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Facing the End with Presence - 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.
• 0:24
  Hogen: We've been talking about transforming problems into wisdom, But we've had a very busy time, so I of can't review my notes on that. But I'm going to talk about something else this evening. Joseph and I were oh, I'm just looking to see who's online. Joseph and I were at a visiting someone this afternoon who is terminally ill, And they're, you know, on their way down and out. So what can we offer?
• 0:59
  What do we do when we look at our own lives? We look at the dystopia of our particular culture? When we look at friends and relatives who are not doing well? What do we say? How does practice become alive?
• 1:13
  How does it mean make something meaningful? And because if practice is not meaningful, if the spiritual path is not useful in these really difficult situations, what good is it? So I think it's very important that we examine this kind of situation. So, and we all have been there. We all have had friends or families or parents or loved ones who we knew there was no hope for them.
• 1:43
  They are going to die. Or we have seen, you know, a company comes to the end or a job comes to the end or a relationship comes to the end and we know it's passing. So how do we practice? How do we we'll practice with what do we say to somebody. How do we meet this so human situation?
• 2:06
  Everything comes to an end. It's not surprising. Part of the agreement we all make with the universe is if we are going to be born, we are going to die. Right? And there is no escaping that basic agreement.
• 2:23
  So what can we say and what can we do and how can we practice with that truth about our life? At some point we'll be the one in the ICU. At some point we'll be the one in the retirement center, the elder care facility. So we'll be the one who is. What do we do?
• 2:44
  What's important? Now, the first thing that we've talked about when we were doing the transforming into wisdom, and this is a very important piece, is while we have the opportunity, we calm ourselves down, we stabilize the mind, and we look directly. Because if the mind is just agitated, if all we think is what's real is our thoughts, then we never can find the stability, we never can find the clarity, never find the equanimity to actually see any of the deeper truths. So regardless of what we're facing, come into the present moment, calm the mind down. Now, that calming the mind down piece sometimes I've given whole talks on you can't believe your thoughts.
• 3:36
  Believe some of your thoughts maybe, but you can't believe them all for sure. Partly, you can think anything. You can think you're a white turtle. You know, it's just a thought. You think you're a complete failure.
• 3:47
  It's just a thought. So it's really important to examine the nature of thought. If you look at thought, it's self liberating, disappears, comes out of nowhere, goes nowhere. We can think anything. When we actually realize that, we can think anything, and we think, why why do I believe any of my thoughts, much less all of them?
• 4:18
  And why do I believe the dystopian, self deprecating, dysfunctional thoughts? Why do I believe the thoughts of hopelessness and despair? So part of the practice is calm down, be in the present moment, and really have an appropriate relationship to thought. Thought's a tool. It's something that could be used.
• 4:44
  We could we could pick it up. We could analyze things with it. We could take apart the toaster and put it back together again if we have a certain state of mind. But it's not a tool to be used for everything. So part of practice is we come in, we sit down, we breathe, we're in the present moment.
• 5:06
  We learn how our relationship to thought. Now, in the present moment, right here, right now, if you're not thinking about what might happen tomorrow or thinking about some ice storm or thinking about some political thing, or thinking about some dystopian future, thinking about the economic collapse of the universe. Right here, right now, sitting in this room, I it's pretty much okay. You know? A few aches and pains, I know some people have some back problems or knee problems, but you know, the scale of things.
• 5:43
  So one thing we can all observe, we can all observe is if we calm down, pay attention, there's a place where everything's okay. And it's right here. Now an interesting practice I was reflecting on is, and you might try it right now, maybe it'll work best with the visual field. If you close your eyes and you look at the visual field, the visual field is not blank. It's not black.
• 6:22
  If you look at the visual field, look at it very closely, you'll see it's made up of texture. It's made up of dots. It's made up of spots. It's made up of red, white, and black. It's made up of little pixels, micropixels.
• 6:38
  Now, if you're looking at your visual field with your eyes closed, zero in and see if it's possible to focus on one tiny spot. Is it possible? Maybe not be. Is it possible in that visual field to only focus on one tiny spot? Check it out.
• 7:12
  And whether it is or is not, move your attention to another part of the visual field and focus on one tiny spot if it's possible. And then, is there a difference between these two spots? Any spot in the visual field? When we are looking at something with a microscopic mind, we're zeroing in. There are some very interesting things that are revealed.
• 7:50
  Now, you could experiment with that in the day or night if you want to experiment with that, but the same thing is true with time. So we're sitting right here. What's the smallest fragment of time we can be aware of? Right now. You have to still the mind.
• 8:12
  Don't believe your thoughts, even though they may be bubbling. What's the smallest fragment of time? Now if you have a heartbeat, it goes thump, thump. Sine wave. Sine wave is a whole increment of time.
• 8:29
  What's the smallest amount of time? Take a minute and check it out. What's the smallest amount of time you can experience, feel, know? You say, Ah. Ah is a beginning, middle, and end.
• 8:56
  What's the smallest fragment of Ah that we can actually attend to?
• 9:12
  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.