Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / Slipping Beneath the Difficulty - Hogen Roshi

Transcript

Slipping Beneath the Difficulty - Hogen Roshi · 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 Buddha Dharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Take refuge in the Buddha. Take refuge in the Dharma. Take refuge in the Sangha. Someone came to me this morning after the long retreats we just did to Seshan. See, there were two people who went to two different Seshan, both of whom came to me this morning.
• 0:37
  And one person said, oh, was agony. It was so difficult. It was so difficult. It was so difficult. And I stayed with it and stayed with it and stayed with it.
• 0:44
  And somehow, I slipped beneath the difficulty. I slipped beneath the thoughts I had about the difficulty. And I encountered a place of no desire. A place of no desire, just what we're talking about in this particular sutra. A place of no no craving.
• 1:09
  And he said, oh, it was so wonderful. It was I was totally free. I was totally free. And two people gave me different versions of that same thing. So this Sutra, the Sutra on Non Craving, the teaching of craving, is really about the habitual ways our mind goes that keep us locked into unhappiness, dissatisfaction, dismay, despair, and all the other disses.
• 1:44
  It is possible with practice, with attention, with presence to slip below them, to go below them. Now, I think it's important to think about going below because we we have desire of course, you know. We have to have desire to eat, to go to the bathroom, you know, all the desires that we normally have. But notwithstanding those by practicing intimately, by feeling deeply, by sitting in your own skin and feeling the not the interpretation of it, that's a different level, but feeling what is the experience, what's the intimate experience, what is the calling. That's what body body discomfort does.
• 2:35
  It's calling to us. Says pay attention. Pay attention. Pay attention. By going into that body experience, by going into it and sinking deeper and deeper into it, it is possible to slip in to a direct experience of non craving.
• 2:53
  Because that is the fundamental nature of this moment. It's not a not a mysterious other. It's the fundamental nature of this moment. This moment is complete. But our mind is so used to, I gotta get it.
• 3:08
  I gotta plan for it. I gotta And it's a wonderful skill, of course. Thank goodness we can we can plan. Thank goodness we have the capacity to to set out a project and complete it. But from this level of Dharma, it is also possible to slip down deeply.
• 3:27
  Now, right now, right here, everyone takes a deep breath, breathe in, and on the exhalation, just imagine you're just sinking down inside your own heart long and slow, and then do it again. Breathe deeply and just imagine you're sinking down like an elevator down into the earth, down into this experience, down into your own heart, down, down, down, down into silence, down into stillness, below all the turmoil. You take a deep breath, you let it out long and slow, and you relax, and you let yourself feel softer and softer softer and more quiet, softer and more intimate, more intimate accepting the way things are and you slide, slide, slide ever more deeply down into now. Now, if you did that for a week, if you did that at night while you're asleep, and you followed followed your own heart ever more intimately, ever more closely with great acceptance, with great willingness to to follow and not to try to control, to to follow and not to try to make something happen. To follow to follow the experience as we exhale and relax and go down, down, down, down, down.
• 5:24
  Everybody can touch. Sooner or later, perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow night, perhaps next year, I don't know. But we can touch the place that is not being driven by I want. I want. I want.
• 5:45
  I want. Maybe some of you remember the the novel Henderson the Rain King. Henderson was a You know, he just had this voice in that just said, I want. I want. I want.
• 6:01
  I want. He traveled all over the world and went to crazy things in Africa and ended up And finally finally, he realized, oh, I've already got what I want. It's right here. It's right here. So that experience of actually recognizing what we already have and letting go of that mind that says, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, is very refreshing.
• 6:30
  Very refreshing. Very freeing. Very liberating. Now, it frankly can be terrifying because we are so conditioned to try to make things happen. We're so conditioned to try to be in control, to try to predict what's gonna happen next.
• 6:49
  That if we actually let go of that whole thing, even just in here for an evening, even just for a few minutes, we let go all of the becoming. All of the becoming. I will become something else. I will be something else. I will do something else.
• 7:04
  I will go somewhere else. And we take a deep breath and we let go. It can be quite disturbing. Disturbing because we are so used to structure our life about I want, I want, I want. And that's what this sutra is about.
• 7:24
  It's about the habitual, the habit, the habit we've all grown up with thinking, if I just know what I want, if I just get what I want, if I just kind of manipulate people, if I just manipulate myself, get what I want, then I'll be happy. We're going to be, doing one of the themes we'll be using at the next long retreat in October is, working with relaxation, working with this present moment. And the phrase, the only thing, the only thing that stands between us and our own freedom of heart, our own liberation is, I'm not getting what I want. I'm not getting what I want. I should be getting something else.
• 8:11
  I'm not getting what I want. I'm not getting what I want. We're sitting there, our mind is not feeling the way we think it should feel. We're sitting there, our mortgage is not the state we think it should be in. We're sitting there, whatever the mind is busy cogitating on, it's something to do with I'm not getting what I think I want.
• 8:32
  I'm not getting what I think I want. And that's what this sutra is about. It is it is I'm not getting what I think I want is the craving, the weaver, the ensnare, the creeper that chokes and engulfs the world, that tangles this world like a ball of thread, stamps it down like matted rushes and reeds, blocking the way to wisdom and liberation. Now, we say that in practice there are two dimensions. One dimension, of course, is we have to really settle ourselves into our own skin.
• 9:05
  Okay. This is not has nothing to with dogma, has nothing to do with tradition. You can be sitting anywhere and just sitting in your own skin. Vitally important. If we can't sit in our own skin, whose skin can we sit in?
• 9:16
  You know, we sit in our own skin, we really feel that. The second part of it though is okay, once we have are aligned with this particular karmic bundle, this particular concatenation of causes and conditions I call myself, and we're sitting in that skin, we're sitting right there with that, what do we do with it? How do we function? And that's a different level of practice, different order of practice. So the first level of practice is we come in, we sit down, we really drop down, drop down, drop down, drop down until we can really truly appreciate this.
• 9:55
  It's the only thing we've got anyhow. But then then how does it What what kind of offering? What am I called to? What in the world needs this particular unique being? And that's different than craving.
• 10:14
  That's that's changing from, okay, if I do the right thing out there, my I'll get more profit, I'll make better stocks, I'll get a better job. It's all out there. Versus when we're inside, we have this centered place, we open ourselves to the world and think, okay, where does the world need my particular offering, my particular skills, my particular way of looking at the world? And it can be all kinds of things. And it has to be all kinds of ages to do that.
• 10:46
  The difference what the sutra is talking about is instead of learning the the deep breath, the relaxation, the kind of the the is ness, the is ness of our being, the the the dynamic alive is ness, we, out of fear, we concretize it. We put it into a box. We we make it a an I am. I'm a thing. I'm a thing.
• 11:19
  And as soon as we're a thing, I'm a this, I'm a that. As soon as we're a thing, then all the mechanisms, all the the the all the machinations of protecting the thing and making the thing and making the thing happy, and making the thing at ease, and making the thing make it the thing, and that's where the sutra is talking about. It's like once we have have lost track of the dynamic isness of our own life. The dynamic bubbling excitement that is our unique body mind, that is fluid, that is changing, that is dynamic, that is in relation to the world. And we close it down into I'm of this, I'm of this, I'm of that.
• 12:09
  And then, all the things that starts off here. I'm of this, I'm here, I'm good, I'm bad, I'm hopeless, I'm the best, I'm ordinary, I'm the worst. We'd spend a lot of time talking about the inner critic. The inner critical voice is just constantly judging. Well, the others There's the other side of it too.
• 12:27
  You know, there's an inner positive voice. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. You're you're doing great.
• 12:31
  You're succeeding. You're you're you're you're know, the Kuan Yin, Kannan, is the is the Bodhisattva of compassion. And in the Heart Sutra, it talks about First line is the Bodhisattva of compassion from the depths of praishna wisdom saw the emptied saw the emptied I'm trying to think how I can tie it to what I was gonna say. Traditionally, he's hearing the cries of the world. So Kuan Yin hears the cries of the world.
• 13:02
  Well, the cries of the world are both positive and negative. I want, I want, I want, oh, I don't want, don't have, I don't have, I don't have, oh, I am so great, oh, I'm so miserable, oh, I am so this, Oh, I am so that. To hear the to hear the world in all of its constant polarity, this and that, and this and that, the cries of the world is not just the cries of agony, it's also the cries of, I got it. I got it. I'm finally there.
• 13:30
  I finally got the person thing place I want. And of course, that will change. So that to hear the cries of the world is to hear both sides of those voices, which means that we have forgotten that our basic nature is inclusive, our basic nature is expansive, our basic nature is not stuck this way or that way. And so this particular Sutra just says, okay, we've forgotten that. And we think, I've a thing.
• 14:03
  The thing is here. The thing is good, bad, or indifferent. The thing is ordinary or extraordinary. The thing. The thing.
• 14:12
  And the thingness, the the the thing generating apparati, the thing, the apparatus that generates the things, these are our thoughts. We have these thoughts. I am right, I am wrong, I am this, I am that, and they're just thoughts. And as we say over and over and over again, if you wanna have real liberation, just look at the nature of thought. Just see what the nature of thought is.
• 14:40
  You look at a thought, any thought, it's ephemeral, it's already gone, it's over before you know it, you can't find it, you know, you never know what you're going to think of next, it's always creative. So we meditate, we come back here, we take a deep breath. We let go of the good, the bad, and the ugly. We let go of the bright, the glorious, and the beautiful. We let go of everything into the heart of our own being, which is inclusive.
• 15:15
  We let go into the heart of our own mystery. We let go down into the the heart of the earth out of which all things come. And from that deep heart from that deep heart, our particular bundle of karma and conditions will will create a world. So during this last session, two people came to me and said, oh, I did that. Oh, you're not lying.
• 15:49
  You know, until we verify something ourself, until we really know something, tasted something, you know, always kind of a skeptical thing. Are they are they really lying? Are they really telling me the truth? Is the is the Buddha really telling me the truth? And once we have confirmed it ourselves, that's the root of faith.
• 16:07
  That's where faith actually begins. I have confirmed something. And I feel the best way of confirming some things is to come to a retreat, to to face all the obstacles of their mind chattering, and to sink down into the underground, sink down into the heart of the matter, and then see what is true. Unchained, unbound. So it sounds so simple, you know, I can sit here and say the whole thing in ten minutes and voila.
• 16:45
  So please do that.
• 16:55
  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 zendesk.org. Your support supports us.