Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / Remembering How to Come Home - Kisei Sensei

Transcript

Remembering How to Come Home - Kisei Sensei · 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.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma, and I take refuge in Sangha. Remember home. Remember home, your body on the earth. How you could watch the clouds parade in their various costumes as minutes slipped into hours.
• 1:04
  How without even trying your mind mingles with sky. As the grasses transform themselves into your bed and tangle in your hair. Did you see the slug emerging from the still wet leaves? Its whole body and organ of perception moving with a curious confidence as if it were aware of the whole forest, the sprawling meadow, the stars still masked by sunlight. The grasses, trees, and great earth still hold out their welcome inviting you into the ordinary magic that is our shared home.
• 2:10
  So I want to, share a folk story that was turned into a Zen koan. And the story is called, at least in the Zen tradition, Sei Sensei and Her Soul are Separated. It's told as a love story but it's more than that. So in the tale Sensei Sensei in love with her childhood friend, childhood companion. They grew up together, they did everything together, they spent a lot of time outside playing in the creek, collecting frogs and fireflies.
• 3:00
  But as she got older, her father betrothed her to someone else and both her and her childhood companion were so distraught by this that her friend decided he had to leave, he had to leave the village. And so they kind of conjured up a plan and the night before she was supposed to get married to this other person she snuck away with her childhood friend and they sailed down the river, left their village. Years passed they started a life together, They had children. They had to figure out work. And as they're living this this whole life together with their family, Kisei suddenly longs to go back home to see her parents and the village that they had left behind.
• 4:07
  So they decide to do this as a family. They sail back up the river and her husband gets out of the boat first and stays back with the children and he knocks on her father's door and he tells them the whole story. Like we left many many years ago, we're okay, we have a family, you have grandchildren, and the whole time he's talking, Kisei's father is quite confused. And he's like, I don't know who you're talking about. What daughter of mine are you talking about?
• 4:44
  It's like, The night you left my daughter Kisei Sensei Cho, she got ill and she is sleeping in this bed over here. She hasn't awoken since you left. After he says that, Se comes into the room. The Se who has gotten married and has a family and the Se that is in the bed gets up and they become one, they merge back together. And the Zen koan of this, a teacher says, Sei Sensei and her soul are separated.
• 5:26
  Which one is the true say? Which one is the true one? I share this story because it's a story about coming home. It's a story about many things. It's a story about remembering who we are, coming back to ourselves.
• 5:52
  Though oftentimes in a sashin, I find especially in this particular sashin, the grasses and trees sashin, but in practice in general it can feel like a homecoming. And sometimes we articulate it like, Oh wait, I remember. I remember how I could for hours just watch the flowers blow in the wind. That was just something I knew how to do. Or I remember dreaming of what it was like to be a butterfly and then walking around as if I could fly.
• 6:41
  Or I remember looking up at the canopy of the forest in amazement like it was a temple. Or I remember going for walks and stopping to greet each flower, fern, leaf, and twig, learning their names, introducing myself. I remember witnessing the night sky or the clouds parting. So many people have reported this kind of remembering. Maybe not those exact things but just a remembering of, oh, I know how to be in the natural world.
• 7:25
  I know how to listen with my eyes. I know how to listen with my heart. I know how to talk to trees. This is something I used to do all the time. So there is that aspect for a lot of people of coming back home to the natural world, to this innocence and curiosity that we had as children.
• 7:51
  So maybe you didn't grow up with a deep familiarity to the natural world but still practice can feel like a homecoming like we come back in touch with that more child innocent part of us that was curious, that was creative, imaginative, that could feel joy for no reason, just the joy of being alive. So this is often something that we touch at some point in practice. This kind of homecoming and there are many homecomings. There are many homecomings in practice. Another way it might be expressed is just like, oh, this is so natural.
• 8:45
  This way of being, this contentment, it is something I know. This ease. It is something I remember. So in the the folktale that I shared in the story, Sei Sensei goes off following her love, adulting, taking up the responsibility, the commitment of marriage and raising children, probably finding some kind of work, or her husband found some kind of work. And in that flow of adulting, of taking on responsibility, of following a passion, a vow, a dream there's much learning, there's growth, there can be great joy.
• 9:41
  It also can awaken the like striving parts of ourselves, oh I need to, I need to do this, this and this, I need to get this, This is what I'm supposed to do. And at some point in Szechos story, she maybe we would say she realizes that something's missing or she has this deep longing to return home, to return to that self that got left behind. So hers is a literal returning because this is a fairy tale we get we get a literal returning And ours here maybe is both. Like there's a literal returning for some of you to the practice of Zazen or to Sashin after many years or decades. But also returning to our home, the great earth, the sleeping outside.
• 10:41
  Maybe you never did that before. This is a great place to start, sleeping outside. So both returning to practice, returning to the practice of Sashin, even, you know, for for folks who are residents, like, they're returning to Sashin month after month can feel like a homecoming. Oh yeah, I'm coming back to this aspect of my life, this aspect of practice that is so hard to talk about. So few people understand, so much of it we can't really share in words with others, but it's important to us.
• 11:22
  We come back. We come back. You know, those who don't live here but come to Sashin very, very, very regularly. Same. Right?
• 11:32
  It's like, oh, I I'm compelled to come back to this practice, to the inquiry, to Zazen, to the heart mind, which is really a coming back to our natural state, which we're never ever ever since we were born separate from. But we forget like Szechos forgot perhaps in the story. The mind of receptive awareness. The mind that is interconnected with all beings. And that, you know, that's foundational, like, that's what practice is all about is that kind of coming home, coming back to what is always here.
• 12:33
  And we get on these little detours even in Sashin all the time during Sashin, forgetting forgetting that we're here, forgetting that we're practicing, forgetting the vow temporarily. And then we come back. We remember. We find the breath, the relaxation of the exhale. We see a flower bobbing in the wind and remember, oh, yeah, I'm right here.
• 13:17
  This is my life. So actually, the Buddha in the Buddha's story, the Buddha also has a remembering. In the Buddha's story of awakening, and this is one of my my favorite stories about the Buddha's life, he has this recollection from childhood and he has it while he's in the midst of pretty ardent striving practice. He's practicing as an ascetic and he's doing a lot of different techniques and they involve a lot of willpower, a lot of forcing, a lot of striving which we maybe all can relate to on some level at some aspect or time during our practice. And this childhood memory bubbles up seemingly out of nowhere as memories do and he he remembers like, oh, there's another way.
• 14:19
  I used to know something. I've forgotten. I'll tell the Buddhist story soon but I just want to emphasize that that like sometimes we do have specific memories from childhood that we remember as we're practicing. So some people have shared they have specific memories of being outside and just remembering, like I said in the beginning, natural it was to pay attention, to play, to be curious about the natural world. And sometimes we have specific memories that rise up about natural inclinations that we had to the spiritual life which isn't that different than like remembering watching flowers blowing in the winds.
• 15:15
  Like I think as children and every we're all different kinds of children and it's been interesting just to hear different people share memories over the years that I've been practicing of practice inclinations as children because some people have memories of more meditative states of just being absorbed in something and a lot of times in the natural world but it can be other places. Other people have memories of an inquiry that was alive in them from very young, a kind of questioning which, you know, children ask questions, but some people remember, like, I was asking people what happens when we die? Where do we go? And nobody can answer, and it was so frustrating, and I just kept asking because it was really important to me. And then at some point maybe you stopped or you felt like I'm not allowed to ask that and it just makes the grown ups feel uncomfortable.
• 16:16
  Or sometimes we have or people remember like curiosity games that they used to play that was really playing with perception or awareness or their understanding of time. I remember I grew up in a place where you could see the night sky. I was very fortunate to have a house that was set in the woods with a pretty dark sky and I would lie on my back a lot of the times in the summer. There were fireflies where I lived But I would watch the stars, and then I got interested in the space between the stars. And it was really compelling to my child wonder mind to just imagine, like, how deep is space.
• 17:09
  And something really cool would happen, so I think this is part of why I kept doing it. I was like, at the space and then the stars seemed to move, and I would just keep looking at the space. Another person told me he received his first meditation instructions from his older brother and his brother was about ten years older than him and he was about seven when his brother started taking him hunting but this he didn't, the seven year old didn't hunt but he would go with his brother and his brother was very kind and mature and would tell him, Okay you can come with me but this is what we're gonna do. You're gonna practice being really, really, really still and quiet and if you do, the the animals will come out and you'll be able to see them and then when we're done you can tell me which animals you saw. And he said he would do that and then they would come right up to him, these squirrels and chipmunks, and he would just practice being so still.
• 18:16
  And then later when he learned meditation, like two decades later he was like, Oh, I've always done this. I learned this when my brother took me hunting. That's also a teaching that Chosen would sometimes give during Grasses and Trish Sensei. And she would say, When you're in the forest or when you're sitting in the meadow, sit so still and withdraw your human consciousness as if you were a tree or a rock so that the wild animals aren't afraid of you. Maybe they'll come over to you.
• 19:00
  I know some people have already had experiences like this. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. So here's what the Buddha remembers.
• 19:17
  So again, he's practicing these very intense practices where he's like withholding the breath and he's using the might of mind to try to suppress thought and it's not working, he's wearing himself out and his condition is just getting worse, his mind is getting more agitated and more agitated. And then he says, It occurred to me, I recall sitting in the cool shade of a black plum tree while my father was off working in the fields. And the grain in the fields was blowing in the wind. And I sat secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities and I entered and remained in the first jhana which has rapture and bliss born from seclusion while placing the mind and keeping it connected. So sometimes, the language in the Pali Canon is a little clunky but what he remembers is he remembers the word secluded is just like being withdrawn from chasing after sensual pleasure.
• 20:38
  So he's not sitting there watching the grain blowing in the wind and like thinking about the bath he's gonna take later or the entertainment that is happening at the palace where he lives. He's just absorbed in the movement of the grain and enters the first absorption, the first jhana, so he enters concentration. It's very basic concentration where his mind is connected and just stays. And it's and and it's says it's blissful. It's there was a rapture.
• 21:19
  There was joy, there was pleasure. And he asked, could that be the path to awakening? That just simple absorption of watching the grain blow in the wind, sitting under the cool shade of a black plum tree. And stemming from that memory in the present moment, as as he's recalling, came the understanding that is the path to awakening. That is the path to awakening.
• 21:58
  So those memories that you have as a child of just simply being absorbed are those moments that we've had during this sashin of just simply being absorbed in the sound of the wind, in the texture of the tree bark, in the flowers, the pink or the yellow, that that could be the path. That is the path to awakening. That's what he says, that is the path to awakening. And then he asks himself, am I, why am I afraid of that pleasure? Why am I afraid of that pleasure for it has nothing to do with sensual pleasures or unskillful qualities?
• 23:00
  So he's recognizing that that that ease, that pleasure or happiness sometimes it's translated as happiness. I think in English all of these words are loaded, like pleasure is so loaded. We think about big pleasure, like what brings me pleasure or happiness we think of like, oh, like, doy, happy. But he's he's talking about like, oh, I touched this just simple happiness, this simple pleasure of just being, being absorbed in exactly what's happening. Am I afraid of that?
• 23:41
  He's asking himself. Why have I been turning away from that? Why have I been engaging in so much striving? And then he recognizes, I'm not afraid of that. I'm not afraid of that pleasure.
• 23:57
  This is the way to awakening. He like checks it out. Okay. This is a pleasure that isn't induced by just a kind of craving for more, craving for more of something else outside myself. This is the pleasure that comes from meditation.
• 24:18
  And he'll go on throughout his life to talk about the importance of recognizing and cultivating the pleasure that comes from meditation, that it's a support for our practice, that it is part of the path of awakening. The pleasure or the joy or the happiness, we've been using the word contentment. It's maybe a little less loaded, it has more of a spiritual quality. But that's that's part of why we're like saying those words over and over again because I think just like the Buddha twenty five hundred years ago, we may too be afraid on some level of just letting ourselves feel pleasure, feel the ease of meditation, feel the joy of just being here. And there might be a lot of reasons for that, can feel unsafe.
• 25:16
  I think of like that homecoming back to ourselves is often back to a more innocent us. And a lot of times in our adult life, it just doesn't feel safe to be that innocent, to be that open, to let ourselves really linger in the pleasure of being, having a body. So, again, that's part of why we've been encouraging you to notice contentment, to notice ease, to notice pleasure or enjoyment or how the body just naturally relaxes on the exhalation. And we say that in the beginning of Sashin and you could check-in your experience now like is that something you have access to? Can you find the pleasure of being, of sitting in your seat?
• 26:33
  And can you trust that pleasure or that ease or that contentment? Can you trust that this is the path of awakening? I personally find it encouraging that even the Buddha went off on his spiritual quest full of striving and effort and determination and forgot forgot about this natural resource that we have, forgot about our fundamental well-being, and had to remember. It's something that is familiar, although it may feel foreign. It's like something that we deeply know and yet it might be something that is so far out of how we normally think of ourselves and our experience and even what practice is.
• 27:46
  Right? I think just like the Buddha, lot of us can approach spiritual practice with a lot of effort, a kind of wholeheartedness that doesn't let us quite relax. The same way maybe we approach other aspects of our lives with this like, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do it hard, and I'm gonna get the thing. And so it can be really challenging to a lot of habit energy, a lot of ways that we're used to approaching life to hear a teaching like, oh, yeah, just recognize the contentment that's already here. Feel the ease in your body.
• 28:33
  So we may spend a lot of time with that question that the Buddha asked himself like, oh, am I afraid to do that? Can I trust this? Can I trust it for this breath? For this breath? And just start to familiarize yourself with it.
• 29:03
  In the Tibetan tradition, the word for meditation translates as familiarizing. I really love that. One Tibetan teacher says, well just get used to it. You just get used to this ease. Get used to this bliss that is your nature.
• 29:23
  That's what we're doing here. We're just getting used to our true nature, getting used to the innocence that we have, that we are, the openness. If we look we find teachings about contentment within the Zen tradition as well. It's not just about striving and determination. Dogen Zenji says, Zazen is not meditation practice, it is simply the Dharma Gate of joyful ease.
• 29:58
  Then another early Chan Zen teacher says, Zen is becoming seasoned in the way of ease. Seasoned in the way of ease. I like both meanings of seasoned. So this is something we can be curious about. It's not like, oh, now we have a new goal.
• 30:29
  Let's make pleasure happen. Or try to force ease. The Buddha is pointing to the ease, the pleasure, the joy that comes from meditation, that comes from the stability of attention, from a heart connected. Ease that is outside of the purview of liking and disliking so even if the mind is like I like this, I dislike this, is there an ease that's outside of that, that's inside you, that's right here, even if the mind is spinning on something else, even if there's discomfort in the body? So as Sashin deepens and we immerse more fully in meditation we have the opportunity to really notice for ourselves this quality that we may just habitually overlook.
• 31:33
  Is there contentment? Where do you experience it? How do you experience it? Is there ease? Is there joy or happiness that's not because you're, like, indulging in some sensual fantasy, but but it's just right here in the direct experience of breathing, hearing.
• 32:11
  It's not about being a Pollyanna, happy all the time. It's knowing this fundamental well-being as your deep inner resource that we all have, that we can wake up to, that's more fundamental than the fickleness of thought. We can truly come to have confidence in this fundamental well-being. I read from Da Hong Soonim and she talked about the pillar. You see, sometimes it feels like a pillar of well-being.
• 32:56
  Like it's immovable, it's unshakable. So it's like that's kind of the arc of practice. We start to familiarize ourselves with the ease, the fundamental well-being of our nature and then it becomes something that we have access to anytime, anywhere, no matter what. It doesn't mean that difficult states won't arise. We're human beings.
• 33:25
  We are of the nature to have ill health. We are of the nature to get old. We are of the nature to get injured. But that fundamental well-being is unshakable, it isn't dependent on the conditions of the body. It isn't dependent on the thoughts that are happening in the mind.
• 33:51
  It's more fundamental than that. It's more true. Like thoughts, they're they can never be quite true because we could always think the opposite. So this is this is beyond the level of thought or before the level of thought. It's more fundamental.
• 34:14
  We knew it before we could think. I want to talk about another aspect of pleasure or joy that we can touch and embody and cultivate during practice during Sashin and that's the joy of the bodhisattva vow. The delight of bodhichitta which is the aspiration of the heart to awaken, the aspiration of the heart that all beings awaken. So sometimes maybe we don't have access to the pleasure of meditation or the contentment, but we can connect to our aspiration for awakening. And it can be so joyful, so pleasurable to remember this aspiration, to remember why we're here.
• 35:32
  Even if you would articulate it differently than the Bodhisattva vows, something brought you to sashin, Something brought you here. Something brings you back to practice. And I often find when I ask people what it what was your intention for Sensei or why are you here I that it is connected in some way to compassion for self or other. And so you can check that out, remember your aspiration, what brought you here. And sometimes that evolves even as we sit hour after hour, day after day.
• 36:26
  I find it often simplifies. Bodhicitta reminds us that we are connected to all beings. It also reminds us that our practice is an offering. And it's not so much about getting what we want. It's actually not about that at all.
• 36:55
  But it's that orientation of the heart, that orientation of compassion, me and you, us together, all beings. It's that love that drives us. And we might not always be feeling like big love, big compassion, but just to stay in touch with or to recollect or come back to your aspiration. And what's one thing that is so beautiful about practicing in community is when we forget or feel uncertain or start, of course, the mind goes into like, why am I here? Why am I doing this?
• 37:45
  It's not working. It's hard. And then we see somebody else embodying the aspiration and it inspires us. We're uplifted for a moment perhaps. That's the beautiful thing about practicing in community and that's the beautiful thing about practicing in the natural world.
• 38:04
  That sometimes who's embodying the aspiration is the noble fur or the butterfly or the cosmos, the field of cosmos. Bodhicitta reminds us that we're connected to all beings in mysterious ways and that the effects of our practice are mysterious, like we can't know them. So there's a kind of faith there. Dogen Zenji has this line that comes back to me all the time during Sashin. He says, this is from his fascicle on continuous practice, Gyogi.
• 38:52
  Because of this practice, there are the sun, the moon, and the stars. Because of this practice, there are the great earth and the open sky. Then he says, This practice isn't necessarily something that we can understand or or is understood by most people. Because of this practice there are the sun, the moon, and the stars. There's a real voicing of the mystery of interconnection, the mystery of bodhicitta.
• 39:33
  Yeah, perhaps your practice right now is allowing the sun to rise or keep rising. Lastly, another theme that we've been exploring during this session is the teachings of the insentient. So I wanna come back to Deng Shan's simple poem, How magnificent, he says, how magnificent, how wondrous, inconceivable. Insentient beings speak the Dharma. The ears never hear it, only the eyes do.
• 40:24
  So we have had the invitation to sit with beings from the natural world and receive their Dharma transmission, to hear with our eyes, to see with our ears, to listen from the heart or the whole body, and to open from to open to their teachings. And many of you have had very precious encounters with a being from the natural world or beings from the natural world. I wanna unpack a little in an experiential way four perspectives on listening, listening to the teachings of the insentient. So we can work with the floor again or you can put your eyes somewhere else. But we're gonna sit with a being here and then we can, bring it outside.
• 41:47
  So let's start with the practice that I introduced a couple days ago. So letting yourself see the floor and just opening the senses, listening with your eyes. Listening with your heart. Listening with your whole body. Now the next kind of listening is to let yourself be seen by the floor.
• 43:10
  So it's like a figure ground reversal of awareness. Instead of you using your whole body to look at the floor or to listen, let the floor look back at you. And just notice what happens as you do that. And then letting go of that practice. That's something you could explore outside to sit with the being and then to just let yourself be seen by them or seeing each other together.
• 44:29
  And just notice what changes as fear come up and just letting whatever comes up be part of the field of the relationship. But we can kind of shake that one out. And then the next invitation is to sit like you're a mirror and you're reflecting the floor. Or another way of saying that that's a little more intimate is letting yourself become the floor. Your body floorboard.
• 45:29
  And it does have that quality of just giving your body over to the floor, giving your mind over to the floor, seeing with the floor's eyes. Emptying out any ideas you have about yourself or I can't do this and just being floor. One inquiry in this space that can be interesting is how does the floor relate to your thoughts? Or as the floor, how do you relate to your thoughts? And then you can let go of that one.
• 47:27
  And then the fourth one is to just let go of any notion of self and other. You're sitting, your eyes are resting on the floor, but you're letting go of the notion of I am looking at the floor, the floor is looking at me, we are the same, just let go of it all. And then you can let go of that one. And just that that's the last one, so you can just kinda shake that out So the four perspectives of listening. Okay.
• 49:03
  Listening with the ears or listening with the eyes, listening with the whole body as we've been doing. So that's the first one. The second is the figure ground reversal, letting yourself be seen by the other being. The third is sitting as them or mirroring them. And then the fourth is just emptying out any notion of self and other, and just seeing what it's like to engage in listening in those four different ways.
• 49:42
  It's in a way just different aspects of the facet of Jewel of awareness, different ways that our awareness and perception interface. And we sometimes just have habitual ways that we see things, even in practice. So this is a way of kind of shake shaking it up and seeing, exploring different facets of intimacy, different notions of self and other, of interdependence, of co arising. The last thing I'll say before I close, we're going to be offering Sansen again in the same way that we did yesterday. And Sansen is just it emphasizes or it underscores the truth that this practice happens in relationship.
• 50:48
  And so we're sitting with sangha in the circle, our human sangha, we're sitting with the great earth, sometimes we're sitting very intimately with a particular being in the forest or a leaf or a rock and then Sensei is an opportunity to sit with another human. And one of the great things about humans, maybe annoying things about humans, is they talk. So we can like get, you know, get feedback about practice or ask a question, but also we can just meet in the intimacy of this deepening sashin. We can meet in this exploration, in our heart's aspiration, and just see what happens. So you don't have to prepare anything if you don't have a question.
• 51:46
  That's fine. We can just sit together and see what coarises in that space.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: 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.