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The Labyrinth of Love - Jogen 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.
• 0:25
  Jogen: This is a META session twenty twenty five. I believe the third full talk. May all beings be happy. May whatever is positive and beneficial that they desire, they have and be near to such things. May all beings who wish to walk, to do the path, the experiment of awakening, have the support, the means, the inspiration to do so.
• 1:00
  May all beings recognize their potential for love. And may they choose that potential over and over and over. Here's a poem by Jane Hirschfield. Tenderness, tenderness does not choose its own uses. Tenderness does not choose its own uses.
• 1:34
  It goes out to everything equally, circling rabbit and hawk. Look in the iron bucket, a single nail, a single ruby, all the heavens and hells, they rattle in the heart and make one sound. The heart. The heart. That is a vital word in a mental world.
• 2:06
  Vital word in a mental world. The heart. When was the last time you turned on the news and heard a politician speaking about the heart? The heart. I think we wish to understand it, but how much can we really understand it?
• 2:32
  How much is this heart actually a basically dark to us? Being creatures that are tugged on by our affections and our necessities. And also, tugged at by things we don't understand. Things we can't see. Things we don't know.
• 2:59
  Being creatures fundamentally motivated by our core feelings. Some deep level, how we feel motivates most of what we do. Safe or not safe? Positive or negative? And these core feelings we have, what are their source?
• 3:30
  How do they come to be? Where do they come from? It often seems like the mind and the heart are not on the same page. They show up at the same party with differing intents. Maybe you've seen that your heart wishes to open, there's an inclination towards openness, and the mind is not so sure that's a good deal.
• 4:02
  Or your mind says, that's a really good idea to awaken, and your heart says, oh, I want things to remain actually just as they've always been. We could say, and sometimes people do say, that all beings want love, and move towards love, and that's what a heart does. But the evidence for that is not always so clear. Look at the world. Say for some, the lovely is freedom.
• 4:45
  The lovely is belonging, but beings very often alienate themselves. We tie ourselves up in ropes of loneliness, made of mind. Beings often build and then step inside their own prisons, deciding this is the way it is, not that, contrary to any evidence defending against it, not only building the prison, stepping in it and guarding it. Often seems like the mind and the heart are not on the same page. Sometimes they're perpendicular, actually.
• 5:37
  Is the heart like this innocent entity that is just carried this way and that? Is it hostage to the world? We sometimes think like that. We think there was this innocent child. Right?
• 5:58
  And a lot of mothers quickly are like, not so sure about that one. There's this pure innocent child and oh, the world comes along and mars it, takes it all away. Is the heart hostage to the world? Is it hostage to the mind? Is it hostage to the whims and weakness of the body?
• 6:35
  We think a thought and it sets our heart aflame and racing. You've probably had this experience this week that out of seeming nothing, you have a full blown emotional display going on. Everything was fine and then you thought that thing and all of a sudden, Oh, all this energy. The world all of a sudden looks a particular way. The body responds, adrenaline coursing or hormones gushing or whatever it may be.
• 7:11
  We think a thought and it sets our heart aflame racing. We think a thing and it sets our mind aflame and racing. Or maybe we've tasted that, we feel, and it's just that. Or we see, and it's just that. And it's very simple.
• 7:40
  It's very pure. The heart, the heart, the heart. Not separate from body, mind, and environment. Why do we fault people? We are at often the whims of the mind.
• 8:03
  Why do we fault people for their hearts? Not separate from body, mind, and environment. And yet, you can have bodies, minds, and environments without heart. Many people have experienced heartless environments, heartless minds, heartless bodies. So, if this word heart actually points to something that we experience, however, hard to pin down, is it something that floats apart?
• 8:47
  Is it an innocent bystander to the cartoon dystopia we live in? If it floats apart, then what for? Is the heart woven into body, mind, and world? Is it inseparable? Well, then what are we gonna do?
• 9:14
  How could we ever be free? Maybe a heart just is. Great teacher Nagarjuna, who's a very big influence on the Zen tradition, said, If you say it exists, you're wrong. If you say it doesn't exist, you're wrong. If you say it both exists and doesn't exist, you're wrong.
• 9:38
  If you say it exists and doesn't exist, you're wrong. Maybe whatever you say is mostly just saying. But there's this thing pounding in your heart and it's not dead. Excuse me, there's this thing pounding in your chest. If it stops, you stop.
• 10:11
  So, we're talking about something here. As you've verified to one degree or another, you do not have a final heart. Sometimes laziness would love us to believe that we're just, I'm just finished. It's all done. I'm off the hook.
• 10:32
  All this stuff happened to me and now I'm final. Here I am world, deal with me. We don't have a final heart, but also I'm not one to tell you that the heart is essentially kind or essentially good or as some people would say, essentially self preserving. It's unknown to me whether the heart has any essence at all that we could say, Well, that's the way the heart is. It's a very comforting thought to think people have essentially good hearts.
• 11:15
  But, it's really besides the point. Does love, love, love? I take pleasure in thinking so. Though the heart, love also seems to enjoy being excited, being proud, being salty, being moon like. I like how the kind heart feels as bearer and recipient.
• 11:53
  So, whether the heart is essentially this or that, maybe it's besides the point. If you like or even love the loving heart, that's very good. The loving heart depends on you loving the loving heart. It depends on us celebrating, expressing, practicing the loving heart. It's part of why we do these chants every day.
• 12:25
  If our hearts were essentially good, we wouldn't need the Bodhisattva vow. We wouldn't need the kind of juiciness of a harmonium to get us in that kind of devotional vibe. Yeah. It's a little bit like love pings love. You know what pinging is?
• 12:51
  I don't really know what it is, but I use the word a lot. I imagine it's like something that activates something from within. Love pings love. Love activates love. So, we love love, we have to keep love alive, so that love can keep activating love because there are no guarantees.
• 13:23
  And just all this over and over and over saying things like love, love, love, and we start to think, oh, know, I'm pretty clear what that is. We could be careful not to put the heart in a heart shaped box. It might be too hasty to draw a line in the sand dividing the kind from the unkind. In my time of training here, I sometimes had, and these kind of people are less frequent nowadays in Zen centers, but I had numerous people say mean things to me. Really, like cutting and direct.
• 14:04
  I guess I was so arrogant, I was just a target for that. I sure didn't think that was kind at the time. In fact, I had violent fantasies. But now I look back and I think those were some of the kindest things that ever happened to me. To be careful not to so easily draw a line in the sand, this is kind and this is unkind.
• 14:37
  Now, continue to explore this mystery of the heart. Here's a crude metaphor. Sometimes things pop in my mind and I trust them. I don't recommend that, but I had to write a talk. Imagine, it's like a big tray with many different colors in different places all over its surface.
• 15:02
  And there's a clear smooth sphere rolling around on this tray. Okay, multicolored tray, a clear smooth sphere that rolls around. The tray tilts one direction, and the sphere takes on whatever colors it happens to be resting on. It's suffused with that color. It tilts another direction, the colors change.
• 15:27
  It's filled with different colors. And the sphere is generally, excuse me, the tray is generally always tilting. What tilts it? Depends on where you look from what tilts it. Who's tilting it?
• 15:43
  It's not clear if there's anyone in charge at all. The sphere is clear, so it's always colored. It's always colored. You have never felt nothing. If you say, I feel nothing, I'm like, that's a really cool feeling.
• 15:59
  What's that like? You've never felt nothing. The sphere is clear, so it's always colored. And the tray is colored, but always suffusing the clear sphere. They're undivided.
• 16:17
  And all the colors are equally colors. If you were a being who did not see hues but you saw vibration, you would say it's all one color. I'm sure there are machines where you can look and you'd say, just like if you've ever looked at a waveform of an audio recording, You don't see different timbers and pitches, you just see vibrations. So, all the colors are equally color on this tray, they're all vibrating energy, and yet, they each kind of have a different feel. There's blueness, there's yellowness, there's redness.
• 17:02
  Also, some are murky. Some you would never paint your room those colors. If you had to sit in such a room, it would be really unpleasant. This monastery in 2003 was vomit yellow almost everywhere. One of the first things we did was paint these walls.
• 17:25
  The sphere transforms with the tray tilting. The tray transforms with the sphere rolling, it's not the same tray. Now, this is a tray where you cannot remove any of the colors. If you remove any of the colors, then the wholeness of the tray is broken. If you take any one away, it's missing something.
• 17:53
  Is this a good metaphor for our training? Mind helping heart have the color mind wants heart to have? Mind wanting heart to have the color that mind wants heart to have. Mind wanting heart to have the feeling that heart seems to luxuriate in. Are we training to stay in that?
• 18:25
  Are we training to hold the tray such that we roll just in one portion of the tray? Maybe that's good enough vision of spiritual life. I'm just going to stay right in these colors. Anyway, what a beautiful thing, without dogma or fear motivation, choosing the stance, choosing the vibe of kindness continually, continually. We used to have these little, Theravadin booklets in the literature rack, and there were those kind of free little texts, and the title was, Do you want to go to heaven?
• 19:15
  Then just be good. Maybe it's not talking about heaven later. Do you want to bless your life? Turn towards what blesses your life? But Zen is a tradition of wholeness.
• 19:38
  It's part of why we have these big circles everywhere. Everywhere you look you see a big circle or a small circle. I don't think there's any direction you can look in this monastery and not see a circle. And so, we're Zen is about wholeness. Because if we hold off all the colors except kindness, well aren't we then an oppositional heart?
• 20:04
  Didn't we just decide that we know what love is and isn't? So, maybe the metaphor misses the mark. The heart is only partially transparent to us. It's tugged at by unseen, sometimes contradictory forces. Everybody here probably got the instruction in kindergarten that it's very good to be kind to people.
• 20:42
  Why haven't we applied that? Here's another inadequate metaphor. Imagine a plant with roots that spread deep and wide in the soil that sustains it. Naturally, draws in nutrients. It's interesting to think that plants eat.
• 21:07
  They eat through their roots. That's kind of correct. Instinctively feeding on the nutrients in the soil, feeding on sky and light. Now imagine that, who knows why, the plant becomes attracted to eating the toxins in the soil. It was always kind of mixed up.
• 21:31
  There was, I don't know, a little bit of aluminum and maybe some leftover Monsanto or also some good calcium, it starts eating the toxins. It starts to lack discrimination about what actually sustains its life because it just reaches, it just eats, it just starts soaking up what meets its tendrils. So, the roots start reaching for that and begin pulling toxins in. There's something actually attractive about the bitter. That's another mystery of the heart.
• 22:12
  What is attractive about the bitter? The Zen, manual for cooking that Dogen Zengji wrote, it said that, the Zen cook should aspire in every meal to have all, I don't know, five or six flavors present. There should be sweet and salty. There should be a little bit of spicy. There should be umami.
• 22:37
  There should be bitter. Something attractive to the heart in just the fact of tasting. Just to taste. We wonder, why do people do what they do? Our minds, it seems so clear, you could just stop doing that.
• 23:01
  Why do you stick your hand in fire? You could just stop doing that. And then we go home and we stick our hand in fire. And we think, couldn't I just stop doing that? So the plant drinks up some poisons.
• 23:21
  And it withers a bit as it ingests them. But, it's still alive. It begins closing to sunlight and growing in such a way that it actually gets less water than it needs. Maybe it gets moved to a new location by the kindness of a stranger. We think that wasn't good soil.
• 23:43
  Someone takes a stick and ties it so it'll grow in a healthy way. A different place in the ground around plants that are not hostile to its well-being. But, in its cells, the plant has a memory of inclining towards in the taste of the toxic. It's familiar. The leaves and stems and such have actually been shaped.
• 24:15
  They've grown in such a way, the body is formed in an articulation of feeding on the toxic. So, the plant ends up drawing in what diminishes its beauty further. Not on purpose, but not on accident. So our heart, mind, brains are kind of like strange flesh trees. Because although we have twisting roots that have wished to and tasted many things, and although we have twisting roots that have tasted many things, entwined with other beings, stretching into our pasts, this metaphor too is very limited because our true nature, our heart is also totally unentangled.
• 25:20
  Totally unentangled. You can say past because you are nowness. Because you are nowness, you can say past. That which hears these sounds right now has no name, has no age, has no history. That awakeness, nothing has ever happened to it.
• 25:55
  As nowness awareness, you're free to dwell on your roots. You're always free to reflect and even be fascinated by the scars, the nicks and the twists in your stock. There's actually some kind of joy in that fascination because as nowness awareness, you are free to not do that. That which hears these words as ageless, has no history, has no name. You're free to drink up this sky, and this light, this, this, this, this, this moment.
• 26:44
  Has no roots. Has no roots. This breath, body, sound, taste, touch. All of this is lit with nowness. Sorrows lit with nowness, shame lit with nowness, fatigue lit with nowness, cushions, chairs, voices.
• 27:21
  Don't look away, don't look within. Just release any distance. Read another poem by Jane Hirschfield. This one's a little bit longer. Salt Heart.
• 27:44
  I was tired, half sleeping in the sun. A single bead delved the lavender nearby, and beyond the fence, a trowel shoulder knocked a white stone. Soon, the ringing stopped, and from somewhere, a quiet voice said the one word, surely a command, though it seemed more a question. A wondering perhaps, what about joy? What about joy?
• 28:16
  So long it had been forgotten, even the thought raised surprise. But however briefly there, in the untuned devotions of Bee and the lavender fragrance, the murmur of better and worse was unimportant. You can say the murmur of past and present, or past and future was unimportant. From next door, the sound of raking, and neither courage nor cowardice mattered. Failure, uncountable failure, did not matter.
• 28:57
  Soon enough, that gate swung closed. The world turned back to heart salt of wanting. Heart salts of will. Heart salts of grief. My friend would continue dying, at last only exhausted.
• 29:16
  Even his wrists thinned with pain. The river suffering would take what it wished of him then go. And I would stay and drink on as the living do until the rest would enter into that water. The lavender swept in the bee, the swallowed labors of my neighbor. The ordinary moment swept in whatever it drowsily holds.
• 29:45
  I begin to believe the only sin is distance, refusal. I begin to believe the only sin is distance. Refusal. All others stemming from this. Then, come.
• 30:04
  Rivers come. Irrevocable futures, come. Come even joy, even now, even here, even though it vanished just like him. So we are in the thick of Sessions' great potential. I know it's hard to keep wholeheartedly engaging.
• 30:41
  I know that there are forces for many of you that wish to peel you away from the matter at hand. Sadly, it is common to coast after just a little bit of calm. Just a little bit of calm, now I can think about my life. Roll back into the old grooves, a mild but familiar at least semi aliveness. They feed us here.
• 31:16
  Forest is lovely. I'll just be carried by this breeze. It's not easy to stay wholeheartedly engaged, but it's harder to keep living a life of suffering. In a way, practice is very very easy and suffering is very very hard. Practice is just this moment, clear and bare, nothing extra.
• 31:46
  Suffering is a bunch of stuff piled on top of that. If you're finding yourself on the lip or entering into samadis, absorptions, luxuriate in that, know that it is not possible to know the bottom. There's absolutely nothing valuable to lose. If you are encountering fear or anxiety or suffering, be really curious, investigate what is the nature of this? Where does it come from?
• 32:25
  What is it made of? What happens when you shine right to its source? It is hard to have a fully honest mind. It is very hard to be really honest with ourselves. You could say an honest mind owns that the mind often lacks honesty.
• 32:56
  The mind gets high off its own supply. The mind cooks up meals that gives itself indigestion. Keep doing that. You can inquire if you notice this kind of patterning. What is the function of the mind's reticence to stay in the deep groove of practice?
• 33:24
  Does that preserve something? Is something preserved by going into autopilot? Is something comfortable about staying or returning to the domain of the already known? But is it really? Is it really comfortable?
• 33:49
  What is frightened by spaciousness? What is frightened by brightness? What is frightened by lack of control? Joy of this awakening experiment is that we never know what we don't know. The yet to be tasted is indestructible.
• 34:22
  That never goes away. What we do not know will always persist. What now in ourselves we take as essential could be slowed off. That feature that seems like it is who I am could be like an old coat that you just shed Because you realize you're wearing a coat in the middle of the summer. Wearing a coat in sunshine, that's the human predicament, sadly.
• 35:01
  So, Buddha says, Meta is a vehicle to release of the heart, please. If that pings something in you, don't doubt that pain. There's a time to dig into it as formal practice. There's a time to let the softened mind drop away from every last word and attachment. It is profound good fortune to sit here with ample safety and time and this medicine at hand, and at some point, this will no longer be possible.
• 35:46
  The turning of the heart that is possible now, the opportunity will vanish. So, may all beings realise their true nature. May we, even as we meander and roll this way and that on the tray, may we find ourselves in a place of deep aspiration to truly know who we are at the bottom. Thank you.
• 36:29
  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 zendest.org. Your support supports us.