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Practice is About Direct Experience - 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.
• 0:24
  Hogen: I take refuge in the Buddha, take refuge in the Dharma, take refuge in the Sangha. Practice is always about experience. Experience, experience, experience, experience. The foundation of practice has got to be direct experience. It's not about our mental understanding.
• 0:52
  It is good to be smart. It is good to have a brain that works. But the foundation of practice has got to be our life. And our life is experience. If we know something without experiencing it, it doesn't carry any weight.
• 1:08
  It's when we experience something, that's when it carries weight. It's the experience that is so affirming. So if we can hear, we hear the Heart Sutra and it says, Form is no other than emptiness, and everything is flow and all that stuff. We can hear it, we know the words, but when we have the experience of it, it carries something very different meaning. And someone at this last retreat who said, Oh, I suddenly understood all these sutras that we're chanting, they're all about direct experience.
• 1:43
  I can know them with my body. So practice is about direct experience and that's why we have, as a foundational practice, is the breath. Because you've got to experience the breath. It doesn't do any good to think about the breath. You've to experience it.
• 2:02
  So it's the experience where everything begins. And of course, you'll see, if you keep practicing, whole universe is part of that experience. Now, we've been doing a series on turning problems into wisdom. This is the fourth or fifth talk of that series. I've been evolving different things about it.
• 2:24
  What I've been interested in myself, reflecting on this last week or so, is we have heard so many wise teachings. We have read so many books or watched so many YouTube, you know, pundits or sages or whoever proclaiming. We have heard so much. Why doesn't it stick? What happens?
• 2:48
  What's the the disconnect between all this great information, great advice, great sages, great and us? Why doesn't it stick? Why haven't we turned this problem into into wisdom? Why are we still still suffering? Now, of course, there are some some obvious answers.
• 3:09
  You know, we're lazy, we're indifferent, you know, all those things. The inner critic is not, you know, when the inner critic gets in there and starts taking hold and says, oh, well you can, as someone put it, you can be apologizing for your life. That's not helpful, that's not a useful way of analysis. So what is it if it's not just self blame which is never helpful? Reflection is helpful but self blame is not helpful.
• 3:37
  So what is it that keeps us hearing the wonderful teachings of Dharma whether it be in this tradition or some other tradition, the wonderful teachings of truth and yet they don't penetrate. So one thing is this piece about practice. Practice, we've got to make sure we're anchored in the direct experience of our life being breathed. Now, when we're anchored there, there are insights that we can have that come directly from the experience of that. People who go to a retreat or weekend workshop or session, something else.
• 4:21
  We're in a container that requires us to, you know, kind of hold our nose to the grindstone, so to speak. That requires us to keep practicing, to keep looking, to keep investigating. The container kind of makes us do that in everybody. Well, not everybody, but most people at the end of a long session, once they've cleaned out a certain some dregs that are left, is brighter and happier and clearer. Once you've done a retreat here for three or four days, the mind begins to calm down and you find there's a brightness in the world.
• 4:55
  What happens? What happens to that brightness? What happens to that clarity? What happens? I think it's worth investigating, worth looking at that.
• 5:05
  And I've been reflecting on this in several ways. So first off, if we have a direct experience of something, that is the foundation of faith. We have a direct experience of something, that is the foundation of faith. And it could be an experience of love, could be an experience of the business of things, it could be an experience of good cooking, it could be any experience. If we go some place, we go to a restaurant, we get a great meal, we've had that experience and that gives us a foundation of faith to go back to it.
• 5:44
  Right? It's my experience. So we have an experience of something. We have the experience of the preciousness of this life, even a glimpse, even a taste, even a flash. If it's genuine, that gives us the foundation of faith.
• 6:01
  Faith in the Buddha Dharma, faith in this tradition is not start with the head. It's it's it's good if we have no other resources to start with the head, you know, foundations of mindfulness and the eightfold path, all that good stuff, good solid stuff. But it never carries any weight until we have experience. So, so we go to a retreat, we go to a four or five day retreat and we're sitting, we're meditating, we're looking at the nature of mind, we're calming the mind down, and we have an experience of clarity, of openness, an experience of ease, an experience of presence, whatever the experience is. And that gives us a little taste, a modicum, a drop of faith to say, oh, oh, maybe I can open this up.
• 6:50
  Maybe I can see something here. And give that faith that we have. So, one of the reasons that people have difficulty taking the insights of a retreat or the insights they have when they come or hearing this is they haven't had an experience that really confirms and says, oh, they're talking about something real and genuine and not just an idea. And of course, how do we have those experiences? Well, first off, we have to meditate.
• 7:21
  You know, we have to we have to look. We have to have the the inquiry. Have to have the the the conviction that there is something to be seen. And that conviction comes from either we have a old faith in the tradition, the teachers, the teaching, the sangha. But whatever it does, we have enough faith that we practice enough so we have a little experience and that experience then becomes the the sea crystal for continuing to practice.
• 7:52
  Now, we've all had those kind of experiences. Everybody has. Everybody has had very glimpses of the okayness of things, the oneness of things, the inclusiveness of things, the nature of loving kindness, the You know, you you name it. You've had your own own version of that. Sometimes people have those experiences when they're children.
• 8:12
  They have the experience of of awe of the world, of the expansiveness of the world, of the perfection of the world. So, having experience, we didn't have to actually pay attention to it. A lot of people will come to a retreat or come to an evening sitting or talk to me at San Zen, and they'll say, oh, I had this insight. Oh, I saw this. Oh, I And we have to be able to to recognize, oh, I had an experience of something that was was free of suffering.
• 8:48
  Something that was, in a way, special. Our life is special. So we have a practice, we have an experience, we recognize that experience, and that is the faith that tells us if we keep practicing, it is possible to grow the experience, to deepen the experience, to expand the experience, to enrich the experience. But what happens often is we have the experience, we don't recognize don't recognize it, and then we forget it. And how do we forget it?
• 9:25
  Well, first off, we all have such comfortable lives. You know, we have all all endeavored. I certainly have. We've all endeavored to make our life satisfying and comfortable. Right?
• 9:36
  The satisfying and comfortable life we have has got a lot of difficulty in it. Now, so it's got whatever our habit of mind is is imbued in our habitual way of living. Our habitual life that we have we have structured. We come to a session, we step out of that life, we find a place of clarity, we have an insight. We don't really recognize it, we go back into our life with the same old same old, same old pattern, same old friend, same old and we forget.
• 10:17
  We're no longer paying attention to what we we saw. Because the habits of mind are so profound, they're so great, the habits of mind are addiction, and we're all addicted. So we have a a insight, and it can be for an evening sitting, it can be for a, you know, thirty day retreat. I mean, we have some insight. We recognize it.
• 10:41
  It's the foundation of faith, and then we have to practice. And the practice is not, I've got to practice to understand more, but I've got to practice to experience. I've got to experience it more. I've got to experience this. Our life is so filled with propaganda and media and so filled with people trying to get us to buy things and people who are, you know, trying to to grasp our attention.
• 11:12
  And our attention just gets sucked out. And we stop experiencing directly the place that we have the capacity for life. So we forget, we go back into our old habits, we stop practicing, and then before we know, we're back into our old habits, we may have had an experience, we went to a retreat, we say, why isn't this working anymore? Here I am, I'm the same old stupid person I was before. But it it it has a a genesis to it.
• 11:53
  Now, one of There are two aspects of practice. One aspect is a developmental evolutionary aspect of practice. We all can improve. We all have the ability to I mean, otherwise, why would we have precepts? Why would we make valid?
• 12:15
  We all have the ability to grow ourselves, to become more educated, to to open our hearts, to practice generosity, to to enlarge our capacity. Mean, that's that's a healthy aspect of human beings, you know. People who don't have that sense of vow, the sense of, oh yes, it's possible there's a better me if I am growing in that way. That's one side of things. In a way our our culture, the good parts of our culture really like that.
• 12:47
  There's another side of practice. The other side of practice is deep respect for the fact that we are alive right now. Deep respect. This is a miracle. It's a miracle that we can sit here.
• 13:01
  It's a miracle that we can see. It's a miracle. And so the miracle, that side of practice doesn't need to be polished. You don't need to polish the miracle. It's already a miracle.
• 13:13
  So the evolutionary side of practice is based upon this deep respect, this deep awe of, I'm alive. We're all alive. Isn't that amazing? How that ever happened? And out of that deep respect, out of that appreciation, then, you know, make healthy choices.
• 13:39
  We then live in accordance with our vow, we then practice. If we're not practicing, if we're not practicing and we all have different kind of practices, if we're not practicing, then the habitual mind just takes over. It's like if we're going to be educated, we decided we want to get a degree or a certificate or something, and we say, okay, I've enrolled, I've gone to the first class, but we don't actually do the homework, we don't actually read, we don't actually digest, we never grow. We have to actually do the homework. We have to actually take the practice into our daily life.
• 14:15
  We have to endeavor to to practice to practice to practice. Otherwise, habitual mind takes over, we're right back. It's like, you know, you enroll in a class and you don't do the homework, you don't learn anything. So we've got these two sides that are really really important. On one hand, it is you are a blessing.
• 14:35
  It took the entire universe. The entire universe. Took hundreds of thousands of of of people and food and plants and animal all to come down to you. Wow. Wow.
• 14:51
  And you may feel like a defective frog sometimes, but, you know, so what? Still a miracle. And, we can we can evolve. We can do some work. We can do some work.
• 15:05
  We can take the practice. We can And as we take the practice and we begin to to say, okay, wanna look at this. I wanna bring it into my daily life. I I wanna walk down the street with mindfulness, I want to to turn my mind to away from the spiraling cascade of habitual thinking. We grow.
• 15:25
  I'm so impressed with having been around this community for a long, long time. I have seen anybody, no matter how confused and crazed they were when they came, if they take the practice and they continue doing it, being present, opening the heart, being mindful, being generous, being connected, being relational, and they take the practice and they make it alive and they keep doing it, they turn into extraordinary people. I've seen it happen over and over again. Lots of people. But if we just think the practice, think think think think think think think think, you can get a PhD in suffering.
• 16:10
  Without any benefit. And I have We have people in the Sangha who got two PhDs in suffering, really. They have they have they have And even that can be transformed into wisdom. Everything can be transformed into wisdom. So that's what was kind of on my mind tonight is, you know.
• 16:33
  And I was also thinking, well, by that criterion, I have I am the slowest person in the Sangha because I it required me to do hundreds of weeks of retreat, requires me to live in a monastery, requires me to be able to be present, to do all these things so I can be present. Everybody else is better off than I am. Everybody else is obviously more skilled in their life because you can do it in lots of different ways. So great. Congratulations.
• 17:02
  It's wonderful. You know? It's only when you're really as as as defective and inadequate as I am that you need to do, you know, so much. I don't know. We're so sorry.
• 17:14
  What can I say? Life is hard. Life is hard. But, you know, nothing things just don't happen, you know. They happen because we really grow them, we have a have a intention.
• 17:30
  The foundation is faith, confidence in yourself, which grows because of faith and because of practice. And then, of course, it has to the basic triad for Buddhism is, you hear something, you see something, have an experience and then you digest it. You have to say, oh, okay, that's what this means, this is how I can live it, this is what this is about, we have to ingest it and then we have to offer it. We have to to have an experience. We have to to begin to understand what that experience is.
• 18:00
  And then we have to turn it into loving kindness. If we don't turn it into offering. If we don't turn it out and give it away, then it somehow goes from from insight or something we've heard, experience, but it it sort of begins to become a mental process where it just goes around and around around. Oh, yes. I know this.
• 18:22
  I know this. Know this. It doesn't actually become alive. It is the It is becoming alive is what happens when we're engaged with one another. One of my other reflections, I was I was reading something, I realized, we could actually just take the entire Why we should do one sentence?
• 18:56
  You are an extraordinary being. Can you feel that right now? To be who you are right now? We don't need to go on to a whole hour lecture. You're an extraordinary being.
• 19:09
  It's extraordinary that you're alive. Right here, right now, you think about all the food that you've eaten. Food came from someplace, somebody prepared it, somebody bought it, somebody grew it, all the food that you've eaten. Wow. Mountains.
• 19:30
  Think about all the progenitors that you've had, all the millennia of thousands of people, couples that have gotten together just to bring you into this world. You think of the fact that somehow we have learned to speak English, Japanese, whatever language we have learned to speak, some people can't, and yet here we are. Somehow, we have been able to have a creative life that we have been able to engage with. How'd that happen? Somehow, we're able to breathe fresh air.
• 20:09
  How'd that happen? Why aren't we living in Delhi where it's the air is red? This We could take one sentence, and if we really probe one single sentence of dharma, we could spend the whole time on that. So I always feel like after I've given a talk, I've only been talking for ten minutes. And I figured, well, let's let's let's try to digest any one of those phrases.
• 20:43
  You are a blessing. Blessing, blessing, blessing, blessing, blessing, blessing, blessing, and we can use some work.
• 21:00
  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.