Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / Chanting Our Way to Wholeness - Hogen Roshi

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Chanting Our Way to Wholeness - 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.
• 0:17
  Hogen: Buddhist and Buddhist practice rests on experienced phenomena. It rests on experience, not philosophy, experience. One of the things that we can see of course is we see everything changing and permanent, we see that, it's just an experience, it's just an observation. We also see suffering of many kinds, challenges, obstacles, problems, just an observation. And we see as part of that, we can see people will be afraid, starving, poverty, war, sadness, all the disasters, we just look around.
• 0:59
  Or we look at our own life. There is one primary cause with many names. The primary cause is separation. Separation. And the manifestation of that separation is clinging, craving, greed, like strong glue, sticky, stubborn, obstinate, obdurate.
• 1:41
  When we have this sense of separation from our self or others and the world has a sense of separation from our self or others, we start clinging to our hopes, beliefs, how do we keep this separate self safe, how do we make it comfortable, how do we make it win in competition with all the other separate selves. We cling. Cray, we're glued to this inaccurate statement, philosophy, experience, belief. And when we cling to this belief of separation that I am separate, that I am alone and afraid in a world I never made, We cling to this separation. And we cling to all of our beliefs and our opinions about who we think we are, how the world should be.
• 2:51
  When we cling to this separation we have not yet seen the the intimacy of all things, we have not yet seen our intimacy with everything else. Then we start looking around and figuring how I can support my separation. I need more, I hate that, those people are the problem, he, she, it, them, those, they, it's their fault. According to my view, I should not have to experience this or that. This sense of separation, this sense of clinging always involves the past and future.
• 3:37
  Don't want whatever experience that might lead to, hate whatever experience that had. I'll get this thing and then in the future I'll feel better. I buy a Twinkie in hopes that the Twinkie is gonna make me feel better, you know, a few minutes after I buy it. We can talk, argue, you know, philosophize endlessly about the correctness or incorrectness of this view, or we can chant the name of the Buddha. In this chanting, as the experience is more and more wholehearted and we we work through the dross and the mud and the feathers that have covered us.
• 4:35
  Our intimacy becomes obvious. And so we are using chanting the Buddha's name, this as a way of directly experiencing the place of no future and no past. The place that cuts through clinging. When we're chanting as wholeheartedly as we are able right now or at any time, when we're engaged in that, we're not telling stories, we're not complaining, we're not we're not full of daydreams, we're not practicing all of our judgments. The chanting, however it sounds, however you do it cuts through the mind that is constantly separating.
• 6:18
  Cuts through and can only be experienced in the ephemeral present. Want to describe the process of practices purifying gold, but the gold is the experience itself and so we are purifying our wholeheartedness, we are purifying our own mind. We are purifying our direct expression experience. We were chanting the Buddha's name, the name. You know, we use that name because it's in harmony with the vibrations of hundreds of millions of people over thousands of years, but it is the chanting, it is the attention, it is the mindfulness, it is the meticulousness that makes the difference.
• 7:08
  So it doesn't matter whether it's chanted hot or slow, cool fast, haltingly or enthusiastically, if we purify the gold of our life as we, little by little, as we more and more include all of our life. As we first learn we're chanting, we're chanting with lots of impurities, you know, we're chanting maybe from up here. But as we keep chanting, as we relax, as we put ourselves into it, it becomes a fuller and fuller experience. Doesn't have to sound like that, it sounds like your your chant. But it becomes a fuller experience where you feel, at least I feel, the tingling of the chant throughout the whole body.
• 8:12
  And so as we purify our chanting from partial hesitant half in there half and we more and more completely allow the chanting to perfuse our body, to permeate the body, to to include the whole body. Then there is a purity, wholeseness, wholesomeness. It's not done by force. There are some traditions where you, you know, you chant moo, you scream moo day and night for days until you just completely give up. That's not the way we do it here.
• 9:02
  So, it is not done by force sometimes, it takes great energy, but sometimes as Bancho was pointing out, it takes stepping back and cooling off, and sometimes it takes just watching, just watching the process, and sometimes it takes deep full intention. We start off chanting as you did a few days ago. We chant whatever is easiest, normal normal, most convenient for us. And it's always used as a part of us, a partial chant. It's not a pure chant.
• 9:38
  It's not whole wholly engaged. But as we start off doing chanting whatever we do, as all of you have discovered, as we are chanting whatever we way we we chant and we are including more and more, we actually engage in the process, we don't engage of course this doesn't happen. We engage in the process, then we begin ringing the bell of our life. And as we do that, paying attention all the way down, however it's done, I can only do my way. As we pay attention to that, then we're, as I say, ringing the bell of our life, the bell begins to ring.
• 10:35
  And what happens as we're doing this is the the dead spots, the dull spots, the unawakened places, the places that we have cut off, the places we no longer feel, the places that are that are hidden from us begin to wake up. And we can call those frozen places, those dead places, those numb places, we can call them old traumas or fixed views or frozen habits or whatever. But as we chant over and over, sometimes we become aware of them and sometimes they start waking up, they start being included in the ringing, and they start being included in the name, they start being included in the breath, start being included in our experience of our own being. And sometimes we have an experience that early in session, some of those later in a session, some of those after a session, sometimes ten years. You know, I've been doing this a long time.
• 11:45
  And we change from an attitude of, I am separate, I am this way, I am this small, you know, suffering creature, we begin to change and begin to welcome all the different parts of us. So Shin Bancho has used Romi's poem, The Guest House, It just says, open the door, let everything come in, everything come in. But you also let it go out the back door, you don't let it live in you. You know, you can let everything come in, all your guests can come in, you greet them and say, thank you very much on your way out. Don't let them move in.
• 12:22
  So we all know what the experience is like when we have a leg that is numb or we've been asleep in one position for too long or or we just got a cast taken off, and we start to exercise it or we have a new, we're trying new asanas for muscles we haven't used. It's uncomfortable. It's stiff. It's achy. It's painful.
• 12:52
  It hurts. It hurts. It hurts to wake up sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. It hurts to wake up something that's been dead, something that's been excluded, something that has not been part of our being.
• 13:10
  Who told us waking up was going to be easy? We read these experiences like Shona was talking about, Dipama, you know, without even knowing something happened, suddenly she was released. That happens. She she was a a great a great practitioner and influenced the Insight Meditation Society, and influenced Spirit Rock, and influenced many people in this country. But that that in my experience only happens sometimes after great difficulty.
• 13:49
  That we have been practicing and struggling and facing ourselves and trying to wake things up and at some point, mysteriously, when we're not expecting it, something shifts dramatically or subtly. But it doesn't... We don't go from a narrow mind to a... An alikened mind. Awakened open mind.
• 14:22
  So this particular practice, chanting the Buddha's name, as we continue doing it, as we begin to take whatever we got, whatever chant we've got, whatever way we do it, as we do it with mindfulness, with meticulous awareness, as we do it with more and more warmth, more and more inclusivity, more and more... You know, we may encounter some really gritty, horrible, strangled parts, but we keep chanting, we keep chanting, and gradually everything comes alive. And that's the point of Seshan, to be alive. Sri Nisargadatta says, what is the use of truth, goodness, honesty, harmony, and beauty? They are their own goal.
• 15:14
  They manifest spontaneously and effortlessly when things are left to themselves or not interfered with, not shunned or wanted or conceptualized, just experienced in full awareness. And such awareness itself is a blessing. It does not make use of people and things, it fulfills them. So the full awareness of our body breathing and toning, the full awareness of this bell, this tuning fork, the full awareness of this has in itself a very positive, as in itself a very rewarding, as in itself a very salubrious experience, is a salubrious experience. So we can look at the spiritual practice, you know, we calm down, become present, we become learn to include different parts, let go of fixed suffering beliefs, and then the last important chunk is of course Bodhicitta engaging with the world, offering whatever we can offer.
• 16:28
  But the stickiest part is letting go of fixed beliefs. And we can't think our way out of fixed beliefs. The more we think, the more we think. We think we understand and we think we know a healthy cause or a course, and we think about exercise, and we think about cleaning our house, and we think about moving to Florida, but the more we talk and think about this, the further from the truth we are. We can't actually move to Florida until we move.
• 16:57
  We can plan, if anybody would want to. So we learn most deeply by experience and experience happens with the doing and doing happens with engagement. And when we recognize something for ourselves, where we have tasted something and not just a matter of somebody telling us or hearing it, then that begins to really change our relationship to the world. So you will have noticed that as we are chanting doing the Buddha's name, have less anxiety about the world while the chanting is going on. There is something to be learned there.
• 17:45
  When we are wholly engaged in some activity, the mind of distress and despair, the mind that is constantly looking outward is calmer. We function better in our lives with less anger and less despair, less anxiety. So this is genuine. Many people, many people over the course of time have have gone through the muck and also have reached reap the benefits. So I wanna read something here from one of our members.
• 18:19
  I don't think he's online right now. As you know, I've been a pet profession... I've been something of a professional cancer patient these past three years. 400 plus provider appointments, millions of dollars in treatment, much of it quite invasive, very invasive, which I will spend the rest of my life trying to pay forward. I don't know what that means, but I want you to know I'm here to help however I can.
• 18:50
  Seshan... This Seshan is a brand new recreation, or is it a brand new recreation of a miracle, just as it always is, so wonderful. Preaching to the choir I know. I feel into the empty clearing that is prior to thoughts and activity and decline to engage with thought. As things settle down more and there is more clarity, equanimity, energy, whole body, moment by moment awareness and quieter thoughts, I let the concentration energy recycle back into practice.
• 19:31
  I still have plenty of complaining type thoughts throughout the day, says Shenronel, about the features of my surgery, the radiation impacted body, I'd rather be different than they actually are. But honestly, those thoughts regenerate time and time again, even when those thoughts regenerate time and time again, they don't stick around for too long. And it is actually some kind of dream it is is some kind of absolute dream miracle that I have this body and that it is very much not dead, and that I can enjoy Sesin, and being with the people I love, not have dreamed this would have been possible even just a short time ago. Might have dreamed this is possible even a short time ago. We don't know what's going to happen next.
• 20:31
  Last point I want to mention this afternoon is that which is aware of hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, chucking, touching, chanting, that which is aware has no location. We are aware of things, we experience things, we do things, but that which is aware that which is aware is a mystery. It's our true nature. It has no findable location. So we say it's everywhere.
• 20:58
  But given that truth, wherever our attention is placed, wherever our awareness extends, that's where we are, that's who we are. Outside, inside, or in between. So when we're feeling pain we think, well that's my pain. But it's also true when we're seeing the beautiful foliage of the fall. That's who we are.
• 21:28
  So everything that we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch is not processed inside here somewhere. I mean, there's a scientific realities which we're which are important. In terms of this direct physical experience, we feel the hands with the hands in the hands, we see the leaves with the leaves in the leaves, we see the world in the world with the world. And everyone whose mind begins to clear up and open up has says the world looks brighter. So this afternoon I'd like us to combine it all.
• 22:07
  So we're going to do a walk around, snow walk outside, those of you. And I encourage you to chant with your feet, chant with your voice, chant with your breath. Look at the world with bright awareness, look at the world with open eyes, look carefully, let the let the light in, and recognize while you're doing this everything you perceive is your own mind, your true self, directly and vividly. Don't have to analyze, just chant and look and walk and let the world awaken.
• 23:02
  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 zendesk.org. Your support supports us.