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Before The Tightening - Hogen, Roshi · 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
  Hogen: Welcome to Rahatu 2025. None of us have been here before. And if you think you have, the only possible evidence you have are a few thought memories. It's new. And when we don't cling to our thought memories, they're already gone.
• 0:51
  And when we really see they're already gone, then no thought, no past, only a fleeting experience what we call now. And then that too is gone. So all that we perceive is ephemeral. Whether it appears inside, outside, there is no in between. Just a memory of a dream.
• 1:30
  So when we are speaking, we're all trying to speak from experience, observation, not from philosophy, not from ideas. It's like if we have never tasted the sourness of a mango, then anything that someone says who is very familiar with a mango becomes a conceptual idea in our mind, An idea of what tasting a mango is like. But it's not the fruit. It's not the flavor. It's not the experience.
• 2:11
  So when we are talking here, we'll be talking to many different kinds of people, many different types of understanding. So if something doesn't resonate with you or you feel, oh, that's that doesn't click, it's okay. That is that's the maybe the part that's not meant for you. The secret teachings are secret because we can't we can't recognize them. But if we've had just a taste of mango, just a little flavor, then we can actually appreciate a conversation about them.
• 3:09
  Now the virtue of hearing about states, observations, and things which we have not experienced is perhaps it will inspire, encourage us to know them for ourselves. So if we've heard about mangoes and the the wonderful flavor of mangoes, the unique taste and sourness of a mango, even though we've not tasted it, the aspiration to find out what it's about can be true. So in a way the dharma is like this. We have three teachers who have over a hundred and fifty years of combined experience, probably more than a thousand weeks of Sushin, and have experience with careers and relationships and families and troubles, And we spend time writing talks not not to try to figure out what to say, but to figure out the the because the heart of the content always comes from experience. But to try to think how to say, how to talk about the dharma, how to talk about the mango in a way that will be encouraging and inspiring.
• 4:34
  And that takes some time, takes some care. And so we want as teachers to inspire ourselves and others. My first advice to anybody who starts teaching is listen to what comes out of your mouth and pay attention to it. To inspire ourselves and others to help us all realize what has not yet been realized, what is possible. And if you've had a taste of the fruits of dharma, then we want to nudge you, poke you, charge you, pat you, entice you, offer encouragement, whatever it takes to encourage, to to support you in finding greater liberation in the capacity to open the heart and to function fully.
• 5:44
  True faith is based on direct experience. It's not based on philosophy. So we come to Sushin and we are all practicing diligently and assiduously. We're practicing and anything that we learn, anything we have tasted for ourselves becomes the ground, the seed for true faith in practice. No faith, no practice.
• 6:25
  Now all dharma teachings are not the same and they're not meant for the same purpose, they're not addressed the same assembly, and they all have have their place. And the more we appreciate dharma, the more wonderful it is to see the variety of Upayas, the variety of skillful means that the great masters have have offered. But the teachers agreed in this particular session, the Rohatsu session, the session that we celebrate the Buddha's awakening in, That we would like to have teachings that point right to the truth that the Affirming Faith and Mind chant is talking about. For those of you who are local, you know that we've had for the last few months an ongoing period of intensive practice and we've been chanting that sutra over and over again, and we chant it every day at lunch here. So that's the the and the aim of this is pretty no tomorrow, no yesterday, no today.
• 7:48
  The ordinary mind can't get a hold of this. So the the teachings that we are trying to hold out, proper, is the teachings that can hopefully inspire us to take one more step. Now, Fuho started off with the apex of the Buddhist teaching. And he had the Koan from the Book of Equanimity, the first case. Attention.
• 8:33
  One day the World Honored One, who's he talking about, ascended the platform and took a seat. Manjushri, who's he talking about, struck the sounding post and said, when you realize the dharma king's dharma, the dharma king's dharma is just as it is. And in fact, the World Honored One descended from the platform. He started right at the apex of dharma, foundational truth of dharma. And if this is not yet clear to you, it's important to investigate until there is some clarity, some understanding for yourself of the cause, particular challenge with two actors, both important.
• 9:37
  The great sages say that this truth that pointing to, the Khan is pointing to, is worth every drop of blood in our body. Joseph followed up by reminding us of some of the stages in the path for us human beings, and all human beings must walk this path to enter and refine awakening. First, as the chant says, learn to manage the inner critical voice. This is found this is this is not the foundation of the bottom, but it's the foundation of the path. The inner critical voice.
• 10:33
  Those critical negative demeaning destructive thoughts which we say are failure, inadequate, worthless. And for some people that voice feels so true that they believe it, and reality is so false. It's a total lie. Total lie. You know, that voice says things like, can't do this, too tired, too old, too damaged, too dense, whatever.
• 11:19
  So the first important thing at the beginning of a in the middle of a session, any time that you feel the storm of the inner critic, use all your tools to calm it down, step beyond it, ignore it, whatever, write it out, find another voice. And it's important to know that the inner critic and the ideal one, the perfect us and the inner critic, they come together, it's like up and down. And as you know, we do whole workshops on this particular point. So right now, if you were afflicted in this way or if you're not, ask yourself right now what would my life be like, how would I be, what would my experience be if I was not critical? Right now, if you had no criticism at all, what would it be like sitting in that seat?
• 12:41
  That's the place to do Zazen. And then Chozin pointed out what you might experience if you begin if you stop fighting and arguing, the inner critic, with yourself and the world. Right now, imagine that all of the war inside of you is over. The struggle between what I like and dislike, should and shouldn't. Just imagine for a few hours or days or even minutes that the war is over.
• 13:19
  What's it feel like being in your seat right now with no war, no argument, no fighting? Now the only thing that can disturb us when we are have tasted that a little bit and resting in that a little bit, the thing that disturbs us is the comparing mind. In reality, have absolutely no basis for comparing ourselves to anyone else in the room. We don't know them. We don't know what thoughts they're thinking.
• 14:18
  We don't know this ancient bundle of karma that has come towards us. Much less can we evaluate our current experience with our memory of some former experience. Our memory is always flawed. If we were comparing our experience right now with the inaccurate memory of some previous experience, of course, it's a lie. It's not true.
• 14:50
  It's not helpful. So again, sitting, argument's over, war is over, don't have to worry about the future, what's it feel like to not be fighting Now from this place we can begin to explore silence. There's two kinds of silence. It's kind of a strange thing to say, but there are two kinds of silence. There's the silence that's opposite of noise, and then there is a silence that's below silence.
• 16:07
  The silence is opposite of noise, we are noisy and we are quiet, we are noisy, we are quiet. Maybe quiet is a better word. Zen knows very quiet, our minds are very noisy, minds are very quiet. Below the quiet is a silence that is not disturbed. The first silence might be like in the zindo or empty library.
• 16:45
  The second kind of silence might be the silence of a deep dreamless sleep. Something we all relish, you long for. But to touch the silence of that experience is a different quality than quiet. The deep silence has the quality of stillness, simplicity, and mystery. War is over, nothing to be done, just rest, find silence.
• 18:06
  Like the silence of an imaginary ocean, where on the surface there's all sorts of waves and crashing, but deep down there's stillness and silence. The real ocean isn't like that, but the imaginary ocean can be. Now, I think there are three basic ways to enter into that kind of silence in my experience. One way is stopping. Sometimes I've suggested that people take a deep breath, relax, relax, relax, relax, relax out on the exhalation and then stop.
• 19:03
  Stop not like a holding, but stopping like the snow falling on the ground and it just stops. And then in that place where everything rests, you explore, you see what's there for a few seconds. And now, deep breath. Let the breath out long and slow, relaxing the whole way, and then stop. Breath, movement, thought, just stop.
• 19:51
  Now of course it doesn't stay stopped, but as a place to explore, what's it like when everything stops? The second way that, in my experience, to encounter this deep silence is kind of like a rock, you know, you're on the ocean, it's thrashing around, you throw a rock over it, it just goes, boom, straight down, it's big enough. So when we get a glimpse of silence, we we get a glimpse of the of what's possible to just hold on to that glimpse and to relax, relax, relax, become more and more still, more and more still, more and more still, more and more still. Until the snowflake has landed. The rock has touched bottom.
• 21:01
  Third way, in my experience, is with the breath, the koan moo. When we are practicing breath and we first off do the mechanics of breath, and then we begin to realize our whole body is breathing, and then we begin to realize that the edges of the body are unfindable, the body is boundless, the body is impermanent, the body is and we begin to realize, oh, the whole room is breathing, the whole world is breathing, my breath is the breath of the world. We're moo, we're working on moo, first we work on moo as a sound, then moo as an idea, then moo and our fingers become moo, our arms become moo. Our voice becomes moo. Our very thoughts become moo.
• 21:58
  And in that non separation there is no other. And when there is no other, what's that like? Now one of the essential qualities for this kind of deep dharma practice, We have to be interested, we have to be curious, we have to have aspiration, a vow, a desire, a longing. Because without real interest, it's hard to maintain the mechanics. If we're in trouble, we long to get out of the trouble.
• 23:05
  The longing, vow is our fuel, the means is the method. So the method, by this time, everyone should have their method very clear. But the fuel that keeps that method going has got to be something to do with interest and curiosity and longing and vow. If we're not really interested in anything more than mechanics, well, fine, it's your life. But part of my hope and the other teachers' hope is that we can talk about things that are experiences that we all can taste and know, and they're really interesting, and even life transforming.
• 23:56
  The aspiration to realize what has not yet been realized. Know what the aim of our method is. Not what I'm going try to get, but the direction I'm going. So we touch silence. Deep breath in, long be silent.
• 24:41
  Touch silence with curiosity. What's it like? What really is this thing called silence? We don't need words, we don't need to be thinking that. If we want to know the temperature of some water, we can put our hand in it and we can directly know the temperature relative to our body.
• 25:17
  Too hot, too cold. That direct knowing whether something is too hot or too cold for us is something we can verify. Silence is the same way. Can we sink into and explore silence without comparing? The best way to investigate silence is with silence.
• 25:50
  Just as the best way to investigate non thinking is with non thinking. So your method is not opposed to this kind of silence. Your method is not something else. Okay, I'm working on breath, I'm working on koan, I'm working on listening, I'm working on whatever else, and then there's this thing called silence. They're not two things.
• 26:26
  Your method is a method for calming the mind down, helping the mind to become stable, helping the mind become clear, helping the mind be the the surface of the water to not be agitated, so that we can recognize, not create, recognize what's there. So stay with your method, just don't compare, and don't judge. Let's take up the koan of the chant affirming faith in mind again. Now a koan is a gate. And some gates are about how to enter, and some gates are closed and we can't enter, and some gates say we can never enter or never get out, we never left.
• 27:27
  Some gates are about functioning, and some gates are about words or silence. Each one is a poster board along the path that says, How about this? So thinking about this chant, this chant is not philosophy. This chant is direct experience. And so, what's the direct experience?
• 27:53
  Let's look at that a little bit in the context of our practice and what's been already taught. If mind does not discriminate, all things are as they are as one. Mind does not discriminate, all things are as they are as one. Now discrimination is one of the wonders of the human mind. It's the ability to know this from that.
• 28:32
  The ability to know up and down, right and wrong, and left and right, and whether it's food or it's not food. So, this Koan says, what's it about? How do we understand this without discriminating? Oh, now understand this, that's discriminating, I don't understand this, that's discriminating, I'm there, that's discriminating. How do we taste this?
• 28:56
  How do we smell this? How do we immerse ourselves in it? So that we can work with this koan, this barrier, to recognize it without the discriminating mind. I know and I don't know, it's just the discriminating mind. I got it, I don't got it, I'm making progress, I'm not making progress.
• 29:21
  The simple answer, true answer, is just being wholehearted, fully engaging ourselves, fully engaging ourselves in silence or work or kinnan or zazen, fully engaging without debate, hesitation, doubt of the inner critic. We're fully engaged, we're responding, we're we're in harmony with life. And the mind may come in and say, do this or that, but the mind is not busy. Good, bad, right, wrong, good, bad, right, wrong, making progress, not making progress, adequate, not inadequate. You're alive, well functioning.
• 30:24
  We may forget the day, we may forget our doubt and our hesitation, we may forget ourselves. But we're still wholeheartedly engaged in zazen, in doing the dishes, in making bread or beds. And we all have had this experience forgetting time, forgetting the rest of the world. We all have had the experience of going home and forgetting the rest of the world and all the troubles and travails of the rest of the world. Right here, right now, as we did earlier, forget, let go of, stop the fight, stop, forget, let go of all the true, all the problems of the world which you are not going to solve in this moment.
• 31:23
  Let go of all those problems. Not good, not bad, not right, not wrong, not failing and not succeeding, just let go. And enter stillness, silence, Where if we truly enter that, when the discriminating mind is not busy liking and disliking, If we truly enter this place, what's it feel like? Who would you be without who are you? Who are you right now without an argument in the mind, without the mind discriminating right and wrong?
• 32:15
  Who are you right now if you didn't believe any of the thoughts that are going through your mind? If you didn't believe any of them, they're all lies, except the ones we like, we think those are true. Taste that. To go to this mysterious source frees us from all entanglements. Now we've got this line from the chant, go to this mysterious source, frees us from all entanglements.
• 33:01
  But the first noble truth, first noble observation of the Buddha is that life is full of entanglements, nothing but problems. So how can we be free of entanglements in the midst of these entanglements? It is not a state where we suddenly get rid of all our problems, and suddenly the field is vast and open, and there's no problems anymore. How do we get rid of, how do we transcend, how do we know the place where there are no problems in the midst of problems? How do we know the place of silence in the midst of sound?
• 33:43
  Same colon. From the side of the discriminating mind, that is our problems itself. The discriminating mind is entanglements, our ordinary mind. Our ordinary mind creates entanglements, it gets confused, it creates knots trying to untangle the tangles that the ordinary mind makes, and it gets even more tangled up in the process. We can't solve this with the ordinary mind.
• 34:16
  The ordinary mind just keeps thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking. Now, there's a place, of course, for that. A place, of course. But when it gets down to these fundamental questions of life, it's not much help. What is of help?
• 34:36
  We touch, we taste, we rest in the stillness and silence. That's right here. When our when we're always seeing with equal mind, to our self nature we return. The unequal mind is that discriminating mind. Our ordinary mind, looking at all the patterns of right and wrong, good and bad.
• 35:16
  But when we drop into silence, silence that has silence and stillness and presence and other qualities, If we drop into that, know for ourselves, One insight that can come out of that is we recognize that everything has a place. It's not up to us to decide anything. Everything already has a place. Right now, imagine that you recognized in this room, in this county city country world, every single thing all persuasions of people, industry, consumers, trash, septic systems, everything has a place. Wars, oceans, poverty, money, animals, crabs, that you see it all with an equal mind.
• 36:31
  It all has a place. We don't have to fix it all. We don't have to say, Oh, that place is the wrong place, I want to put you in this other place. Right now, in this moment, it will change, of course, totally fluid, but in this moment everything has a place. And if you want to take that one step further to actually recognize everything is in the right place, it's in the correct and the best place, it's in the only place it could be in this moment.
• 37:12
  Again, a deep breath. Everything is already in the right place. It's not up to us to organize the world, even our chaotic gym. Chaos has a place. So how would it feel right now, right now, deep breath with no problems?
• 37:53
  Guarantee you'll breathed, things will be digested and blood will flow. Problem. So all you have to do is sit in acceptance, presence, stillness, and silence with no problems. Just for a few hours. And what happens when we even touch this, our craving, as the chant that we do after before dinner, as our craving for those thoughts arises and disrupts.
• 38:55
  Our craving of our craving thoughts, like the addiction, the addictions we have, the old habits we have, they bubble up, we might touch stillness, silence, presence, we might touch that, but then the addictive mind comes in. Before we know it, back in the loop. But let's explore it a little more deeply. Kind of going down different so called levels or different parts of the mandala. If we enter the realm of stillness, silence, presence without the discriminating mind that knows, does not know, we begin to enter the realm of mystery.
• 40:14
  The realm of not knowing, the realm of the unknowable. Who are we then? We enter the realm of the unknowable. Who are we? We enter the realm of the thoughtless, stillness.
• 40:38
  What happens to this life? What's our true nature then? Do we even have a true nature? Is anyone there? Perhaps mystery itself is the pervasive equal mind.
• 40:58
  Perhaps mystery itself is Prajnaparamita, the wisdom beyond wisdom. So if we touch this mystery, just as we can recognize everything has a place, we can realize everything is a mystery. You're a mystery. Plus or minus 30,000,000,000,000 cells in your body and 30,000,000,000,000, plus or minus a few trillion, bacteria in your body. 60,000,000,000,000 in your body, how much do know about those?
• 41:57
  How do they work together? What are their lives like? Where do they come from? I mean, scientists can spend their entire life investigating some portion of these, and still there are always more questions than there are answers. It's a basic rule, there's always more questions than answers, because the known, the unknown, is always far larger than the known.
• 42:21
  The known is finite, the infinite unknown is infinite. What is the source of the source of the source of this electromagnetic field? So here's an interesting experiment, I think Chosen alluded to it. You've got to sit in some degree of silence and stillness. So, some degree of silence and stillness.
• 42:58
  Now watch. What are you going to think next? Right now, what are you going to think next? Right now, know what's next going to pop into your mind. If you look at this closely, you'll actually see that everything you know has already happened.
• 43:44
  A thought has already appeared before we recognize it. We don't know the thought that's going to appear next. It's already appeared, so that means it's already happened. In fact, everything we experience may have already happened, and our information operating system is just trying to catch up. The great mystery.
• 44:26
  Sitting in the great mystery is not befuddlement, it's not bewilderment. It's alive, tingling, sourceless, beginningless. Who are we then? Please find out.
• 45:10
  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 zendest.org. Your support supports us.