Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / Vast Space, No Lack - Kodo Conover, Zen Teacher

Transcript

Vast Space, No Lack - Kodo Conover, 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.
• 0:24
  Kodo: Good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming. I had thought when I first came in tonight, there were only a handful of people here, so I thought I will do a small group, but then more people came and there were a number of people in line, so I thought I will go back to the talk. But we will see what actually happens. I like to have dialogue with people.
• 0:48
  Not so much dialogue as I like to hear people's experiences in practicing. And how this, so this poem that we have been chanting, affirming faith in mind or affirming or trust in mind, I like both translations, has been present with me this whole Ongo period and I hope it's been important for you or at least brought you some time of contemplation or interest and kind of just what is this all, what is he saying to us? And today when I was thinking about it, it came to me that he is talking about being able to live with uncertainty. Being able to be in the present moment with the uncertainty of life. And that is uncomfortable for most of us and difficult in some ways.
• 1:54
  But he said that is the way to is that is the great way is to be able to sit without judging, without comparing, without opinions, without thinking about right and wrong all the time or should I be doing this? Should I be doing it that way? So this uncertainty of just sitting with an open mind, or sometimes we call it a beginner's mind, knowing, is what this poem talks to us over and over again. I brought a couple of things that I want to use in part of this talk and one of them is Chosen's forward in this book, Trust in Mind, which really gives a good explanation of what is going on. And then another letter that I found from Hogan, an open letter to the Sangha at one point, it was quite a while ago, about how to practice.
• 3:00
  And I thought both of them are interesting and they intertwine. So Chosen says, in her talk she says, our minds are full, are chock full of ideas about meditation and enlightenment. And our teachers had only a little time to entice us into dropping those notions and doing the hard work that will enable us to taste the actual experience of a clear bright mind. The clear bright clarity of Samadhi and the deep flow of prajna wisdom. So that's one of the things that we have these ideas that, oh, I will I will be enlightened, and then we have an idea of what enlightenment is.
• 3:50
  And that, he says over and over, is what prevents us actually from going forward. We have these fixed ideas. We think, oh, I need to be I will be enlightened after one year, or I will have Kensho, or I need to sit in Samadhi. We have fixed ideas and all those fixed ideas are what prevents us from really experiencing. It's like if we go to the beach and we see a sunset and we have a fixed idea of what that sunset is going to be like, it clouds our real experience of sitting there and watching how the sunset may unfold.
• 4:38
  So the person who wrote this poem, it was attributed to the third ancestor in our Zen lineage, name is Senkhan, although he may not have written it. But as inspired Zen practitioners for over a thousand three hundred years. And so there is an important aspect of these teachings and ways of practicing that have been handed down over time and seem to work. And they are still here and they are still with us. And so I think that adds to the credibility of our practice.
• 5:25
  Thousands of thousands of people have practiced and found peace, wisdom, compassion by following these practices and these teachings. One of the things that is brought up in this book is that Buddhism as moves from one country to another, as if the country is a vessel and Buddhism flows in and becomes part of this vessel. And so in each country, important parts are kept and other parts are dropped away. And then the things that are needed for the time and place are enlightened, I would say. So it's interesting to think what is it that we need?
• 6:30
  What is it in this western mind of ours that we need that Buddhism can help us with? And I think one of the things that are important, one of the main aspects of Buddhist training is this dropping of opinions and judgments. Opening our eyes to a wider view, letting go of our fixed views, And seeing that there is lots of nuance in in the world, lots of different ways that people manifest compassion and wisdom. And there is a lot of different ways that we can that we can actually be in the world. There's a lot of different ways that we are able to relate to other people.
• 7:31
  And with our very fixed views that this is the only way we get ourselves in more and more trouble. We become more and we can see it today with our more polarized views. This is the right way, this is the right way. This is the way I see it and it is the only way that is going to work. This is the right way and it is the only way that is going to work.
• 7:53
  We don't come to the middle to the middle way. The middle way where more people can benefit. Where the most people can benefit. So how do we do this? This this sitting in uncertainty.
• 8:18
  Well, Dogen Zenji, the great Zen master of the thirteenth century said simply think of not thinking. Well, I found that kind of difficult. But with this, this is what Chosen says, Dogen invites us to fill the mind with something other than thinking. So what could that be? It could be a mantra.
• 8:46
  A mantra. We do the Jizo mantra. Fill the mind with mantra. We can fill the mind with meta, loving kindness. We can fill the mind with a con, perhaps you have worked with a con.
• 9:11
  Or we could fill the mind with just pure awareness. And just not pay attention to that other part. The thinking, the remember to do this, that other voice that's talking all the time. Or sometimes it really calms down. It's important that the so Dogan also goes on and says, the mind of enlightenment is a mind that is aware impermanence, of discontinuity, of ceaseless birth and death.
• 9:49
  It doesn't mean that the enlightened mind thinks of impermanence, but rather that it has a continuous experience of the actual function in this moment of impermanence. Of arising and disappearing. In Pali Canon, the Buddha recounts that he sat under the Bodhi tree just on the brink of enlightenment. He reached a state where his mind was purified, bright, unblemished, light and rid of imperfection. What is this imperfection that he was rid of?
• 10:40
  Not quite rid of, or was almost rid of. It is simply the self centered thoughts. So this is also what Simcon is speaking of in this poem, our self centered thoughts about I am better, I am worse, this is good, this is bad. When we examine discursive thought, all comparing and judging thought, we discover that they are all self centered. Even self critical thoughts are self centered.
• 11:23
  High self esteem and low self esteem are both forms of esteem, esteeming the self. If we are to experience for ourselves the truth that we all earnestly long for, we must find a way to suspend for a time the thought function of the mind. And activate the awareness function. Interesting. Can we switch that?
• 12:00
  Can we make a toggle from oh that's thought centered to experience centered? Awareness function. Only when we enter pure awareness do subject and objects drop away and we leave behind the confusion and anxiety of the realm of the individual mind To enter the eternal serenity of the realm of one mind. We have relied upon this individual and self referring mind since our early childhood. When we began to think and speak, when we became self aware and aware of others, in relying on this mind, were finding safety and comfort.
• 13:01
  Certainty. We were finding safety and comfort in the same mind that mankind has relied upon for speech, since speech first arose thousands of years ago, hundreds of thousands of years ago. To step out of that ceaseless activity of this mind, we have to take the backward step of meditation. To return to a pre verbal and even pre human awareness of sound touch, color, taste and smell of reality as it is. I'm not so sure that we can return to a pre verbal space, but we can most definitely be in a space where the verbal chatter has completely gone away from our awareness.
• 14:15
  All great spiritual teachers have given us the same message and reminds us of our primary purpose in undertaking a life of religious practice. We must open the gateway not just to our full potential as human beings, but ultimately to freedom from suffering. It seems inherent to human life. So eventually, what the the, poem says to us is that we will be able to relinquish our old patterns, our old habits and patterns. In other words, we change our default.
• 15:27
  And you can think, what is my default method right now? Is it reactivity? Is it fear? Is it finding safety? Less and less, we can fall back from our strategies of developed by the small self centered and self referential mind to the reactions of life's inevitable buffeting and wounds.
• 16:00
  Renouncing the ways of the small and fearful mind and allow this one mind, one heart to begin to carry us to function through our bodies and minds. And that is the last part of this poem. Finally, our old structure of body and mind fall away and we are returned inside out To an outside that is immeasurably vast. This is when understand that this What is is not. What is not is.
• 16:54
  If this is not clear to you, you're still far from the inner truth. So we have this last bit of this poem to experience. And that is why we suggest people go to Sashin or retreat practice so they can have long days and nights and weeks of practice. And people are at Rohatsu Sashin this week, it started today, goes until next Sunday. It gives us all an opportunity to really delve deeply into our practice and to see our own how we are thinking.
• 17:39
  How does this mind continually return to the small self? How can we open up and return to the pure one mind? And that can can only be had by deep practice. When we come here for an hour, twenty five minutes, or an hour of practice, that keeps us steady. I will say steady and stable, attached to the ground.
• 18:23
  But we also need another part of practice and that is the deep practice that we find in longer retreats. You can also practice at home and walk and zoom into the long retreats. And I have tried home retreat and those work just as well for those who have some difficulty with spending the night or your position or posture. But what this says, what this poem says is, day by day, year by year, eventually wisdom will work its way deep into our subconscious. There it lies waiting for the right circumstances.
• 19:13
  Then in an unexpected instant, an event in our life meets the poem exactly. And the song of awakening suddenly becomes our own celebration of joyful understanding and liberation. That is how Chosen has expressed this practice and this poem. Now if you want a little more, a little different view, I will give you Hogan's view. I think this was written quite a while ago, maybe ten years ago.
• 20:03
  He says the Buddha dharma is medicine that cures dissatisfaction, Suffering unhappiness, dismay. Chosen just said is from our own self centered minds. We hear that we may think that the Buddha is prescribing a medicine such as an antibiotic, a pill we take periodically, which does the magical work and heals infections without her having to do anything else. We hope we can do Za Zaan once or twice a day and that will cure us. This thinking may be fine at the beginning of practice because it allows us to have some faith that it really is possible to end this dissatisfaction.
• 21:03
  But after we practice for months or years and then look at our lives, we observe that we are still filled with difficulties. Maybe that is where we all are right now. If so, then is what we have been taught about the practice of the Buddha dharma the truth? This periodic taking stock of our practice is very important. When we do it skillfully, it shows us a new dimension of spiritual practice.
• 21:37
  When people are unskillful in this investigation, they decide that they or the practice are inadequate and they give up. Dharma, the truth as taught by the Buddha is foremost a system of close observation and undertaking the practice of living in accordance with what we have observed. Some of the classical observations that anyone can easily see are that everyone has difficulties with their lives, that everything changes, and that all direct experience is in this very moment. The Buddha's advice on how to end dissatisfaction takes all three of these into account. There are two basic approaches to practice.
• 22:38
  The first is to end dissatisfaction. The first way is to settle the mind completely into the experience of the moment. Which is what we have been talking about. When we do this, there is no comparison, no judgment, and no obstructions. Freedom from dissatisfaction happens completely in the flow of experience before conceptual thought arises.
• 23:10
  This experience has no shape, it is not involved with time, does not move, has no barriers, and has no attributes. And all life just is just this. To put the wordless into inadequate words, it is by very nature a bright, clear it is bright, clear, free, and boundless. Because it penetrates everything, everything that occurs has the same nature. From this perspective, nothing moves and everything flows.
• 23:49
  The vicitudes of life arise and disappear without hindrance. To have even a glimpse of this is the beginning of true faith in Buddha dharma. But we have only had a timeless glimpse of this fundamental foundational truth. With new appreciation, we come back to our ordinary lives of duality and lots of problems. So the second way to end dissatisfaction is to follow the path of practice laid out by the Buddha and great masters.
• 24:33
  In essence, this is to live ethically, to look deeply into things and to do our best to live in the wisest way possible. This practice is a day by day, moment by moment, path requiring continual awareness. When we are absorbed in awareness, fully responding to what comes towards us in the present, Dissatisfaction is not an issue. But when we think of practice as medicine, take once or twice daily, our old habitual way of thinking and acting once again takes over in dissatisfaction. Suffering, unhappiness, dismay, vexations, and dukkha all arise in full measure.
• 25:28
  So what is a skillful way to work with this evolutionary phase of spiritual practice? There are three things that might be helpful. First, study basic Buddhism so that the path is understandable and people do not have magical ideas of what should happen. Second, encourage involvement in ongoing practice. Hogan says that he finds people who attend retreats have deeper and more affirming experiences than those who do not.
• 26:12
  Third, to take responsibility for the Sangha. There is good research that repeatedly shows that people who help others are happier and more satisfied than those who do not. People who are appreciated for doing even the smallest jobs such as the ones we have here are more satisfied with the sangha. Fourth, develop discussion and question and answer and social groups which give people a personal feeling of connection. One of the functions of the spiritual path is that it gives purpose and direction to someone's life.
• 26:57
  An aimless self indulgent life is full of dissatisfaction. A life of purpose helping others and experiencing the taste of real dharma is much more satisfying. Hogan says to all of us, may you and all beings become awakened and help others. So my practice has been starting with just coming once a week to coming twice a week to becoming more and more involved, to taking OnGo seriously, to delving deeply into practice, going to Sachin, to really looking at my own mind and how full of judgment and opinions and comparisons and self centered views it is and was. I think over time, a lot of that has dropped away.
• 28:08
  Some of it at least has dropped away. And so I am encouraged that this practice really does fulfill our dreams of not of letting go of our dissatisfaction. Of feeling connected to other people, to the world, to to the cosmos. That we all have a purpose in life. And our job is to find out what is that purpose.
• 28:40
  Now when I say a purpose in life, I don't say that you are going to be a lawyer and you are going to be the janitor and you are going to be the cook. But a purpose is how do you navigate through this world with kindness and wisdom as much as possible? How can a spiritual practice actually propel us into being people that have a wider view, a wider understanding of life on this earth. And I am convinced that the only way we can do that is by calming down and slowing down. And really observing what is happening.
• 29:28
  Really observing your own mind. Really taking the time to settle down and realize that this life is precious and it is short and things are changing all the time. And that we can help others, we can help ourselves, and we can help each other along this path to awakening.
• 30:07
  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.