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The Fluid Heart of the New Year - 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.
• 0:22
  Hogen: I take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. The transcendental values of life. Good evening. Welcome to the New Year. The New Year is an arbitrary date and time.
• 0:35
  You know, in China there's a different New Year, in Israel there's a different New Year, in Saudi Arabia there's a different New Year. New Year, the New Year, the idea of a New Year is, you know, Gregorian calendar, our particular contemporary way that we formulate time. And so welcome to this arbitrary day, which we call the new year, beginning of And the essence of dharma, which is good to talk about in the beginning of the new year, is impermanence. Now impermanence doesn't exist because there's no opposite. For something to exist there has to be something opposite.
• 1:18
  To be an existence and a non existence. But there's no opposite to impermanence. Right? There's nothing that's permanent, so there's no opposite. If there's no opposite to something, we can't say it exists.
• 1:31
  You know, if there's no If there was only blue and there was no opposite, we couldn't really say there was blue because there's nothing to contrast it to. So this thing we call impermanence actually is just an idea that people we've made up to account for certain experiences. The essential teaching of impermanence is that it's the foundation of liberation. So many times during the month we chant or during the year we chant the Heart Sutra, the Bodhisattva of compassion from the depths of prajna wisdom, saw the fluidity of all the five conditions, all the worlds, it's all in flux. And because they saw it was all in flux then there was relief from suffering.
• 2:16
  Now how is that possible? How is seeing that everything is actually in flux, is actually not stable, is actually like waves of aliveness, waves of things just arising and disappearing? How can that be liberating? So that's part of what is important to do with practices that we are actually stabilizing our self, stabilizing our minds, stabilizing our view enough that we can look directly, We can look directly at reality. Now, in meditation we often talk about looking directly at the reality of being breathed.
• 2:57
  Right? That's our our fun, no breath, no life. So let's look directly at life. Life is being breathed. As soon as that stops So if we look directly at the breath and we're watching the breath in this moment, first off we have to experience it.
• 3:18
  We're not up here looking down there somewhere. That isn't the way we experience breath. We experience breath in the breath. We feel the breath. So if we're thinking, oh, the breath is a thing and I'm some other thing, that's not really the reality.
• 3:34
  The reality is breath is our life. And we look at the body and we think, What's the body breathing? We begin to look at again, this is a meditation you can all look at at some point. Everything moves when you're breathing. Your chest moves, your neck moves, your shoulders move, your back moves, your belly moves, your pelvis moves.
• 3:57
  And if you look more subtly you'll even find your legs, your legs and your arms move. And you'll notice your mind is always moving. The mind and the breath aren't two different things. Our thoughts and our body aren't two different things. The body and mind are arbitrarily divided.
• 4:17
  But they're really one thing. So we we look at our direct experience at any level and we find it's flickering, it's changing. Our thoughts pop in and pop out. Our feelings, our emotions, it's all in flux. It's all fluid.
• 4:39
  We think we're sitting in this room right now and partly because we can't actually see the swirling of the the swirling of the air, the swirling of of all the invisible energies that are going on, we think that it's stable. But we can hold up a glass of water, a clear glass of water, and it looks stable because of our information operating system. But if we really examine the water, put a drop of ink in it, we we hold it up to a microscope and see the microbes in it, we see it's all swirling. We only think things are permanent because of the limitations of our own perception. Because in order to perceive things, we have to put them in categories.
• 5:27
  And we put them in categories, we think that category is real and stable. But when we look at anything directly, it's impermanent. Now, I always think the best thing to look at is our thoughts. So right now, everybody here, I assume, has got some kind of cognition, kind of cerebration going on. And you look at that and you watch, they're all flickering.
• 5:58
  You can't hold on to a thought. It all flickers. Check it out. You say one. You can't hold on to one.
• 6:06
  The only way you can hold on to one is say one, one, one, one, one, one, one. It's still all changing. It's all disappearing. Thoughts disappear so fast, so fast and so quickly that we don't even notice them. And we think that they are the same.
• 6:29
  We think that there's a continuity there. It's just flow. I always think of those those examples, those motion examples from the nineteen twenties, you know, about a century ago of somebody running on on, what is it, 16 millimeter film or where you have a whole series of sequences, you know, click click click click, and you play the film, and suddenly it seems like there's a man running. You seem like because all those things, you see so many different images all at once, the brain puts them all together and thinks this is a thing. This is the way that we create ourselves.
• 7:05
  It's really interesting. We create ourselves by a little snippet, snippet, snippet, snippet, a moment, a moment, a moment, an experience, experience, experience, and the mind weaves them all together into an us, into a thing. We're not things. An interesting sideline byproduct is I was someone showed me that those those old movies, you know, the films that that at least I used to have when I was a kid, that we used to show in school, those big reels. They don't they're not actually continuous.
• 7:41
  They only show you a flash of a single image, a flash of a single image, a single image, and the brain puts all those images together. The brain is creating, coordinating those. The same is true with our lives. If we're looking at very carefully at our lives, at our thoughts, at our body, at our breathing, we have instant, instant, instant, instant, instant, instant. And somehow the brain, you know, the mind, we we weave it all together.
• 8:17
  We think, oh, I'm a thing. Oh, the world is a thing. If we look carefully, we really see the world actually a place of enormous potential, creativity, enormous freedom. That each moment, all things are dying and something new is coming up and something new is coming up and something new is coming up. And the Heart Sutra says that when we really see the world is fluid, flowing, it's constantly creative.
• 8:47
  We're not stuck. Being stuck is a fixated mind. Mind thinking, yeah, this is the way it is. But when we examine it, we really find, oh, there's a lot more creativity and flexibility and fluidity. So we have a new year.
• 9:05
  Arbitrarily calling a new year. And it's a new year of potential. There are, you know, habitual personality, energetic forces in each of our lives. But they are not exorable. You know?
• 9:22
  They are not, fixed because creativity is always possible. It's always possible to see things in a new way. One of the world things that we talk about in this tradition and other traditions is that if we actually see something, if we have a realization, if we have an opening, if we have a direct experience, or if you're doing the Byron Katie work, you really see through a particular belief that somehow just seeing through a fixed belief that we have about ourselves and the world suddenly opens up possibility, suddenly opens up potential that we didn't even know we had but has been there all along. When we're looking here at the beginning of the new year, we for those of you who are at our new year's ceremony either at the monastery or up here, we have we start off with three parts. One part is we let go of the old.
• 10:22
  We we just sort of say, okay, that's the old crusty way of doing it. That's that's my old habit pattern. That's that's a way that has not served me well. And we just identify it and we set the intention to say, I'm going to let it go. Now, actually it lets go by itself, but our mind just keeps grabbing a hold of it.
• 10:40
  So we first off say, I want to let go of the unskillful way that I have been living my life. The unskillful places that I have been stuck. The unskillful beliefs that I hold. I really look into them and see, oh, they're actually, I don't have to believe these crazy things that I've been believing about my life and my history and who I am. I don't have to believe them.
• 11:02
  I have a lot of flexibility. So the first part of the ceremony is we let go. We acknowledge and let go, and we have this nice fire ceremony where we get to burn things and create lots of smoke, which is fun. As a total aside, when we do that, I am often sitting up here at the front, we do the fire ceremony. And so I and everybody comes up and gets to burn the things that they had written written down on.
• 11:30
  So I get to watch everybody's relationship to fire. Some people come in and they're really timorous. They really say, oh, I don't want to touch this. It's it's dangerous. And they'll just reach out and quiver and they put the light through a piece of paper on fire.
• 11:45
  And some people think that if you light the top of the paper, it will burn down like a candle. Flame always goes up. So, you know, but it's so interesting. People light the top of the candle and the top of the paper, very slowly it burns down and burns out. So you to kind of grab it and turn it upside down.
• 12:02
  So some people are totally confident. You know, I understand this. They know how they know how fire goes. They know they know how to light paper. They they just come up with great aplomb and and do it.
• 12:15
  So it's so interesting just to see everybody's relationship to a simple thing like candles and fire. We reveal ourselves. Always we're revealing ourselves how we walk, we move, and we're revealing ourselves. So back to the theme here. When we begin to let go of those old fixed ideas, I am this kind of person, I will have to do this kind of thing, these are my old head patterns, Suddenly there's some freedom that begins to be in there.
• 12:48
  And that freedom is is that freedom that freedom comes from direct experience, direct realization, direct understanding. That freedom then allows us not to suddenly change our body shape, although people's body shape changes over the years, of course. But it allows us to change our relationship to the so called world. We can talk about that in a second. The next part of the ceremony is vow.
• 13:18
  You know, each of us is different. It's without question. You know, you look around the room and we're all so different. And as soon as you're out of this context, everybody wear very different clothing. But even in this place where clothing is all dark and subdued in a way, it's all different.
• 13:38
  Everybody's different. So that difference means that each of us in our lives is here to express something different, something unique. We cannot express anybody else's life. Our life is totally unique. Our life is here in this particular configuration, this particular configuration of hair and brains, and this configuration of breath, and this configuration of our ethnic background, this configuration how our mind thinks is totally unique.
• 14:19
  Totally unique. And so each person's uniqueness is calls for, is is is asking for, there's a compulsion to express it. To express it in some way. To become something. Each of us has an inherent vow in ourselves to really become the potential that we have here.
• 14:48
  Now, it may look lots of different ways. It may look big or it may look small, it may look wide, it may look very narrow, it may look very deep, may look very shallow. But that's that's just the the judgmental mind. Each of us has this inherent vow to make the most of our life. To become who we really truly are.
• 15:11
  And it does not mean that we will become the president of The United States or the surgeon general or we'll become really wealthy or it means that we will become ourselves. There's a vow to it, a kind of purity, a vow for integrity, a vow to be to have integrity to give to give life to the wisdom that we have have embodied in our life. So that's the the next part of the ceremony is acknowledging that. And we often, as you know, sometimes we'll do a whole week or weekend of of life out. I think Koto is doing one in January.
• 15:48
  Jomon: Yes. Coming up next weekend.
• 15:50
  Hogen: Great. So if you're, you know, if you're unclear about this this very vital part of the spiritual path, this part of the human path, you know, what is what is your vow? What is your intention? What is your heart's aspiration? Then I encourage you to come to that that workshop.
• 16:06
  And it's it's also a developmental lifelong thing. The third part of the ceremony that we do is a ceremony of ethics, ceremony of integrity. Ethics are basically integrity. It says, I have integrity that my my my heart, my deep heart that realizes the connection of all things, my loving kindness, my my true nature has and the way I think and live, all those become one. It's part of the spiritual path is that we're no longer thinking I should I should I should I should should should I should should I should.
• 16:44
  But we're actually doing our best to live it. To live it. To live it. To live with integrity. So we first try to let go of the old crusty fixed beliefs within honor and acknowledge the the vows, the inherent aspiration that we all have, the heart's heart's desire.
• 17:04
  And then three, we say, okay, I want to live this life with integrity. I want to really be bring my my my deepest heart intentions and my actions together in relationship with the world. All that is possible because of impermanence. All that is possible because of the fluidity that we are not fixed. All that is possible because every moment has the potential for creativity.
• 17:34
  And if we and we often are talking about different levels of of clearing up our act, different levels of integrity, different levels of creativity. But that's only possible because we're not stuck. It's only possible because things are always fluid. And no matter what we have done, no matter what realm we find ourselves in, we can turn it into wisdom. We can turn it into wisdom because of impermanence, because of the the ever the changing nature of things.
• 18:06
  So for this new year, this new time together, to really make a vow to to to see what is most fundamental, What is most fundamental before our thoughts. What is the most fundamental truth about our life. To learn to recognize it. To live with integrity with it. And to to use the integrity of our our unique nature to be of service to the world.
• 18:38
  One of the ways of being service to the world, the most important one, is if we clean up our act, the whole world is better. You know, if you have the whole world minus whole world of darkness with one candle, suddenly it has changed. So our we our view of the world, ourselves, and the world we live in is improved when our mind becomes clear and bright. And that is a matter of practice. Sitting down, you meditate, you clarify the mind, you open the heart, and it improves the whole world.
• 19:18
  You know? It improves the whole world with an end of one, and even in a more profound way, it improves the whole world. Well, improves the whole world completely. Because the whole world is nothing but a projection of our mind. How we are thinking and doing things.
• 19:35
  And when we think and do things in a different way, the world is a different place. Instead of a place of hostility and fear, it actually can become a place of love and kindness without changing anything. So, welcome to the new year and this particular culture, this particular time. I hope each person makes a vow to make the best of this year, whatever way you you possibly feel is in most accord with your heart, may everyone benefit from that.
• 20:22
  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.