essential to your nature and how, beautiful it is if someone has faith in that. Second, our behavior has to protect it. Right? And this is what the precepts in Zen are about. This brightness gets shrouded or dimmed not only by choppiness and crowdedness of mind, it gets dimmed by our heart being out of alignment.
• 24:16
  Right? But those are really related, the crowdedness of mind. For example, if we deceive others, if we're being dishonest in different ways. There are different ways we can be dishonest. We can be dishonest out of actually wanting to be loved.
• 24:36
  We can be dishonest out of, wishing to gain advantage in a situation. We can be dishonest because the truth is hard to feel. I mean, if we deceive others or if we deceive ourselves frankly, we create disturbing thought echoes. The heart is a little bit less able to come to rest. Right?
• 25:02
  If we indulge aggression, the mind tightens and hardens. That's part of why I speak so often about not getting into tribalized righteousness with politics. Because of what it can do to the mind, what's lost when that happens. Again, with our behavior, if we elevate ourselves and we look down on others, as soon as you have an exaggerated object out there, you amplify the subject in here. Self and other subject and object, so called.
• 25:48
  They're entangled. They arise as one. So if I start looking down on some person or some group, then this person that I am gets a little bit tighter, a little bit stronger, a little bit more affirmed. It's lent more existence than it really has. And the more firm and tightly packed my self image is, the more this brightness gets blocked.
• 26:18
  I don't know why, actually. But maybe it's good. If we take in too much of the toxins of social media, and frankly, I just think it's getting worse. My girlfriend is somehow able to look at just cool art and kittens. She can like dive into Instagram and get out unscathed.
• 26:48
  It's amazing. But me, I don't even open the thing. If we indulge too much of the toxins of social media, it's a very human instinct to resentment. Human beings, when things are going their way, they have resentment in them, but it's kind of under the surface because we're basically fed and safe and we have, you know, our basic needs met. But as soon as that gets threatened at all, the resentment that exists instinctually in human beings starts surfacing.
• 27:30
  And social media is often the toxic areas of it are playing right on that. And our resentment, which everyone contains in potential begins to royal and trouble the heart. Again, I commend those of you that sort of get in there and get out when it actually supports your bright mind. I am I am not able to do that. You know, and I could could and would to some people suggest, why don't you do an experiment of taking time apart?
• 28:07
  See if you are actually less informed. Is that true? See if you're actually contributing less to the problems you care about. Is that true? See if you actually were doing anything to support your cause by pressing pressing thumbs up on someone's view.
• 28:22
  See if that's true. And then make a decision. Okay. Enough of my soapbox. Consider independence from the flock.
• 28:40
  As I'm fond of saying, I think this is an important message as all of us who are doing this practice in different ways in the world. It's really, important and is this polarizing? Maybe it's a polarizing message. I hope not. The world doesn't give a crap about your bright heart mind.
• 29:03
  Zero, zip, zilch. Generally, world wants your attention, your money, your agreement. Places, organizations, people, communities that actually are about this are about as rare as a star in the daytime. That's an old. That's an old saying for how rare sincere practitioners are.
• 29:33
  The rarest stars seen in the daytime. The flock, the flock is a steaming constant busyness. Right? On to the next thingness. That's very flock like.
• 29:51
  Right? To feel like if you have space in your schedule, you have to fill it, manufacture importance. In some sense, bright mind needs the crack of non doing to fall into. And there's something to be said, of course, for a daily sitting practice. I'm an advocate for that.
• 30:18
  But also, there needs to be moments where we are not animated by a vector of next. Where actually the moment can just bloom wide. Right? The moment can actually touch you. You're available to be touched by the moment.
• 30:39
  That cannot happen if we are always in nextness. But that is a message of the flock. Busy equals important. But what does important equal? Somebody tell me that.
• 30:57
  I'm not sure. To esteem always having an opinion is very flock like. I don't know. I don't know if this is a modern thing or an American thing or a Western thing. I don't really know.
• 31:22
  When I was younger, I had a Japanese girlfriend and she told me I talked too much and that men in Japan were attractive who were quiet. And I know some women would find men more attractive if they were quieter. That wasn't funny? Nice. A little bit.
• 31:39
  Okay. I am aware that some people, their work related to Bright Mind is bringing forth their opinions. Right? Is bringing forth their views into the world, not being silent. I am aware of that.
• 32:02
  And yet, bright mind doesn't need to know everything, doesn't need to have an opinion. Right? I actually remember when I left the monastery and I started dating, imagine that. That's that's its own interesting tale. A monk a monk on hinge.
• 32:27
  It was as exactly as it sounds. Imagine these ladies. Okay. Anyway. My biggest fear was I didn't have enough opinions to be interesting.
• 32:43
  Because when I left the practice culture, I realized that that's what people take to be an interesting person, is someone who's full of opinions about things. And I thought, well, I got to get some opinions. But there is a freedom outside of yes and no, outside of for and against. There's actually an art of conversation that has nothing to do with having an opinion. Yeah.
• 33:28
  A life based on self image is flock like. If being okay or valuable is always outsourced to the gaze or the words of others. And you put aside the emotional consequences of that, but we drain the energy it takes to, as the old Chan masters would say, turn the light around and shine it within. It's actually a very interesting phrase. So the light that I'm talking about is expended in outwardness.
• 34:12
  I'm not criticizing extroverts, but it's expended in always getting hooked on this or that person's opinion, view, this or that shiny object. Right? It's dissipated. It's like when you feel exhausted because you put out too much. It's related to that.
• 34:35
  To that which is put out, to put it, to let it come to rest in its source. The source feeds on the source. So I don't know why the feeling tone I have right now is one of like a kind of a ping of sadness. That's interesting. Whether that's mine, yours, the shared reality, right?
• 35:09
  But actually, this is a message of great good news. Great good news. Because you cannot save the world. By doing this and this alone, I feel like you're making a positive contribution to culture. Right?
• 35:37
  But you can you can uncover this. It's not metaphor. It's not for special people, and it's not as remote as you might believe. And that's my that's my basic message. So may it be so.
• 35:59
  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 zendust.org. Your support supports us.