Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / The World Lies To Us- Jogen Sensei

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The World Lies To Us- Jogen Sensei · 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 Buddhadharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Taking refuge in Buddha, taking refuge in Dharma, taking refuge in Sangha. So I'm gonna talk about the world and I'm not talking about your life because I don't know your life. I'm gonna talk about the world whatever that is. There is something that the world will not teach us. There's something that the world cannot teach us as much maturity as may come from pursuing a career or raising a family or starting a business or even going through the arc of getting old, facing the challenges of that sickness.
• 1:53
  None of that offers what's on offer here. In the world we're taught to understand, to acquire, to maintain things, relationships, and ideas. We're not taught how to let go. We're not taught how to let go and arguably letting go is life's most important skill cause everything has to be let go. Every single understanding, acquisition, relationship, thing, relationship and idea.
• 2:35
  Everything has to be let go and the world does not teach letting go. Although, it may force us to learn letting go. In the world, we're taught or shaped, pressured, cajoled into or towards being someone respectable, enviable, competitive, good, family culture, church. Our own desire to be, attractive to a sexual partner, compel us to all of these things. We're not taught that all of that is about as real and reliable as Santa Claus.
• 3:27
  Respect, status, competitiveness, good in whose eyes. In the world we're taught to maximize health even though the healthiest person can get cancer tomorrow. We're taught to avoid thinking about or seeing death. We're taught basically that even well into our middle age, we should just keep increasing energy, productivity and avoid depression because depression equals defeat rather than a spiritually fertile place. And we're not taught, the world does not teach how a deep source of meaning can be found.
• 4:20
  A deep source of meaning that's durable in the face of all these ferociously fleeting things. Part of the anxiety of being a human is that everything that we are leaning on besides Dharma is a very unstable contingent reality. All bodies are contingent realities, all jobs are contingent realities, all sociopolitical systems are contingent realities, the power grids are contingent reality, the internet's a contingent reality, The economic system's a contingent reality. Housing is a contingent reality. And so the world is fake in a way.
• 5:12
  It's totally fake. Think about money. It's completely made up. The world is fake because it's saying get this get this get this get this. But everybody's running around anxious.
• 5:24
  Everybody's got this tremble in their heart because the world is saying invest in this, invest in this, invest in this and none of that brings peace of mind. Zero, zip. It's super temporary. I bought a new car and I guess it was two months later someone decided to key it. And I thought, it's great.
• 5:45
  It relieved me of the idea that this is not a public object. In a way, everything is a public object subject to the whims of everything. So saddest of all the world, sadder than all of this, the world fails us in its most basic presentation of what is true. It teaches us that we are merely a personality in a body, first lie, who needs to find a small group of other personalities and bodies so we can come together and taste and touch delicious things. Ascend in our importance and fend off our discomfort and insecurity until we die or go to heaven.
• 6:40
  That's the basic life strategy of 99% of human beings. Secure a small group of reasonably harmonious people we can stand, other personalities in bodies to taste and touch delicious things, ascend in our importance, fend off discomfort and insecurity until we die or go to heaven. And so the the basic basic program we're fed is just bullshit. And no wonder we're dissatisfied. The weird thing is our dissatisfaction gets put in, well I need a better personality and a better body to taste more delicious things, to touch prettier things, to send a more importance, fend off more insecurity so that it's good until I die or go to heaven.
• 7:33
  And no one ever has known anybody who's died or gone to heaven. People disappear from our world of experience, that's true. So the world lies to us and we could even say we lie to each other because sometimes we know that the world is a lie and we're not real with each other about it. We keep pretending it's gonna work. We keep trying to merely taste and touch delicious things ascend in our importance and fend off our discomfort and insecurity until we die or go to heaven.
• 8:13
  And both of those are rumors. Death and heaven. The world sells us short regarding the great matter of life and death. And in some ways we sell each other short. How many of your friends or family members when you are chasing these false securities say, hey, do you know that's not going to work?
• 8:48
  Why don't they? Do they love us? Are they aware? Hey, do know that's not going to work? Jogen, another record.
• 8:54
  Come on dude. So the world lies to us and we are the world so we lie to us. And then that means that to practice Dharma is to confront illusion. And much more than the discomfort physically that we face, the real discomfort of practicing Dharma is that we're confronting our illusions. They're the really the cause of most of the bodily aches and the sickness emotions.
• 9:36
  It's the confrontation with illusion not sitting still. This is my my experience. We're confronting illusion. There are old texts that have lengthy lists of all the illusions a person who wants to wake up examines. In fact, I I had one that was like five pages just listing illusions.
• 10:03
  And in these texts they would call them Maras which is interesting because a Mara is something like a spirit of deception. It's something that is is alive. It has its own life force. A spirit A spirit of deception. So here are some of the the ones that they that they take aim at and that we're taking aim at as we sit and melt illusions.
• 10:32
  They take illusion at, they they point at the illusion of permanence. Yes, we we swim in impermanence that everything is fleeting so therefore it's really hard to see. Just like probably for a fish, water can never be conceived. They point out the illusion of permanence, they also point out the illusion of impermanence. For something to go away, it had to be here in the first place.
• 11:04
  What does that mean for something to be here in the first place? Your life is experience. They point out the illusion that there is, a self of a person sitting here. Think when I was younger in practice because for me it impacted me so greatly to see that self was an illusion. I esteem that as some rarefied and high thing.
• 11:40
  But the more I practice, the more I think it's really obvious. If you're willing to look, you will see that the self cannot be found. It's just not something you can experience. It's quite a relief. On the other hand, the text point out that to say there's no self is an illusion.
• 12:06
  To say there is no self is positing what? Independence is an illusion. If I have any anything positive comes out of my mouth or is done with my hands, I didn't make that up. I was either taught it or it happens to be an instinct. If I have any skills, I didn't make that up.
• 12:48
  I received that. If I survive it's only because countless beings are working somewhere and all of their offerings that they don't know where they came from are supporting my life. Independence is a total illusion. So it's weird that we get prideful whether that's I'm great or I'm no no good. It's weird.
• 13:14
  As independence is an illusion. They point out that dependence is an illusion. One of my teachers who is He's so powerful that people glom onto him. And he said, everything you become dependent on you begin to resent. Why do you resent what you become dependent on?
• 13:43
  Because it's an illusion. You can't really depend on it. The illusion that there is a thing called enlightenment. That there is a particular object of experience that I'm going to have and it's gonna be the same object of experience as someone else. How would I know?
• 14:10
  And the illusion that there is no enlightenment. The comfort that we just kind of sit here and everything's okay. And that there's no real pivotal clarification. They point out the illusion that the path comes to fruition by our effort. A kind of hero's myth understanding that we sort of we fend off the dragons and we slay the mind and on all by our own power we become super Buddha.
• 14:49
  Get a cape or something. They point out the illusion that the path doesn't require our effort. Like these silly YouTube people who tell you, you're already there. It's all non dual, come to my seminar. You'll catch my vibe.
• 15:14
  I like poking fun at the non dual people because they're so silly. They point out the illusion that there's an external world and whole schools of Buddhism exist to show what a silly thing it is to believe that there's an objective world apart from your experience. First of all, you could never experience a world apart from your experience. You just couldn't. But then because we cling to that, they point out that to say there isn't an external world is dumber than bricks.
• 15:56
  Actually, the old saying from Tibet is clinging to things is stupid but clinging to emptiness is even stupider. But it's better to cling to emptiness I think. The texts and especially the Zen tradition points out that it's the illusion we get caught in that we're an experienced practitioner which is just a bunch of biographical memory. And then the illusion on the other hand that that there's no effect of sustained practice. Somehow there's an effect.
• 16:39
  Somehow this non abiding empty moment, it's it's inexplicable. Another way to say it is it's an illusion that we lack capacity as a practitioner. Just to think, oh, I don't have what it takes is just a story that we're free to believe. Our tradition is radically radically willing to not accord with the delusion of the world. And the basic premise of the Mahayana is that beings don't really exist.
• 17:34
  That's why you can save them. And then they point out as soon as you cling to that, oh, beings don't exist. That's an illusion. How stupid. They're right in front of you.
• 17:50
  You know, I thought about these illusions and my own sway under them and as a teacher what I see as the most actually problematic for us. It's something that is really stressed as primary. It's the illusion that what we normally take as happiness is actually happiness. Think about that. Could you be wrong about your own experience of happiness?
• 18:31
  Could what we put in our mind, we prioritize as the thing, the good life or the experience I have that fulfills me, could that actually be full of deception? The illusion that what we normally take as happiness is actually happiness. One way to think about it is a temporary reprieve from a life of stress on to stress is not happiness. The interruption of hell is not happiness, it's just a temporary distraction from hell. Or a temporary distraction from a life of unrelenting wanting and rushing is not happiness.
• 19:19
  It's just a breath between running the gauntlet. And I think, they point this out not because like Buddhism ancestors want to pee in our punch. They don't have any such agenda. They're pure compassion. If if it was happiness, they would have sympathetic joy with us.
• 19:44
  They pointed out so that we could see, oh, it's it's actually really just bound up with with with grasping and anxiety. It's like getting a new car. I'm so glad my car is not beautiful anymore. I'm freed from wanting to grasp that I have this beautiful thing I possess. It's gonna make me happy.
• 20:13
  I think they point out that it's an illusion what we take as happiness for happiness because if if that rug is pulled then we might ask what else is there? Okay. I I can see that my pleasures are really tied up with stress. And just think, I'm just for whatever reason think about people who live in like the Bay Area. And they have to work like sixty hours a week to have their tiny apartment and their $9 latte.
• 20:45
  Okay. What if there is actually a greater happiness that problem being we don't yet know it. We have to get weaned off the lesser in order to be available to the greater. This is how the Buddha talked about renunciation. So the world does not offer what is offered here.
• 21:25
  And the here that I'm talking about could be anywhere that there's an interruption in the madness, the constant momentum. Anywhere that we we stop and look and really see what what is this carousel. So we're peering through the kaleidoscope of illusions that's frothed by our own body mind. The chant says, alertly seeing through illusion is the way of silent illumination. There's no there's no path besides you and I and whoever else wants to being alert in the midst of illusion.
• 22:16
  That's not a wrong thing that we're in the realm of illusion. It's just just a way to call it. And each each person anyway is sincerely mustering wakefulness that is not caught up. And that's the primary point, you're mustering wakefulness that is not caught up. And you're shining through, you're presencing through the habit stream of words and images.
• 22:52
  What you've noticed by now they're all just symbols, they're not realities. Whatever we see or think in the mind is not a reality, it's a symbol of a possible reality. It's not a reality. That's not your mom or that's not lunch. That's not your future husband.
• 23:16
  That's just a thought. That's just an image. Part of what's meant by illusion, it's all symbols. None of it is real except as a symbol. It's a real symbol.
• 23:33
  Peering through the kaleidoscope of illusions. But what is this one that is peering through? If you're with me and you can say, yes, a kaleidoscope of illusions. What is it that recognizes that? By what power?
• 24:02
  Wonder with me about things we take for granted. A thought arises and there's a recognition of thought arising. See if that's true for you. Just a basic experience. Thought arises, there's recognition that a thought has arisen.
• 24:25
  When is that recognizing? Thought lasts this long. When is that recognizing of a thought arising? Or you could examine it on the level of the body. A body tingle happens, they're happening.
• 24:54
  Okay? Or any body sensation and there's recognition of a body sensation happening. When is that recognizing? Well, if you say it's right after, well that means that you're living in the past because thought or sensation and recognition. So that means that your whole life is a memory.
• 25:23
  If recognition of experience happens after even if it's an iota after experience happens, that means you live in a memory. That means you live in lag time like a slow modem. Sensory experience happens when is it recognized? When a shift, emphasis with this. Is it is it true for you that something in you feels that these are my thoughts?
• 26:10
  It would be a natural thing, someone might try to get you committed if you didn't think that. You feel these are my thoughts. Okay. If internally you feel like that's true, just affirm, yes, I feel strongly that these thoughts are mine. But right now, what do thoughts belong to?
• 26:35
  Who's the mire? Who's who who's the who who claims ownership? What what is that? Does it Is it here? Thought and the recognition of thought or body sensation and the recognition of body sensation, fact.
• 27:04
  But that sense, that belief of this is my body, what is the my? Where's the possessor of all of this? When is the possessor of all of this? Could examine it like this, sometimes we feel strongly that my life and people think all the time, my life, my life, life, my life. My life is, my life is, it's my life.
• 27:36
  I'm gonna do what I want with my life. There are these two things. There's my and there's life. But is there two things? Who owns this life?
• 27:50
  This is not philosophical right here and now. To actually wonder about what the hell is going on here is zazen. Actually, to wonder. Not to coast in a method mechanically. Hong Jogen said, that is serenity neglecting illumination which leads to wasted Dharma.
• 29:03
  So what's on offer here is not offered by the world. So let's, let's hear from Hong Zhi says, expansive and inherently spiritual, expansive and inherently spiritual, refined and inherently bright. Awakened heart mind can permeate universally without grasping the merit of its illumination and can apprehend without being bound by discursive thinking. Emerging from manifestations of existence and non existence, surpassing the emotions of deliberation and discussion, merely interact positively and appropriately without dependence on others. All Buddhas, all ancestors, all leaves and all flowers relate in this manner.
• 30:19
  When responding they do not grasp at forms where illuminating they do not attach to conditions then they can stay wide open and unhampered. Unhampered. When any moment when we're sufficiently relaxed, present and not caught up, its blessing begins to shine. That's why even without having some penetrating confirmation of these kind of teachings, we're nourished by the practice. Something is coming through deeper for you than just whatever way you would conceive of your struggle with your mind, your approval or disapproval of your state.
• 31:20
  There's something more more basic, a more basic nourishment going on. It's like a plant that is getting fed by an underground stream. But that's not all there is to this. Yes, in a moment when we are sufficiently without argument and we're just present, the blessing of our true nature begins to like permeate to suffuse through us. And.
• 32:05
  Now you could think of what I'm gonna say next as a kind of sequence. And the problem with sequence is it invokes a sense of time and invokes A, B, C, D, E, F, G or one, two, three, four, five and that's not reality but it's on all language and concept can do. And or you could think of this as successive tasks or challenges That each element I'm going to name is something that has to be verified and we have to have sufficient staying power for the next thing to open up. Which again is a delusion of time but it feels that way. So the first is, we don't follow or believe thoughts and we don't invest meaning or react to sensations or feelings.
• 33:03
  As the basis of practice. Okay, then we have direct experience. Beginning to not be, at the mercy of continual hallucination and shadow boxing. And then we're instantly a little bit more peaceful. So that's stage one.
• 33:38
  Don't follow or believe thoughts. Don't invest meaning or react to sensation or feelings. Then further, if we are wakeful, steady within this direct experience, then we see it's all always shifting nature. The anxiety is alive as a shifting field. The thoughts are a stream with no source and no destination.
• 34:15
  The senses are a constant modulation of color, shape, texture, pressure. We begin to directly be knowing the shifting nature of things. That's stage two. Between here and the next couple of stages is where I feel purification begins to happen. And where sometimes more difficult things start to come up because we've gone from the gross experience of ourselves as solid beings in a solid world and we have gotten more real.
• 35:02
  We've gotten more real and we begin to thaw the thingness of ourselves and all kinds of stuff starts to come up that we haven't felt for a while or that we've never felt. And if we can keep the foundation of stage one, not investing meaning or reacting to sensations or feelings, we begin to have purification. Things can, slow off, things can be released and this is not conscious. If you try to do it, it does not happen. But you can know what I'm talking about having gone through it.
• 35:51
  In the Vishuddhi Maga, this was called the stage of arising and passing. So further we stay there where we we manage to not get distracted and things become more compelling here because we're in this illusion like experience. We're in this scintillating experience. Everything is losing its thingness. If we can stay there and not get distracted then the translucence of everything becomes clear.
• 36:27
  The mind has no weight, the body has no weight, perceptions have no weight. This is beginning to taste what's meant by emptiness or form is emptiness. It's not just that they come and go, that's impermanence. Emptiness is in going nothing came and in departing nothing went. It's all translucent.
• 37:04
  This is not something you make happen, it's attention not grasping such that things can be what they actually are. So we're awake to the shifting translucence of thought, body and sensorizing. Can't even hold on to a thought. There's nothing that can be held on to. There's no sense of a thing ified, thick solid body that can be attended to at this point.
• 37:40
  And because there's nothing but this translucence, all that can happen is we fall back, we drop down into a basic still awareness. There are no objects to hang your attention on. There's nothing is stable enough for that. Which in a way is always the case. And so awareness begins to just rest in its own nature.
• 38:13
  And then relaxing the basic still awareness further, we don't make a nest there. Now most people do. There's an old Chan saying that has different meanings that says, the great road, so the path of Zen is littered with corpses. And this means that we all tend to die spiritually because we get satisfied and want to stay in the known. And it's pretty tempting when you've landed at still a quality of still awareness.
• 39:01
  Because there is peace. There is the the end of turmoil. There is the end of need. There is the end of craving. There is the end of the personalities problematics.
• 39:21
  But if we happen to have the the something, the good fortune to be curious, we look and we feel into that. It's clear that not only is there no self, there's no mind. And then to what is that clear? To whom does that insight dawn? And then, we can truly let be and let go of all reference points.
• 40:06
  And then it can shine, then it can really shine and everything can be overwhelmed with brilliance. And because you have your body mind and its configuration, the way that's experienced is different for each person. Past, present and future collapse and everything is redeemed and then you get up and go to dinner. So, Hong Jogen says, expansive and inherently spiritual, refined and inherently bright, awakened heart mind can permeate universally without grasping the merit of its illumination. It can apprehend without being bound by discursive thinking.
• 41:00
  We're practicing that illuminating merit. Merit means something that, is only of benefit in this in this sense. We're practicing that anytime we let the scene just be the scene. We let the heard just be the heard. We let the felt just be the felt.
• 41:29
  The illumination of not being bound by discursive thinking. It's no big deal once we acclimate to it and it changes everything. Because in a way we don't move freely in the world until we take this up. We can't so much as make a cup of tea without our mind farting and making a big stink. Who's watching me?
• 41:55
  Do I have enough time to drink it? Is it good enough? There's definitely better coffee elsewhere. I don't like how they drink their coffee. They drink it too fast, slow.
• 42:11
  Take up the challenge of simply making a cup of tea without letting a single self conscious thought intrude. Or take up the challenge of just walking through into a room getting your dinner and leaving without letting a single self conscious thought intrude. We practice this illuminating merit. He continues, emerging from manifestations of existence and non existence, surpassing the emotions of deliberation and discussion, merely interact positively and appropriately without dependence on others. When you and I have times that we're authentically confident about how we are and how we be, it's not because our personality is a good one.
• 43:20
  No matter who you are, someone thinks your personality is not a good one. No matter who you are. When we're authentically confident about how we are and how we be, it's not because we're doing everything right. From someone's point of view, you are not doing everything right and your point of view is not more true. It's not even because we finally understand something.
• 43:51
  Just thinking about you know, understanding the pride of understanding is so weird because in every human domain we just move around bits of self existing magic and then look at the results. That's all we do. We don't really know how anything works. That place that has no need to argue, That place that has no bone to pick. That place that has no points to prove or disprove.
• 44:27
  That clear and free place you actually could not be any closer to it. And we practice simply to stop moving away. Lifetimes of confusion comes from screens of distrust or whatever else he said. That place in you and I that has no need to argue, no bone to pick, no points to prove or disprove. Just just maintain that.
• 45:07
  That's it. It's fine if arguments swirl around that. It's fine if the desire to prove something, tell someone about it swirls around that but just just maintain that. Hong Jogen says, all Buddhas, all ancestors, all leaves and all flowers relate in this manner. When responding, they do not grasp at forms or illuminating they do not attach to conditions.
• 45:47
  Then they can stay wide open and unhampered. The unsnagged mind heart. That's it. The straightforward mind heart, the not separate mind heart. That's what this is all about.
• 46:10
  Jogen Sensei said, it's like meeting someone and not considering what they look like. You don't have to consider what they look like because it's directly communicated. Analysis is after the fact. Just like you don't confuse, you know, heat for cold. And you never will.
• 46:41
  Wide open and unhampered, heart mind freed from unnecessary snag, drag and diminishment. All that's being offered here is freedom. That's it. I feel the tradition as this as this kind of beneficence that just invites people to sit down and say, just feast on your own freedom. And we say, no, I'm not free.
• 47:12
  I have to have X, Y, Z, A, B, C to be free. It has to feel like this, it has to be like this. I have to struggle for twenty years. They say, well just sit down, you could be free now. We're on the seat of freedom's possibility.
• 47:30
  It's simply the heart mind unsnagged by whatever appears. Are we ready for that? Could you accept being free right now? Or do you need a struggle? Do you need high drama?
• 47:57
  If we're not ready for it now, then when are we ready for it? All that's being offered here is freedom. Nobody needs to become a Buddhist, nobody needs to have a special experience, nobody needs anything. Nobody needs anything besides the basics of human care. Time passes swiftly, please let's not waste it.
• 48:28
  Thank you.
• 48:43
  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 at zendust.org. Your support supports us.