Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / Not Personal, Permanent, or Perfect: The Three Dharma Seals- Zen Teacher Jomon

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Not Personal, Permanent, or Perfect: The Three Dharma Seals- Zen Teacher Jomon · 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. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for being here.
• 0:20
  Hello to everybody on Zoom, and let's take refuge together if you'd like. I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha. How's my microphone placement maybe a little lower, Ian?
• 0:39
  Okay. Thank you. Okay. So I just wanna talk tonight about the three Dharma Seals and the five Remembrances. Buddhism is so good about lists.
• 1:16
  So we'll get to hear a couple of lists. And then the amazing thing about this, you know, teaching is that we all have this direct experience of these foundational aspects of Buddhist teaching. So my hope is that you'll also share your own observations. And a lot of our practice is to really bring an open mind to the teachings, what we call Dharma, and really see for ourself, is this true? That's what makes it alive.
• 2:15
  So the three Dharma seals are suffering or stress or discontent, however you want to say that. No self, which is a little sometimes difficult to quite really connect with maybe. We sometimes call it interbeing. That's a little more, I think, accessible. Interbeing and impermanence.
• 2:54
  So dukkha, anatta and anicca, suffering, interbeing and impermanence. And we could add nirvana, awakening as well. Maybe it's in some ways the four seals. The best way that I have heard to describe these is by a dharma teacher named Ruth King. And her interpretation of these three seals is life is not personal, permanent, or perfect.
• 3:38
  So it's in a slightly different order. So life is not personal is that no self, it's the inner being. It's all just happening. We're all just part of a giant process. It's not personal.
• 3:54
  It's not permanent. That's pretty obvious impermanence or perfect. That it's there's gonna be this tension. There's gonna be dissatisfaction. It's just what it is.
• 4:10
  Because it's impermanent, because we're not we can't we can't get our ducks in a row because they are in a flowing state of inner being. Just like everything. And then the five remembrances, another very powerful teaching. And so, the invitation is to just see for yourself if these five things are true. I am of the nature to grow old.
• 4:49
  There is no way to escape growing old. I'm of the nature to have ill health. There's no way to escape having ill health. I'm of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
• 5:03
  All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature of change. There's no way to escape being separated from them. My deeds are my closest companions. I am the beneficiary of my deeds. My deeds are the ground on which I stand.
• 5:28
  Sometimes when I've shared the five remembrances with people, especially people who are experiencing the dukkha, the discomfort or pain, the pain of impermanence, the pain of trying to hold onto distinct self or a distinct something. To share the five remembrances sometimes provides people with some deep relief. Did anyone have that feeling in hearing it or is it just it's also a little bit scary? Yeah. Yeah.
• 6:06
  But in a way, I find it I find there's some comfort in it in the way that someone who's telling you the truth, in a way that can feel. It may be hard to hear, but it's true. So there is suffering, there is discomfort, there is difficulty, and it's caused. These are the noble truths. We could also call the there's another list, the four noble truths.
• 6:40
  We could also call them the four observations that yes, there is difficulty. Yes, there is sufferings. Things are difficult sometimes. Suffering difficulty, it has a cause. And that cause is grasping an aversion.
• 7:00
  That cause is wanting things to be different than they are. What would you like to be different than it is? You might have a list of your own. I don't want there to be climate change or intensifying fires or dying fir trees or melting ice caps or violence or racism or I don't I don't want there to be conspiracy theories or water wars or any kind of wars. I don't want this to be the case.
• 7:39
  And yet here we are. Life is not perfect, which is a total understatement, isn't it? The word dukkha means like a crooked wheel axle, or it just doesn't go the way we think it should. And, I often think of that, you know, it's just kind of a mundane metaphor. It's not like, Ugh, suffering great you know, it's just like like at the grocery store when you get that cart.
• 8:23
  Duca. It just doesn't go the way we think it should. And then I can really just in that way, my own expectations are revealed. So we just live with it. What do we do?
• 8:45
  It's not to say there's nothing we can do, and especially with the things that arise that evoke the heart of compassion when we see and witness suffering in the world or in ourselves, of course we can find ways and do take action on behalf of those who might be hit the hardest or on behalf of our burning world. We can still do that even if we are accepting this imperfection that life is not perfect to whatever extent we can. That life is not perfect, will never be perfect. And can we see somehow the beauty within that? In spite of that, or because of that.
• 9:47
  Perhaps we might be moved by that, Moved to act. Moved like the Buddha to try to understand and thereby alleviate suffering. Life is not perfect. Also not personal. That the world is subject to the laws of nature, the laws of cause and effect.
• 10:18
  It's so helpful to go out in nature and be surrounded and reminded of that. But even in a room like this, we can see the nature of this incense smoke and just the kind of impossible complexity of the pattern of how it's being released into the air. And that everything is changing here. Everything is moving. It may not be detectable, but it is.
• 10:59
  That's not personal, these laws of cause and effect. We might characterize nature and the natural world as good and human interference as bad. This of natural law, cause and effect law, is really just larger than its humans or its non humans. It's just whatever happens has consequences and that's just the natural way of things. This is just how it is.
• 11:45
  The laws of nature themselves do not have an opinion about this. The earth itself patiently accepts and generously gives. It just is. It just follows lawfully. Simply true.
• 11:59
  When certain causes and conditions fall together then phenomena arise. It just the right conditions create the next phenomenon. That's like the law of gravity. Sometimes people say, I hate change. And it's like, well, you might as well say, I hate gravity.
• 12:23
  Nobody says I hate gravity. Not really. It's not personal. That law is not personal. We don't take it personally.
• 12:32
  Maybe some of us do. Maybe little kids who put the cape on might take it personally that there's still gravity. But it's not personal. We have inherited the phenomena, the causes and conditions, the actions, the words, the thoughts of all beings throughout space and time in this very moment. It all has led up to this.
• 13:04
  It couldn't be any different than this. We have inherited just the immensity of this. So much bigger than just this being, than me, than I, me, mine. And it is constantly moving. Whatever we can say about it, it's like putting your feet into the river, it's not the same river.
• 13:38
  You can't say this river each time. It's not the same. That river is only an idea. Life is not personal. Life is not permanent.
• 13:57
  And we might know that's true, but it makes us want to grasp, doesn't it? It makes us want to hold on. It makes us want to find some solid ground to find safety. The expectations we grasp onto, that's the set up. The expectation, I will get to live a certain number of years.
• 14:22
  I found a really wonderful haiku about that. I don't know if I'll be able to find it for you right now. Maybe oh, here it is. An author named Hanabusa Ike, who died in 1843 wrote, I thought to live two centuries or three, yet here comes death to me, a child just 85 years old. So our suffering reveals this argument with life, this disagreement with the way everything is, with the laws of nature.
• 15:23
  So so when we notice that, it's something to pay attention to. It's something to take note of. We can explore. We can examine. What's that all about?
• 15:42
  Dharma teacher Diane Rossetto from her book Deep Hope says, We are comfortable and feel safe when we think we know what the future holds, when we are certain we have some control over events. And yet, as the great teachings remind us, it is exactly this clinging to our personal view of what is real and true, what is good or bad that causes us to suffer. Clinging causes suffering because it closes us off from the potential of not knowing, the potential of life itself. In Zen teaching, we call this don't know mind. Don't know mind.
• 16:25
  It is the mind that steps out of the limited self centered view of life into an all expansive view of life's full potential. It doesn't mean don't act. It means act wisely. It means just examine our assumptions when they arise, when we encounter them, when we encounter the friction of disagreeing. Can there be a different perspective about this?
• 16:53
  Probably. So I'm curious about the five remembrances and how they might apply. They're they're really to me it seems like an expression of the three seals that it's it's it sort of flows out of that. It's not personal. It's not permanent.
• 17:20
  Here here is what it is to be alive as a human being. And given that, how do we want to be? Given that, we're going to grow old. I like to, I heard it said once and I've really taken this up that I am an old person in training. I like that.
• 17:45
  I'm an old person in training. Or a person in their fifties, I'm in the freshman class of old people. So I'm I'm I'm working on the just taking it up, taking it on. Yeah. I like to listen to people who are older than me.
• 18:08
  The thing they say that really hits me that I really just like to make sure that I hear every time. And I'm sure you've heard this too because people who have experienced this, who have been able to grow old mostly say, it happens so fast. I can't believe I'm whatever year old that I am. I can't believe it. In my mind, feel like I'm 30 or 40.
• 18:37
  This is how it happens. It's fast. I believe it. I believe it. And yet, there's part of me that doesn't believe it.
• 18:44
  Like, you know, Instagram a little bit, you know. Is that what I want to do? Or I'm of the nature to have ill health. I'm of the nature to die. It's like we do live in this bubble of denial, a lot of us.
• 19:09
  Some of us maybe have encountered these things earlier or in more visceral way. So some of us don't quite have so much denial about these things. A lot of us do. We live in a bubble of denial of I write my schedule. Most of me believes these things are going to happen, which is pretty laughable.
• 19:33
  I don't know. I don't know if I'm gonna make it home. Right? And so given that, boy, doesn't that just sweeten the deal. Right?
• 19:45
  If this was our last time together, it's also look how beautiful everybody is. It's just great. Wow. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. So yeah, we don't know when either.
• 20:17
  And my deeds are my closest companions. I'm the beneficiary of my deeds. My deeds are the ground on which I stand. This leads right into our a whole precepts study we could we could do about the the Buddhist precepts and the the guidelines for ethical behavior. One of my friends who's a Zen teacher in Portland says about following the precepts, it's not so much like 10 commandments and you should and shouldn't or you're a bad person.
• 20:51
  He's like, if I don't follow these things, I suffer. And other people do too. That's all. I found that to be true. So Jocoback in her book, Nothing Special, writes this, We are rather like whirlpools in the river of life.
• 21:23
  In flowing forward, a river or stream may hit rocks, branches, or irregularities in the ground causing whirlpools to spring up spontaneously here and there. Water entering one whirlpool quickly passes through and rejoins the river, eventually joining another whirlpool and moving on. Though for short periods, it seems to be distinguishable as a separate event. The water in the whirlpools is just the river itself. The stability of a whirlpool is only temporary.
• 21:55
  The energy of the river of life forms living things, a human being, a cat or a dog, trees and plants. Then what held the whirlpool in place itself is altered and the whirlpool is swept away reentering the larger flow. The energy that was a particular whirlpool fades out and the water passes on perhaps to be caught again and turned for a moment into another whirlpool. What is this? What is this?
• 22:27
  This. Who are we really? The river, not the whirlpool. So, I wanna share a little bit too from I wanna hear from you all about your experience. Are these teachings true?
• 23:17
  And is the practice, the practice of settling the mind, the practice of just showing up, the practice of being of service or just absorbing the peace of this practice. What is this practice in terms of expressing our life and relying on our deeds in this way as the ground on which we stand, as we're being the beneficiary of our deeds? So Zen Jew, Earthling Manuel, in the book, The Shamanic Bones of Zen, says, the Buddha set out to face the issues of life that concerned him. His quest led to a deep seeing and knowing about suffering. After fasting for days if not months dwindling down to the bone, it was clear that the impermanence of life could be a dilemma of birth or a reckoning with death.
• 24:24
  He came to realize that he didn't exist without his family and those of the Shakya tribe. He understood clearly, as is apparent in his teachings, that we possess nothing, not even our lives. In living, we make a mark in the world and from that action a certain consequence will occur sometime in the future, perhaps a future we will not live to see. So what is that mark that we're making? Is it informed by, are we aligned with the truth of life just as it is?
• 25:12
  And in aligning with that, what is it like? What is our life, what kind of mark is our life leaving? So just being able to live and apply the teachings is a gift. So I hope you can find the teachings applicable in your life. I'm curious if that is true for anyone here or not.
• 25:37
  The Buddha did not say believe what I say and don't think about it. He said try it for yourself. So what do you know about old age sickness and death? What is your experience of impermanence, imperfection, the impersonal nature of life? The floor is open.
• 26:09
  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.