Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / The Right Thought of Letting Go - Jogen Salzeberg, Sensei

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The Right Thought of Letting Go - Jogen Salzeberg, 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.
• 0:22
  Jogen: So the Buddhadharma, the teachings of the Buddha and the traditions that flow out of that is based on each person's inalienable right and possession, you could say, of a clear, bright heart mind that is tapped into the very source of meaningfulness and being. Each person's inalienable right, each person's inviolable truth. It can't be lost. It can only be lost touch with. But when we lose touch with that, we seek it in things that can only offer it imperfectly, instably.
• 1:14
  We get brightness and meaning and fullness from many things in life, but they can only do it the way they can do it because they're shifting, and our perception of them is shifting. And so to be in touch with the very root of ultimate well-being. This is what the Buddha dharma is about, to increase our touch with the ultimate root of well-being. And it takes work, and it doesn't come cheaply. And all the teachings are in service of that, addressing obstacles to that, inviting different avenues to that in different ways.
• 2:12
  In the Eightfold Path, there is one of the folds. One of the folds of the eight folds is Isn't it interesting? It's like a piece of fabric, and there's eight folds in that fabric. Is right thought. And sometimes when the Buddha would talk about right thought, Buddha would express it in terms of right thought is the thought of relinquishment.
• 2:43
  Right thought is the thought of letting go. And that's what I want to try and talk about tonight. We're sometimes like people who walk with a sharp object in our boots, but don't take that object out. Or sometimes we're like a person who wears a really heavy coat when it's hot outside, but we don't want to, or we don't know we're wearing that heavy coat, so we don't take it off. This thought of relinquishment, it's interesting.
• 3:24
  You could translate right thought as noble thought or awakened thought or wisdom thought. You can interpret it like that, not translate it. Right and noble might be more close to actual translation. In a way, I want to just emphasize something very simple, that for practitioners, this is an important lens to take on our life. The thought of letting go, the thought of relinquishment.
• 4:03
  I think that it is instinctive for mind to lose touch with its core well-being and then reflexively blame that on something external. It's like having money in your hand. I'm the kind of person who loses something and blames people right away. I'm like, Somebody snuck in here and stole my 1982 New Age cassette. Who did that?
• 4:40
  Very reflexively. But spiritually, we do that, which is actually a sad and bad thing. We lose touch with root well-being, and then we blame or we game externally to try to get it back. And you can only get it temporarily back in that way. So the thought of relinquishment, you know, is not somebody looking at your life and saying, Well, you got a bunch of attachments there, buddy.
• 5:13
  Better shed some of those. It's a personal inquiry where we look at ourselves as only we can do, or as only we can do, and we say, What do I hold onto that tethers me to unhappiness? What do I hold onto that tethers me to unhappiness? Implicit being that there is the potential to let it go. Right?
• 5:48
  There are some, unpleasant things in this life that it is not in integrity to let go of them. Right? You made babies. It's not in your integrity if you're raising those children to let go of them. Many examples of that, right?
• 6:11
  What do I hold onto that tethers me to unhappiness? Now, I say this because people sometimes don't respond well to these kind of teachings, holding on is not something we just decide not to do. It would be wonderful if it was that easy that someone says, You know you're holding on to your grudge about me? And you're like, Great. I'm going to put that down right now.
• 6:48
  Actually, on some level, it might be that easy, but that's too easy for us to believe. We don't just decide not to do it, but the thought, the right thought of relinquishment is part of the magic of how letting go happens. It's an ingredient in the alchemy. You have to believe it's possible, and about the things that don't serve you that you could let go, you have to want it to be possible. You have to want that.
• 7:20
  And somebody in the chat earlier said, What's the difference between craving and longing? And one way to think of longing is this kind of deeper current where we let a certain wanting permeate us because it's worth the permeation. To long to take the sharp object out of our own boots, to want deeply to be able to let go. There have been times in my practice that were so painful that I just prayed that I might be able to let go. That's all I could do.
• 8:05
  I couldn't meditate it away. I couldn't budify my suffering. Nothing. All I could do is pray that may I be able to let go of this. So this, it's important that if we take up this practice, the right thought of relinquishment, we do it with the spirit of compassion.
• 8:34
  Because if we're too critical, we will see so many attachments. We will see so many unnecessary stuff in our minds. As soon as you take the lens of what is necessary, you look at your life, you go, Oh my goodness. There's a lot that's not necessary. A lot of unnecessary stuff in our minds, hearts, maybe our houses too, if you're like me.
• 8:59
  And if we're too critical, it's like such a harsh light that we actually can't see by it. We just sort of cover our eyes. It's too bright, too clear. So the question is more, what is ready to be relinquished? And I love the metaphor of like autumn fruit that is ripe, and how you go to pick pears.
• 9:35
  I picked a lot of apples at the monastery because the neighbors around the monastery, there's lots of apple trees, but folks were aging, and they just didn't have the bodies to pick all of their apples. And we would be driving to the monastery, and we'd see fields full of apples just rotting there. It was so sad. And so we began asking, calling our neighbors, saying, Would you mind if we pick our apples? We'll give you some.
• 9:59
  And they were like, Hell yes, please. Come pick my apples. We can haul our ladders at. And you begin to learn when you pick enough fruit that there is a time for apples, for this is true for blackberries, true. Picked a lot of blackberries, pears.
• 10:15
  When they're ready, it's just the slightest touch and it comes off. It doesn't take a lot. So this thought, this right thought of letting go is about what's ready to be relinquished. Beliefs ready to be relinquished. Habits.
• 10:39
  Goals. People crucify themselves to their own goals. They made up some goal. Life didn't say, Take this goal on. They suffer themselves to a goal and then suffer their goal.
• 10:55
  We can give up goals sometimes. Self images, things, sometimes relationships. What's ready to be relinquished? And what does readiness actually feel like for you in your heart, your body, your mind? What's the how do you read readiness?
• 11:17
  Because readiness is not the same as, yes, I would like to let go of this. They're both important, the wanting and feeling out readiness. I've noticed that a forced idea of letting go often triggers rebellion in people later, or it only lasts for a little while. Kind of put yourself in a box of some sort of discipline, and it was too early, and so what happens is you end up breaking that box of discipline, and then next time you feel less confident that you'll be able to do it. What's ready to be relinquished?
• 12:06
  Does life somehow sort of let us know that? I've found that when I have character things I need to really look at in myself, That often it doesn't pop up just in one place. Like multiple relationships start reflecting to me. This little thing starts coming towards me if I'm listening. Sensing, sensing readiness.
• 12:41
  One of the ways that the Buddha talked about this, because I think this was a person who understood their mind and understood how the mind responds to some of these teachings, is giving up a lesser happiness for a greater happiness. Because there are some things that maybe we're hearing a little thought that says, Yeah, I should let go of that, but then something else says, But I really like that. It really feels good. I know it's bad for me, or I know it's bad for other people, but I really get something from this. Yep.
• 13:32
  Giving up a lesser happiness for a greater. This is a description of, on one level, entering full time renunciate practice, which that ancient ritual is you give up everything. You give up your eyebrows even. These people give up their eyebrows, okay, on purpose. You give up your choice of food.
• 14:05
  You give up sex. You give up clothing. There's no fashion, although monks and nuns try to find ways to be fashionable. Get a shiny robe, or I remember one person who was in the path of renunciation sewed their robe with very shiny stitches that everybody could notice. Fashion finds a way in.
• 14:31
  So Buddha was addressing people who had given up everything. They had given up their roles and family. You think of Indian society, traditional Indian society, your role was very important. If you were a man because of patriarchy, you had all this power given to you over other people. They were giving all of that up.
• 14:52
  Right? So for us who are not living that lifestyle, it's like the thing is not bad necessarily. It's just like I could swim out of a small pond into an ocean. Or sometimes it's like we could graduate from a puddle to a pond. Yes, I get something out of this, but sometimes I can't can't even know what's on the other side of it until I give it up.
• 15:30
  And that's why someone like the Buddha has to say you're giving up a lesser happiness for a greater happiness. In a way, he was really saying the path of meditation, all of the pleasure you get from everyday things when you really realize and cultivate clear, bright mind, it's frankly just better. It's more consistent. Doesn't mean you don't enjoy those things, but you're cutting to the source, tapping into the source. And this is actually really a challenge for us and why sometimes the faith is not at the moment sufficient to make, to really make the transition to letting go of something that causes us pain because we can't yet know what's on the other side.
• 16:21
  We don't actually know. We don't, it's not verified for us. And the thought of stopping the thing or becoming renewed in a different way, becoming a different person, because what we do and what we are are so kind of entangled. The basis is hard to feel for why we would do that. Now, I'm not saying you should shave your eyebrows.
• 16:53
  Okay? In fact, if you've never, really had to have a conversation with somebody with shaved eyebrows, it's really weird at first. It's a little creepy. You get used to it, but we should look at this on a minute scale, on an everyday scale. For example, there are people who would love to have a steady morning practice, but they stay up late reading romance novels.
• 17:30
  That is really meaningful to some people. They enjoy that. Right? It's not any different than anything else we might read, really. It's all just stuff.
• 17:41
  So if they were able to let go of that little thing, then they would have a more steady morning practice that would, in the long term, really benefit them. Right? It doesn't seem like such a big deal, but over time it might actually be a big deal. The arc of that. This is one of the ways to think about this, where it's gonna they're kind of thinking through causation rather than morality.
• 18:17
  And I find that refreshing about the Buddha's teaching. It's generally not so moral as it is causal. Breaches of integrity actually feel bad. Nobody likes the consequences of them, actually, if they pay attention. It's like morality is built into paying attention, so just focus on cause and effect.
• 18:45
  So doing or thinking x leads to x. Really pay attention to that. Seems like we would do that, but there's this amnesia in human beings that's really weird. How many times? I think I talked about this sometime earlier this year that for a while, my girlfriend and I were really into hard cider.
• 19:11
  We were in Asheville, and they had this great, funky cider. And we would drink it, we'd get the buzz, and it was so fun. And then we always had really rough poops the next morning. It was terrible. It was awful.
• 19:27
  And we go, I'm never doing that again. We gotta stop drinking cider. It's not worth it. Well, a month later. So causal thinking is hard for us to actually connect the dots and to really to really pay attention.
• 19:50
  There's a misnomer that Buddhism is just paying attention in the present moment. That's one side of things, the nowness of things. But also to contemplate one's life deeply, you have to pay attention over periods of time so you can observe pattern. You have to sustain attention. Right?
• 20:11
  Because to just be present could easily just lead to impulsivity, and impulsivity could easily just lead to regret. So part of this right thought of relinquishment is getting really honest and sober with our patterns. In a sense, we're amnesiacs. We forget what we know. Forget what we know.
• 20:39
  It's weird. And so we do what we know isn't the best thing for us, but in the moment we kind of don't know. The right thought of letting go includes the everyday mind snags on the past. I remember Chosen Roshi recommending that people, at certain times, if this was really strong for them, if they were just continually accumulating detritus of each conversation, each encounter, each day was like, it was like they had flypaper, and they would just accumulate slights and grudges and disrespects that they believed were happening to them at the monastery. And by the end of the day, they would sit down and this flypaper was covered in all the ways they weren't treated the way they should have been.
• 21:39
  Now, of course, that can people are actually disrespected in this life. But at the monastery, people were pretty good. Pretty good behavior. Very kind. So she would recommend that they imagine that they went through the day with an eraser on their back.
• 21:56
  And so each moment you step into, you let the previous moment just evaporate, which is actually reality on some level. It's just evaporating all the time. We are continuous evaporation. It's really magical. And that the mind renews its impressions.
• 22:22
  Renews, it recreates, and it puts a spin on if you pay attention its impressions. And we are in eddies and entanglements, and we get snared by should have been and could have been when we could not be being snared by that. This is a place that you could aim the right thought of relinquishment, not for anyone else's benefit but yours. Right? We don't have to accumulate or keep score.
• 22:58
  Well, that's really an interesting thing, actually. That's how we might say it. We keep score of our slights and the disrespects. But that was really emphasized in the teachings of old to encourage people to really think about giving that up or think about what are you doing that for? Where does that lead?
• 23:18
  Grievances. There's this all this talk about the new it's fashionable to be aggrieved even if you're privileged. Why do we make grievance? Who does it help? One of the things that if you're an astrology person, you'll know that being a triple Virgo is really hard.
• 23:51
  Okay. That's like anal retentive times three. Okay? So I've had to learn to let go of perfectionism. When you first come to Zen, you're like, Oh, this is the perfect place for me as a perfectionism.
• 24:07
  There's a perfect way to place your hands. Perfect. It's a perfect way to bow. The cushions are perfectly in line. You could say the chants perfectly.
• 24:18
  You can have perfect posture. Oh, perfectionism, that's not an easy one to let go of. But we have to feel it in our bodies. And when I started to pay attention to perfectionism, it just comes with its own ew. It's tense.
• 24:39
  It's rigid. It tends to divide the world into right and wrong very easily. It's kind of absurd if someone pokes fun at it. Like, who cares if the cushions are straight? Really?
• 24:58
  And this is true with a lot of the right thought of relinquishment is we want to feel what not letting go is like. The evidence is in your body. The evidence is in your own being. It's not someone else's again, it's not the Buddha. The Buddha doesn't point fingers at people and say, You bad practitioner, get better.
• 25:24
  The evidence is just in our bodies. Giving up a lesser happiness for a greater, the thought of relinquishment, what comes to mind is it's so easily in various relationships we tether ourselves with the thought of being right. That's so hard. It's so hard to be right. It takes a lot of work.
• 25:52
  It takes a lot of maintenance to hold a position. You have to remember why you're mad at somebody. You have to continually renew the slight in your mind in order to hold your position. Because if you let go of your case in your mind, then you might it might slip away, the the right. And then what?
• 26:13
  What would this relationship be if I wasn't right? If they weren't wrong? Those come together, of course. What do we get from being right? It's weird.
• 26:28
  And, of course, to let go of being right doesn't mean that you're it's suggested that you switch to being wrong. That's really just the same thing. Wrong and right. It's just the same idea basically, just looking at it from a different angle. There is a time, maybe even a season, maybe even lifetimes for, I don't know, where the right thought of letting go is about a simplified life.
• 27:01
  And actually paring down activities and relationships, right, to focus, in this case, focus on communion with dharma. So if you entertain relative simplicity as a right thought, what unnecessary complexities could be put aside? What are the unnecessary complexities? What do we invite in? What do we say yes to for the wrong reasons or without really considering the implications?
• 27:43
  Right? Or what are the necessary complexities for me to live in integrity? What is it I need to take on and agree to where I'm in integrity, and how much do I go beyond that and crowd my mind and crowd my life and leave no room for silence, for space, for contemplation? So we can develop our feelers for that which may be good to let go of. Is this tension, stress, burden when I do or think or get or be a particular way, thought or thing?
• 28:37
  Is this mind to grow the capacity to hold with spaciousness? Or is this tension, stress, burden when I do or think or get or be a particular activity, thought, thing? Is this telling me that it's something to take my hands off of? It's not being said here. Anywhere you encounter stress, should just say, okay, stress, bad, must be a thing I should let go of.
• 29:03
  That's not mature practice. The general formula in Zen training is as someone matures in their practice, you give them more and more responsibility. Teacher puts more upon them, especially in the training center. Right? So that what they let go of is the idea that they don't have space.
• 29:33
  And what they let go of is the small belief in who they are. It's not about manicuring a life where everything is all peaceful and kind of unruffled. Right? So sometimes letting go is just letting go of the idea that I can't be free with this, and sometimes letting go is just letting go. Again, I'm making the mudra as if it's so easy.
• 30:03
  This is like what's it called? Time stop motion? What's it? When you watch a plant grow over time. This is like time lapse.
• 30:14
  Five years, ten years, twenty years. So sometimes this is really just minute things we could look at and start to relieve ourselves. And sometimes we have to really shape shift. And sometimes people are on the, whether through life's hard knocks in stages or through a longing in them, it's time to really let go. Life is really pushing us to grow into something new, to shed our skin and be fresh.
• 31:07
  And generally, it doesn't feel good at first. It may be giving up a lesser happiness for a greater happiness, but the first beginnings of letting go most of the time don't feel so excellent. So the right thought of relinquishment, as we move into autumn and the trees embody that, and the sky embodies that.
• 31:46
  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.