Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / Generosity Without Separation - Jomon Martin, Zen Teacher

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Generosity Without Separation - Jomon Martin, Zen Teacher · 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.
0:26
Jomon: I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha. Thank you everybody for being here. It's nice to see everybody.
0:40
Thanks for John for helping us do and everybody really, Esho, Shinku for helping us get sansen going. It's long awaited. We were gonna do it in the sauna in there, but it's kind of nice to have a whole actual room. So that's a nice landmark, I think, for our group here and our practice together. It's very heartening.
1:15
And we're going to, I'll just say it at this moment and I'll maybe reiterate it at the end too when we do announcements, but I'm just excited that we're planning on having kind of a first year birthday party for our group. We did start online in December but it was kind of early January that we started meeting here in person or mid January. So it's January 13, which is a Tuesday night. We're gonna find another venue that has a little more room and just celebrate, have a little first birthday party together. Yeah, yeah.
2:02
So thank you all for those of you who were here from the beginning and thank you all those of you who may have just arrived. It's an exciting time. So was not here last week. I heard that Gensho gave a stellar talk on Affirming Faith in Mind, which I'm sorry I missed, but I was doing a retreat. I did a retreat on generosity and gratitude in Corvallis and then again another retreat at Great Vow on generosity and gratitude.
2:44
So I'd like to share a little bit of that that is really up and alive right now, and it really does align with Affirming Faith in Mind. When we were chanting it today, it did strike me around generosity and gratitude really can be applied and I felt like this line popped out in From one mind comes duality, but cling not even to this one. When this one mind rests undisturbed then nothing in the world offends. And then Things are things because of mind as mind as mind because of things. These two are merely relative and both at source are emptiness.
3:32
So we really do just kind of create things, limit things, identify things, and then we add on these other categories of things that is my thing and that is your thing I am a thing that can give a thing to you and it separately exits my possession and enters yours or you can give something to me and that is a very explicitly dualistic way of looking at generosity and gratitude and really in the teachings we really worked a lot with Dogan's teachings. This is all a big blutter actually And when we see that, when cultivating generosity comes from the no mind of no separation, the mind that knows no distinction between giver, receiver, and gift, the not two and not three, when we really can see that that's how generosity can be expressed and received, that we never are separate from ever giving or receiving at any point. So I just want to share a little bit of the energy from the Gratitude Sashin and some of of Dogen's teachings. Dogen was the first Zen ancestor in Japan in the 1200s and his teachings filter strongly in our tradition, but I also wanted to share one of my other favorite teachings, the Shantideva teachings, the way of the bodhisattva.
5:17
Shantideva was a scholar in India in the seventh and eighth century and Shantideva offers very specific practices to cultivate gratitude and generosity which I did not get to in the sashin, so I'm very excited about bringing that in today. So here's what Dogan has to say about generosity and giving and he uses the Pali word or in this translation the Pali word for giving is called is dana, that just means giving. When we understand the meaning of dana, receiving a body and giving up a body are both offerings. Earning a livelihood and managing a business are nothing other than giving. Trusting flowers to the wind and trusting birds to the season may also be the meritorious action of Donna.
6:12
When we give and when we receive, we should study this principle. Great King Ashoka's offering of half a mango to hundreds of monks was a boundless offering. Not only should we urge ourselves to make offerings but we must not overlook any opportunity to practice dhana. Because we are blessed with the virtue of offering we have received our present lives. Whenever we can give up even one speck of dust for the practice of dhana we should quietly rejoice in it.
6:48
So that's almost like a poem, it's like a poem about generosity and we can just kind of let it wash over us. We don't have to understand all of it. Dogen is extremely he's very poetic and he's often moving from the perspective of the absolute and the relative sometimes in the same sentence. Let's unpack a couple of these. So when he says, When we give and when we receive, we should study this principle.
7:15
Great King Ashoka's offering of half a mango to hundreds of monks was a boundless offering. So King Ashoka lived a couple of generations after the Buddha and he was known as a very shrewd ruler and actually a brutal warrior. That is until a battle with the neighboring kingdom resulted in so much bloodshed that as he walked on the battlefield and saw the carnage, he converted to Buddhism and spent the rest of his time and all of his power on creating benefits for the country. He planted and had planted banyan trees for shade, dug wells all across the country, and created way stations for travelers and planted mango groves for food. He promoted benevolence, fairness and justice towards prisoners and for the welfare of animals and he wrote these edicts on pillars and stones throughout India, and this is the reason we even know about them.
8:23
And it's said that at the end of his life he had given away all of his possessions despite all of his advisors' protestations, and all he had left was half a mango. And the story goes that he gave even that to the monastics to add to their meal, to use as medicine. I mean that's impressive. We can see the power of a generous act, the power of a generous heart, the heart that's always looking for a way to be generous. A heart touched by compassion can see more clearly the path to generosity is unobstructed in this way.
9:03
It arises naturally. And what about this part? Trusting flowers to the wind and trusting birds to the season may also be meritorious action of Donna. How would you trust the birds to the season? How would you trust flowers to the wind?
9:29
What's that mean? It could be that we are taking a stance of deep acceptance or radical acceptance of the way things are in this moment. That's not to say that there's not a response that is ours to do if we encounter something that's necessitating a response, but to give the world the room, to give the world the grace, to unfold as it's unfolding, to trust that the birds and the flowers know what they're doing, to give our appreciation for how things are rather, you know, rather than imposing our own ideas on how it should be, what we think the birds should do. We'd want keep the flowers around longer. This is the gift to the world to just allow and to trust things are unfolding.
10:23
I was just talking to my mom on the phone in my drive here and she is a gardener. She loves her flowers and for some reason she has these iris that are blooming in November which like, I don't know if that's climate change or like what is have a second bloom, it didn't used to be this way in Illinois but they do a second bloom sometimes in November in the fall and they just had a freeze and so she was kind of like beating herself up because she hadn't gone out and cut the ones that had budded already and she wanted to have it bloom inside and she's like, Oh, it's just not blooming. And she was just kind of like, Oh, why didn't I go out there and cut it sooner? And I'm like, well, I mean, aren't just the November iris just bonus? Like, aren't aren't we aren't they just supposed to be in the springtime?
11:23
So just allowing the the flowers to the to the wind, you know, to to trust the flowers to the wind that, you know, when it gets to be 28 degrees, we're done with iris. But I appreciate her. I brought her I'm just gonna meander a minute when because I'm from Illinois, she still lives there and she used to come and visit. She's 91 now so she doesn't want to travel that much but much earlier, 20 you know, fifteen, twenty years ago she would come here and visit and I took her to the Shriners Iris Farm and it was like, you know, it was literally breathtaking for her, you know, when they have the beautiful garden that you can walk through and see all the different kinds. She knows all the names of them and she was literally struck like her breath she kind of and she whispered, she goes, it's even better than I thought it would have been.
12:27
Know, it's just so sweet. She's very, she really is a very appreciative and grateful person But she does love the iris and she wants them through November. So anyway, the pieces that I just read from Dogen is from his fascicle called the Bodhisattva Shishobo. That means the Bodhisattvas for embracing actions. So a Bodhisattva is kind of like a saint in Buddhism.
12:57
A Bodhisattva is a being that could sort of, you know, go into nirvana but chooses to stay back here in either the human realm or other realms of suffering and help everyone else realize nirvana. And so they're helpers, so they're for embracing actions. What would a bodhisattva do? How would they embrace or help the suffering realm? And a fascicle is just a chapter of a book that can also stand on its own.
13:37
That's how most of Dogen's teachings are organized in these fascicles. So what are the four embracing actions of a bodhisattva? They are giving, kind speech, kind action and what some translate identity action is the fourth one and that just means having an identity of purpose or all in the same boat pulling together as one, being on the same team. Again, that blurs the lines of identity and difference that we can see ourselves as we and not just us versus them. Identity action.
14:21
So are we talking about a bodhisattva that appears from a heavenly realm and embraces us poor messy humans? Not necessarily. We are perhaps talking about how we can take up these actions, how we can embrace our life and embrace the world and embody the bodhisattva practices. So the first practice is generosity or dhana and Dogen is calling us to bring a very broad mind to what generosity actually is. Trusting flowers to the wind and trusting birds to the season may also be the meritorious action of Donna.
14:54
That's like letting things be. That's giving. It's the opposite of, you know, trying to get, right? Because we are blessed with the virtue of offering, we have received our present lives. Just that awareness of the miracle that we are all here.
15:15
What even is this? What actually is this? Here we have this life, this human life. Whenever we can give up even one speck of dust for the practice of dhana, we should quietly rejoice in it. And that he's saying that even if you're just giving a speck of dust, which not super valuable to most people or anybody else, but it's the spirit with which we offer it.
15:44
If we are truly giving generously with a generous heart and in the spirit of wanting to give, wanting to help, wanting to be of service, that is what we are rejoicing in, giving heart. So in another part of this first part of the four on giving there's this line that I didn't read yet. We give flowers blooming on the distant mountains to the Tatagata. We give flowers blooming on the distant mountains to the Tathagata. So the Tathagata it means Thus Come One, that's the Buddha.
16:25
And to give flowers blooming on the distant mountains, how would we do that? We don't even own those, right? How do we give something that we don't even own? Well, I'm pretty sure that this is a reference to Shantideva's way of the bodhisattva. So I'll say a little bit about Shantideva and this particular writing.
16:49
Shantideva lived in India in the seventh and eighth centuries, the common era. Not much is known about his life, but he is widely credited with writing what is called the Bodhicharya Vattara, the Bodhicharya Vattara or the way of the bodhisattva. This text is very popular in Tibet. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama says it's his favorite spiritual text and it does figure largely in Tibetan practice and ritual. Yeah, and we can talk about it in Zen too.
17:24
We can benefit from it. So the Bodhisattva Chariavattara has 10 chapters dedicated to the development of Bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment, through the practice of the six perfections or paramitas. And those six are generosity is number one, it turns out. But also ethics, patience or diligence, joyful energy, meditation or concentration and wisdom. Those are the six Paramitas and that's something that we that was kind of the first thing we practiced when we started sitting here together is we would practice one of the Parmitas every week leading up to the first day of spring.
18:11
Shantideva attended Nalanda University which was a huge complex of Buddhist scholarship in India. It went into decline and is said to have been ransacked and destroyed in the November and there's now only archaeological excavation that remains, a few of the building remnants, and it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. So when it was in its heyday, thousands of monks, thousands of students and monks from China would come and translate many of the teachings over the centuries and take them back to China and they go into eventually made their way to Japan so quite likely Dogen is referencing the richness of Buddhist literature through the ages and likely referencing Shantideva's teachings on being generous and this possible way to practice to cultivate a giving heart. So a little more about Shantideva. According to Pema Chodran, who has a wonderful book on way of the bodhisattva called Nothing to Lose, she says Shantideva was not well liked at Nalanda And people thought he was lazy.
19:27
He was one of those people who didn't show up for class. He didn't show up for anything. He didn't study. He didn't come to the practice sessions they were supposed to come to. And his fellow monks said that his three realizations were eating, sleeping, and shitting.
19:47
So according to the legend, Shantideva was goaded by his fellow monks into giving a talk to the entire university body while sitting on a large lion throne and they hoped that they were setting him up. They wanted to expose his complete laziness and lack of understanding that he would be unable to recite any scriptures. They were hoping he would leave the monastery in shame. But instead, he gives this banger of a talk which was the Bodhicharya Vitara. He basically starts, he's like, do you want to hear some of the scriptures or do you want to hear something new?
20:27
And of course they're like, oh yeah, we want to hear something new. And it was this. So when he got to the ninth chapter of the way of the bodhisattva which is all about emptiness, it's said that he levitated up into the sky and out of sight at the end of that which is of course before the mic drop was invented. So the second chapter of this is called or sometimes referred to as preparing the ground.
21:03
Jomon: Oh man, I don't know if I can
21:05
Jomon: these glasses are very good or sometimes confession. Chapter two begins with offerings and the practice of generosity and it continues and ends with the process of confession and atonement. At the retreat we did kind of notice this relationship between atonement and generosity that in atonement we really can sort of clear ourselves out, acknowledge the ways we've been unskillful so that that leaves room for us, this flow to offer from a different place. Pemachodran calls chapter two Preparing the Ground and His Holiness, the Dalai Lama calls it offering and purification. So this very specific practice of generosity is about kind of priming the pump.
21:53
It's just like even if you don't have that view of oneness, we can at least, you know, act as if, as they say in the 12 steps, you know, let the action really teach us and maybe our heart will follow. So making offerings is almost half the chapter. Generosity is a way to behaviorally put ourselves aside for a moment, to act as if we are Bodhisattva, removing ourselves from the center of the universe for a moment with an act of giving and that may be easy and that may be difficult but there are some wonderful ways to practice it that everyone can do and this is the genius of Shantideva and the genius of the Paramitas that is said that the Buddha said that that generosity is the first one because anybody can do it. So what's the intention? Why give?
22:46
Shantideva starts by making offerings to the Buddhas of the past, to the Dharma and to the Sangha and he says that I might gain this precious attitude. Attaining the attitude of bodhicitta is his goal. In this way it is somewhat of an exchange or a way to acknowledge requesting and receiving the gift of bodhicitta, this awakened mind or this mind that wants to awaken for the sake of all beings. And you can offer anything even if you're feeling really constricted or even if you feel like you do not have anything to give or you do not have enough, you can still practice generosity. Shantideva shows us that we can imagine giving the most precious and luxurious of offerings and so the next verses are sumptuously beautiful but instead of imagining having these items for ourselves we can imagine giving them away.
23:42
So he says in this chapter let me see if I can just read it from here I offer every fruit and flower, every kind of healing draft, and all the precious gems of the world, all the precious gems the world contains with all pure waters of refreshment. Every mountain wrought of precious jewels, all sweet and lonely forest groves, the trees of paradise adorned with blossom, trees with branches bowed with perfect fruit, all the perfumed fragrance of divine and other realms, all incense, wishing trees and trees of gems, all crops that grow without the tiller's care and every sumptuous object worthy to be offered. I mean he goes on, lakes adorned with lotuses, the sweet voiced cries of water birds, everything unclaimed and free extending to the margins of the boundless sky. I hold them all before my mind and to the mighty sage, the greatest of our kind, that's the Buddha, and to his heirs, that's the Sangha, I make a perfect offering, sublime recipients, compassionate lords, oh think of me with love, accept these gifts of mine. So that's amazing, right?
25:12
We can just we can just give anything we can imagine. We can just give that in our own mind and not just think about how we want to remodel our own bathroom and kitchen and stuff. There actually is the next section, this whole entire spa experience that he's wishing for the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas that I totally love. I won't share the whole thing with you but it's really beautiful so I kind of condensed it here. That he would invite the Buddhas, their heirs and the bodhisattvas indulging and delighting them, treating them to the most gorgeous sensory pleasures.
25:56
I'll just read a couple of them. The bathing chamber, excellently fragrant with even floors of crystal, radiant and clear, and graceful pillars shimmering with gems hung about with gleaming canopies of pearls. There the blissful Buddhas and their heirs, I'll bathe with many a precious vase, a brim with water fragrant and delightful, all to frequent strains of melody and song with cloths of unexampled quality, with spotless perfumed towels, I will dry them and offer splendid scented clothes well dyed and of surpassing excellence. He goes on, I mean it's really fun, he's clearly having a good time and I don't know maybe when you're giving your baby a bath and Benjamin, you know, it's just like such an act of care, such an act of intimacy and such a delightful thing. When I first read about META or loving kindness practice and I just was reading about it in a book, it was suggested that we bring to mind someone who, you know, really loved you, someone who really helped you, someone who nurtured you.
27:10
So I immediately and unbidden thought of my grandmother and I would visit her in Florida and be at the beach all day and get tired and then she would run a bath for me. And just the simple kindness and nurturance of my grandmother running a bath for me and I can remember like, I don't know, about half a cup of sand at the bathtub from my day at the beach, you know, but that was the feeling, that was the recollection of that kind of love and care being cared for by being bathed. And so what a beautiful, intimate and precious thing to want to offer that we can just do that, we can just imagine that. So even though none of these things are owned, they may only be imagined, we can appreciate them, make them an offering, sharing our appreciation, wishing this joy to be experienced by others. And Pema Chodron recommends that if we're feeling kind of stingy or kind of like, oh I don't have enough of something, we can imagine that we have a multitude of those things.
28:22
So like a favorite sweater or you know our house or our sleeping bag, like what if I had a 100 of these? Well I would just want to give them away or my car I could just give everybody gets a silver Prius which apparently already happened, like everybody already does have a silver like there's just here we are with all of them. Whoever needs, let me let me be in this mind and heart of giving. Let me let me imagine that people have what they need. Everyone gets a house.
28:53
Everyone has a beautiful bathroom, that everyone can be bathed and taken care of in this way and I can offer this in my own mind and heart and just get in that habit whenever I think about it, whenever I feel like it and just spend my time and heart energy in a practice of generosity. People I like, people I don't like, whoever it is, whatever I would like to give or whatever I'm feeling like a little bit of constriction, just giving in my own mind. So that's a whole practice that you can try just walking around. And you know, we've been in this season of awareness of food insecurity in our country and you know just wishing for everyone to have enough to eat can also be a practice even when we whenever we hear about it, whenever we hear another story about SNAP benefits, like let's use that as a cue to just imagine that everyone has enough food that I could give that to them, that I could offer that to them, that I could be that generous, that I could share what I have with others even if it's not happening in the physical moment.
30:12
Or when we're eating too, to just like, what if I could multiply this sandwich and share it with everybody? Or what if I could share this feeling of fullness, like getting to really appreciate feeling full and not having to worry about the meal that just happened? Could I share that feeling? Could I give that away? What if I could give this away to everyone?
30:38
Dedicate the merit of this practice to others. It's really fun actually to do. So I want to close with a few practices and then hear a little bit about what your experience is, which is of course optional to share, but go ahead and tune in to how it feels right now to be sitting. If you want to shift around a little bit, you're welcome to do that. Maybe noticing where the breath is, where it feels most vivid and just being with that for a moment.
31:25
Letting the muscles, the body relax to the extent that that's possible. And if you'd like to close your eyes, you're welcome to do that too, you can keep them open. And on each exhale, just saying this phrase silently to yourself, this is what is being given to me now. This is what is being given to me now. And there doesn't have to be an answer or there doesn't have to be something arising.
31:58
There might be some realization of like, gosh, what is being given to me right now? You could even phrase it as a question. What is being given to me right now in this moment, just sitting here? What is being given to me now? And we can turn that also towards generosity.
32:34
How can I be generous right now? Just sitting here, just breathing without doing anything. How can I be generous right now? How can I be generous right now? Or what is being offered right now?
32:58
And that can go either way. What is being offered right now?
33:17
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.