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Life As The Original Vow - 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: So we're continuing a bit of a series on vow. So that's what I'll be talking about. But I first want to just thank everybody for being here. Nice to see our stalwart folks and new people and people I haven't seen in a while and it just keeps unfolding here. We've been here seven months now in this physical location and practicing together as a Vancouver community since December or so of last year.
• 1:04
  And we just keep going. It's fun to watch the light in this room change from moment by moment and month to month. And there must be some vow that is arising or blossoming in each of us. So we talked last time about the four bodhisattva vows which we'll chant at the end here and in that talk there were a couple of things that came up where there were some questions. So one of them was this word bodhichitta, what is that?
• 1:49
  So I'll unpack that a little bit and also the phrase life is the original vow. That is also something that deserves some unpacking and in addition what are some practical steps that we might take as we perhaps discern what our own vows already are or what they might be. And we kind of arrived last time last week at this agreement maybe that the word vow is kind of heavy and kind of packs a wallop. It's more than just a promise, it's more than just a commitment, it's pretty weighty. So it ends up kind of needing the seriousness or the time that it takes to unpack things.
• 2:44
  But in the Buddhist tradition this word bodhichitta, bodhi means awakened or enlightened and Chita means mind or heart or heart mind. Certainly in the Chinese character for mind or heart, heart mind is one singular character. So bodhichitta translates into the awakened mind or the heart of enlightenment and this is what we're endeavoring to cultivate as we practice, a sensitive being here that can see clearly. There are two aspects of relative and absolute and that is to some degree what the chant was that we did at the beginning. It addresses this duality, seeming duality of relative and absolute which are actually all one thing, not really a thing, it's all put together.
• 3:55
  So the expressions of bodhichitta in the relative sense, this is the compassionate intention to become enlightened for the sake of all beings. This is an act of generosity. An absolute bodhicitta is this wisdom, so there's compassion and wisdom sometimes the two wings of the bird. Absolute bodhicitta is realizing the emptiness or the lack of solidity or the impermanence of inherent existence. Whatever it is that we think we see objects as we come to understand them, they aren't really all that solid.
• 4:39
  They certainly aren't lasting and so with wisdom we can actually see that this ever flowing reality and when we do then we can see that everything's just really functioning all as one mysterious unfolding. So those two wings of the bird they function together. Our motivation might be bodhichitta. Bodhichitta is the driving force behind the bodhisattva path, the path of an awakened heart and this inspires each of us perhaps as individuals to try to cultivate wisdom and compassion so that we can be of benefit, so that we can be of service. I understand that on the internet with various influencers there's a question that goes around which is something like what is your why or find your why And that's a cute way of kind of trying to get at our motivation for whatever it is that why are we doing what we're doing?
• 5:53
  Why are we doing something difficult as sitting in meditation or why do we do anything? Sometimes, maybe more often than we'd like to experience, sometimes our motivation is grasping an aversion that we're fueling our action by trying to get something or keep something, maintaining our sense of identity or who we want to think of ourselves as or trying to make it so that other people see us a certain particular way or our fuel for action as aversion where we're just trying to avoid losing anything, we're trying to get away from things we don't want. I like to call these dirty fuel that they certainly can be very powerful motivators for action but they're kind of expensive and they're kind of polluting a little bit too. Even something as seemingly wholesome as social work which most of my career in social work, I've had a lot of years in the career of social work and also have experienced burnout and you know certainly working to relieve suffering this is what a social worker is endeavoring to do but I found that whenever I wanted it and really needed it to look a certain way and if it didn't look a certain way, if someone's success or outcomes didn't look the way I thought they should look then it seemed like I wasn't doing a good enough job.
• 7:36
  And then if I'm clinging to that as the outcome like I need to be feeling like I'm doing a good job then my well-being is hinging on this whole other person and they're free to do whatever they want to do. So I really found that that was one aspect, there's many aspects of burnout but that was one aspect for burnout that grasping for a particular kind of outcome or it's an aversion to the experience of not being helpful just not being willing to have experience of like wow I did my best here and I sure hope that you know maybe something I did ends up being useful someday if not right now. That's kind of a lot to tolerate, it can be uncomfortable. When we say that wisdom is realizing the emptiness of inherent existence we're also allowing for this view, this much larger view that we are part of something much larger than just our little story and our little interactions. In one of our chants it says, You are not it but in truth it is you.
• 8:53
  This mysterious much larger life that we are part of. We're not separate from anything but we know we're not the entirety of it. There is this you know it's not that we don't exist, IRS certainly thinks I have a self But we can recognize there's something mysterious, there's a lot we don't have any control over right? I mean that's unfortunately or unfortunately I don't even have control of my you know the process of my liver right now thankfully. I'm glad I'm not in charge of my own breathing or my own heartbeat.
• 9:41
  If I were I would not be here I'm sure. What is that mysterious commitment to life that apparently this body has made a vow to stay alive somehow as best it can? So when we recognize that sort of absolute view then that can put our suffering and the suffering of others into some perspective. We can respond to the suffering of this world sometimes called samsara which is like the endless turning wheel of birth and death that just inevitably we return and keep making the same mistakes as human beings. We can see and respond to that inevitable suffering but at the same time we can also know that there's a way that everything is alright and to know that everything is alright and just functioning freely and to rest in that equanimity that we have a way to rest even if we're encountering some of the very painful horrible suffering in this world and I don't say that to minimize it at all.
• 11:06
  They do these two things hang together and it's a mystery for each of us to really come to that understanding. We can rest in that equanimity without tipping into the near enemy of equanimity which is indifference. That is not what we're promoting here, cold indifference. Oh well everything's just functioning freely I guess I don't have to do anything. That's not what we're saying.
• 11:32
  It's that if we don't have that larger view we can just get swamped by the magnitude of suffering. Isn't that true? So it helps us grow our hearts even larger, grow our own capacity for meeting life. So one thing that I often appreciate in this relinquishing, not relinquishing, just acknowledging that we don't have a lot of control as much as we wish we did, I noticed that surrender is a big part of 12 step recovery and I appreciate that. In terms of addiction, I think we're all subject to addiction whether severe or mild.
• 12:26
  It's all rooted in the same wish to avoid discomfort or to try to control our mind state or control our mood state and chemicals do a great job of that changing the channel but we don't actually even need chemicals. We can also have process addictions like shopping or hoarding or even relationships. All of it is endeavors to try to control our emotions. So some of these behaviors provide us an illusion of control. There's that.
• 13:07
  But then the irony is that the very behavior becomes itself the things that gets out of control. Life is just resistant to our control. I think that's safe to say. I want to share a poem by Dana Folds called Allow and it kind of points to this. There is no controlling life.
• 13:32
  Try corralling a lightning bolt containing a tornado. Dam a stream and it will create a new channel. Resist and the tide will sweep you off your feet. Allow and grace will carry you to higher ground. Allow and grace will carry you to higher ground.
• 14:06
  The only safety lies in letting it all in. The wild and the weak, fear, fantasies, failures and success. When loss rips off the doors of the heart or sadness veils your vision with despair, practice becomes simply bearing the truth. In the choice to let go of your known way of being, the whole world is revealed to your new eyes. In the choice to let go of your known way of being, the whole world is revealed to your new eyes.
• 14:55
  And this is so much like how we just sit here and letting it all in. The only safety lies in letting it all in, whether that's sound or sensation or swirl of thoughts and emotions. We sit with this commitment or this vow to just allow our life experience to arise. We gently and firmly return to the very actual experience of our breath or body or sound whatever that is, but we become open to what's here. Stop controlling so much And as we do then we just simply bear the truth, we get in that habit of simply bearing the truth, bearing the truth of the way things are right now.
• 15:51
  And in that spaciousness then often there are new ways of seeing, new ways of being. So here we are talking about vows and what is that? So here we are allowing and just accepting but isn't a vow an implication that we're trying to do something or get somewhere or make something happen to meet a goal or to align ourselves with some kind of value? How can we have a vow and simultaneously have this idea that we can't control anything either or we have very little? So it may be that we do get to make habits of our behavior, we can decide to sit still, we can develop that habit of being still and not reacting to every urge to move or itch or run out of the room screaming.
• 16:57
  We can work with our habits of thought and of action off of the cushion and we can endeavor to choose know the kinds of thoughts that that we populate our minds with, are they wholesome or unwholesome, the kind of actions that we engage in or just even first notice what our habits even are. That's usually the first step, just noticing what our habits even are. But then to kind of find out well what am I, what is my life about, what are my vows? Maybe you have a vow already, maybe you're already halfway there and you just don't know it yet. So one way to begin to ascertain that is to consider who your exemplars are.
• 17:46
  Who do you admire and why? Whose life has impacted you in some way from their help or from their example and how is your life influenced by them? Here's the audience participation part and if someone can grab one of the fluffy microphone, yeah thanks Beth. If anybody's willing to just share a little bit about who you admire, it could be someone known or unknown, alive or deceased. Who has been your someone you admire?
• 18:20
  Yeah. Let's wait for the microphone and that way our folks on Zoom can hear you.
• 18:30
  mystery speaker: I admire my father because he has said, like, he has taught me about meditation and spirituality and Beautiful, really thank him a
• 18:47
  Jomon: thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Who else? Jonathan. When
• 19:01
  mystery speaker: I first came to this community, I I think the oceans of compassion retreat was one of the first things I did, and I was led by Juman and Koto and Miyo Yin Miyo Yoo from Corvallis. I
• 19:16
  Jomon: don't remember. Not Miyo Yoo, though.
• 19:22
  mystery speaker: And I was so impacted by meeting and talking to all three of you. I was a bit bold over just like, all of you are people I wanna look more like, and how did this happen? And then as I met more of the community, it just kept happening. It's like every single teacher and elder in this community feels that way. So, yeah, you and and all the teachers and elders in this community really impacted me as individuals and also in that gradual realization that this isn't just like one special person.
• 20:08
  This is real. This practice does something very noticeable in particular.
• 20:14
  Jomon: Thank you for sharing that. That is a nice sight. We always encourage people to shop around looking for a spiritual community and they say this in the 12 Steps too. Find someone who has what you want. If someone's been in recovery for a while you can kind of see that in people.
• 20:35
  So thank you for bringing that part around. Any other exemplars or people you admire? Yeah, Dawn.
• 20:53
  mystery speaker: I've come to admire somebody who I really didn't know too well. My grandfather, my father's father, immigrated from Sweden in 1896, made his way across The US, landed in San Francisco just in time for the nineteen o six earthquake.
• 21:15
  Jomon: Oh, no.
• 21:16
  mystery speaker: And he said, the heck with this. I'm gonna move away. So I went to Berkeley. Oh. 23 miles away where they have a lot of possible problem with the earth.
• 21:34
  Oh, jeez. I I wish I had talked to him so much so much more because I've heard so many things about him. He was a seaman. He came across the ocean, the Atlantic, and eventually, his father was the gardener of the king and queen of Sweden.
• 22:00
  Jomon: Oh, wow.
• 22:01
  mystery speaker: On an island in the sea. And eventually it got to California and became a hardwood floor lair. Oh. And ended up laying floors for blimp buildings.
• 22:24
  Jomon: Well, somebody thought
• 22:25
  mystery speaker: How could a little guy from Sweden end up building blimp places? And I remember driving with him and my folks, and he looked out the window and he said, I've sailed on that river, the Sacramento River, and I didn't understand it. And ever since, I've wanted to know, oh my god, what did you do back then?
• 22:59
  Jomon: Yeah.
• 23:01
  mystery speaker: I know I'm taking too much time here, but I read a read a book about the late eighteen hundreds in San Francisco, where he was. It was a wild, wild place.
• 23:12
  Jomon: And
• 23:13
  mystery speaker: he was a kind and wonderful man. And I thought, how did he get that way?
• 23:19
  Jomon: Yeah. Yeah.
• 23:20
  mystery speaker: And not be you know, affected by that. Anyway
• 23:25
  Jomon: Yeah. Thank you. It sounds like so what's interesting is what I've heard is for a couple people, there's a a spiritual know the admiration of a spiritual practice or participation and for your grandfather it's this kind of, you know what an adaptable person this was and someone who could just sort of show up and find their way in the wild west. Yeah, thank you. So that's one way to get a hint of what how you want to be or how you might want to focus your life energy.
• 24:13
  How to be adaptable or how to express your life just given the options that are in front of you. And also with these examples we can see that what we do matters even if we have very little control. It's also true that what we do matters. Both are true at the same time and so we can take those into consideration and try to align ourselves with these principles or wholesome endeavors and in our practice we learn to just observe and attend to our own heart, our own heart mind and see what we're actually growing and cultivating. And if we don't have a specific exemplar what then how do we decide to align our life?
• 25:04
  So I want to tell a story about I just recently took a trip to St. Louis area where my mom is, that's where I'm from. I'm from a suburb across the Mississippi River from St. Louis in Illinois so I've been telling people all along that I'm from basically the Vancouver of St. Louis so it's very nice that I've ended up in the in the actual Vancouver but I took a Lyft to the airport in the morning of my departure and I found myself chatting with the driver who was by his name and accent I am guessing he was from Africa.
• 25:51
  You know these days it's a little sensitive to be asking people about where they're from and how they've come to be here. It felt a little intrusive and it felt like he was a little trying to be very careful so I didn't want be too nosy about that but just trying to be friendly. He ended up asking me where I'm going, what I'm doing. So I was telling him I was going to visit my mom, she's 91 and here's our situation and he was asking me all about her, all about what she was like and those kinds of things. So I felt like I had talked enough about that and started asking him a little bit about his mom and he told me that his dad died when he was three and his mom died when he was 10 and that when his mom died I said, Well who took care of you?
• 26:53
  And he said that he had aunts and uncles but that one aunt right after his mom died said to him, You know, no one's ever gonna love you like your mother and no one owes you anything so you're on your own. And he just kind of took that in and lived according to that but he always tried to recall what his mother had advised him before she died and a lot of that she would advise him about you know participating in a biblical church and some of those the Bible verses she had read to him and try to offer him this kind of moral center ethical conduct however that was codified. That's what she was able to leave with him and even if her life couldn't continue what could she tuck into him and leave with him that his life might continue in some meaningful way or some way that would reduce the level of suffering that he might encounter. So he told me that because he only had ten years with his mom that he always asks people and this is what he was asking me, what did you learn from your mom? What did you get from your mom?
• 28:11
  What did she teach you? What did she show you about how to be? And for my mom it's definitely, know, she was always very kind and generous and you know with people that she could come to know if people were in need she was just immediately very kind and generous. So that's what he does. He just kind of gathers from everybody all the collective wisdom of all the mothers.
• 28:37
  He just decided that that's how he's making sense of the world and finding this kind of true north, adopting all of these mothers. One of the things that that did, that whole conversation was so precious to me because I have to admit I was a little bit feeling a little bit burdened frankly. Know my mom is start we need to start talking about assisted living, it's very hard to be this far from her. We do not agree on politics at all so that's a careful thing to do and yet I was not thinking of how lucky I am in that moment that I even got to go and be with her, that I'm 53 years old and I still have a mom that's alive and that I get to hug and you know hang out with for a week and it utterly changed my whole attitude towards this trip and made me really appreciate her in a completely different way. So it was I got to hug him at the end of it, know, like I'm hugging my Lyft driver like just really we just had a very genuine human encounter.
• 29:54
  It was quite beautiful. So he's enacting this vow that his mother and his experience with her brought to him. So maybe there's a difference too as you're kind of thinking well what are my vows? There's a difference between a vow and a goal. A goal is something measurable or accomplishable and you can check the box when you're done.
• 30:23
  Chosen, my Zen teacher, she calls these sub vows or the action taken on the outside. Underneath these is the actual vow that's moving you. So vows channel energy, they're a conduit for our life energy or the reason you get out of bed in the morning. So if my goal I suppose or if my vow is to awaken for the sake of all beings then my sub vow or my goal might be, I'm going to put myself on the meditation cushion every day or as often as possible so that I can settle this unruly mind and perhaps see a little more clearly so that I don't miss an opportunity to be of service or to be compassionate somewhere. My own life karma doesn't get in the way.
• 31:15
  So these vows are the larger wish there and it's not measurable. It's not like, Oh, awaken for the sake of all beings. Check, now I'm done. Good job. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen teacher often talks about vow like the North Star that we use the North Star to orient but nobody actually thinks they're going to arrive at the North Star itself.
• 31:44
  It is just a way to orient ourselves north and the same is true for our actual vows that will probably never really accomplish them, will never be done, but we can absolutely use them to help align us in that way. So you can also backtrack to find your vow. If you know already about some goals that you have, you can just continually ask yourself well why? So if my goal or resolution is to drink less alcohol or to use the phone less, why? Is that so you can be healthy, see your kids grow up or participate in the lives of grandchildren?
• 32:26
  Is it so that you can keep the mind clear? Why? Is it so that you can relieve suffering? So those are the, sometimes we can notice that we are engaging in the means or a sub vowel and that can help reveal what our vow might actually be. So ask why until you get to the vow.
• 32:47
  It may be accomplished by other means if necessary. So there are a few different kinds of vows that's kind of interesting to learn about. These are from Chosun's book, The Vow Powered Life and she founded the Great Vow Zen Monastery so we do work with vows quite a bit. We have a week long retreat sometimes where we really dive into these questions and really reflect on what our life is about and discern that, try to articulate that. So there's a few different kinds of vows.
• 33:28
  These are interesting, maybe you'll recognize some of them. Sometimes people take what's called a reactive vow. I will never be like, fill in the blank, parent, grandparent, whatever. Sometimes a reactive vow might also be oftentimes people who are medical professionals have experienced something, maybe an illness or a crisis. Certainly for me I had some experiences like that as a teenager with friends that were in a mental health crisis and I wanted to learn how to be the person that could help.
• 34:14
  I've noticed also in my career and working with some parents who had abusive parents themselves when they had children they said, Well I didn't have very good role models so I decided what I would do is just the opposite of whatever my parents would do. And I've seen that work pretty well actually. People really just ending a whole generational stream of suffering that way, reactive vow. There's also an inherited vow, this is a way that we may have an example from the family and this also is sometimes how medical people carry on a family tradition in medicine or law or things like that or engage in service that we inherit a vow from family members or people we're close to. And there can be an inspired vow.
• 35:13
  Maybe we see examples from others like Jimmy Carter or Albert Schweitzer. These are people that are inspiring and we might be inspired ourselves. Another way to take up a vow is to join a larger vow. So that's certainly what I've done by practicing in this community for a while and really just adopting my teacher's vow to create a community of practitioners and carry forward these dharma teachings. I've just decided to offer my hands and heart to that existing vow, the vow that they made.
• 36:01
  Perfectly good way to channel our life energy. Then there's these endless vows that we'll chant about later at the end of this when we do our concluding chant. These are called Bodhisattva vows, vows that are impossible but we take them anyway just to align our lives with something. To save all beings from suffering basically is one of them. To always step forward into learning about how things are, go through each dharma gate.
• 36:37
  And we can see our vows as a multi generational practice, it's not just this life. I heard a person refer to the civil rights movement that way that it's a relay race and it's passing the baton and certainly the Buddhist teachings have been passed along that way from person to person, actual human beings. And finally I just want to share this piece about how life is the original vow. This is a phrase that one of Chozan and Hogan's teachers, Shoto Haradaroshi, he lives in Japan and sometimes comes to Tacoma to do retreats and they've been practicing with him for over twenty years. So I want to read this little bit from Chosen's book about how life is the original vow.
• 37:40
  And it's got a few, I'll just read a few paragraphs of it and it starts with a quote by Doctor. Albert Schweitzer, A man is ethical only when life as such is sacred to him that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help it is good to maintain and further life. It is bad to damage and destroy life and this ethic profound universal has the significance of a religion. It is religion and basically some of the basic vows that we take as Buddhists is not to do harm but to do good and to do good for others. Those are the basic vows that we take.
• 38:30
  So Chosen writes, When I asked my teacher Shoto Horataroshi about vows he said in his succinct way, life is the original vow. This became a koan for me or something to ponder. Life is amazingly strong, 2,000 year old seeds dug from excavations at Herod's tomb in Israel were sprouted and grew into a tree. Russian scientists have regenerated plants buried for over thirty thousand years in permafrost from the ice age. We can see it ourselves, a barren desert turns into a flowered carpet even when rain falls briefly only every few years.
• 39:10
  A new freeway is built and within a year there are plants pushing up through the thick asphalt along the edges. Life seems to have its own vow to persist and more than persist to create new life. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki people were told that nothing would grow, that the ground would be sterile for seventy five years. At the Sano Shinto Shrine, camp for trees thought to be four or 500 years old had their branches blown off and were split and charred by the blast. Within a few months they began to sprout new leaves, a sign that gave the defeated people hope and strength to work toward recovery.
• 39:58
  Life is defined by growth and transformation, Our vows arise from our individual desire to grow and transform, to encourage new life to emerge from our current and soon to be old life. Life is what we are, our life is what we work to continue as we eat, sleep, exercise, build our homes, take vitamins, obey traffic lights and make love. We work hard to expand the boundaries of our life to learn to walk and read, to fix the toilet, to play an instrument or do algebra and earn enough money to travel to France or go on a meditation retreat. Life wants to live, life wants to be expressed and you really can go to that shrine in Nagasaki and see those beautiful trees which are now replete with leaves and it is an inspiring and sacred place. There is a torii gate, a cement torii gate that stood at the front of it before you go in to see the trees and in the blast one of the legs of it was completely blown off but it still stands on one leg.
• 41:14
  It's really an inspiring place. So we have this flowing through us already and we have a little bit of discernment how we want to use this gift that we've been given. So feel free to ponder these directions and how you might express your life and I can't think of a better way to do that than to sit here with all of you doing that together. So thank you.
• 42:04
  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.