Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / Familiar Life, Fresh Eyes - Jomon Martin, Zen Teacher

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Familiar Life, Fresh Eyes - Jomon Martin, Zen Teacher · 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. Welcome everyone. Welcome yet again, everyone who's been here this weekend and everyone who's just arrived.
• 0:30
  Welcome to the Zoom sangha. We just completed a beginner's mind retreat this weekend. And I want to perhaps begin with a poem and I'll end with this poem also. Thing Chosen Roshi mentioned in our sharing circle is that we are all actually oriented to home and to find our true Home, which is always here and available. This poem is by Rilke, it's called The Prodigal Son.
• 1:08
  To go forth now from all the entanglement that is ours and yet not ours, that, like the water in an old well, reflects us in fragments, distorts what we are. From all that clings, like burrs and brambles, to go forth and see for once, close-up afresh what we had ceased to see, so familiar it had become. To glimpse how vast and impersonal is the suffering that filled your childhood. Yes, to go forth, hand pulling away from hand. Go forth to what?
• 2:00
  To uncertainty, to a country with no connections to us and indifferent to the dramas of our life. What drives you to go forth? Impatience? Instinct? A dark need?
• 2:16
  The incapacity to understand? To bow to all this, to let go, even if you have to die alone, is this the start of a new life? We're all endeavoring to return Home. We're all endeavoring to return to beginner's mind, to let go of the entanglements. And that's what many people did this weekend, let go of the entanglements of work, of news, of wars, of family, of home, bills, whatever our lives require of us to respond.
• 3:05
  And to come here to see how we are and who we are without all of that. The mind that is a true beginner, the mind of not knowing. So there's much in a Zen retreat that goes on that cannot be explained or described in advance or even during the process. And that's actually the point. Seeing for yourself close-up, afresh as the poem says, close-up, seeing afresh.
• 3:52
  Even so, in such a retreat it seems like we do a lot of talking. Was wonderful to have Myo Yu in the teacher's seat with me. It seems like we did a lot of talking but it can't all be compressed into words. So there's inevitably a time for discovery and for the practice to reveal itself. To discover what's larger than our stories about who we are.
• 4:25
  Something impersonal perhaps, but not cold. So this sounds really good, but it does not always feel good. It can feel panicky to not know what's going on or to worry that you're doing something wrong or to not know what's coming next. And perhaps you did not sleep well or much and now we're up at a very early hour and sitting again and again. And pain and there's all these chants and bows and choreography in all the things, including meals.
• 5:06
  And one thing after another, it's a lot. And the people who were here really bravely met it each moment. This not knowing is becoming a more rare experience. Perhaps we're losing our tolerance for it, Or maybe we've come to find that not knowing is uncomfortable. Maybe we have a story about it.
• 5:43
  Sometimes there's a shame in not knowing. Maybe that comes from our personal history or how we've been enculturated. Maybe we feel like we're supposed to know everything. Now we have Google in our pockets, right up against our own bodies. And we spend less and less time wondering about something, less time aware of our own ignorance.
• 6:15
  And if that not knowing is an uncomfortable feeling we can extinguish that discomfort pretty immediately whether the answers we come to have any nuance or not, any relevance or not, whether they're even accurate or not. The courage to sign up, the courage to show up, and the courage to stay maybe it was just stubbornness or willingness born of some combination of curiosity or suffering. But this is no small thing to arrive here. There were many people here for their very first meditation retreat who kept meeting their experience. So that's inspiring also.
• 7:11
  Because the world is really flowing us in the opposite direction of that, of meeting our experience. Our attention is prized, it is monetized in the form of clicks or likes or engagement. Engagement is measured or captured by ranting or opining. And in that fire hose of information, rage bait, scary news, and fear, we show up here and find that our attention is like a bag of marbles that got dumped on this floor. Everybody's bag of marbles on the floor.
• 8:07
  We come to this thing that's called a retreat, that whole word evokes this picture of ease and comfort and relaxation and bliss. You're going to leave here and people say, Oh, you went on a meditation retreat. That sounds amazing. I'm so jealous. You're thinking of a spa.
• 8:31
  This is a Zen retreat. So I will offer you a Zen story. There are so many Zen stories and we sometimes call them Koans. They are teaching stories, usually conversations between a teacher and a student, or between teachers. Because our practice is about relationships, that these stories have endured thousands of years.
• 9:07
  This is how the practice has continued, warm hand to warm hand through these relationships, long relationships or a genuine connection with another human being. This one is about Di Zong and Faiyan. This interaction took place in Tang Dynasty China about a thousand years ago. Di Zong is the abbot of a monastery. Fai Yan is visiting.
• 9:40
  Their interaction goes like this: Di Zong asked Fai Yan, Where are you going? Phayon said, Around on pilgrimage. Dizong said, What is the purpose of pilgrimage? Phayon said, I don't know. Dizong said, Not knowing is most intimate.
• 10:11
  And at that moment, Thayeon was awakened. These stories often end this way, with sudden enlightenment, a turning word or phrase that hits exactly the right place at the right time. And these stories are like the highlight reel of sports, though. What they do not show is the hours and hours and hours of meditation practice, the hard years of living in a monastery, or the twisted karma that each student and each teacher had to untangle in their own hearts and minds. It's like that famous quote about the stone cutter.
• 11:05
  Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a 100 times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow, it will split in two. And I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before. Not knowing is most intimate. What is the purpose of pilgrimage?
• 11:37
  What is the purpose of retreat? Dizang is inquiring about the mind Fayan is bringing to his pilgrimage, to his practice. What is the purpose of anything? Why do we do anything? What is your life about?
• 11:56
  That's what he's asking Fayan. He's inviting this level of discussion. And Fayan meets it. He offers a humble answer: I don't know. He could have answered that a lot of different ways.
• 12:15
  He could have had a whole story about it. Told all the places he'd been, talked about the blisters on his feet, or made it interesting, or made himself the hero, or tried to impress this abbot, but he didn't. He just said, I don't know. I don't know. He's meeting the question on that level.
• 12:37
  And Phayong is showing up earnestly. I don't know what it all means. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm going to get. I'm just putting one foot in front of the other.
• 12:51
  I'm just practicing. Not knowing is most intimate. And then Dizong's response, this beautiful affirming response that blossoms, not knowing is most intimate. Fayan is awakened. It was here all along, has never been anywhere but here.
• 13:23
  So what does this mean, intimate? Intimate. Travel to a foreign country can sometimes offer this experience. When we get out of our familiar surroundings and we find ourselves somewhere we maybe don't know the language, all our usual assumptions about things are upended, we have to look more closely at what each situation brings us, we have to see things fresh, sometimes helps us practice humility. And if we don't approach travel or situation like that in this way, if we don't, we just end up what gets called the ugly American, demanding everyone speak English and looking for the McDonald's and not open to what is intimate, what is new, what is surprising about a different place.
• 14:22
  That openness to it, to allow it to reveal itself. Some people carried a phrase to return to this freshness, Right now it's like this. Right now it's like this. So our views can be occluded by our history, our assumptions that we don't even realize that we have. When we think we know what someone else is saying, we're already formulating our response.
• 14:57
  And in that assumption we miss what they're really saying. Of course, we all do this. When we do, we miss an opportunity for true listening, for intimacy. And our practice helps us see how our view might be obscured, how our habits might be getting in the way, to pay less attention to those habits and insist on seeing without our previous conditioning. So I'd like to offer you an example of this.
• 15:33
  It's a very simple, pretty easy visualization. If you can, please play along and shout out your answers. This is the audience participation section of the talk. I'm going to offer you a few things and I want to hear what is the picture in your mind of this. What is your mind showing you that is happening?
• 15:59
  There's no wrong answers, it's whatever your mind is showing you that is happening. John was on his way to school. What do you see? A little boy. A car.
• 16:12
  Lunchbox. Lunchbox. Walking on the sidewalk. Daytime. School bus.
• 16:21
  Bicycle. It could be anything. Shorts? Yes! John is already getting to school in very different ways according to all of you.
• 16:34
  There's already this multiplicity of assumptions and pictures in what is happening. Here's the next sentence: He was worried about the math lesson. Now what do you see? Now what's happening in the picture? Frown.
• 16:51
  Numbers on paper? Crying. I see a man going to GED. A man going to GED. Yeah.
• 17:03
  Algebra. The dog ate my homework. It's getting personal. Fidgeting. Yeah, so okay.
• 17:20
  He was not sure he could control the class again today. Now what do you see? Teacher. Yeah, yeah. And the last sentence, It was not part of a janitor's duty.
• 17:43
  Our mind fills in the blanks of what we don't know with what we think we know. It's so believable, isn't it? It's just right there, of course. That's the barrier to intimacy, right there that Dizong is talking about. Intimacy is letting go of expectation, getting up close to our actual experience, whatever it may be, and perhaps not believing our thoughts.
• 18:18
  Even if we were unable to separate from our thoughts, perhaps we were able to learn about our mind's habits of reactivity. There's usually plenty of that at a retreat and it all serves. It all serves. Our reactivity often falls into one of these five categories or some combination. I call the five hindrances.
• 18:47
  I love that these were written down a few thousand years ago, that these are the things that meditators run into. This is what happens when we take our practice seriously. We run into these things we call the hindrances or the obstacles. They are aversion or anger, desire or craving, restlessness or anxiety, sloth or torpor. It's sometimes called laziness.
• 19:19
  I don't love that word, but you could also say giving up. Finally, skeptical doubt or cynicism. Cynicism about the practice or about our own capacity. So the Buddha in his teaching compares each of these metaphorically with trying to see our reflection in the surface of water in a pail of water. So when we are beset with aversion or anger it's like the water is boiling.
• 19:49
  How can we see ourselves clearly or see the world clearly when the water is just boiling? Or if we're craving, it's like the water is clouded with colorful dyes. Restlessness, it's like water ruffled by the wind. Sloth or torporates, I love this one, is covered with algae and slime. Doesn't it feel like that when you're meditating and you're just so unconscious almost?
• 20:18
  It's just so slippery and slimy. That is definitely my experience. And skeptical doubt, it's like the whole pail is hidden in the dark. So we might learn to recognize these as scenery along the way. It's not a failure to encounter these.
• 20:47
  But this is just part of the process. It's inevitable that we will run into these. If you keep practicing you get to learn how to deal more skillfully with them or see them for what they are. That's not the whole truth. It's not reflecting reality accurately when I am embroiled in any one of these experiences.
• 21:19
  And we can turn our mind from these. We can't do that until we first see them for what they are. A mind state. A mind state. It's not inherently true and is just like everything else.
• 21:41
  Everything else impermanent. Many people here experience the intimacy of the meals. And what a gift of gratitude to the people who made them. Some of them on the kitchen crew too. We get to really see every part of this offering.
• 22:04
  To truly experience the intimacy of the meals, taking the time to really smell the food. This is one of those times where you can just get your face down into the bowls. It's totally socially appropriate here to do that. And to eat one bite at a time. We often don't really even give that to ourselves.
• 22:27
  Now this is so different from thinking about food, so different from having a story about food. Eating and just eating, tremendous gift. Many people experience the intimacy of pain. The way it moves, the way it responds or doesn't to our attempts to work with it. The way we might work with our mind, does it tighten around the experience?
• 23:04
  What happens when I struggle against it? Can I relax into it? Maybe, maybe not. What is alive even in this experience? What is true?
• 23:24
  So we're really practicing turning toward our experience over and over again, turning toward our experience, getting up close, getting intimate with it, not knowing, not assuming or catching ourselves in this knowing, catching ourselves in this assuming, catching ourselves in these stories. We're just learning how to do this, how to get up close to our experience, whether it's pleasant or unpleasant or neutral. See for once, close-up afresh what we had ceased to see. So now you've done your first Zen retreat. Do you now know what a Zen retreat is?
• 24:24
  Hopefully you know the answer to that. You don't know, not knowing the answer to that. Yeah, Yeah. It's endless, isn't it? I mean, just when we think we know a person.
• 24:41
  How can we really know a person? Someone who's still growing and changing and has that infinite capacity. But our tendency is to crystallize a story about anything, even our Zen retreat. Freeze it into a picture, file it away. It's like those old tin type photographs with some humorless looking person staring back at you.
• 25:14
  But to not believe those thoughts, I mean there's a certain amount of story that functions, that we utilize the capacity. And in fact stories are sort of the delivery method of the teachings. That's so much of how the Buddha taught with stories. This is just how human beings understand things. It's beautiful.
• 25:42
  But ideally, a retreat like this, an experience like this, this practice, is not about the story of the retreat. That's going to be this paragraph or two and how could it possibly be encapsulated in that? It's like trying to describe this room in a paragraph or two. It can't be done. Each person here with all of our lived history and connection, I mean the whole universe is sitting right here.
• 26:15
  How could it possibly be diminished in that way? It's not about the story. It's about the clearer view that you might be able to come away with, that you might have touched or sensed are always new. It's about turning toward, turning toward. And when you go home and see the same old things, perhaps a sliver of freshness will intrude upon that.
• 27:10
  And you can meet your life with don't know mind and be intimate in this way. We're always orienting to our true home. And coming home has always been, can only be, right here, right now. So I'll share that poem again to close. The Prodigal Son To go forth now from all the entanglement that is ours and yet not ours, that, like the water in an old well, reflects us in fragments, distorts what we are.
• 28:01
  From all that clings, like burrs and brambles, to go forth and see for once, close-up afresh. What we had ceased to see, so familiar it had become. To glimpse how vast and how impersonal is the suffering that filled your childhood. Yes, to go forth, hand pulling away from hand. Go forth to what?
• 28:33
  To uncertainty. To a country with no connections to us and indifferent to the dramas of our life. What drives you to go forth? Impatience? Instinct?
• 28:50
  A dark need? The incapacity to understand? To bow to all this. To let go. Even if you have to die alone.
• 29:05
  Is this the start of a new life? Thank you. 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.
• 29:32
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