Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / Free From What? - Hogen Roshi

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Free From What? - Hogen Roshi · Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome. This is the Zen Community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddha Dharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: I take refuge in the Buddha, take refuge in the Dharma, take refuge in the Sangha, all the transcendental values. We just finished the July 4, and everybody purports to love freedom. You know, that's what the July 4 is about. We celebrate freedom. We celebrate our freedom.
• 0:37
  We celebrate our freedom from England in 1776. We We celebrate our freedom from England in 1812 when we went to war with them. We celebrate our freedom from whatever we try to get rid of. There is a an inherent belief that, oh, if I am free, then I'll be happy. And yet, we don't know what freedom is.
• 1:02
  We kept we keep thinking, if I am free, when I get a better job, when I get more, a better job that pays better, when I get a better house, when get a better car, when I get a better partner, when I get a better, you know, I'll get a new pet, I'll I'll move to move to Nova Scotia, I'll whatever. And we keep thinking, I'll get something better. I'll get something better. And then I'll get something better based on my own freedom, and then I'll be happy. And we all have our version of that.
• 1:35
  I'll get a I'll have a deep awakening experience, and then once I have a deep awakening experience, then all will be crystal clear, and I'll be at ease, and whatever our fantasy is. It's like like, you know, the proverbial donkey with a carrot in front of it. It's one of the ways of keeping the donkey moving is you keep tempting it saying, here, try this, try this, try this, try this. And of course, that's what seems to me like virtually all media is trying to do is say here, here, you should be outraged about this, therefore give us some money. You know, you should If you just had some more high quality nutrition, you would not feel tired anymore.
• 2:15
  If you just had this, you'll do And so our our whole culture is based upon on I want. I want. I want. And we have the the mistaken assumption that that what we want is going to lead us to freedom. Despite our evidence over the last many decades, And if someone is comes and says, no, you're not going to be free in this way, we immediately get upset, we get angry, we get we get resentful.
• 2:52
  And we have this sort of mistaken notion as a culture, you know, that that somehow freedom will lead to happiness. The freedom to exploit others, the freedom to to make ourselves better than other people, the freedom to to go where we want, the freedom to do what we want to do. It's confused. In Buddhism, we talk about there's a different kind of freedom. There's a freedom that's actually free.
• 3:21
  We all crave freedom. We all want freedom. We all want to be liberated. That's that's that's that is the nature of awakening is recognizing that. But this is an awakening that is not based upon getting.
• 3:34
  The the awakening that we talk about in Buddhism, the freedom we talk about in Buddhism is being free from fear, free from anxiety, being free from ignorance, being free from anger, being free from delusion. If we were free from greed, anger, and ignorance, if we were free from all those things, how would we live our life? How would we live our life if we were truly free? How we live our life if we were in straighten circumstances? How we live our life if we found ourselves in the gulag in Russia?
• 4:10
  How we live our life if we were somehow transplanted to Somalia? How we live our life? The the the aspiration for practice is it is possible to directly recognize, it is possible to directly taste and know for ourselves something that is not just a carrot that says, when I get this, when I get this, when I get when I get this. How do we recognize something that's right here? That's imminent, that's intimate, that's close.
• 4:45
  How do we recognize something that we don't have to make happen? How do we recognize something that is more intimate than dinner this evening? More intimate than going to bed last there tonight? More intimate than ending this talk. How do we recognize what is always intimate, always present in each one of us?
• 5:14
  So we have, you know, our cultural celebration of, you know, we are free. We are free from England. We are free from whatever. And we're never free. We're bound.
• 5:31
  We're tied in knots. We're constricted. We're not free from the inner critical voice. We're not free to be generous and to help other people. We're not free to be connecting and and in relationship with everyone.
• 5:48
  So with Dharma practice, we talk about let's let's let's discover this deeper kind of freedom. Let's know it for ourselves so that it will both serve our life and the life of everybody around us. And how do we do that? Well, first thing we do is we just take our ordinary mind and we come in and we say, I'm gonna sit down. I'm gonna at least be stable for a few minutes.
• 6:16
  Instead of chasing the carrot, just chasing the carrot of doing doing doing doing doing doing doing doing doing doing You know, of course you've got to do. Of course you've to pay our bills. Of course you've to take care of things. But at least some of the time, once in a while, stop. Stop.
• 6:36
  And sit down. That's one of the things that we offer here. This is an upaya. This is a skillful means to allow this investigation. Sitting in rows in the seat is not something that's sacred.
• 6:49
  It's not a a sacrosanct thing that if we sit in the right rows and we do the right bows, then we're gonna get a big reward. It doesn't work like that. This is simply an upaya, a skillful way of bringing us into relationship with people of like mind. A skillful way of saying, stop, sit down, breathe, pay attention. And when we come into the zendo and we are no longer, at least for hopefully a few minutes, we come into the zendo and we are actively, proactively attending to the breath, attending to the feeling of the body on the cushion, attending to what is present.
• 7:33
  We stop attending to all the carrots. Or maybe maybe carrots is not a good idea. Maybe ice cream. Maybe, you know, whatever your particular fantasy is. We stop for a while attending to those things that seem so important.
• 7:53
  If I just had them I would be free. If I just had them I would be no longer suffering. And we sit down and we come, we feel the body with the body, we feel the breath, and we begin to rest. And we begin to rest. And we relax on the exhalation.
• 8:15
  We relax on the exhalation. Each exhalation, we come back into this this experience of this present moment more and more. We find some space. We find some space. Maybe we just find a few minutes of space from the the the blithering confusion of the blizzard of our thoughts and all of our demands.
• 8:40
  Maybe we we just discover a few moments of space. Maybe if we actually do this regularly, we'll actually discover something that is more stable and more reliable. Maybe we can actually touch what's at the root of the blizzard changes that we're storm, that we are subject to all the time. Maybe we can actually touch the the boundless qualities that are inherent in us. Compassion, sympathetic, joy, equanimity, and, loving kindness.
• 9:19
  We can't make these kind of things happen because we have to take it as another goal. Okay. I'm gonna make it happen. I'm gonna make it happen. I'm gonna happen.
• 9:27
  Make I'm make it happen. I'm gonna do all the right practices. I'm gonna do all the bowels. I'm gonna do all I'm gonna go here. I'm gonna go there.
• 9:33
  We have to at some point stop and look and breathe and be breathed and watch life move through us. And then we discover that the roots of kindness, compassion, sympathetic, joy, etcetera are right here. They're already present. Why are they already present? Because if we are looking carefully, if we're paying close attention, we cannot find a boundary between me and the world.
• 10:08
  The mind says, yeah. Here's the boundary. Yes. Yes. Here's the boundary.
• 10:11
  But if we look carefully from the inside, and we say, where do I end, and where does the world begin? And you feel that right now, you're feeling your legs on the cushion, you think, where do my legs end and the sensation of the cushion begin? When you're looking with your eyes, you think, where does my seeing end and that which is seen begin? You can't find a separation. We are connected to the world.
• 10:39
  We are the world. It's all our mind. And so we're talking about these four qualities of compassion, equanimity, sympathetic, joy, and loving kindness. We're talking about they are inherently part of our being when we realize the true nature of our lives, not separate, connected. But we can't just think that we have to actually look.
• 11:03
  We have to actually continually maybe continually become aware of that. It is so easy for us to just fall into habitual thought. Oh, yes. I know this. I've read that.
• 11:17
  I recognize this. I've even seen this. I've even tasted this. But to keep it fresh, to keep it fresh, that's what practice comes in. How do we keep fresh the the vivid sacredness of this moment?
• 11:31
  The Buddha said, in one of the Pali Sutras, he said that this life is so rare and precious that it's like an ancient sea turtle, half blind in the bottom of the ocean that once every hundred years rises to the top. And if he just per chance happens to put his head through a hula hoop, then that's the probability of being a human being. And so you think about all the different life forms, whether you regard yourself as a a being that is moving through time, or you regard yourself as a concatenation of causes and conditions and circumstances, either way it makes the same sense. If you think about the probability of actually being in this body at this time with these circumstances, this this state of mind with these emotions, it is virtually zero. The Buddha says, it is so rare to be born with all the the attributes that we have, with the minds that we have, with the hearing and the senses that we have, to be alive for even a moment is rare and precious.
• 12:47
  It's sacred. And so, we sit down, we have our intention, we calm our mind, we relax on the exhalation, we feel the present moment, and we open to the sacred. The sacred is not some vision that we have on drugs or it's not some, you know, riding the roller coasters in 6 Flags Magic Mountain or it's not excitement. There is something sacred that is available and touchable right here. When we Our life is infused with awareness of the sacredness of this life.
• 13:27
  It changes our relationship to ourselves and others. Everything has its place. So any of us who I remember I was This struck me so deeply at one point I was in an airplane getting ready to go someplace. I'm just looking outside and I realized, oh, if there's just one tire missing. If the computers blip and go down, I did in Florida a few years ago, we were on a plane and suddenly the computers in Southern Florida all went on the fritz for some reason, nobody quite knew why.
• 14:06
  And suddenly the entire airline service in Florida was was put in hold for twelve hours. Just a little and it's gone. Little and it's gone. And you look around and you think, what little thing could happen that would keep my car or my bike, keep me from walking? What little little tiny blood clot in my brain could chip, maybe aphasic.
• 14:35
  So when we begin to realize we're connected to everything, this life is precious. Then we have a foundation for the practice of coming into the room, breathing deeply, settling down, relaxing on the exhalation, and being alert to this life that is moving through us, this breath that is breathing us. And it can transform our relationship with ourselves and with the world. Instead of the inner critic saying, you're not good enough, Instead of the inner critic, the outer judge is saying, oh, well, the administration, the government, the the whatever the factories, the industrial whatever complex is wrong. Instead, we begin to see the sacredness.
• 15:27
  Everything has a sacredness about it. Everything has a unique wonderful quality about it. Know, storks build nests and human beings build cell phones and they're both miracles. So our practice has the ability to change for the better our relationship to ourselves, our families, our communities, and the world. But it has to be practiced.
• 15:53
  Doesn't just happen because we understood it. Doesn't just happen because we have a real glimpse of it. It happens because over and over again, over and over again, we return. We return. We return.
• 16:07
  We let go of the the build up of the habit mind. The build up of all that stuff that we learned. All those carrots that we keep getting inundated with and we return. The sacredness of this moment, which is infused with loving kindness, sympathetic joy, compassion, and equanimity. So, this sound that we're hearing right now, a marvelous gift.
• 16:39
  A marvelous gift. A sacred sound. And suddenly, it's a sacred sound and not an imposition. And suddenly, the world is a sacred place and not an affront and not a place of fear, but a place a sacred place. Living in that way is very very different the ordinary state of mind.
• 17:06
  And it's predicated on practice. So I encourage all of you, come in the evening here practice, come in any day of the week practice, practice at home, come to Sushin I feel is the the number one place where we come up against our self and we we find ourselves facing our own discomfort. We have to have a different relationship with it. It's all about changing that relationship from from aggressive dislike into compassion, into loving kindness, into sympathetic joy. So these reflections all began because we did fourth of July at in Klatzknight yesterday.
• 17:47
  And you know, we we put up this giant tent and we played bingo and there was a big parade and we had a had a our marimba band was in the parade and Tracy and Scott who were two of members up there made this giant piece dove with eight foot wings on it and on their way on their way to the parade it got blown off and then the whole thing broke and they had to put it all back together again. They glued it all up and they had six or eight people holding the bird while we were doing the you know, just just the the tumult of life. It was wonderful. It's wonderful. Please come join us next year.
• 18:21
  Please join us next year. May we all find the deep freedom that we long for, The deep freedom that is an inherent possibility. The freedom that the Buddha says, this can be achieved. This can be realized. This can be known.
• 18:39
  This can be shared. And I personally feel like one of the best social actions that we can do is to share that news with everybody. Oh, it is possible to live in the world as a sacred place that is in relationship instead of a place of threat and anger and doubt. And that sharing that possibility and the practices that lead to that is I feel the deepest kind of social action. The deepest way of of engaging with the difficulties of our world in a way that benefits our self and others at the same time.
• 19:21
  Okay. Anybody have any comments? Insights, objections, beefs, questions? Great. Kosho has something behind me.
• 19:41
  Cool. Look at this. Monty Python has a whole thing called silly walking. Yes. You for demonstrating that.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: Roshi
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Taking your own life lightly. That's great.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: You talked about, you said you have to keep it fresh, the the sacredness of the present moment. How do you keep it fresh?
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Well, first you have to open your eyes and look and see what's in front of you. And then you have to open your ears and hear what's coming at you. And then you have to feel it as it is and not as it should be, it could be or might have been. That's what being fresh is. You know, it's one of the things I noticed with people, really mature practitioners is you look at their eyes and they're actually seeing what's there.
• 20:27
  They're not seeing what's not there. Know, a lot of people you talk to them and they're not seeing what's present. They're just seeing whatever their fantasy, projection is. Well, it's all projection but we keep it fresh. Present, alive, alert.
• 20:45
  And that doesn't mean we stay up 24 a day doing jumpy jacks. Mean, it just means that we're we're really hearing and we're seeing what's actually going on instead of our fantasy of what should go on. Yeah. Clear eyes is always helpful. Anybody else?
• 21:11
  Well, mister Vivek. Anybody online have any comments? You're welcome to. By the way, people online, it's always nice if you if you show your show your face, turn your camera on so that I can relate to you and see who's there. You know, I I thank you.
• 21:31
  I appreciate that. Yes. Okay. Because otherwise, I just see this picture. Yes.
• 21:37
  Thank you. Yes. Vivek.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: I'm wondering, Vinsama, how does a deep desire of growing can be simultaneously true in, like
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: A deep desire for Growing. Growing.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: Like, I wanna do well on a test, I need to have the intention of doing well on a test is my understanding. And in The first thing I learned in as an experiment list is, like, they teach you to, like, have a name for the experiment. Like, what are you trying to do with the experiment? So how does that play with, you know I'm not not necessarily trying to give myself a hard time with the current version, but I'm I'm wanting to grow for sure.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: So there's two answers to that. First off, you will grow regardless. Change is inevitable, you know, inevitably, you know. You are no longer a, you know, two foot tall being. You're now a giant being, you know.
• 22:36
  And we'll keep on growing if we're not paying attention. We'll become even more giant. That's that's always possible too, you know. We will will grow one way or another. We're going to grow.
• 22:45
  But the the the nice piece I think is it's really important that we are clear about our aspiration. What is it what is your heart's aspiration? We have the particular aspiration, I'd like to finish college, I'd like to do this retreat, I'd like to build this monument, I'd like to build this bird. That's great, but what's the aspiration beneath the aspiration? So what?
• 23:08
  So be clear. That's that's a that's a real con is what is it that I want? What is it that I want? And we think, I really would like to be tall, dark, and handsome. Well, you already are tall, dark, and handsome.
• 23:21
  So But but why? What what what point? So what? So what do people happen to think that we're this way or that way? So what?
• 23:29
  So we have to we have to be able to go underneath our our first first reading of that and think, what's what's this life about? What's this life about? And we find that this life and is not it's not just about us, it's not just about others, it's a dance. Anybody else? Okay.
• 24:02
  Terry, one more person, and we'll Terry in the back of there. If I start going over and getting too interested in talking, then then Jisan starts looking at his watch, and I know that we're we're in trouble, so we gotta end on time. Okay, Jared. Two minutes. Yep.
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: Okay. So I'll try to make this question succinct. So this morning, I had, like, somewhat of a headache. And I'm a yoga teacher, so I go to my work and I could feel that, like, I wasn't necessarily the most positive being. And I'm among people, you know, it's my job to teach.
• 24:52
  What is it that you say or do to have equanimity with health challenges? I mean, a headache is really nothing, but just Yeah. How how do you remain?
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Well, my my my answer is I just gotta keep showing up. Show up I'm bright, I show up I'm dull, I show up I'm not feeling well, I show up I just show up. And then when you show up you do the best you can do. So you know, I've got prostate cancer, I'm dealing with all the medications for that, I don't feel so well, but you show up. What difference does make?
• 25:33
  You just keep showing up. You do your best. And we do their best whether you're teaching yoga or you're standing up here or you're in a assembly line. We just do our best because it's our life. It's our life.
• 25:44
  So our best is not a particular state. Our best is just, I wanna show up and be engaged. So may you show up and be engaged. Thank you all very much for showing up and being engaged. Thanks everybody online.
• 25:56
  Nice to see your faces, some of you. And let's close with the four Bodhisattva Vows. Bye, everybody online. Thank you.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: 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