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Serenity Is a Stance Not a State- Jogen 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.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Hear it real here on maintain it. May we humbly realize a and heart, a heart, heart, heart,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: true
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: meaning. A Take refuge in Buddha, take refuge in Dharma, I take refuge in Sangha. Very good to be here with you for this July session. This week the talks will take inspiration and instruction and something of the spirit of practice from master Hongzhi's practice instructions. And master Hongzhi is an important teacher in our lineage and a very important teacher for this monastery just in terms of influence and flavor.
• 2:00
  Master Hong Jogen lived and taught in twelfth century China and in a large community of practitioners that included monastics and lay people. One of the things that said about Master Hongzhi is he was so dedicated to serving his community that he never left the mountain once he was installed as abbot. Although, these complexes are huge and there's sub temples and training temples and it's basically like a kind of a village. And ZCO being in the stream of the white plum lineage brought by Maizumi Roshi who carried forward two streams of Zen that historically in Japan for sectarian reasons are thought of as very distinct. Soto and Rinzai.
• 2:55
  Master Hongzhi represents the Kowdong, it's the Chinese name for the Soto Dharma that is part of our part of our inheritance in this this stream of practice here. And he's known for promoting and teaching a style of practice called Silent Illumination or or serene illumination. And there are texts, there's a whole collection of koan that master Hongzhi and one of his disciples I think collected and then Hongzhi wrote poems and commentaries to it. That's called the Book of Serenity, a very profound text. This, I don't I think this is just master Hongzhi's practice instructions is how it would translate and and that's what we're going to be pulling selections from Bon Cho and I and using to springboard.
• 3:57
  I thought I'd read the introduction to these practice instructions. So this was compiled by Monk Pukung. Please forgive my pronunciation, maybe it's Fukung, I'm not sure. Says, Dharma words of monk that's master of Mount Tiantong in Ming province. And so this is the the student that transcribed these and he said, made vast and empty the bright mirror and saw through it and reflected without neglect.
• 4:37
  He manifested the mysterious pivot of subtle change then trusted his fortune and certainly found the core. Only one who had the true eye and deep flowing eloquence could have mastered this. My teacher lived below Taipai Peak. Dragons and elephants trumped around. Dragons and elephants is a term for, real adepts in the practice, awakened practitioners.
• 5:06
  And I don't know the difference between a dragon and an elephant except the dragon is not an elephant but the hammer and chisel of the teaching chipped away. That is through his teaching and the practice it chipped away at the delusions of the ordinary mind. The meaning of his words spread widely but still conveyed the essence. Sometimes scholars and lay people who trusted the way asked for his directions. Sometimes mendicant monks requested his instructions.
• 5:39
  They spread out paper and wrote down his responses. He spoke up and answered their questions producing appropriate Dharma talks. And one of the things I think is marvelous about this is this is just the stuff that flowed out of this person's mouth. He's sitting in a state of emptiness which is full of potential. Someone says, what's the Dharma?
• 6:01
  And this is what emerged from his being. I have selected a few of these and arranged them in order. It's too bad that we don't have all of them. The compiler continues, Ah, the emptiness of the great blue sky, the flowing of the vast ocean. I have not yet attained these utmost depths, so please excuse my attempt to record his talks.
• 6:27
  I must await the ones who mysteriously accord with spiritual awakening to pound out the rhythm of his words and appreciate their tones. So one of the reasons we sit here is because we have some faith. We have some trust, we have some confidence. We have some experience or a mix of those that there is something of real value to be discovered and uncovered in sitting meditation. And it might be like we see the just the tip of the jewel of what's possible.
• 7:15
  We see the tip and we know that there must be something submerged because we see the tip. You have some faith or experience that this practice does something beneficial for you and that's the right way, the right basis to proceed, you want to be benefited by Buddha's teaching. Right? And however way you would give expression to that. And the more experience of that beneficence, the more faith we have.
• 7:55
  And then the more faith we have, the more we can have verifying experience. And so then these feed into each other, we have enough faith to start, the starting gives us some experience, the experience feeds our faith and it flows into each other. And at some point perhaps the distinction between experience and faith disappears. Those are the same thing. One of the possibilities in sharing lineage teachings like master Hongzhi's from the old records, is we might be able to get a sense of the profundity, the vastness, the trustworthiness, the refinement of the practice that we're doing.
• 8:53
  Nowadays, somebody could have meditated for three weeks on an app and they get on Instagram and say, here's my guided meditations. Send me $20 and people do. We are the recipients of a style of meditation and practice from a succession of people going back many, many centuries. Even if we said this particular flavor of practice started in the December, it has a precedent, a yogic precedent that goes back a thousand years before that. So appreciating the lineage teachings, it's kind of like a family recipe.
• 9:39
  A family recipe comes down over the generations and it becomes so delicious because it was respected but it was also adjusted, it was tweaked with love. Yeah, grandma really knew how to make cornbread but a little bit more butter. Yeah. And we recognize this, this is something special. So we can choose to receive this recipe.
• 10:10
  We can choose to be heirs to this particular kind of understanding and approach to awakening. And that's what a lineage is. It's too bad that sometimes we come into a lineage place and we go, well I know that you're guys are Zen but I do X Y Z. So I'm gonna sit here and just do what I do. Because the whole the whole system and the way the teachers are are training is aimed towards carrying forth the family recipe.
• 10:43
  Now to speak to the benefit of that through choosing to be heirs to a flavor of practice, imperfect and conflicted as you and I might be, we can taste the very same thing these people have been tasting. We cook it up and we're like, yes, that's damn tasty, don't mess with it. Or if you mess with it be very careful. Don't just haphazardly throw some ingredient in there. And then, we become part of the succession and transmission.
• 11:21
  Whether we sit here, sit there, doesn't matter. We're part of the transmission of something refined, vital and unusual. Now a good way to hear probably all Buddhist teachings but at least Chan and Zen teachings, Chan is Chinese Zen, is that they are talking directly about your mind. They're talking directly about my mind. Even when we don't understand it, even when we go, what's an invisible ox leaping over the moon?
• 12:04
  I don't get it. Still, that invisible ox back flipping over the moon, they're talking about our practice. They're talking directly about our heart and mind the best way that they can for the subtlety of what they're trying to point out. They speak to the mind's anxious ordinary surface condition, Hongjir will, they speak to its depth. They speak to how to work with the ordinary condition, they speak to how the core of your mind is eternally unblemished from the beginningless beginning.
• 12:46
  All these levels are spoken to in these teachings. And so, part of receiving a lineage transmission is just an attitude of I would like to receive a lineage transmission. I would like to be penetrated, permeated. I would like to open to this and it's that sort of humble receptive attitude then the teachings can land. Our soil is moistened, something can be planted.
• 13:27
  This is true for the chance we do each day. This is true for Sansen. This is true. This is pretty much true. Now, the teachings are directly addressed to you and I.
• 13:45
  And, sometimes the language or vibe hits for us and sometimes it doesn't. But what's offered here in this lineage, this practice is a time tested medicine for what ails the heart. It wasn't invented twenty years ago. It wasn't thought about two hundred years ago. It is time tested thousands and thousands of people have been part of this transmission and very few of them were getting famous and paid for it.
• 14:27
  They passed it on because it works, because it's genuine. What's offered here is time tested medicine for what ails the heart so we don't have to be confused by the form of delivery. What ails the heart is thoughts, beliefs and habits of action that we could give up. That's basically the Buddha's message. What ails the heart is thoughts, beliefs and actions that we could give up and that at some level we might know that we need to.
• 15:20
  So, this section, I'll read it first and then, make some comments about it. This section for today is called the practice of true reality. The master Hongzhi, the practice of true reality is simply to sit serenely in silent introspection. Practice of true reality is simply to sit serenely in silent introspection. When you have fathomed this, you cannot be turned around by external causes and conditions.
• 15:59
  This empty wide open mind, this empty wide open mind is subtly and correctly illuminating. Spacious and content without confusion from thoughts of grasping Effectively overcome habitual behavior and realize the self that is not in the grip of emotions. You can see that problems of a thousand years ago are not that different from the problems of today as far as being human. He continues, you must be broad minded. You must be big hearted, whole without relying on others.
• 16:51
  Such upright independent spirit can begin not to pursue degrading situations. Such upright indispendent spirit can begin not to pursue degrading situations. Here you can rest and become clean, pure and lucid. Bright and penetrating that is your state of mind has become that, immediately return to the world accord and respond to deal with events. Everything is unhindered, clouds gracefully floating up to the peaks, moonlight flowing down mountain streams.
• 17:38
  The entire place is brightly illumined and spiritually transformed. And it continues for a few more stanzas, but for today, the practice of true reality is simply to sit serenely in silent introspection. There's some confusion in teachings where it says sit calmly or have equanimity and we think that's a particular way that I feel like I mentioned last night kind of after I have two CBD drinks. Or that's how I feel once I've arranged all the conditions in my life and no one's bothering me. My body is not bothering me.
• 18:22
  But that's small equanimity there, that's conditioned calmness. When Hongjir says to sit serenely, it's a stance, It's a stance. It's a It's a practice of being before the reactive mind. Because sometimes you feel serene and sometimes you don't. Sometimes you're sitting here and your body heart are thawing because you're practicing well and well there's a panic attack moving through you.
• 19:04
  You don't get to be serene there but you can still practice. You can still have the stance of serenity which is I will not react. So when we do this practice and this tradition was actually criticized even way back in the twelfth century by other lineages because people performed calmness. That's the critique of the So to school, people walk around pretending they're serene and calm. That's missing the point altogether.
• 19:44
  Feeling serene is not the point, the serenity is to slow down with how we react to experience. To sit serenely in silent introspection is to let experience unfold, to give it that space. Ordinary habitual mind is always in this instant decision of good bad. A feeling comes, we go good or bad. Thought comes, good or bad.
• 20:22
  The temperature in the Zeno, good or bad. How the body feels, good or bad. Let experience unfold itself, to let it be what it is, that's what is meant by serenity. So the practice of true reality is slowing down the knee jerk. There's another old Buddhist practice image that a practitioner is like an unstruck bell.
• 21:04
  And one of the ways to understand that is a bell is full of the potential to resonate and give off vibration. You can just breathe on a bell and you can listen and hear some vibration. But to be like a bell that's just suspended from its rope. You're full of potential and yet, Practice of true reality is slowing down the knee jerk reaction to experience that is impermanent. It's basically light speed.
• 21:48
  And therefore seeing clearly within. Introspection. Right? And Buddha's teaching a lot of it is really just emphasizing that meditation is a sober and direct apprehension of mind, feelings and body. It's not a practice with psychological intent.
• 22:22
  It has psychological benefit but it is not a psychological practice. This means we are not watching what we're thinking or feeling and deciding that's a good thought, let me think more about that one. Or let me make space so I can analyze my life path really carefully in the silence of the container. That may arise naturally but to do that on purpose is to miss the point altogether. Altogether misses the point.
• 23:01
  A moment of true reality practice doesn't mean that we're in involving with memory or good ideas or painful thoughts or happy thoughts or understanding about our life. Thoughts and feelings are appearing, they always have a shape, they always have a form. But what we're doing is just steadily seeing the dance of all this as simply phenomena. As simply phenomena. This is vital to understand the content of the feelings, content of the thoughts actually have very little to do with anything whatsoever in the practice.
• 23:47
  It's true as we purify the heart, as we begin to rest nearer and nearer to the the true reality, more and more love and compassion is what comes forward as thought and feeling or less and less judgment and fear comes forward. But the content of the mind watching it, monitoring it, inventorying it has nothing whatsoever to do with the practice of Zen. That's really good news, you don't have to worry about what comes up. It's all in a way grist for the mill which is unmoving awareness. The virtue of that, the brightness of that, the freedom of that is none of that which arises.
• 24:43
  Steadily seeing the dance of all this phenomena and then there's a wonder and a deepening at being that which is not caught up. And Buddha said it very simply, he said, Mindfulness is knowing a mental formation as a mental formation. Period. Knowing an impulse as an impulse. Knowing a body sensation as a body sensation.
• 25:18
  Period. So as we sit don't try to have good thoughts. Also, don't feed deluded thoughts. It's not about that dimension of your being. This is not a psychological practice though it has profound psychological benefits broadly speaking.
• 25:50
  The master continues, when you have fathomed this, you cannot be turned around by external causes and conditions. This empty wide open mind is subtly and correctly illuminating. This empty wide open mind is subtly and correctly illuminated. The steady frame of awareness. The purpose of Sansen tonight will be simply to clarify the method of practice that you're doing.
• 26:28
  All methods are unified in being about being a means of holding a steady frame of awareness. Attention held unmoving within which the moving which is everything arises and disappears. And we begin to do this. There's a clean, clear taste of correct illumination. There's a taste, there is a spiritual nutrient that comes from experience without additive, without distortion, without buffer.
• 27:24
  Hearing the sparrows with nothing extra in the mind. Tasting the breath with nothing extra in the mind. The subtle and correct illumination is its own subtle nourishment. We begin to taste it as we settle. And, you hold this frame of awareness with continuity, with real engagement and it brightens, and it widens, and it subsumes and it permeates.
• 28:12
  And this heart mind, we could call it awareness is experienced as partaking of everything and it's totally at rest. Suffusing everything and completely still. In the Maha Mudra tradition, Maha Mudra is an Indian lineage that has very similar emphasis and roots to the silent illumination practice. They emphasize that a practitioner is switching their basis. As a practitioner, you are attempting, practicing, switching your basis from the thinking, reacting, analyzing mind to awareness.
• 29:11
  When our basis is habitual mind, we can't help but be anxious. Really the thinking mind doesn't do serenity. It can be impacted by the deeper rising up of serenity but thinking minds, generally the thinking mind is either dependent, rebellious or checked out. When our basis is habitual minds litany of the latest desired solution to our lack of ease, we can't help but grasp. So it's exactly why we're here so we can begin to break out of that prison.
• 30:05
  Hong Jogen then says, spacious and content without confusion from inner thoughts of grasping effectively overcome habitual behavior and realize the self that is not possessed by emotions. You must be broad minded, whole without relying on others. Such upright independent spirit can begin not to pursue degrading situations. In this practice, we come into a kind of dignity. Naturally aware of the state of our heart mind moment by moment, you're the primary witness of whether you're aligned or not aligned.
• 31:00
  When you're the primary witness about whether you're aligned with a heart or not aligned, then what happens? What's what's what happens to the opinions of others? How do they land when you're aligned in truth with yourself? You're the primary witness of your own goodness or whether you're deviating from that. When you are aligned with your own goodness because you're not being fooled by the mind, what happens to that part of us that seeks to get affirmed that we're good, we're doing it right, we're approved of.
• 31:52
  When we're aware of our state of heart and mind moment by moment and therefore we align what happens to our beliefs about others and how they should be acting? What happens to our judgments? My experience is that my disapproval of others is not really very significant. I have my alignment to tend to, to act from, and other people have theirs. In this practice we come into dignity because in this practice we have choice, we have that space before we react from the old anxieties and fears.
• 32:45
  And we can stay relaxed in that place. We can stay the unstruck bell. You could read this as talking about different kind of subtle stages that happen in the practice. We begin to have more ethical alignment, begin to behave internally and externally in a way that we more and more are aligned. We know that, we're the primary witness to that and because of that, the mind can get brighter and clearer.
• 33:33
  It can be more at peace. When we're out of alignment in ourselves, no matter how good you are at concentration, that peace is gonna be elusive. That's why we emphasize the precepts. So he continues and he says, Here you can rest. Doesn't mean you're not working hard to maintain that alignment you may very well be.
• 34:04
  But there's a kind of rest. There's a kind of static of the heart that we don't have to deal with. Here you can rest and become clean, pure and lucid. Clean, pure and lucid. So see and feel how it feels when you are really taking care of your practice.
• 34:36
  Actually, I think when I'm really taking care of my practice I don't have the time to analyze how others are practicing. When I'm really taking care of my practice, my eyes don't really wander around the Zen Do. I'm really taking care of my practice in a way nobody else exists until they do, until I need to bow as I pass somebody, until I need to be mindful of how I put the dish in front of their bowls. See how it feels when you fully mind the business that is yours to mind. We're social creatures, we're wired, we're definitely socialized to always be minding the business of other people.
• 35:34
  And yet, it's interesting in the different traditions of Buddhism and probably you would find this in other contemplative traditions. They speak about doing spiritual practice as the highest and most central task of a human being's life. It's a more central task and a higher task than everything else. And the belief is that when we take care of that, everything else flows from the right place. So in Zen, this is called the great matter of life and death.
• 36:23
  And maybe if you're like me, you first come to this and all you want is a little relief from the turmoil of your mind. All you want is a little relief from your suffering and then bit by bit you realize this is this is really profound what we're up to here. It's not just about a little mental relief. The Buddha said, one fully engaged in the practice is doing what needs to be done in this lifetime. Doing what needs to be done.
• 37:10
  Spacious and content without confusion from inner thoughts of grasping. Don't be confused by them. Know them for what they are. This is what I meant by honesty about the ego's display. And when we first start to take this in to to, consider that this is a truth about our mind, it can be kind of dismaying to see how much of the thinking mind is fearful, self centered and grasping.
• 37:42
  It's a lot of it, frankly. It's a whole lot of it. Everybody has love shining through them because that's our deeper basis, but generally a whole lot of the mind is inner thoughts of grasping. Even if it masquerades as caring for others. So we're sitting, sitting here awake, intimate with our bodily experience, letting things flow and not being fooled, not being fooled.
• 38:32
  I think you'll find that as you actually get closer to a ripening of your practice, the mind says, well how about this? How about when some to so and so said this to you ten years ago? Or how about that really good meal? Or how about, oh this opportunity or that? You'll find that it tosses out bait.
• 39:00
  And if we are not wakeful, if we're not really on it, we will get captured by it and temporarily knocked off our seat. We will lose the thread. Hongjo continues, bright and penetrating immediately return accord and respond to deal with events. So we leave the Zen Do, but we don't leave the practice. Don't leave the practice.
• 39:33
  Let's really make an effort this week to live in presence. Moment by moment, just function without leaving any trace. Just this, this, this, this, this, this. Very few things in session need us to analyze how did they go. Nothing that's said in any talk needs to be remembered.
• 39:59
  No meal needs to be, you know, reminisced after the fact. Let each moment evaporate, that's what's happening anyway. And then you're available for freshness, then you are continually practicing. Bright and penetrating immediately return accord and respond to deal with events. Accord in our response to events.
• 40:34
  Now when you begin to really sit, not being involved in the the content of mind on a personality level, you see that you don't have a fixed self. It's plain as day. You see that you don't have a fixed self. The center is all space and energy. If you put awareness on where you might think there's a self, you will never find it.
• 41:04
  If you look in a thought for a self, you'll just find thoughts. If you look at feelings for an owner of them, you'll never find it. It's all space and energy, your pure creativity. It's such a relief. Sitting, see that you don't have a fixed self and that means we can easily shape shift.
• 41:28
  All the time we easily shape shift. Just like you don't talk to a mailman like you talk to your baby, I hope. That doesn't take any special effort. You don't have to think about that in advance. You don't have to say when the mailman comes I'm gonna stop saying or whatever.
• 41:48
  Isn't it weird if you just kinda catch someone talking to a child like out of context? You would never do that with somebody else. You switch because you have no fixed self. You're not stuck on any mode of being and we're amplifying that quality. We're making that more available.
• 42:15
  So sitting and seeing that no self can be seen, this is just If you do the experiment, it's inarguable. You translate that into deep flexibility that we offer each other. It's not that hard to drop the preference about whether someone chews loudly or quietly. It's not that hard to drop the preference about the sound of someone's breathing. It's not that hard because you have no fixed self.
• 42:50
  So, we translate this into deep flexibility that we offer each other, we offer the session vessel and we offer ourselves freedom from rigidity. It sucks to be rigid. I don't think anybody likes the feeling of rigidity which is not the same as dignity. Master being a man, a liter a man of hyper literate China expresses his experience of this poetically saying, everything is unhindered like clouds gracefully floating up to the peaks. Moonlight glitteringly flowing down the mountain streams.
• 43:40
  The entire place is brightly illumined and spiritually transformed. It's trying to convey something of what it would be like to be Hongzhi. What it would be like to deeply put these things into practice and let them change us. So we're off to a good start and we're laying the groundwork for the rest of the week. It's gonna be a little bit hotter tomorrow.
• 44:17
  It's gonna be that challenge. There's gonna be a little bit more of the body aches come up, the complaining mind, that habit generally starts to arise. It's really up to you, can you stay steadfast? Is your feeling for what's possible here deeper than being cozy? Is your faith in awakening stronger than being comfortable?
• 44:54
  And then we continue to lay a strong groundwork. And just to return to the what, to summarize the essential practices. First of all, relaxation. Not as I feel so good in my body, relaxing as in I'm yielding my resistance. I recognize I'm averse to some mood, texture or feeling and I'm reacting.
• 45:23
  I'm tensing, I'm checking out, I'm complaining, deciding instead from wisdom, I'm gonna I'm gonna wear this. I'm gonna be this. As soon as you be the thing you resist, the barrier disappears. This is not a rumor or don't let it be one. I like the word yielding.
• 45:56
  It's weird, we think that our bodies are this accident. And that what comes forward is somehow like, we're victimized by it. Especially when we're doing a deep practice like this, what comes through the body needs to be felt because it's true reality. This is why we sit still not because sitting still is special. We sit still so that we can deeply be one with, so we can be people who feel very deeply the light speed sensations that make up our life.
• 46:45
  So relaxation of resistance, relaxation of separation, holding steady awareness. If you need some clarity about how to most skillfully do that, that's what Sansen is partially for. And then honesty about when our personality's narrowness is enchanting us. And the willingness to put that aside. That could go on forever.
• 47:23
  There's no end to anxiety unless you end it. There is no end to complaining mind unless you end it. There is no end to dissatisfied mind unless you end it. It's just self replicating delusion forever. All of us know somebody who has spent their whole life practicing those things.
• 47:51
  Nothing happened to stop it. So we wanna be just honest. The honesty is, not that I'm a bad person because I have this, you're just a person and that's why you have it. The honesty is am I willing to to to stay closer to my deeper intention and give it up? Right?
• 48:15
  Like am I am I willing to say no, I'm not gonna go with this state of mind again? And do it gently. And be willing to do it fiercely if that's called for. To know the satisfaction of being wholehearted, as wholehearted as you currently know how. I'm not as wholehearted as I could be.
• 48:53
  I try to work my edge of wholeheartedness. Know the satisfaction of what results from being as wholehearted as you currently know how. In a way, the completion of a retreat and the way the heart is nourished is not because we had some flash of insight. It's more how deeply did I engage my spiritual aspiration, which is more fundamental than any experience. If you are a resident and this is your fiftieth, hundredth, thirtieth session, sometimes we are consenting to habits of going through the motions.
• 49:49
  Well, I don't know what could be more boring. We're putting coziness over real engagement. And if we're bothered by that possibility, that's good. We figure have out how can I having practiced for all these session or all these years or decades for some people, how can I engage this fresh? That's the koan.
• 50:22
  When we have no fixed self, the past is a memory even though it has imprinted our bodies and so we can begin fresh. There's actually nothing in the way but ideas. So, each practice, each oriocchi, each chant, each sitting rediscover the practice, that's the way it is. You rediscover it. You're informed by your experience and yet there it is again.
• 50:53
  What is this? What is holding awareness steadily? What is eating wholeheartedly? What is letting go? Rediscover.
• 51:07
  And then we can really, really make the most of this time that we have together. It's just, it's just so brief. So, so thank you for supporting me in this. Thank you for supporting your neighbors in this. And we're just getting started.
• 51:26
  So please, keep the zest alive. Thank you.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Zen Community 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.