Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / The Doors of Liberation - Jogen Salzeberg, Sensei

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The Doors of Liberation - Jogen Salzeberg, 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: Taking refuge in Buddha, the historical example of wholehearted practice, also the transcendent nature of mind, taking refuge in dharma, the teachings that have helped so many people's hearts flower over the millennium and also the real nature of all things, taking refuge in sangha, the community who practices the teachings together, and also our kinship with all beings. Love is an essential ingredient in waking up. And there are so many flavors of love in the practice of dharma. There's the love that's the very shimmer, the brightness that is each sensation, sparkling right now. There's the love that's present in the small beauties and the kindnesses and the supports all around us if we have the mind available to notice.
• 1:58
  There's tough love, firm love. You could think of the strong container of a Zen session as a kind of tough love. The love of firmness, the love of support for what is most vital. There's love as patience. Patience, the absence of waiting.
• 2:40
  There's love as an open mind. How little we know about the inner life of another, the inner struggles of another, how much we fill in the blank. There's love as devotion to ending one's own suffering, reducing it, at least. There's love that's devotion to ending one's suffering because one respects all beings. Love that's informed by really knowing the ground of interdependence.
• 3:38
  And there's love as an absence of aggression towards oneself. The macro and microaggressions towards oneself through mind, through body, through action. I want to guide a foundational practice suggestion and just what I have already been suggesting but just add in an aspect of connecting with love as part of your practice ritual. Beginning by inviting relaxation into your being. And maybe that's through the breath.
• 4:43
  You know how to breathe into tightnesses in your body. It can be just a reminder to unclench What doesn't need to be clenched. Your back and your spine more or less do the work of holding you up. See if you can be a soft body around all of that. A soft belly.
• 5:39
  A soft chest. And then with the quality of relaxation, at least initially established, feel into the contact of your butt, legs, feet, hips, with the cushion, chair, bench. You could luxuriate in that a little bit. And sometimes I press with my sits bones. So I really dig into that rootedness.
• 6:51
  Feeling really firmly planted in the seat. And then to spark, to invite the quality of love. And I will go through a number of different ways hoping that you find one of them fits for you. Now the first somewhat traditional. From within yourself, with a sincere desire, wish to be happy and internally say, May I be happy.
• 7:57
  May I be at ease. May I be happy. Or it could be simple as ease. Not so helpful as a rote exercise. That style requires you to give rise to it from the place in you that really has such a wish.
• 8:46
  May I be at ease. May I be happy. In addition to or instead, may all beings be happy. May all beings be at ease. Taking that stance, You could be in this way of doing it opening your heart to everyone in the room.
• 9:36
  You don't have to be seeing them. The next style of this is to smile subtly. And, feel the subtle vibration of joy or warmth in that smile. And then feel that that spreads out through your body. Cocoon yourself in the bright energy of a smile.
• 10:55
  Undercut the logic of capitalism, happy for no reason. And the final method, and this is not an exhaustive list, we tend to call over around here the seed crystal method. And that simply means, you bring to mind a being with which there is completely uncomplicated affection. And feel, see them in your heart smiling or looking at you. They could be alive or not alive on the physical plane.
• 11:52
  And let your imagination bring forth the real warmth of that being. And let it permeate. You're careful not to think about your relationship with that being. That begins to be a deviation from this practice. Ideally it's really simple.
• 12:38
  So, a sequence of practice this could be three minutes, it could be twenty. Even a few seconds is a connection with the quality. And then you shift with the afterglow of that into your main method that you're keeping some fidelity to. Your means of embodying nowness, awakeness. So we are in the second day of a retreat.
• 13:51
  People like to say, 'Second day is XYZ' or 'Third day is ABC'. What I found is not so simple. Different people have different rhythms. We're in this retreat second day and this is real life. This is real life and we're doing this in the wholeness of the real universe.
• 14:21
  And, we're enacting an alternative. I want you to appreciate, to notice what it is, what's being embodied to live this real life. We're embodying harmony. Notice the relief of not having to have so many opinions. Notice the relief of not having to assert so many preferences.
• 15:09
  Notice the relief of not needing to stick out and be one who is above or below others. Notice the relief of not needing to be attractive or special. In many training centers they have no mirrors or they cover them. That's not really what you look like anyway when you look in the mirror. Notice the feeling of being part of a community of different kinds of people, but with unified intent.
• 16:16
  We're enacting an alternative and embodying simplicity. How many watts a day are essentially pumped into each of us for our need for infotainment in habitual consensus reality? I don't know, somebody might have a number. It's going up with artificial intelligence. Notice the times when the sound of raindrops, or the taste of tea, or the texture of breath is enough.
• 17:07
  Notice how right now this very aliveness is enough. Or if it's not enough, why not? We can notice that in this environment. You can notice how many thoughts are unnecessary to do what it is we're doing. A play by play to sit on a toilet and let go of some feces.
• 17:56
  The mind has to narrate. Okay, now opening the door. Now we're lifting the seat. Notice how many thoughts are just unnecessary. Even more challenging to really take stock of, notice how many thoughts are self referential.
• 18:29
  How many thoughts revolve around, How am I seen? How am I performing? Or, Am I going to get what I want out of this? Notice that life is so much bigger than just this character called myself. For example, the sounds of the forest are woven into your being, choicelessly.
• 19:28
  The light in the room, other people's aspiration or lack of are woven into your being effortlessly. We're embodying commitment in being here. Was having a conversation with, I think this person identifies as a late millennial. And they were saying, us late millennials, we don't like to commit to stuff. Or something like that.
• 20:12
  Joking, How did you figure out how to commit to stuff? I didn't have that many choices. Notice that something in you, quiet as it may be, is nourished by engaging a repetitive discipline. That may be alongside the part of you that's like, this sucks and why are we doing this? Quiet as it may be, notice that something is settled, relieved even that we're facing ourselves.
• 20:59
  That we're getting down to real spiritual work. So we are manifesting an alternative. This is real life, as real as any life can be. And it is a counterpoint to the immature aspects of modern life. And we're doing meditation.
• 21:40
  Now I want to talk about or just reemphasize that distraction and return is just the texture of practice. It's just the way it is. This would be true in any thing in your life worth cultivating. You would get distracted from it and you would need to return. And this is true whatever the method.
• 22:19
  So if we are working, with the breath, we're feeling the flow of the breath down to the very bottom. Resting in that crisp, empty vital space at the bottom. We get snatched away by a thought, or some sensation pulls at us. It can be very very very simple to just drop that when you notice and just return. It could be so quick and so simple, you're returning you almost don't skip a beat.
• 22:59
  It's like sometimes when I'm doing chanting in the morning and I'm sleepy, I forget the chants and I say a weird word. But, I can get right on in the next beat. Or if you're practicing some kind of practice where you're essentially just sustaining quality of presence without a particular object. As soon as you lose that, which you know, you just reestablish it. It's like it gets clouded over, but you're the sun so you just, Oh.
• 23:51
  But you don't need to think about how you got clouded over. It's all just clouds. You don't need to think about the distraction and what it was that distracted you. That's just extra stuff on top. Just.
• 24:06
  Oh. It actually doesn't mean anything when we lose the view, when we lose the breath. I think you might be surprised that even very mature meditators have times where they get distracted. The difference between us and them is I imagine they just come right back very quickly. Perfection.
• 24:41
  Perfection is the enemy of the good. Perfection is the enemy of the good. It's good just to accept that this is what a conditioned mind is like. It can help you with compassion for people in the world. It's just a miracle that there's such a thing as a freeway.
• 25:00
  There aren't collisions every moment. This mind drives? A lethal vehicle at 70 miles an hour? That's some scary shit. You just accept this is what a conditioned mind is like.
• 25:23
  Because when you are no longer kind of displeased with the nature of the work, it becomes a lot easier. It becomes a lot easier. You just do it. Just like you're walking your dog and it starts to go and pee on someone's whatever that shouldn't be peeing on, you just pull the leash. You just pull the leash.
• 25:54
  Eventually it's just okay. Some of you experience frustration that you are not more easily concentrated. And I think that's wonderful. Because when I hear that you're frustrated I think, oh you really value this. You really get that this is not a trifling matter.
• 26:22
  You might even have a real aspiration to become accomplished in meditation. That's fabulous! The next generation needs accomplished people in meditation. Who's going to teach? Who's going to teach your kids?
• 26:38
  Or who's going to teach whatever they're called, Gen, Gen Y? Alpha. Who's going to teach Gen Alpha? I don't want to teach them. You're going to teach Gen Alpha.
• 27:00
  Perhaps, you have a memory of previous deep immersion in the bright clear empty and you are thirsty for that again. Wonderful. I kind of like the challenge. Now, sometimes we're up against real graspy righteousness in ourselves. And those kind of thoughts have a particular stickiness.
• 27:33
  We have some sense of I was slighted or disrespected or I'm not getting my share of the pie and that comes and just, oh, it pulls. And letting go of those, boy that's valuable work and usually not so easy. We're not letting go of our belief that the other person harmed us or cheated us. We're letting go of the delicious but deadly, I'm right. To let go of I'm right.
• 28:12
  Now, that's some real spiritual practice. But that kind of thing aside, to savor the challenge, it's kind of interesting just to consider this a challenge. Oh, how long can I stay with this object of concentration? There's a pleasure in developing a skill. Also, we get distracted, okay.
• 28:47
  But when you're distracted which is basically we're discriminating. We're saying when we're concentrated we're not distracted and when we're caught up in thought that's distraction. That's our basic framework. When you're caught up in waves of engrossing thought, see them. There's a world of difference between seeing them and just being totally absorbed in their narrative.
• 29:14
  See right through thoughts. And to know a thought as a thought. There's different levels at which you could experience a thought as a thought. You can experience it as simply a voice. Simply habitual response.
• 29:41
  In some ways, it's like we're poked in a way we don't like and out comes out, no. What about me? Kind of like one of those dolls you pull a string and it would say some stuff. We're kind of like that sometimes, very conditioned beings. There's that level, there's the level of thoughts are totally transparent.
• 30:07
  They're just energy in the shape of symbols. There's no tangibility or substantiality to them whatsoever. That's an interesting place to be in meditation when you're stable enough to appreciate thoughts as actually just lively energy. It's like a holographic dance. You can really be at ease because you don't have this enemy called thought.
• 30:37
  But that takes some time. So distraction return is the texture of practice. And it's kind of like this, the the as your practice ripens so in the beginning it's like here's here's attention and here's the object, they're not really separate, it seems that way. You keep touching and then parting because of distraction. Touch and part, part, part.
• 31:13
  And then practice matures and it's more like And then as it really settles it's like this. Whether that's breath, space, the koan, it doesn't matter. There are stages that unfold. Now, putting aside stages, I'm going to begin talking about aiming for completeness. In the great Mahayana teachings, so Mahayana is just a word for the northern school of Buddhism that evolved in a particular way as it met particular cultures.
• 32:12
  Zen is Mahayana Mutant. In the great Mahayana teachings, there is something called the three doors of mystic liberation. Three doors of mysterious liberation. And they're translated in various ways but, standard translation is wishlessness, signlessness, and aimlessness. The three doors of liberation, wishlessness, signlessness, aimlessness.
• 33:04
  I'm going to be unpacking and emphasizing aimlessness and wishlessness some. But I want to touch on signlessness briefly. Signlessness. A moment comes and a moment goes. A moment comes and goes.
• 33:24
  That's one thing. Coming and going is what a moment is. It's not before or after. The coming is the going. It's like that.
• 33:35
  Each moment of experience is vivid and totally empty. So right now, zone in on any area of body sensation. And whatever you recognize has already changed. And again, whatever you recognize has already changed. Each moment of experience is vivid and empty.
• 34:13
  There's no such thing as the present moment, it's just pure replacement. Zone in on an area of sensation. It's being replaced by a slightly different sensation. There is no moment that you can put your finger on when we pay attention. This closely.
• 34:50
  Experience is pure replacement, vivid and empty. Empty of what? So from that foundation, signlessness. Again, zone in on any sensory experience. Just choose a domain that's alive for you right now.
• 35:25
  And notice that experience makes no proclamations and comes with no value judgments attached. It's just vibrant shimmer. It's just pulse, flow. So for example, see if you can zone in on one of your legs. What we call leg is sensations of touch and sight.
• 36:06
  These sensations never say, I'm a leg. These sensations never say, I'm a painful leg. Pain doesn't say, I'm pain. It's intense, it's an intense energy. Or notice, the leg has no I'm a right leg or I'm a left leg inherent in it.
• 36:43
  If your mind is silent, you don't know what's left and what's right. So sensations themselves, life before discriminating mind, is just pure. And in a way, because we mind life to death, this is a kind of bliss. We deaden the sheer vividness of experience by boxing it in continually, continually. We don't actually know that we do that.
• 37:41
  So you can apply signlessness. It's really good to apply especially with uncomfortable sensation. Habitual mind goes, oh that's nausea. I don't like nausea. I don't wanna barf.
• 37:59
  But if it's mild enough you might be able to actually just drop into it with no idea and just encounter its nakedness as a play, a dance of sensation. And go for a walk. Yes, you can go outside even if it's raining. Walk in the forest and try to look at things without any idea, any notion of what they are. Try to perceive before mind gets there.
• 38:49
  What is green? So. Then we have aimlessness. Great Mystic Door of Aimlessness. When we believe that what we are doing is going after an experience that will happen in the future, we are in a perpetual condition of rejecting dharma.
• 39:39
  Nothing happens in the future. Future is not a happening place. You know this. You are bound to now. You're made of now.
• 39:54
  You're now's expression. The future is not a happening place. Nothing has ever happened in the future. Can't. Future just means moments will keep arising disappearing.
• 40:18
  You are bound to now. You are now's expression. Again in the Mahayana teachings this was called the reality limit. There's actually something profound about really accepting how bound we are to now. Though that doesn't mean that now is some small tight thing that excludes the past and the future.
• 40:46
  So aimlessness, when we aim for a particular experience, we are ever so slightly tilted away from dharma. Because dharma is not a particular experience. If dharma was a particular experience, it would be samsaric like everything else. We would have the experience and it would pass. And then we'd want it again or be disappointed in it.
• 41:18
  Or organize our life around keeping it from changing. All the samsaric things that we can't help but do as human beings. When we aim for a particular experience, we are tilting out of the fact that we are bound as nowness. So aimlessness is really a profound spiritual training because most of us like to have interesting experiences. Of course you do.
• 41:55
  You want to taste life. That's why we have all these weird organs on our face. Eyeballs are weird. They like to see things though. And tongues are weird but they like to taste things.
• 42:11
  Ears are kind of weird. They love to hear things. Our head is covered in these organs of wanting to taste life. Of course. Of course.
• 42:26
  Good. I like tasting life. But in aimlessness we become available to what we haven't tasted not by reaching after it. We're practicing faith mind. What comes towards us when we cease reaching out to get?
• 43:09
  Now, some people thrive in the drama of striving and hard trying. And there are venerable styles of practice where the striving and hard trying passionate mind is in that passion, the mind is purified some and eventually the experience seeking mind is exhausted. We're not practicing that style here. So very similar to aimlessness is wishlessness. Recalling that these are called the mystic or mysterious doors of liberation.
• 43:57
  Now just think about that for a minute. There are inconceivable spiritual principles in the cosmos. There are principles that why and how and when have no power with. Wishlessness. You can verify for yourself that when you deeply let go of wanting, in meditation, when you bring yielding to fullness, things mysteriously open up.
• 44:50
  A lot of the experiences that afflict people from them trying to get back to them happened in that way actually. They had deeply yielded to what is. Something had room to reveal itself and then they wish for it. And then it's blocked. So I want to suggest that in tandem with whatever method you're practicing, this isn't like an extra technique on top.
• 45:27
  You really work with deep and thorough yielding. Relaxing so fully as the moment that you are that past and future fade. Relax yourself right out of the shackles of linear time. You let go of wanting there to be any other moment, even a bit. To relax and release the energy of wanting.
• 46:27
  You're relaxing the energy of wanting or wanting a different experience to come or wanting a current experience to change. This is crucial. Release the energy of wanting a different experience to come or wanting a current experience to change. And this has, we could say mental and energetical levels. So on the mental level, can recognize wishing and wanting as sort of the subconscious mantra in our mind of I need, I need, I need, I need, I need.
• 47:10
  Or there needs to be, there needs to be, there needs to be, there needs to be. Or for some people it's if only, if only, if only. When that happens, then. When that happens, then. And then we have the energetic level.
• 47:40
  So what I'm talking about, I'm not making this stuff up. Buddha taught about the impulse to becoming is what Buddha called it. The thirst to exist in some form in the future. And basically, that thirst is tied up with our wanting to control what we will be experiencing in the future. Buddha taught that this impulse, this wanting is the very root of all birth and death, all suffering.
• 48:37
  Something in us is definitely deadened By always being in I need, I need, I need. If only, if only, if only. Get, get, get. So, some people will be able to feel the energy of wanting directly in themselves. You can recognize it.
• 49:13
  I'm using this word energy for something that is non material. And you recognize it and you can learn to surrender it, to let it go. To be like a hollow tube that everything just flows through. Nothing is captured. Or maybe you don't feel that energy of wanting directly but you release the thirst of wanting indirectly through total yielding to the moment that you are.
• 50:01
  I promise you, when you really fully totally yield you will experience timelessness. Because time is made of wanting. This means that we face our fear of experience. Our fear of experience not being juicy enough or being too juicy. Our fear of our own heartaches.
• 50:38
  Our fear of space. Our fear of just being a body that's being breathed with a heart that's being beat. This means we face the fear that has us always trying to control stuff. This deep mistrust of life that's always trying to Contrive control. Adjust.
• 51:15
  Adjusting is a way that this sneaks in. So, we're building and strengthening the capacity for direct experience. We're undoing the reflexive fear of experience. There are things I have the ability to be with and just let wash through me that before training I just had to run away from them. I just had to collapse or dissociate.
• 51:56
  And mostly that was because I went, Oh, a monster in me, anxiety. Rather than, What is this? What is it like to soften and just let this, let this dance through my body? Or even deeper. So aiming for moments of completeness means you have in mind that your aim is aimlessly fully yielding to the moment that you are.
• 52:53
  And so continuing, continuing, continuing with this short retreat. Please remember that your heart mind interpermeates with this world. Your heart mind interpermeates with this world. This isn't even, you know, something esoteric. You are inescapably an influential node in all the circles you move in.
• 53:27
  And many of us are here because we met someone whose state of being touched us, who struck us, who resonated something in us. And as you clarify yourself through these practices, you will be such a person for others. Able to uplift, able to give hope, able to demonstrate sanity. You might be surprised. And those you uplift, give hope, demonstrate sanity to, then they may be able to do that for others.
• 54:25
  It's just a fantasy that we exist in isolation. Individuality is just an aperture, not a whole truth. Please appreciate your heart mind interpermeates with this world. This matters. So please continue with great sincerity.
• 54:51
  Thank you.
• 55:01
  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.