Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / Longing That Cures - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei

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Longing That Cures - 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.
• 0:24
  jogen: I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the dharma. I take refuge in the sangha. Thank you for being here. We used to call this session longing for the ancient way.
• 0:40
  So here is a poem about longing. Longing is the name of our pain. Longing is also the medicine. Longing brings the cure, but not just any longing cures. If you have a name for your longing, then it is not yet the longing that cures.
• 1:06
  What are the names of some other longings? Longing for love, longing for security, longing for ease, longing for company, longing to be left alone, longing for more, longing for less, longing for a good meal, longing for a sweet lover, longing for power, longing for freedom, longing for safety, longing for recognition, longing for enlightenment, longing for a home, longing for ourselves and our loved ones to be happy, longing for God. Longing is our pain, longing is also the medicine. Longing brings the cure. There is a longing in you which has no name, cannot be named.
• 1:59
  Names and words disappear like mist in morning sunlight when that longing dawns. That longing with no name is the one that cures. Like a fire burning in a hollow log, when the log is burnt, the fire too goes out. This longing reaches out from within itself into the infinity that is unutterable only and always. Then there is only, well, love.
• 2:35
  So the theme of determination has been emerging. And we've been encouraged to practice meticulously, to keep mindfulness, absorption, relinquishment lit continuously, to close the gaps, to stay nestled in your practice groove, to let nothing budge you. That's one of the ways I feel it, I'm nestled, I'm it. This is brought into one, and then pop out. This thing pulls, that thing pulls, that thought disintegrates.
• 3:24
  And of course, we do pop out of our practice. The point is not to perfectly have no gaps, the point is to aspire to perfectly have no gaps. We can never know if we perfectly have a gapless practice. Who could say? Who is watching?
• 3:47
  So we do pop out of our practice, and then we drop back in. And that rhythm, that rhythm is completely as it should be. Over and over, just this exhale, every particle tasted, every particle let go. Just this inhale, every particle tasted, every particle brought to life. And so we're practicing a unity of intention, attention, and this body heart life, Not separate.
• 4:49
  And you could feel like, Oh, this is just a mere technique and I'm here trying to master this mental exercise so I can be good at concentration. But the deeper thing in this is this is about how we live life. Can you be wholehearted for its own sake? Can you be wholehearted for its own sake and stay open? To stay on the living edge of wakefulness, not for what's beyond that lip, not because somebody said it's gonna do something good for you, not because everyone else is doing it.
• 5:47
  Can you stay on the living edge of wakefulness for its own sake? Well, you can. You absolutely can. There's the haunting of wanting. Haunted by wanting.
• 6:13
  It is professed that there is more to this matter than the mundane. And something in us resonates with these professions. There is more to the matter than ho I eat some food and I sit on a cushion and I breathe some breaths. But there's the haunting of wanting, and that has effects. In this intimate nestling, how does wanting appear in your heart, body, and mind?
• 7:03
  Wanting showing up as waiting. One can be at a very settled place with a mind that is alert, clear, and yet still like a background there's waiting. There's not yet giving up the game of time. There's waiting, excuse me, there's wanting showing up as giving up and dejection. It's not going how I want it to go, so why should I put myself into this wholehearted painful sometimes thing?
• 8:03
  What kind of, sort of, like when you want attention from a lover, so you withdraw yours, hoping that the dharma will come after us and say, Oh, I see that you're withdrawing. Let me give you a deeper samadhi. Wanting showing up as trying to understand. If I can just get a new angle on the practice, on these words, on these chants, if I can just find a new angle on my life. I'm gonna finally think the right combination of thoughts about the things that happened so that I'll feel different about the things that happened even though they happened exactly as they happened.
• 9:05
  But I can't even remember how they actually happened because I've thought so much about how they happened. Wanting, showing up as trying to understand. We're gonna piece it all together mentally. Wanting, showing up as trying hard. I don't know what else I can do.
• 9:29
  It doesn't seem to be giving me good feedback, so I'm gonna try really hard. And so we flood the engine, put tension in the system, we actually lean out of intimacy, we separate ourselves. Wanting showing up as trying to not try, we just go to the opposite. Well, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna do not doing anything. See what happens then.
• 10:12
  I can talk about these things because I've done all of them. Can you be wholehearted for its own sake? It's a bit like mushroom hunting. Yes, you might want to find some delicious mushrooms, and you increase the odds of doing so by going into the forest, but the point is not that today you found a basket full of oysters, the point is that it brings you awake. The point is that you're alive.
• 10:52
  The point is that you're really there with your senses wide open. Your life is enlivened. And whether you find a Reishi or don't find a Reishi, that is true. So it's very good we confront our transactional conditioning in waking up practice. Our quid pro quo.
• 11:24
  Quid pro quo. I love saying that. Quid pro quo. Tit for tat. I do this thing because then you'll think I'm not bad.
• 11:36
  I don't do this thing so that you'll think I'm good. There's an old practice saying that says, when with others practice as if alone, When alone, practice as if with others. Quid pro quo, you scratch my back tonight, tomorrow I'll scratch yours. Couples know they have their little transactional. Maybe you don't, so I need to work on that.
• 12:20
  I work forty hours and you give me a paycheck. I treat you sweetly so you won't be direct with me. I treat you roughly so you won't be sweet with me. I've been meditating for at least two years now. Where's my damn enlightenment, Buddha?
• 12:42
  For some people, two months or two days. And we're very demanding, most of us. We smoke out our demandingness as we do this practice. Sometimes when people are making too many demands on me, I call them demandos. It's like a commando, but they're armed with their to do lists and it's pointed at me.
• 13:18
  You're such a demando. We're demanding and it's exhausting and often ugly. We discover this by contrast. You're steadfast, the mind clears, that you live in a world replete with undeserved beauty becomes apparent. Enlivening challenges all around, just the right bits to bring forth, just the right people to bring forth what needs to be brought forth from us.
• 13:58
  All of that is true, and sometimes all I can muster is, Not this is not good enough. What else you got? Not this. Can we say that the dharma gates close for the I do this, you give me mind? And we get a particular dharma feedback.
• 14:40
  Profound. Don't be hasty with it. Don't believe that we can impose our agenda on the way the practice unfolds. Don't believe that it has its own integrity, its own movements in the dark. The great way is lofty and profound, Dogen said.
• 15:16
  Dogen also said, Practice with the determination of someone who has a fire burning on their head and the urgency with which they wish to extinguish it. And what are you gonna do about both of those things at the same time? The raging fire of mind. The inscription of trust in the heart says, Those who cherish rigid beliefs about the path are filled with vacillation and anxiety. Their grasping approach to awakening practice is the very obstacle to it.
• 16:08
  Those who cherish rigid beliefs about the way are filled with vacillation and anxiety. Their grasping approach to awakening practice is the obstacle to it. And so someone thinks, yes, right, natural awareness, like the chill Tibetans talk about. I'll just take it easy. Well, that's wrong too.
• 16:35
  Many of the teachers of natural awareness have done 300,000, 500,000 prostrations, millions of mantras. They report their buttocks were calloused from decades of taking it easy, sitting on the edge of cliffs. So called natural awareness. So the intention to wake up and save all beings is the attention of this body, heart, life nestled in our practice groove. Not having or not having a goal.
• 17:28
  You can't have a goal when you're nestled in your practice. That nestling is total. When you pop out, the goal is very good. The goal is to get back in. Not deciding easy, not deciding hard.
• 17:47
  There's nothing signaling easy or hard when you're nestled in your practice. These feelings in this part of the body don't say easy. These feelings in this part don't say hard. They're just what they are. Not deciding right, not deciding wrong.
• 18:21
  Faith mind poem says, All is self revealing, spacious and clear without the need to exert the mind. Everything is communicating just what it is, just for you and I. Totally straightforward, nothing concealed. Not deciding easy, deciding hard, not deciding right, not deciding wrong, and discriminating mind can't do that. You're not being asked to take your discriminating mind and make it a non discriminating mind.
• 19:06
  Discriminating mind does not fit the job description for what we're talking about. Discriminating mind isn't the one doing zazen. So in a way, just don't be bothered or swayed by it. Just keep aligning. Just keep integrating.
• 19:32
  Keep focusing. Fifteen hundred years ago at this very moment, Master Zhihu says to us, All things are free. All things are free. What binds? What restricts?
• 19:54
  You yourself create your own difficulty and ease therein. Now if this was some hotel ballroom guru that you paid $2,000 to see and you knew that they were going back to a spa and wonderful catering and I can have a posh life, might go, yeah, right, it's easy for you to say. But these people, our ancestors did not live air conditioned lives. So many of the inconveniences and the hardships of life that we have muted through technology, we're just texture of existence. All things are free.
• 20:46
  What binds? What restricts? You yourself create your own difficulty and ease therein. The mind source is a single continuity pervading the 10 directions. To the sharp practitioner in us, it is naturally clear.
• 21:05
  Everything communicates itself just so. Have you read Nong Kwan's statement, innocence like this after all are rare in the world. Innocence. For those of us who've done the practice for many years how to recover innocence, How far away is a fresh mind really? How honest it is to simply say to yourself in the midst of some shrouding conclusion, I don't really know.
• 22:08
  I don't really know. And just let the silence flood in. Have you read non quan statement innocence like this after all are rare in the world? Clearly they exist. Actually, everyone is so.
• 22:28
  But they just lack a robust will. That's what makes them get so tired. Well, that's interesting. You would think it would be the robust will that would make us tired. That's what some people are afraid of.
• 22:43
  If they practice wholehearted, they'd have to get tired. And we hate being tired. Isn't that moment when you first wake up just the worst hell like, Oh, not again. Many times I pretended I didn't hear the wake up bell for ten extra minutes. Ten heavenly minutes.
• 23:16
  They just lack a robust will, that's what makes them get so tired. Wholehearted practice takes energy but returns it tenfold. Now, doesn't mean that your body feels peachy keen. Alternating between fits of inspiration and doubt, that's what's tiring to the spirit. That's what wears us out.
• 23:47
  Really our own unwillingness to really commit to what we're already doing. What a weird thing. Zihu continues, Do you want to understand easily there has never been a single ordinary person or sage appearing before you? Now think about this and think about the discriminating mind that goes, Oh, she's wise and him, not so sure. Or, Oh, I'm wise, I really got it.
• 24:25
  But them, just look at how they do kenhen. Do you want to understand easily there has never been a single ordinary person or sage appearing before you and not a single good word or bad word that truly applies to you. Give that to your critic. Not a single good word or bad word that truly applies to you. Also then there's no excuse.
• 24:59
  You're not off the hook. Why? If you can do it right, but right has no fixed form. If you do it wrong, wrong has no abiding reality. Since there is no self, what do you take for good or bad?
• 25:14
  Since there is no self, what do you take for good or bad? This crabby inner thought mess you take for having authority about your practice or someone else's? What do you define as ordinary or holy? How can we preserve etchings made in a dream? Do you believe or not?
• 25:40
  Do you take responsibility? Where is there to escape? Maybe he's saying something like, having been initiated as we are into something of the truth of our mind. What choice do we have but to really see through the clarifying? Continuing.
• 26:12
  Where is there to escape? That would be like trying to flee your shadow in the sunlight. Reminded me of what Buddha said in the suffering follows the unclarified mind as sure as the cart follows the ox. Longing, determination, learning to love the taste of this deep engagement with the way, The flavor of practice, the Rasa of real spiritual practice as it hurts and shimmers and opens in your body, in your heart, in your mind. The willingness to do the work because there is absolutely nothing to lose that's worth keeping.
• 27:20
  The willingness to see that work is not always what's called for. There's a marvelous text that is, I think, under appreciated of Dogen Zengji's called the Ehei Koroku, and it's a very big book full of all these many talks and poems that this person gave over the course of their life, of rich teachings. Here's one from a very long time ago. Dogan said, This very body and mind are not merely the five Skandhas. Our wondrous existence is most excellent and should not be considered an object of desire.
• 28:17
  Without coming or going, we simply respond to sounds and colors. Further, we turn around from our center and move out in the eight directions. Negating all dualities, your feet are on the ground. How could there be a rising and perishing as your magnanimous energy penetrates the heavens? Although it is like this, do not say that killing Buddha after all has no results.
• 28:45
  The genuine cause of attaining Buddhahood is zazen. This very body and mind are not merely the five skandhas. So skandhas are the conditioned elements of our being. Thought and impulse and sense consciousness and the sense of having a body, inclinations, mental formations. These are the conditioned elements of our being that are conducted and created this way and that with the flow of the world.
• 29:28
  The Skandhas are created and conducted this way and that with the flow of objects, mind and consciousness. In a way it's very dissatisfying because nothing belongs to us. There's no us to which something could belong. Well, we think my body, but is there some owner floating in some part of your rib cage of the body? This does not belong to anything but maybe you could say nature, maybe this belongs to dharma.
• 30:08
  Naskandhas are kind of scary because if that's all we know about ourselves, if that's all we take ourselves to be, then we're in a situation where we have zero control. You can definitely get sick, you can definitely lose your mind. You can definitely fail at your best intentions. You can definitely get confused. The scandhas are conditioned.
• 30:35
  They are interdependent with the world, not separate. They don't belong to us. There's little within that is stable and much without that is shifting and unsteady and trickster pulling the rug. And that's actually very interesting and enlivening from one angle and terrifying and suffering from another. It's really a matter of practice.
• 31:17
  So Dogen Zenji says, Yet this very body and mind are not merely the five Skandhas. Not merely the five Skandhas. Our wondrous existence is most excellent and should not be considered an object of desire. Objects are pursued, avoided or ignored. That's the fate of objects.
• 31:56
  Very easily the pursued, ignored or avoided object owns us. It contorts us, it controls us, it deceives us. Think about I know for me, I think about times where romance had me lose my dignity because an object that I made contorted me, controlled me, deceived me. Our wondrous existence is most excellent and should not be considered an object of desire. We can't say it's wrong to desire to wake up.
• 32:40
  But we can't say it's good if we feel like that means sort of getting the best cookie on the platter and leaving all the rest. Dogen continues, without coming or going, we simply respond to sounds and colors. This freely functioning intimacy. You turn your head this way, wild flowers. Turn your head this way, bamboo.
• 33:18
  Body right now absorbed in body right now, it's a perfect Samadhi, just don't mess it up. Thoughts with no thinker not known an iota in advance. They appear with no second mind, no first mind. This breath right now, no breather, no beginning to it, no knower of it, just We simply respond to sounds and colors. There's no moment of hearing or deciding to hear choicelessly this sound.
• 34:16
  Choicelessly these wrestlings. Fundamentally, there's no picking or choosing. Perfectly undivided. There's no picking and choosing. Dogen continues, Further we turn around from our center and move out in the eight directions.
• 34:45
  Negating all dualities, our feet are on the ground. We can function from this place. Seeing what's what with Za Zen eyes, we can start to trust ourselves. Often we don't trust ourselves, we put trust in the discriminating mind, which is mistrust itself, and then things are clanky. We put trust in discriminating mind which is fear itself and then things are a little off, a little suspicious, a little But this mystery functions, it responds, it takes care.
• 35:39
  It might surprise you. You might say something, you didn't premeditate. You might make a decision, you didn't plan in advance. You might know exactly how to take care of yourself, how to take care of others. You might be asked a question with nothing in your mind and you've got a response.
• 36:04
  It's all a matter of how deeply we're trusting our basis. How could there be a rising and perishing as our magnanimous energy penetrates the heavens? Although it is like this, do not say that killing Buddha after all has no results. Killing Buddha to let our ideas and our concepts about awakening to just put them down, to really just put down, it's like this, it's like that, So and so said this, such and such sutra said that. To put down the idea that doing it right is gonna make me a shiny version of what I am.
• 37:00
  A perfectly whatever version of what I am. Letting die our concepts. The genuine cause of attaining Buddhahood, Dogen says is Zazen. We are beings of suchness appreciating our nature as such. But how deep is that appreciation?
• 37:36
  The intensity of our picking and choosing tells us something about that. We're starting to create, to weave, to make together a very vibrant zendo, a very crisp energy, pregnant place of practice. Please continue for the sake of your future self, your past self, your relations, whom, if you do this wholeheartedly, will be blessed. The lineage, the Buddhism ancestors, the forest, the meadow, the skies, the stars, the moon, we embrace it all. It can't be separate, So it deeply matters.
• 38:31
  Please continue with integrity.
• 38:41
  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.