Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / Traveler, There Is No Road - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei

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Traveler, There Is No Road - 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.
• 0:23
  Jogen: Taking refuge in Buddha, taking refuge in Dharma, taking refuge in sangha. What a splendid and heartfelt retreat we are having. And just how fun is it to just walk in circles together? Look at a floor. I'm serious.
• 0:47
  I love it. I would just keep walking. Here is a poem by one of my teachers named TK. It's a title less poem. Early in the morning in a desert land dreamscape.
• 1:05
  Early in the morning in a desert land dreamscape. A little girl walked up to me, her face covered in dust, her hair disheveled. She motioned me to bend low, and when she did, she cupped her hand and whispered these words, 'In last night's wind, the rose thorn tore the petal. In last night's wind, the rose thorn tore the petal. The heart mind is torn by compassion.
• 1:39
  Body releases the fragrance of love. Don't be too quick to shun your pain, your stress, your loneliness. Secrets are hidden within life's hardships. Sometimes the dust of the road adds beauty to your face. Sometimes the dust of the road adds beauty to your face.
• 2:06
  Sometimes the streaks of tears are radiant like sunshine. Sometimes the salt adds depth to sweetness. Don't be too quick to shun your pain. So I'd bet that each and every one of you is valued and highly regarded by many beings. Even if you don't believe it.
• 2:42
  Compassion is a shape shifter. It's not always showing up like we think it should be. It doesn't exist in fixed forms. Each of us, regarded, cared for by many beings. And yet, even for all the beings' care and their willingness to help, or what sometimes feels like us, an inability to help.
• 3:16
  Generally, each of us has some disturbance inside that can only be resolved on a very intimate level. The old Chan masters would say things kind of like this. This is sort of an amalgamation of things I've read. They would say, they would admonish, you idle baldies in robes slurping up rice. Is your heart at peace?
• 3:49
  Is there still turmoil in your breast? Now that you have encountered the dharma that extinguishes turmoil, don't mess around or the last day of your life, you'll be thrashing around and shedding alligator tears of regret. Or sometimes they say, you'll have to repay the monastery all the rice that you ate in vain. A disturbance that we carry inside that the most loving being could not, and actually probably would not, somehow reach in and undo for us. And so, to endeavor seriously in dharma is to take responsibility for this primary thing.
• 4:52
  To take responsibility for it. Because otherwise it just haunts us. You can move from place to place, person to person, tradition to tradition. Maybe it's even true life to life. And if this disturbance that lives in our breast is not taken care of, it haunts, it follows us here and there.
• 5:23
  And it might even be that it spoils, it overshadows all the good stuff in life. It pisses in our punch. I sometimes wish I had started dharma practice when I was like 10. It comes from the shallow place in me because I remember being on dates and being like, she was so cute but I was really nervous. I couldn't enjoy it.
• 5:50
  I know, not the most profound regret. I'm just trying to be trying to be transparent here. The hidden from others often, yeah my life is good but because there's that haunting. And it's different for each person. Maybe a fear of life lives in the heart.
• 6:27
  Maybe a sense that things are never right. Maybe a sense that I'm fundamentally broken or unworthy. Maybe a sense that there is something I really must see in this lifetime. There's something I must really come to know in this lifetime. So there are many flavors of peacelessness and turmoil.
• 7:01
  Probably, you're getting to know yours. I like to point out that our haunting is not caused by the meditation retreat. You're just closer to it. And you're just not turning away from it in the same way that's so easy to do in everyday life. That's so easy to point the finger elsewhere.
• 7:36
  If it wasn't patriarchy, it'd be matriarchy. If it wasn't capitalism, it'd be the emperor. The traditional teachings have a name for different flavors of peacelessness and turmoil. One whole category is called the shedding of accumulated knowledge'. We might think that we could just become real ace at concentration.
• 8:22
  Somehow, learn to hold our mind clear and our inner rigidities or the stories that are actually below even just the conscious level are just going to somehow vaporize. But in a way, the same teacher who wrote the poem, TK, he said, Human beings are made of mistaken perception. They don't have mistaken perception. They are mistaken perception. We have reflexive wrong knowing.
• 9:02
  We have reflexive instinctive mistaken perceptions that we don't believe are mistaken. And everybody in here, I'm sure probably even the week before this retreat, you were looking at the news or walking down the street and you're like, Well, that dude sure got some mistaken perception. Those people. People in that camp full of mistaken perceptions. How rarely to be like, well, what about mine?
• 9:34
  What about me? No, I read some books. I took a course. So fixed beliefs and reflexive, maybe even instinctual false perceptions define us in a way as human beings. Otherwise, why is there so much senseless war?
• 10:03
  And, again, I want to emphasize, just being able to go deep into different states of meditation will not necessarily, expose those or melt them. We have to be willing to see. In the moments when we can see, we have to be willing to see. Oh, this lives in me. This lives in me.
• 10:36
  One way to put it is, we are very often in relationship to our own representations, our own mental representations rather than living actualities. Persons, feelings, objects. Think about the relationships that live in your mind. You have conversation with people. And sometimes if you're lucky, you encounter the actual person and you're present enough to notice that your representation is inaccurate.
• 11:29
  It's very partial. You recognize that we spend a lot of time shadow boxing. Boxing with our own shadow. When I was in my twenties in this zendo, I would shadow box with my deluded symbols of people from other traditions. I would be sitting here and probably I was, you know, hurting or some other thing I didn't want to be present with.
• 11:56
  And I would just be like, who would win in a battle? A wisdom battle, Lama Lauren or Ajon Amaretto? And out of my own insecurities, I would be making shadow representations and judgments of others. Why else would we judge others if we weren't insecure? So, we have thoughts and they tend to come with feelings.
• 12:30
  And thoughts are symbols. They tend to come with feelings and because they come with feelings that we feel and we're deeply feeling creatures at at the root, they seem really compelling. If I think this thing and I feel bad, then therefore my thought about this thing means it's bad. It's actually bad because I feel bad when I think of it. Right?
• 12:58
  And then this becomes hard to see through, it becomes tightly woven because the representation, let's say it's a symbol of a person. So anytime you think of a person, that's a symbol. That's your symbol. You have your symbol of the person, you have a feeling, then you probably have a thought about that feeling. Then you have a feeling about that thought, and before you know it there's this whole weave, and then we can procreate.
• 13:31
  That's how romance happens on one level. Deeply instinctual. So, I am actually not saying something profound. I'm saying, The symbol is not the thing. Are we living in that truth?
• 13:53
  Is our practice informing that truth? The idea, the picture is not the actuality. None of them are. Right? Zero zip.
• 14:05
  Even if you had the most brilliant mind that could remember the taste, colors and shapes of an orange. Say, I I realized I have taste memory. Does everybody have that? I can like recall the taste of pizza and make my own mouth water. Even if you had that really sensitively, if you were having the actual experience it would pale.
• 14:30
  There's so much data and information that would be missing from that. And a lot of people are more dimensional than oranges. A lot of experiences in life have more dimensionality than the memory of the taste of pizza. Oh, we shadow box. Another aspect of this, of shedding of accumulated knowledge, As we can catch in action how we think ourselves into worry or defensiveness around situations, and then it turns out we didn't need it.
• 15:16
  And this takes a kind of continuity of paying attention to one's being. Otherwise, you actually you don't need it but you forget that you worried all the way up to the point and that that wasn't necessary. All the ways we have a predisposition. We brace for how things are going to be Because we just don't really trust ourselves. Or again, with people, I use this very often as an example because I think, this might be the most painful place and therefore motivating to excavate.
• 16:05
  We catch an action how we think someone is very one dimensional. We just kind of latch our insecurity latches on to some idea about a person. Sometimes we don't even know them. And then if we're open, if we're present, we might be confronted with evidence to the contrary. Wean us off that predisposing mind.
• 16:43
  We can do that with our own practice. And make a conclusion. It's very interesting that one's kind of energy, let's call it energy, and mind can be, in some sense, of course they're unified, but another sense, sometimes people, it's evident to the teacher that they're profoundly settled and that there's a real clarity in their being. But they happen to be having some proliferation of thoughts and so they come in and they're like, Oh, my practice is terrible. How do you know?
• 17:20
  Well, I have thoughts. Oh, you have thoughts. So, your practice is terrible. Interesting. Make a conclusion.
• 17:38
  Don't make a conclusion. Don't make a conclusion. Actually, I might be wrong, but ideally, I would say you don't need to have any thought at all about your practice. None. Once you do it, forget about it.
• 18:00
  What else would you do? Because if you start thinking about the practice you did, you're no longer practicing. Once you do it, forget about it. There'll be another chance I hope. That's the idea.
• 18:11
  Oh, next time you'll do your best again. We want to get positively swept up in the doing of it. Just like we want to get positively swept up in the engagement with life. Maybe the discernment can be, Am I being wholehearted? That's really not a yes or no question.
• 18:31
  It's just an invitation to engage. People who are deeply settled in their practice don't think about how their practice is going. They might reflect on their shortcomings that are reflected by the Sangha. It's a different kind of matter. This brought to mind the famous poem by Antonio Machado and I adjusted it.
• 19:05
  So poetry gods, please forgive me. I like to change poems to suit my needs. If you've not heard it, this is called, Traveler, Your Footprints. Traveler, this footstep is the only road, nothing else. Traveler, there is no road.
• 19:29
  A road appears as you walk. As you walk, a road appears. And if you look back to see the road, you see a road made of dream. A road you can never travel again. Traveler, there is no road, only a ship's wake on the sea.
• 19:51
  Traveler, this footstep is the only road, nothing else. Traveller, there is no road. A road appears as you walk. As you walk, a road appears. And if you look back to see the road, you see a road of dream.
• 20:09
  A road you can never travel again. Traveler, there is no road. Only a ship's wake on the sea. Positively caught up in the doing of practice. Fully caught up.
• 20:32
  So many beleaguering thoughts and obstructions just begin to melt and just being positively caught up. This can be threatening to part of the mind that always wants to position us. We want to know where we are in the race. We want to know how are we ranked? Who would win in a wisdom battle, me or that lady?
• 21:19
  We could make trading cards with stats. Oh, I'll trade you a Roshi cap low for your I don't know. Mostly we don't know that much. Mostly human beings are not given the chance to know that much. Another way to say it is human beings are not given the total picture.
• 21:53
  And practice is not and will not give us the total picture. We occupy a slice of time and space in a body and even if we profoundly release identification with that, nonetheless. Human beings are not given the total picture. Now, related to this, shedding fixed beliefs. I forget what it I took a What's it called?
• 22:33
  Oh, yeah. The shedding of accumulated knowledge. We have a self image. Have you been able to see that your self image is only that and nothing more? It's just an image.
• 22:59
  It's just a kind of picture. It's like some sort of like, I don't know what it is, residue of memories strung together that we're kind of like, That's me. Or kind of the feedback we get from others that seems most consistent or true to us, we sort of take that as, Well, I must be that kind of person because that's what comes towards me. But if you look right now at the sense of yourself, what do you actually find? Look!
• 23:38
  It's not a metaphor, look! So in some sense the primary disturbance is believing too much in separate self. Believing too much in separate self and then we believe too much in the self image and somehow we've been taught we need to protect that and defend that. I don't know if that is instinctual or cultural or both. And then from that sense that I have to defend or protect that, then we have all kinds of stuff.
• 24:30
  We have things like pride that arise out of an image. I'm above, I'm below. Or another tenacious form of pride is, I know, don't tell me. Or for people who are a little bit more subtle, it's like, yeah, but Teachers are very familiar with that one. Yeah, but.
• 25:06
  Or from believing too much in the self image, we suffer loneliness. Now, there are some people who have the kind of loneliness because they just happen to have unfortunate conditions where there aren't loving people around. But there are a lot of people who suffer loneliness because before they walk in the room they're already thinking, I don't belong, I don't belong, I don't belong. I don't belong crosses the threshold of the room before the person does. I don't belong.
• 25:38
  I'm truly different. I'm so different than other humans. Or from a probably wounded self image, anger, particular kind of anger. Don't you dare do or be the thing that I think shouldn't be done. Yeah.
• 26:11
  It's a topic for another time, the appropriate place of anger. Anger that has wisdom behind it. From self image, suffering, wistfulness. If I think I'm this incomplete, ghostly image that needs to get affirmed continually by others, that needs to have the right experiences, then there's a kind of, is the right word wistfulness? It's like, if only, if only, if only, if only.
• 27:11
  Suffering estrangement from so called divine qualities. You can't be fascinated with the self image and also know diamond presence. And you know that from your own meditation. You can't be fascinated with self image, concerned with maintaining it, bolstering it, protecting it, and actually love or care for other beings. So, what to do about believing too much in separate self?
• 27:52
  Well, first you have to believe that your separate self believes too much in its reality. And you have to have some confidence that what I'm saying is not just like some guy saying ego is bad or whatever. It's much more subtle than someone saying ego is bad. I'm just saying what actually is it? Are we looking at it?
• 28:15
  Because more than some great state, that's the point. More than some special state, that's the point. So first we have to believe that our separate self believes too much in its reality. Then in a way we do exactly what we're doing with as much honesty as we can. But there's another thing though.
• 28:47
  I was noticing this in my own practice. We can get so caught up in the application of meditation that we sail past vital and compelling things. For example, what is this being doing meditation? Is a thought doing meditation? Does an impulse do meditation?
• 29:16
  Does a body do meditation? Do meditation right now. What does that? That's really interesting actually. Or we can enter it through the reflexive sense of thought of I, I, I.
• 29:44
  Does this thought I refer to something in this moment? Does it refer to anything deeper than a memory? From a very instinctual place you feel, I am. What is that I actually referring to? Not theoretical.
• 30:13
  You can look right now. Or for a moment exhale completely and just let go of all thoughts. And silently inquire, what is this I now? You even just begin, if you sincerely do that, you begin touching even a hair tip of a more fundamental reality than self image. We'll come at this from another angle.
• 31:18
  And all of these things, if they touch you at all, they're things to take up as practices. Deep inquiry can't be casual. Another thing we can, sail past is how the degree to which, control is quite illusory. For example, just notice that you don't operate your senses at all. Tune into any one of them.
• 32:03
  Nothing called I, me is involved whatsoever. The body's feeling. You will never experience a doer of that. There are sights. You're not applying the action of sight.
• 32:31
  You're not back there like, I don't know, cranking some sort of old movie camera. There are sounds. There is no hearer that has ever been experienced. Check that out, there's always just been this fact. It's wonderful.
• 33:12
  What is animating you? All you have to do is be curious. So again, all of these things can be their own rich practices in themselves. And that's not separate from wishlessness and deep yielding. So I want to touch on that just a little bit more.
• 34:00
  Probably you don't need someone to tell you the value of that. I don't think so. But it's worth saying that integrating this practice of deep yielding is really going to help you with your future sickness and dying. Because you have future sickness and dying coming. And for a lot of people, that's really, really rough.
• 34:22
  And part of the reason it's really, really rough is not that they don't have a good hospital. That may unfortunately be the case. It has to do with so much resistance to experience that was never addressed. So much fight against life that lives in the breast. And even in meaningful ways, you integrating deep yielding, you can be an example of someone who doesn't freak out if there's no air conditioning in a car or other kind of bourgeois dukkah.
• 35:04
  And you're not in Arizona. Or maybe you are, then you need air conditioning. You could view the universe as having a priority of teaching people surrender. Because without some sort of softening of the heart, this life is insult after insult. Isn't that interesting?
• 35:40
  What if the universe has a priority of teaching us all surrender? How beautiful it is to sort of consent to that, say, Okay, got the message, going to work on it. Now, I hope it's clear that this deep yielding isn't just going with and fusing with our habitual mind and reactions. It's not, Oh, I don't feel good so I'm just going to wallow in that. And Jogen said yield.
• 36:18
  I mean once in a while you could do that and see what happens. Just observe. Deep yielding is aiming at a really soft heart and to whatever degree body and firm presence simultaneous. Can I say the union of masculine and feminine? Let's say, I don't know which one's which, but they're both there.
• 36:53
  Diamond presence which is your nature. Soft tenderness letting feeling ripple through you like a body of water has no resistance. There was a teacher who was recounting studying with their, dharma master and they said, He was so smooth. He was so smooth that we would be riding in a car in India and his body would just kind of undulate when we went over bumps because he had no hardness in him. He had no resistance to life.
• 37:35
  That would be really cool to see somebody just undulating like that. Embodying this when things are easy, it has its value. Embodying this when there are really challenging storms of sensation, feeling, compulsion, that's a mysterious door to liberation. If only that we prove to ourselves that we don't have to be as afraid of life. Imagine tomorrow, wake up and we have a 75% reduction in our fear of life.
• 38:32
  How beautiful that would be. How much things could really shine and touch us. So, we've touched on taking responsibility for ending our inner haunting, the intelligence of not knowing. Recognizing that knowing is very often just representations, my own symbols. The weirdness of believing that self image is more than that.
• 39:18
  The weirdness of believing that self image is the fullness of what we are. And I'm practicing deep, deep yielding and how at the same time this is a firm spine. Union of masculine and feminine resilience. One more thing I want to mention is something I call decisiveness. This is a time in retreat when being decisive will be very much of service.
• 40:06
  This is not anything to do with trying harder. In a nutshell, if you are 85% putting yourself into the method, make that 95. If you're 95, aim for a 100. That is explore being undivided. Explore being without hesitation.
• 40:32
  So that you're doing the thing you're doing, your being is 100% as much as that's possible. Explore how fully can you be doing the thing you're doing. When you see to 100% see, when you hear to 100% hear, when you feel the flow of breath to 100%. Because there can be this just slight holding back. We never take the whole plunge.
• 41:09
  I'm not in any way talking about trying harder. Just investigate, check out, contemplate decisiveness. It's another mysterious door of liberation. So our time is rapidly disappearing here together in this beautiful temporary community we've made, in these lovely conditions with whatever degree of health we have, that good fortune. Don't throw it all away for some fantasies of the future or some, you know, thing you're going to eat when you get home.
• 41:57
  Don't do that. You'll eat it when you get there. Whatever else your fantasy is. Really, respect yourself. Make the most of this time.
• 42:11
  It becomes cliche for long timers but all the work you've done so far now makes deeper tastes, deeper impressions in your being of dharma possible. It's not like you kind of reach an apex and then you go downhill unless you let it be like that. So, please don't. Please continue for you, for everyone else. Thank you.
• 42:47
  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.