Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / Motivation and the Dharma - Jogen Salzeberg, Sensei

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Motivation and the Dharma - 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.
• 0:23
  Jogen: Well, good evening, everybody. Thank you for being here. It is so nice to be back after being away, holiday break. And then last week, I was up at the monastery teaching a retreat that was for young folks, which is 35 and under in this category. And we had a great retreat.
• 0:49
  Some people in this room were there. And I touched on this excuse me. I touched on this somewhat in the retreat. But today the theme of my talk is going to be motivation for practice. People struggle with it, and that's one of the things you hear a lot as a dharma teacher is, This really means so much to me.
• 1:16
  I see the value of this. I have a really hard time doing it. And, you know, that's interesting because this is such a disturbing world. It's such a disturbing world, and it may get more disturbing. And isn't inner stability, isn't a spiritual root quite desirable in such a disturbing world?
• 1:49
  Or we could look at it from the other side. Human beings have very disturbable, porous, and sensitive minds. Right? They're just we're so easily touched. We're not separate from the environment.
• 2:05
  We're not closed systems. Isn't there a hunger to have some deeper refuge in the midst of all that? Wouldn't that, couldn't that? I marvel at, why is that not, more motivating? We all live, with knowing on different levels that our loved ones will die and probably get ill.
• 2:33
  The odds are high. We're gonna be one of those loved ones. Does that help us, want to know something about the universe and being alive that can bring some refuge or solace? So now all of you here have some degree of strong motivation because, you gave up your Wednesday night. And I know many of you have given up hundreds of Wednesday nights, and some of you have given up years of your life.
• 3:10
  So, there is a lot of motivation, in this room, in the practice, but I want to explore this, a little bit with you. Where does a strong motivation for practice arise from? And maybe it's a total mystery. Perhaps it's like passion for truth or deep levels of freedom in the spiritual sense choose you or you or some people to enter their life and animate them. Actually, Dogen Zenji, an important teacher in our lineage, said something like that.
• 3:55
  He said, It would seem that suffering would motivate people to practice dharma, but actually it's not so. The dharma motivates people to practice dharma. And he actually said the bodhi mind just awakens in people. Sometimes motivation is catalyzed by meeting a teacher or a mature practitioner. So when I was, a teenager, my feeling then is I hadn't met an adult yet.
• 4:27
  I was 19 and everybody I met was sort of adolescent even if they were 40. That was my judgmental teenage mind. But then I had this professor at school who was really kind and really present, and I thought that was kind of odd and weird. And why did he live in Las Vegas? And then, I was in the parking lot of the school, and he had this Buddhist bumper sticker, and I was like, what is that all about?
• 4:57
  Perhaps motivation to practice is the culmination of past lives. Right? If you think about that just physically, sometimes somebody lives five, six decades and finally they're like, okay, there's got to be more to life than what I've tasted, and I can see my last decades in sight. Or I'm just tired of being buffeted around by the changes of life. There's got to be some way to have a quality of inner stability.
• 5:34
  But from where comes the force that you would decide to put away thirty minutes of sleep in the morning and get up a little earlier and do a practice? Where is that coming from? Or when it's, not there, where did it go? What is the cause of its, departing? Or, put aside, you know, it's not well rounded to conceive of real engagement with practice of how much meditation do you do.
• 6:16
  Let's kind of tally the minutes that you put on a cushion. That's not that's not a mature way of thinking about it. How about this? From where in the moment when you're on the lip of doing something unskillful with your mouth or your body or your money or whatever, when you're on the lip of doing something that could be regrettable, from where comes the will in you to interrupt that? From where comes the, okay, I'm gonna let this go and not, like, give so and so a piece of my mind right now?
• 6:53
  Some kind of wisdom said, Hold on a sec, right, to apply the practice in the moment. Now, one thing that may be true, and I don't think there's like one answer to this question. It's really, I'm just trying to spark reflection in you. It can come from a gradual proving to oneself the benefits. Okay?
• 7:22
  You do enough steady practice that you have a feedback loop of effort, reward, and because we are reward driven creatures, motivation. So part of the mystery of why we're not motivated sometimes is, often the people who say I'm not motivated to practice, they're currently not doing it. You're currently not doing it. You, if you're anything like me, have a very short term memory, and so you kind of forget the benefits of it, or you acclimate to coping with life with your other strategies. You acclimate to the disturbances of the world, finding some way to manage those, in a lot of ways with, band aids.
• 8:16
  Often we Band Aid the disturbance of life rather than receive it with, inner stability. So that's one of the first theories is motivation comes from doing the practice because if you, as I was talking about earlier, if you practice well, you know what you're doing, you know how to do it, it will bring benefit. It's really unlikely that if you actually have the time and you do a session of practice with some clarity in how it's to be done, that you'll get up and go, well, that was a waste of forty minutes. Should have just been on TikTok. And I have never, in my, couple of decades now of doing retreat this is kind of an important statistic to me.
• 9:09
  So almost thirty years of doing retreat, no one has ever come up and said, I just wasted six days. I haven't heard that a single time. So and then deeper motivation to give oneself more fully, whatever that means for any individual, would just then be organic. Or not. Who says that someone is supposed to take their practice in a certain direction with a certain intensity?
• 9:42
  It's, it's our business if it's our business, but otherwise, who knows what's, what level of engagement is supposed to happen. But sometimes just doing it will draw you deeper over time. And there are, deeper levels of motivation, for lack of a better term. More, in a way, they're more disruptive levels of motivation. Where does the motivation come forward when somebody makes significant changes to their life to fit dharma?
• 10:25
  To make dharma central rather than for dharma to be something you squeeze into the life you already live. People, who make sacrifices. I was thinking of all of the boomers who traveled to India, Despite what you think about boomers and the privilege of boomers, there are a lot of lots of boomers who the reason we have the dharma is because to some deep degree, they let go of that privilege and they went to this very uncomfortable country where they pretty much didn't speak the language because they had a hunger in their heart for dharma. And some of them had a hunger for dharma and a hunger to bring it back to us. Right?
• 11:10
  And I know some of those people personally who, gave up savings, gave up decent retirement. They're now having the consequences of not having some super cushy retirement because they chose their love of spirit over in the future, I'm gonna be cozy and just okay. And they actually don't have any regrets. Or some of you who, instead of going to the beach, you go to the monastery. That's amazing.
• 11:52
  Some of you who have two weeks of vacation a year and you spend ten days of it doing this practice, that is really touching. Dogan's, comment aside, traditionally, motivation was said to be a particular intersection of things in somebody. So it was supposed to be an intersection of wisdom, whether that's like natural inborn wisdom, what we might call like street smarts, or what's it called when someone just has wisdom from looking at life? What's that? Common sense.
• 12:27
  Common sense. They have it's a confluence of wisdom, deep self respect, and suffering. Right? So the wisdom is you're actually you have the capacity to look sober at life, which, is not, if you're in this room, you must, but that's not necessarily the case. For some human beings to really consider, things like impermanence, death, their own cycles of chasing pleasure, that is really kind of, off the table, at least for now.
• 13:05
  And maybe that's not true. Maybe that's, an outsider's thing, and maybe they do consider it, but they don't act on it. I don't know. So wisdom to really look at what life is. For example, like I was saying, everyone we know is gonna die, and most of them are gonna get sick and have a lot of pain at some point in their life.
• 13:28
  Okay? You have that. You have deep self respect that says, if there really is a way to make this disturbing journey smoother, more peaceful, if there really is a way for this disturbing journey of life to also have meaning at the same time, I'm not going to pass that up. So this this respect for one, in a way, it's often one's future self, this sobriety and this, love. They they they come together, and then one practices the dharma, which doesn't necessarily mean Buddhism.
• 14:12
  There are lots of dharmas, but in this case, we're in a Buddhist temple. So hard knocks. If you meet someone who practices fervently, often they've had some really hard knocks in life. Something has touched them to the core. Right?
• 14:37
  Or they live with some kind of inner, inner wound or inner goad that if they don't practice, they just feel a lot of pain. I had a teacher who would say, The only reason I have practiced so assiduously all these years is because I have so much inner pain. And when I stop, that inner pain goes from a five to a 10 or whatever. Now, this is not the only way to be motivated. There are people who are motivated by mystical curiosity, by joy, by pleasure.
• 15:20
  That has a place too, of course. So hard knocks. And really just being in tune with how hard existing is, is said to be one of the, core things of motivation. Right? And then they invite us to see that this is a feature of this place, that every single person is in the midst of their own journey of intermissions between hard knocks.
• 15:58
  Does that sound pessimistic? Interesting. For some people, it really is like, oh, there's that pessimistic Buddhist thing again. And so it's worth reflecting on. Now, even in days when there weren't amazing things like microwaves and central heating and antibiotics, people were like, Dharma?
• 16:32
  I'd rather just drink tea. Okay. Motivation is not a modern problem. Yeah. If you, read, traditional accounts of teachers, they'll sometimes say things like, oh, of these 2,000 monks, only three of them are really practitioners.
• 16:52
  The rest of them just sit around and gossip and drink butter tea or whatever. So, there are different, devices that are said to help one really reflect deeply on life, and if there is a motivation in you that is locked up or is bottled, to unbottle it. It's not so much like fire and brimstone, like, well, let's scare these people into meditating. If you don't meditate, you're gonna be unhappy next week. Or whatever the equivalent, Buddhist equivalent would be.
• 17:31
  If you don't meditate, you'll be reborn as a beetle. You might find some kind of things in the teachings. It's more that it might be that there is a more powerful motivation in you, and you just have to remove some things to take the cork off of it, and it could start flowing. And it has been a while since I talked about the four thoughts that turn the mind, so I thought I would offer you that. This teaching is not going to be potent for most people if you just sort of hear it once and go, It's intended to be something that you really take time and think about.
• 18:23
  And so in some, sanghas, part of the training would be, and we might maybe we should do this. That could be an interesting experiment. You would, chant something like this before you sit, and then you'd have some time and silence where you really thought about it. This is the kind of thing where contemplation is how it goes deep. Interestingly, I had a teacher who said, if you really contemplated and understood the import of the four thoughts, you would immediately renounce everything and practice dharma full time.
• 18:55
  Now that's something for you to, see if you feel like that's true. Okay. So now these are, me trying to word them in a way that I think is, accessible, to us, you might, if you're curious, do a little bit of Google research and you can find a dozen easily translations of these and probably 500 dharma talks on the four thoughts that turn the mind. In the Tibetan tradition, these are considered the preliminaries to the preliminaries. Some teachers won't even give you the first practice unless you've spent a lot of time with these because otherwise they say, well, you don't really you haven't really thought about life carefully enough.
• 19:46
  So, number one is, suffering. Now, traditionally, this is focusing on the objective world. And what it's about is, just pay attention now. Everything, is kind of disappointing at some level. Okay?
• 20:06
  I think, this, is a little bit more motivating. Here's my way of saying it. Suffering. I am currently a suffering style of being. I am currently a suffering style of being.
• 20:19
  When circumstances become difficult or displeasing, and they will, my mind easily turns to restlessness, blame, aggression, complaint, or despair, and that sucks. I need to undo this through the practice of dharma. So it's a recognition that one's mind is easily put into states of agitation. Like, one is not yet at a place where life can have its fluctuations and there's just, steadiness. There's just, oh yeah, this is just part of life that things feel this way.
• 21:01
  This is just part of life that, people disrespect me sometimes. This is just part of life that, things I depended on go away. This reflection is not saying you, because you feel things, you are not spiritual, and then therefore do the dharma so you can stop feeling things. It's not saying that at all. It's pointing at, Do we have an inner source of resilience?
• 21:33
  What is the basis of our resilience? Is there one? Because difficulties are going to come our way. This political situation we have right now with these maniacs could get worse. Do we have an inner resilience?
• 21:57
  Wonderful, all the external things we might do to mitigate that, but is there stillness to some degree inside? Is there perspective to some degree inside? That's what this is an invitation to contemplate. The number two, which is related, is impermanence. And this is somewhat of the traditional view.
• 22:21
  Not a single thing in the world of appearance lasts. Not a single thing in the world of appearance lasts. Everything is in the process of change without exception. Therefore, I shouldn't cling to any person, thing, or institution as my primary source of reliable contentment. I need to align with my true nature to have a stable internal basis of contentment and joy.
• 22:54
  Even if we're, blessed, like I I I know some of you to know, you do have these kind of blessings with really good friendships, with really meaningful work, with current health. Even that will have its fluctuations. People move. People change. Affinities become disaffinities.
• 23:20
  We outgrow each other sometimes. Right? Even a very beneficial and supportive institution has funding problems. Sometimes they don't meet your needs. Sometimes they just break and bottom out because of forces beyond their control.
• 23:42
  Even our own, passions, there is no guarantee that those things that we love right now will still give us juice ten years from now, twenty years from now, thirty years from now. Sometimes they just kind of leave. Wonderful if something does like see you through your decades. Right? So again, this is not like an indictment of loving life.
• 24:08
  Like, hey, don't love life. This is, is there something in you that is stable as things fluctuate? Because it's a fact. Everything will change. Everything will change.
• 24:25
  Okay. Then the, third one that one reflects on is karma. And karma basically means this, that the things I do with my speech, my body, and my mind have real effects, and they shape my future. They shape my mind that meets the future. The things I do with my body, speech, and mind shape how I experience my past.
• 24:58
  It changes the meaning of the past. I am with my current state of mind remeaning what the past was by how I deal with its echoes, and I am seeding all the time. Right? And kind of trends. I am creating trends of things that are going to arise in the future.
• 25:22
  Speaking of impermanence, the kind of friendships that I'm likely to have ten, twenty years from now has a lot to do with what I do now. The kind of health has a lot to do with what I do now. The kind of, spiritual practice. The depth of my mind has a lot to do with my body, speech, mind now. I'm I'm shaping I'm shaping the trends.
• 25:50
  The emphasis on karma in Buddhism is not, Oh, you got the flu? Probably that was because you cut somebody off in traffic on I-five. Karma. It's to not believe that we are not continually making causes for the future. It's basically saying, Don't believe that even your own mind is a zone of, causeless, I can think whatever I want.
• 26:25
  No. This is a zone of impacting the future. Right? And even more so speech and actions of body. They're all, interdependent.
• 26:38
  So the last line in the karma reflection says, I shouldn't avoid taking responsibility for my actions. Otherwise, I fool and betray myself. In a way, ignoring karma is, you see you concede resentment in the future for who you used to be because you get to that moment, and if you're honest, you're like, oh, yeah. I got myself here. I got myself here by neglecting such and such or by doing such and such.
• 27:09
  Or you seed, joy for the future because you believe in cause and effect. You believe in, karma, which is sort of it's not, esoteric. No. It's really not esoteric. And then the fourth, as you can see, these have, related themes, is death, at least in my list here.
• 27:35
  And for death, it says, I don't get to be this person for all that long. I don't get to be this person for all that long. This character called myself comes to an end, and I don't know how soon that will be. Feeling this truth in myself, what is meaningful and what is a distraction? Now, the the emphasis on, this character called myself coming to an end is sort of, inviting us to look closely at how much energy is going into status, image, and getting others approval.
• 28:15
  Like, when are we gonna really give less shits about that? How long is that gonna take? Separate that from wanting to be a person of integrity. Yes. But but how much do we do based on the sense that this, character of me is this, is the main character in the drama of life.
• 28:45
  It's a kind of paradox, right, because you have to really take care of yourself. In a way, all the previous three reflections are saying, really take care of yourself. But to take care of yourself with a fixation that forgets that, this this ride called Jogun comes to an end. You know, my dad died at 35. I've outlived him by twelve years.
• 29:09
  This ride called, Jogun comes to an end. And if I really am willing to spend time with that and not go, oh, no. Fifty years is so long, you know, thinking I might have fifty years. If I'm if I'm willing to actually contemplate that, it's not really morbid. I have these Mexican, I think they're called, colored skulls in my practice room.
• 29:37
  Right? Because for me, reflecting on death is a great source of joy. Because I reflect on death, I mostly do the things I think are meaningful. I still have habit energies and then things where I go, why did I why did I just spend that why did I watch that movie? Usually, it's a movie.
• 30:00
  Usually, it's a movie that ambushes me with, like, gratuitous violence or a dumb plot. And I'm like, why did we just spend three hours? I don't get to be this person for all that long. This character called myself comes to an end, and I don't know how soon that will be. And if we really do that in ourselves, then we start to look at our loved ones, and that becomes more, than conceptually apparent for us, for them.
• 30:32
  Right? Feeling this truth in myself, what is meaningful? What is a distraction? So, some of you might want to take this on as an experiment, finding a version of the four thoughts that is resonant with you and, reciting it on a daily basis and reciting it and letting yourself think about it. And you even let yourself argue with it.
• 30:57
  Argue with the dharma all you want. Be like, that's that's so whatever. Things aren't impermanent. Everything comes back. It's kind of true also.
• 31:08
  Right? Death isn't real. What about rebirth? Or what about my true nature? Argue with it.
• 31:13
  But be in in relationship with it is as alchemical, as one of my teachers says. So motivation. It can come from deep reflection. It can come from just continuing to practice. It can come mysteriously.
• 31:34
  And may it come or may whatever motivation is really in your heart, may it be unbottled, right, so that you can see what happens when you don't tamp that down. Some of you might have a more fervent or devoted practitioner in you than you actually know, and that will have good results.
• 32:06
  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.