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The Mysterious Source - Kisei Costenbader, 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
  Kisei: Dharma, and I take refuge in Sangha. So if you've been following along on Monday nights, we've been going through the Affirming Faith and Mind poem. It's a chant also in the Great Vow Chant book, which you can find on the teachings page of the Zen Community of Oregon website. And we've just been reading a page at a time. It's a long chant.
• 1:07
  And we're on the second to last page. So we're getting to the end of the poem. We're getting to the end of Ongo. So I'm gonna read it. You're welcome to follow along.
• 1:18
  It's also, I think, really nice just to receive the words and see if any line or stanza or word jumps out at you or touches you in any way, gets under your skin, irritates you, all are interesting to me. All right, so here we go. If mind does not discriminate, all things are as they are, as one. To go to this mysterious source frees us from all entanglements. When all is seen with equal mind, to our self nature we return.
• 2:03
  This single mind goes right beyond all reasons and comparison. Seek movement and there's no movement. Seek rest and no rest comes instead. When rest and no rest cease to be, then even oneness disappears. This ultimate finalities beyond all laws can't be described.
• 2:29
  With single mind one with the way, all ego centered striving cease. Doubts and confusion disappear and so true faith pervades our life. There is no thing that clings to us and nothing that is left behind. All's self revealing, void and clear, without exerting power of mind. Thought cannot reach this state of truth.
• 3:03
  Here feelings are of no avail. So the lines I wanna focus on for the Dharma talk, and of course they may be different than the ones that touched you or jumped off the page at you, are the first two stanzas. So if mind does not discriminate, all things are as they are as one. To go to this mysterious source frees us from all entanglements. When all is seen with equal mind to our self nature, we return.
• 3:42
  This single mind goes right beyond all reasons and comparison. One of my ongoing commitments for this practice period was to really investigate trust in mind. That's the theme of this poem, trust in mind or faith in the heart mind. And so I find myself every time I pick up this chant to read it over, to study, I remind myself that, that this chant is about trust in mind, in the heart of wisdom, trust in our true nature. And I ask myself, well, what does that mean?
• 4:42
  To trust in mind, to trust in the heart mind. Do you trust in your heart mind? When? What does that feel like? What does that look like?
• 5:02
  Do you have faith in the nature of your own mind, your own heart? Well, that's part of what this poem is asking us. And, you know, in my experience, faith and trust aren't like, we're not talking about blind faith or blind trust. We're talking about trust that comes through relationship, through being with. So I would say that the trust I have in HeartMind now is quite different than when I started practicing or even five years ago.
• 5:55
  Like what mind is and what trust is has evolved for me in my practice. I imagine that's true for all of us in some way. Another thing that I've been thinking of or reflecting on as we've been going through this poem, which is very, and I say this a lot, but it's very direct. And it's really a poem or practice instructions for pointing out. And this is a particular kind of teaching that is really emphasized in the Zocen school of Tibetan Buddhism but we have it in Zen too and this is an example of it.
• 6:50
  It's really pointing at what is the nature of mind? What is our nature? And we're told and we have some experience of like, it's not a thing. So we can't describe it in the ways that we might be able to describe like a table or a feeling. It's more elusive than that.
• 7:22
  It's not like things. Like that's part of what this poem is saying. It's not like other things that we have experience with. The mind or the heart mind that we're talking about, our true nature, it's unconditioned. So how do you talk about something?
• 7:43
  How do you recognize something that doesn't have any conditions that you can't really describe, but yet it's the most intimate thing that we know. And so this poem is pointing out like, oh, we have tendency to
• 8:04
  Jomon: take refuge in our thinking minds because we learn to do that. That's how we've learned to function
• 8:16
  Kisei: poem as human beings in society throughout a long time of human history, including the Buddhist time, including when this poem was written, which was over a thousand years ago. We have a tendency to identify with the thinking mind, to identify with our thoughts. And this poem is saying there's another way. There's a more reliable aspect of our nature that we can really truly trust. And to know that and to start to trust it totally or begins to change your life.
• 9:03
  Like, there's a refuge right here. You don't need to go looking outside for the truth. You actually have it. It's right here. It's who you are.
• 9:19
  But we don't recognize it because we have this tendency to get identified with thoughts and think about it. And then we're further from the truth, as the poem says in so many different ways. So there's that. That's the bulk of what this poem is trying to do, is just pointing out over and over again the nature of mind and the distinction between the nature of mind and the thinking mind. And so it's spelling out all the different things that the thinking mind does.
• 10:02
  It discriminates. It has preferences. And if we get identified with that discrimination and those preferences, we're missing our true mind. Now it's not saying that you won't use your discriminating mind after you recognize your true mind. It's just helping us parse out this apparent distinction that we sometimes don't even realize we're doing.
• 10:31
  Like how prominent the thinking mind is. But I also want to talk about, there are seasons of practice. There are seasons of practice that we move through in our lives and there are seasons of practice that we move through in a year, just like years have seasons, spring, fall, winter. So ongo tends to happen in the fall every year and it tends to feature this collective season, like as a sangha, we're being encouraged to practice and to recognize who we are, recognize the mind beyond the thinking mind. And we don't just do this once, We do this over and over and over again, really familiarizing ourselves.
• 11:32
  That's how trust develops. So as a sangha, we're in this season of, like, tearing down and and looking into mind. Part of what this poem is saying in these stanzas that I just read today is, like, as we do that, we can know ourselves as mystery, as the great mystery, this mysterious source. We can know the source of all experience experientially, not like know, so now I can talk about it and I have this new concept that I can explain to my friends, because that's just more thoughts. That's just more knowing.
• 12:24
  But we can know this mysterious source of being as our nature, experientially, as something that we can trust and rely on. So that's the particular season of practice that we're exploring together. But, and, like, you may be in a different season. And so you're kind of orbiting with us during this ongo, and yet, like, there may be questions that are big and alive for you that aren't the same as this, like, particular edge of practice that we're kind of swimming in as we're reading this poem together. So it may be like the flavor or time of practice that you're in is more about like, how do I use my discriminating mind actually skillfully?
• 13:26
  And that's part of what the precepts offer is a reflection on how to engage with, with thought in relationship, with speech in relationship. And, you know, there are many seasons practice. There's a season of practice that we often focus on as a sangha in January. That's more about like coming into recognition of our own life vows. So it's different.
• 13:59
  Like this season of Ongo and especially with this Faith Mind poem is more about like, what do we all have in common? What is our shared nature? What is reliable no matter what is happening? And then like life now is much more about our particular karma, our particular affinities, express, how we give life to life. And that's an important season of practice.
• 14:35
  And so, you know, you may find yourself, like, more in those questions. Those might be more alive for you. We're like reading this poem that's saying don't discriminate, don't discriminate. Like put that aside. And it's relevant.
• 14:49
  It can be relevant in any season but it might not be like exactly meeting like where you're at. And I just wanna speak to that a little bit today, like, because we've really been, you know, diving deep in the depths of this poem and it's not saying anything new, really. It's continuing to point out the nature of mind and will continue until we're done with ongo. So I, yeah, I wanna just talk a little bit about somebody who I met recently. So we had the privilege a couple of weeks ago to host a Zen teacher named Myobun, who's a dharma teacher at Buddha Eye Temple in Oregon in Eugene.
• 15:56
  And she's actually just finishing up a, how long was it? A little less than six months, about five month cross country pilgrimage that she engaged in. So she started walking on July 4 from Eugene across The United States. And she's carrying this question with her of what is faith in America? And she's carrying this poem with her that we're exploring, the Faith Mind poem.
• 16:36
  And it just so happens that Columbus, Ohio, which is where I live, was on her route. So she walked through here and stopped for a couple of days. She had two off days while she was here. And so she gave a talk to our Sangha, and she's also been connecting with faith communities. And part of what I want to tell her story is this is more about the particular, the particular shape that someone's life of practice can take.
• 17:10
  And part of what I really heard in her story is she was listening to what is the next step? And sometimes we feel that way. Sometimes we're in our practice life and there are all these aspects of practice that we might be interested in. And so sometimes people are holding the question like, should I do a retreat or should I go live at the monastery? It took me seven years to finally move to the monastery after getting a whiff of like calling of that kind of life.
• 17:51
  And so sometimes we're just sitting, like waiting for the conditions to come together and the clarity and the courage to take the next step, whatever that next step is, whether that's deepening into the commitments that we have in our life or clarifying our work or engaging in a cross country pilgrimage or taking some kind of direct action politically or deepening, like feeling that call to deepen into spiritual questions and wanting or needing the support of sangha or monastic sangha to do that. So she like she called it the forced gump moment, which I think, like, means something to people who, like, get this call to go for long walks or pilgrimages. And she said it was she was watching the conversation between Trump and Zelensky, and this question arose in her mind. So this was, like, early last this year, early spring this year. This question arose up in her mind of what side are we on?
• 19:05
  Which interesting question. Like, that question didn't arise in my mind, but that question meant something to her. Like, what side are we on? And she started to really see just the assumptions she was making about the country and, you know, what side she was on. And so she started to, like, really grapple with sidedness.
• 19:31
  And this poem, of course, is, like, you know, telling us ways to, like, step outside outside of being sighted. But one of the things she was really wrestling with, and she read a lot of the stanzas from this poem during her dharma talk that she gave to our community, was can we ever step outside of our sightedness? And we temporarily can, and that's part of the practice of really recognizing our nature is that we can let the thinking mind go and not get so involved or tangled up in the dreams and scenarios that the thinking mind puts forward. And we're also human and we function through thought, through relationship, through body. And so, and many of you maybe have had this like on a micro level or, you know, on a macro level, but it's interesting for me, like during retreat where I'm really like step back at times from the thinking mind, or the thinking mind is like completely quiet for periods of time, and I still have preferences.
• 20:54
  Like I want to put soy sauce on my peanut butter and oats, And without even thinking of it, the body has its preferences. The mind has its preferences. And it's part of the causes and conditions that go into shaping us. Like, I have different life experiences than all of you and you have different life experiences than me. How we meet a particular moment is going to look differently because we're drawing on all of that karma.
• 21:28
  So we're always sided. And yet we also can know what's not sided. Like we can know that field that Rumi invokes, the field beyond right and wrong. And we can and this is the challenging dance of dharma is we're both. And I feel in my experience, and Mioboo talked about this too, that as we practice and are more familiar with that field beyond right and wrong, we have more choice in how we how we respond to our sightedness, how we respond in in the world.
• 22:18
  And so she, like and, you know, as I listened to her talk and as I, like, had conversations with her afterwards, I learned that, oh, she's an interfaith chaplain. So, like, this question of faith in America is, like, really relevant on, like, that level. She was curious about people's faith, what they believe in, how they worship, how they conceive of religion and spirituality. Then she was also curious about what does it mean to have faith in America, in the dream of America, in the creation of this democracy that maybe we debate whether we actually live in a democracy anymore. But she was curious about all of that.
• 23:12
  And so that was part of this walking for her. There's this, I wanna I wanna read a little bit from Dahui. He is writing a letter. So this is Dahue's letters again, which I read from a few weeks ago. And in the letter he references this koan, and I just wanna share the koan.
• 23:47
  So the koan is Ryuyan Shiyan. And he would often call to himself, he would say, Hey master, are you in? So he's talking to his true nature and he calls it master. And he says, Hey master, are you in? And then he would answer himself, Yes, I'm here.
• 24:12
  I'm in. And then he would say to himself, Be awake. And he would respond again, Yes. And then he would say, Whatever the time, whatever the day, never be misled by others. And then he would say again, Yes, yes.
• 24:45
  I always found that to be a sweet koan. You could see it as some old Zen master kind of losing his mind a little bit and talking to himself. But I always appreciated that, we like, can talk to our true nature. We can recognize the part of us that is already awake, that's always awake and affirm that. And that's part of what this poem is inviting us to do is, like, affirm that, know that that aspect of your nature is always here, always here.
• 25:30
  And we forget, so we remind ourselves, hey. Are you here? Yes. Yes. And in the context of Da Hui's letter, he's writing this letter because someone's saying, like, I'm too dull.
• 25:44
  I I just can't awaken. It's not working for me. Do you have any advice? And he's saying, Well, the one who's aware of the dullness, that's your true nature. That part of you is already free.
• 25:58
  Nothing actually can get in the way. Whatever you think is in the way, the one who perceives that is free. That's your nature. And so, you know, this koan of, are you in? Yes, here.
• 26:19
  Yes. Here. We can remind ourselves that's a way of practicing faith in mind on the go in your daily life. And what I love about that last line, Do not be deceived by others. Do not be deceived by others.
• 26:42
  And that could be him talking about all those opinions and thoughts that flow through. Don't be deceived by his partial truths. But it's also, I think, an important reminder that we must live our life. We can't compare our lives to someone else's life and say, Oh, I should be more like that person. Or, They do it that way.
• 27:13
  I must not be good because I don't do it that way. The Buddha dharma is saying like, this life, this is your life. In this life, you are Buddha and you're also this particular human with this particular karma, which means you have certain limitations and you have certain gifts and certain ways that only you can respond. So live that, live that. And it's not easy to do, but this part of the mysterious unfolding of this life is that we get to live it.
• 28:08
  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.