Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / Courage To Be Afraid- Working Our Edges- Jogen Sensei

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Courage To Be Afraid- Working Our Edges- 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.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: So tonight, I wanna talk about going beyond our edges. And I think largely, this talk is an admonishment for myself, and I'm just sharing it with you and it might it might be, resonant. So, cultivating Zen includes compassionate acceptance of our limitations. It's one of the one of the powers of the practice is the power of acceptance grows. It deepens the the edges to our maturity, to our courage, our ability to care.
• 1:02
  We are able to, accept those edges, those limitations. And in sufficient stillness, our conscience is active, which is an excellent thing. Right? A healthy conscience is essential in the spiritual life. We're not trying to shut that down.
• 1:27
  Right? These are good thoughts to have us arising. These are good thoughts to be arising when we when our integrity reminds us of our limitations. And in a way, this is why one of the reasons the critic limits our spiritual possibility, not only that it's a bunch of noise and it's usually not true, but that when the critic is so involved in our life and practice, it's hard to take on what our conscience is saying which often really needs to be acted on. So, we develop that.
• 2:10
  We find space around, the limitations that we can't help but see, the limitations of our behavior, our maturity, etcetera. Okayness. Right? And this aspect is excellent medicine, but how do we grow past our edges? How do we actually do that?
• 2:32
  Because a spiritual practice that is acceptance only is actually a kind of stagnation. Lately, I've been, you know, taking potshots at YouTube non dual people because and one of the potshots I would take is often they're just teaching everything is totally okay as it is. You're just you're awake. Just know, just eat your dinner and watch your shows and boom, that's the enlightened life. And that would make the spiritual ancestors of Zen laugh or cry because who we are as human beings, how we actually live our life is the testament to spirituality.
• 3:16
  Acceptance only is a kind of stagnation. States on the cushion may be satisfying. There may be an afterglow into our lives. We may at some point actually have a shift in the abiding quality of our being. We're living in a transparency of self or a dreaminess of world or we have total ease with inner and outer, and these are all wonderful.
• 3:47
  And yet, the heart testifies to where our spirituality is really at. And we can glimpse this when we're quiet and honest. We need both. We need enough quiet and we need enough honesty. Lately, when I've been doing, Sashin, which is, Zen retreat, there's a particular place I meet where I see, oh, there's this vista that I'm either not willing to or not ready to step into.
• 4:28
  And I can see it and it's like a door that's actually unlocked but I'm like, nah, not gonna open that one now. Maybe next life. Maybe next year. Maybe when. It's important it's important to see these places.
• 4:53
  It's important to to be be approaching these places or else this will probably become meaningless to us. If it doesn't actually change our lives, it will become meaningless to us. So what? If I'm a little calmer, so what if I have a little bit less reactivity? So how do we grow past our edges, our limitations as humans?
• 5:24
  How do we actually do that? The first thing that comes to mind for me is we actually really need to protect our ideals and our aspiration. We need the images, first of all, of the accomplished practitioners. We need the images of the saints, of the awakened beings. We need to not forget that possibility.
• 5:55
  And the general, kind of tenor of the culture is so jaded. It's so jaded. We just love to more than being inspired, we would like to, you know, research and find out who has a scandal in their background. That would be our first instinct rather than, wow, this person lives a really selfless life, a very jaded kind of, culture. Some of that is the fault of spiritual practitioners that we're suspicious, But we have to protect our ideals because even though they're ideals, they're not realities, they are vital.
• 6:35
  The wanting to be a mature human being or a mature spiritual being is so amazing in a world like this. I actually feel like the standards of like what has are acceptable for people and how we can act have just gotten lower and lower. So to to protect our ideals and aspiration and, you know, the the quiet and honesty that sees that we're not a mature human, I'm kind of using that synonymously with being a mature spiritual being, but yet wanting to be is amazing in a world like this. So I think the first thing is cherish the ideals of love and wisdom. Even if it always remains a North Star, even if it's always a horizon.
• 7:37
  In the Tibetan tradition, they say it's better to live three mountains away from your teacher. Right? There's different ways of understanding that. One of the ways of understanding that is we all carry around a very discriminating mind and if we look too closely at something, we're bound to see the flaws. And if we can get the right distance, we can maybe sustain our inspiration a little longer.
• 8:05
  Cherish the ideals of love and wisdom. And mostly that's your own feeling of like what's possible about how you could how you could be. Fools who worship money, status, and power will not get it. This will not get the stamp of approval of 99% of the world. They will not get it.
• 8:29
  Hang around people who do. So to protect our ideals, protect our aspiration, I think that's that's the ground. And then, I wanna use, the teaching, some teaching of Machigalabdhran. And this teaching is probably familiar to many of you. And of the I think, Pema Chodron used it as the basis of a book.
• 9:00
  I think it was called The Places That Scare You. Apparently, that's a classic. I should probably read it. She wrote a book around this, Jogeni. This was a great great master, and I believe in India, maybe like eleventh century, Machig Labdran, she was like the most hardcore spiritual master.
• 9:19
  She makes the Zen masters look like kitties. I mean, she was like super hardcore. Uncompromising, uncompromising, Bodhicitta, desire to wake up for the sake of all beings. And she had these five sayings that, I don't know if they were slogans she would give to students or, you know, how it was taught, but the five sayings are, first of all, confess your hidden faults. Number two, approach what you find repulsive.
• 9:51
  Number three, go to the places that scare you. Number four, help those you think you cannot help. Number five, anything you are attached to, give that. That's some scary stuff. I mean, anybody who doesn't who is sincere, who doesn't have a little bit of, ugh, is probably not looking closely at themselves.
• 10:20
  So confess your hidden faults. What are our hidden faults? Again, we have to be post inner critic to be at this level of mature reflection. We have faults. Okay.
• 10:37
  What would it be like to not hide them? What would it be like to not have them even, to to really overcome them? What are our hidden faults? Now, confess your hidden faults. Probably this the context of this tradition, it originally meant that you confess to your guru or your your meditation deity, whether in person or through visualization.
• 11:07
  So in Tantric Buddhism, is a regular practice you would do. You would you would confess your faults. You would basically, you'd unburden your heart. You would make this acknowledgment. And it goes sideways because human beings are human beings, but confession in the Catholic tradition or in the Mormon tradition or other traditions has an aspect of this.
• 11:32
  It's not diluted. There's something, spiritually purifying about having somebody that we can say, yeah, I'm messing up. Here's how. Or here's this, shortcoming I have. I have, some personal experience of this.
• 11:53
  I've unfortunately had a few psychic teachers. That's a real pain in the ass, but without wanting to, you confess your faults. But also, I lived in a monastery for a while and you live in a monastery and you're just totally exposed. There is no hiding your faults for very long. There really isn't.
• 12:15
  People eventually, you're just you're seen, you're revealed. And so the confession is not, hey, let me tell the priest about what I did on Saturday night. It's a confession of being. It's a transparency of being. It's I'm I'm fully seen.
• 12:35
  What does that do? How does that affect me to be fully fully seen? So when we're in a spiritual community or we have a relationship, it could be with our spouse, it could be with anybody, a good friend, it could be with a teacher, Our faults are drawn out. Are exposed. They are confessed.
• 13:00
  This is saying lean into that. Chosen was talking about Chosen Roshi was saying, when people first start dating, they're on their best behavior. I was thinking about that like, is that true? Do we just pretend we don't have all kinds of faults? And then later they just start come burst out of the closet.
• 13:19
  What if we just told people like date four, like, here's what you're really getting into. Okay? Part of what this is saying is we could treasure the person or the situations that expose our hidden faults. We could treasure that rather than all the energy of self deception that goes into hiding them, into pretending. And I think that my my own experience is that rationalizing my fault is often how I hide them.
• 14:00
  Rationalize. I'm so good at telling a story about why that was okay because so and so did or everybody does or that'll be the last time. Those are my three versions. Everybody does, that'll be the last time or poor me. One time I went into Blue Star Donuts and I stole a This was only like last year.
• 14:27
  Bit a grip this big of straws because I was doing an art project and I was like, Blue Star donuts, this is like a $9 donut, that's messed up and they must be making tons of money and then the the person at the counter said, hey, what are you doing taking all of those? This is part of why we're going out of business. I kept them. It was a $9 doughnut, but my girlfriend at the time was like, that was messed up. So the faults, these are the things, a $9 doughnut, like what?
• 15:07
  The things our conscious is weighed on or compromised by. That's what the faults are. It's not the quirks in your personality. Of course, you have quirks. That's just relative to someone else's point of view whether they're quirks or not.
• 15:22
  This is the thing that our conscience is actually weighed on by. This is a this is a path of a of a light heart. This is a path of making the heart lighter and lighter. So confess your hidden faults. And as you go through these, you can see that they're all in a really related and and kind of coming at it, maybe the same thing from a different angle.
• 15:57
  This next one, approach what you find repulsive. Now, in Southeast Asia, at least in the past, in India, to some degree currently, but definitely more in the past, Buddhist practitioners and other yogis went to Charnel grounds to do their practice. They sat amongst carrion, rotting corpses, disgusting smells. They didn't come in air conditioned, perfectly incensed zendos. Maybe sometimes, they went to the charnel ground.
• 16:32
  They went and did their practice in the most repulsive conditions. The repulsive, carries potential teachings for us. Why does something repulse me? What is it? What is it about the thing that so I recoil from that I can't approach?
• 16:58
  And maybe the repulsive is is only repulsive at a distance. Right? The mind's distance. The mind makes distance from so many things. Right?
• 17:10
  We don't approach. We don't get close, whether that's people, places, experiences. What if there are actually hidden beauties in that thing that we find repulsive? Because we're not just talking about rotting corpses. We're talking about all the things that we invest energy in avoiding in our lives, a neighbor, a weather pattern, a feeling in ourselves, a person at work.
• 17:44
  Like what is concealed from us by doing that? Maybe we are actually kin with what we find repulsive and we just don't wanna see that. Like if I actually sit down and share a meal with this person, I will discover I'm not actually that different. Approach what you find repulsive. I think this is also saying to prove equanimity to ourselves, to prove spaciousness, to prove compassion to yourself.
• 18:34
  You know, each time we we sit on these cushions and we really stay engaged even when it's really difficult, we prove something about the practice to ourselves. Its durability and its value is more clear. When we sit down and it's just all love and light, in a way, that's less valuable. Like in a way, there's not that much growth when we sit down and it's just love and light. But when we prove the capacity for compassion in the midst of what we just wanna get away from, that's a different experience.
• 19:18
  Approach what you find repulsive. How could we implement implement that? If we were to internalize a slogan like this, we could just remember that this was recommended by a great yogi, that the logic of it might be clear at this moment. We we internalize it, and then we test it out. What happens when I actually go towards that thing?
• 19:43
  Have the experience. We don't know what it will be like because usually we don't approach. I think the next one is, pretty similar. Go to the places that scare you. Now, I'll give a little bit of, tradition and historical, context.
• 20:05
  So Machig Lubdhran is one of the people, this yogini from I think eleventh century, who's known for creating a practice called Chuh. And Chuh means severing and particularly it means severing attachment. This is a very popular practice to some degree in, the West, very popular in Tibet, Nepal, and India. And, in the practice of Chu, you go to haunted places. You discern places that disturb you, and some practitioners in the West might do that in a particular, corner of their city.
• 20:43
  Some people might do it, people have done it at Auschwitz. Some people in India do it at places that are actually haunted. And the idea is that you apply the previous slogan approach what is repulsive, but you work with fear directly. You don't use your practice to find a zone that's free, fear free. You move your practice right into fear.
• 21:14
  I actually, years ago, I was, training in chuh and cha scared me. I backed off of it. I only had so much capacity at the time to do cha. In cha, you ask all of your demons to come forward. You invite your demons.
• 21:32
  You invite them into the light of awareness. You say, I really want to see. I really want to know. I really want to companion. Very different than making a peace capsule, understanding your meditation like that.
• 21:53
  Many years later, I did a dark retreat. One of a series of dark retreats. People know what a dark retreat is. It's getting more popular nowadays, but a dark retreat is basically you sit and meditate in a room with absolutely no light. And, at that time, I was I was, you know, younger, a little bit more arrogant, and I just sort of locked myself in a basement for like eleven days and thought this is gonna be great.
• 22:21
  And at one point, I was so frightened, I hid under a blanket for three hours. Just kind of buried myself. Part of the benefit of it wasn't, oh, look how brave I am. I'm such an awesome practitioner. It was, oh, how humble I need to be.
• 22:43
  Like how easy it is for the mind to conjure and deceive. Right? Because it's just me in this basement. The other aspect of this and a key thing that is talked about in this chair tradition is that practice needs intensified energy at times. There's times when it's good for your practice to be in a very tranquil space.
• 23:13
  There's times where it's very, counterproductive, and what we need is an intense space in order to goad us, to bring more energy in. Right? So some belief says that the ideal, circumstance of our practice is a sealed off tranquil zone with perfect weather. You might have version of like, what are the conditions that would be ultimate for me to finally get down and do the thing? Some idyllic countryside cabin or whatever.
• 23:47
  But when we move into zones of uncertainty, it loosens our hold on things. We wanna be The ideal spiritual state is actually not being fully balanced. The ideal thing is to be a little off balance. Be a little off balance. Or to to be like an iron that is hot because an iron that is hot can be actually reshaped.
• 24:17
  Right? The saying, strike while the iron is hot. One of the ways we can get heated up is in a zone of uncertainty. Right? Actually implementing our practice at that time.
• 24:32
  Sometimes I talk to people and they do that. Sometimes I talk to people to say, well, right now my life is hard so I don't practice, and that's exactly the wrong way to understand it. Now, it's none of my business if you don't if you really don't have time, but the my life is hard so I'm not meditating is completely backwards. Or my life is hard so I'm not applying the teachings. It doesn't I'm not talking about only sitting on a cushion.
• 25:05
  Go to the places that scare you, I I think also is saying, when we really begin to shift out of our habitualness, it will be scary. It will be scary when we actually go into the unknown, which is where practice takes us, something in us will react. Our claws will come out. Our tails will get puffy. We start blaming people.
• 25:32
  We start rationalizing it. Generally, we don't move into deeper territory without some kind of emotional upheaval. And that's scary. An emotional upheaval is like, you just don't know why what you're experiencing is what you're experiencing. And we love to understand why what we're experiencing is why we're experiencing.
• 25:57
  We wanna know why do I feel this way? Where did this come from? And get it under control. Awakening will have scary times. We don't get to know what's happening to us.
• 26:14
  We will experience aspects of ourselves that are disturbing. I think I I don't know if I've shared this before, maybe I shouldn't, but I will. There was a time where I would just be driving I would get these sudden like instincts to just ram my car into the person in front of me. Just wanted to slam on the accelerator and just I encountered this like raw level of just violent instinct to myself. I just wanted to do some damage.
• 26:41
  Or even scarier, I'd be in a kitchen and I would see a knife and it would flash in my mind. What if I picked up that knife and I just stabbed the steak right now? Or worse, I kind of backpedal because I saw somebody cringe in the room. I've practiced long enough that I know these are just thoughts, but it's scary to feel that aspect of myself. Right?
• 27:08
  But I needed to own my own capacity for violence. So easy to think, oh, it's just other people who have a capacity for violence. It's just other people who do that. Me, I couldn't do that. It's bullshit.
• 27:23
  Yes, you could. We might also encounter beautiful parts of ourselves that scare us because if I live into just how broken open my heart could be, then what would what would I do? What would I have to do? That can be scary too. So go to the places that scare you is a nudge because we go to places our mind cannot fully get a toehold on.
• 28:06
  The next thing, Machig Labdrin says is help those you think you cannot help. So in this tradition as, Sei was so beautifully talking about last week, we take a vow. Actually, you're kind of voluntold each night, like people just show up here and they're like, chant this with us. It's pretty crazy. We take these vows that say, I'm gonna I'm gonna develop myself spiritually so that I'm responsive enough to help all kinds of different people.
• 28:48
  Take a vow, that's one way of understanding that. Help those you think you cannot help. What does it mean to help someone, first of all? What does that actually mean to help? We can share hope.
• 29:08
  We could share encouragement. We could share resources. Does that help someone? Does that help someone? Yes, and we feel the limitations of that.
• 29:30
  Because at some level, we feel the aloneness aspect of things. We feel how each person is responsible for their own life. No matter what we do, no matter how loving we are, no matter how selfless, no matter how we show up, people are responsible for their own life. For each of us, our primary dwelling is our own heart mind that we bring everywhere. That's our that's our primary dwelling.
• 30:10
  How do we redecorate that? How do we help someone who exists in their own aloneness just like us? How do we help? This is a this is a koan. Actually, here here is, a traditional koan related to this.
• 30:31
  I've, returned to working on this after about twenty years. When I first was working on this with my teachers, I was digesting all of this resentment I had towards how I was parented. Right? The practice brought me up against that really strongly. I wanna share the it's a brief koan.
• 30:53
  I wanna share it with you. It's related to help those you think you cannot help. A little context in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition of which we're a part, part of the understanding of the universe is that we've had countless, countless rebirths. Countless, countless, countless rebirths. We've been doing this really long time.
• 31:16
  And because of that, every single person has been one of our parents. And you train in this perception, in in the tradition. It's more emphasized in the Tibetan tradition than the, Zen tradition, but in the Zen tradition, it said that everyone you meet, especially if you have this level of meeting, have, n with, you have affinity, you have past life karma. So all beings have been our parents, but in a way, all beings are our parents right now. So the koan, and and what the what a koan is is it's a it's a saying that you you soak in with your whole being because you're quieting your mind and opening yourself, and you let it work on you.
• 32:03
  It does something to you when you take it in. This one says, tear off your skin and give it to your mother. Break your bones and give them to your father. Manifest a spiritual teaching for your parents. You could you could practice with this.
• 32:25
  Tear off your skin and give it to your mother. Break your bones and give them to your father. Manifest a spiritual teaching for your parents. What happens when our bodhicitta, our aspiration to help those we cannot help, help those we wish to help, meets the seeming impossibility of it? What what what happens in that moment when we feel our care?
• 32:59
  Think of anybody in your life, and you also feel like, I just don't know what I can do because this person is primarily responsible. What if at that moment we don't just retract and say, it's their life. What if we really stayed with that? What if we, rubbed up against that edge? Right?
• 33:25
  For me in that moment, a practice I like to do is I like to pray in a certain way, like with a clear mind. It's like, how could I be helpful to so and so at this moment? And by prayer, I'm dropping into bigger heart, bigger mind because I don't know. I'm stymied. I'm stymied and yet I've taken this vow and I mean it, and I'm right at that place.
• 33:59
  What comes forth when you do that? That's part of what I think Machig Labdhran is inviting us into. Help those you think you cannot help. You think you cannot help, it looks like you cannot help. Help them anyway.
• 34:13
  What does that mean? You have to have to be in the living tension of that. It's very beautiful. Okay. The one, here that I think is the scariest for most people, although they're all pretty scary, is anything you are attached to, give that away.
• 34:36
  Anything you are attached to, give that away. So we could define attachment in this context not as your, Pez collection or whatever you don't let people touch, but as the beliefs or the feelings or the habits or the objects that keep us from taking the next step in embodying our humanity. I know that was a lot of words, but I wanna try to like Attachments are that not the things that we love that we don't wanna just give away. It's the things that our involvement with them, whether it's mental or physical, are actually having us stagnate. We're like we're like tethered to, a post and but the trail is kinda going on.
• 35:26
  I remember, one of the greatest things that happened to me when I had started meditating when I was like 18 and I was really into it, but I was also really into my Honda CRX. It was such a sweet Honda CRX. I know. I know that. I know.
• 35:41
  It was very cool. The best thing that ever happened is it got stolen off my driveway by the guy at the auto parts shop who sold me the cool rims and all that. It got stolen off my driveway. It was amazing blessing because I was finally free. I would be in meditation and I'd be worrying about, is somebody gonna break into my car?
• 36:05
  That's ridiculous. So Machid Lubtran says, anything that is keeping us from taking the next step in embodying our humanity, give those things away. Give that. Could be scary to even consider it. The scariest thing I think when we are honest is what if I have to give up my free time?
• 36:35
  You learn that if you're a parent or you learn that if you're a monastic, at the monastery, especially in the early days, there'd be times where you had like an hour a day, forty minutes maybe to yourself, Maybe? And you get real gollum like about your time. It's like, my precious. You'd have twenty minutes and you'd have planned four activities in twenty minutes like, oh, the things I'm gonna do. But the thing about attachment is it's scary to consider it, but the doing, the giving up could be quite different.
• 37:13
  It might just be a relief from some pettiness we got accustomed to but forgot it was petty. It could be a release into knowing how we are actually totally okay without those beliefs, feelings, habits or objects that we have fabricated dependence on. We only think we need them. We only think our happiness revolves around them. In the tradition of Machik Libdhran, there's a very old practice called, the mandala offering.
• 37:50
  Mandala offering, it's a wonderful practice, and basically, mandala offering, if it's done in the traditional context, a 110,000 times through with have a you have a pan of rice that symbolizes all the elements of the universe. You visualize giving everything away including your own body over and over. You give it away. You give it away as wholeheartedly as you can. You visualize and you get a
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: little feel, you get a
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: little hit of what it's like to just be totally undefended, to let go of all the things we're scared and hold onto so tightly. I think in Zazen, we give up attachment over and over, at least on the level of on thought and feeling. And a real commitment to working with a teacher in a community, they really help us without even intending to to give up attachments that limit our growth. These are the traditional means. Right?
• 38:58
  Another way of understanding anything you're attached to give that is share your sources of joy. Transmute it, whatever you are are fixated on. First of all, take a look and see, is it actually a positive beneficial thing? If after examination, you still think it is, then you think, how do I share this? How do I give it away?
• 39:25
  Think about how many wonderful things there are in this world or in this city that someone said, I love this stuff. How do I give it away? Right? How do I how do I share this more broadly? So I think Machig Lubdhran's teaching is, a good framework for how do we actually grow in the ways we need to grow.
• 39:54
  How do we actually change so that not externally people are like, oh, you're really doing it, but we have a sense of I'm actually really doing the spiritual path. I'm like living into what I'm seeing. I'm living into my own my own aspiration. Because if we won't do that, we'll eventually wander away or just get into some kind of routinized engagement with this. So just, to review, protect our ideals or aspiration, confess hidden faults, approach what we find repulsive, go to the places that scare us, help those we think we cannot help, anything we are attached to, give that.
• 40:43
  And even if we do a little bit of this, it would be a good thing. Right? A lot of doing this starts with a little bit of doing this. It has to be that way.
• 41:02
  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.