Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / The Spell of the World - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei

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The Spell of the World - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei · 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
  Jogen: A poem by Jaya John. What they have said about you is not true. What they have said about you will never be true. The perceptions others have of you is at most a molecule of your entirety. Perception that others have of you is at most a molecule of your entirety, more often is an aspect of a dream they have been living their whole life.
• 0:56
  More often, it is an aspect of a dream they have been living their whole life. A dream into which they have placed their imagination of you. Nothing you do can ever reveal to them your whole and accurate truth. Even you cannot grasp all of you. For it's a mystery that wanders dimensions and has no end.
• 1:25
  Even you cannot grasp all of you. Practice letting go of worrying how others cast you in their theater's play. Practice letting go of worrying how others cast you in their theaters play. You are not here to act in their presumptuous production. Even if they love you, you are not an image for them to project onto the screen of their storytelling.
• 1:57
  And you are not owned by their idea of you. You are a free and sovereign sky. Now, all things in you are not beautiful, yet you are the beauty of all things. All things in you are not beautiful, yet you are the beauty of all things. Recognize your glory and ground in the reality of it.
• 2:28
  So that's what Jaya said. And practitioners are open to feedback. So last full day, this retreat is almost entirely evaporated. Where does the time go? And thank you for those who have horses for holding your horses and staying put, still giving it your best.
• 3:02
  And thank you for being a little messy. Thank you for having an imperfect practice, for being a nuanced being who thinks and feels and dreams. And also would not like to be ruled by that thinking and feeling and dreaming. Thank you for not performing spirituality. Thanks for not faking it.
• 3:28
  But practicing and meeting your actual desires, challenges and concerns. You don't want to practice a fake dharma. You don't want to pretend. You want to bring yourself. You want yourself to meet this dharma.
• 3:44
  So thank you. I would be too intimidated and unqualified to take this role if you were saintly creatures of stainless perfection. So Even though some of you secretly wish to be saintly creatures of stainless perfection. I got some feedback that the teaching this week was like one of those places where it's like, it's a car wash and a rib joint and an antique store. And an ice cream parlor and you're like, can we just go to Target?
• 4:30
  They sell auto oil and it's a taco stand? Okay. So, there is a single clear thread that goes right to the core of the myriad Buddhist practices. And that is to be aware. Be aware with body, be aware with mind.
• 4:58
  Be aware in sound, be aware in silence. Be aware of impermanence in all things. Be aware of stillness. Be aware in what you're thinking. Be aware that thinking is exactly thinking.
• 5:23
  Be aware in what you're doing. I said earlier that part of the satisfaction of dharma practice is not being an automaton. To be aware in what we're doing. To be aware in how we're doing it. To be aware in our patterns and to be aware of them.
• 5:50
  To be aware of others needs that you or I are appropriate to respond to. And in that, to be aware of confidence, to be aware of hesitation. To be aware with body, to be aware with mind. To be aware of when awareness is a concept you need to release. To be aware when awareness is a limit you need to go beyond.
• 6:23
  And to be aware when you need to pick it back up, or when that's skillful. To be aware within actual experience. To be aware with an actual experience. To be aware that experience and awareness are exactly the same thing. So the single clear thread of dharma will not fail you.
• 7:02
  Be aware. And awareness frees awareness of the obstacles to awareness and one of them is, Oh, I've got this thing called awareness. You gotta start somewhere. Be aware. Be aware.
• 7:23
  Anytime you think, Well, I want to practice dharma. I really believe in the Buddhist teaching. I believe in the path of liberation and I don't know what to do. Be aware. And if you're like, Well, I'm already aware.
• 7:36
  What does that mean? Good, investigate that. What does it mean to be aware when there's nothing but awareness? And be aware. That single clear thread of dharma cannot fail you.
• 7:52
  The great teacher Longchampa, big inspiration for me, said, The only difference between the world of samsara and the awakened world is the presence or absence of awareness. Be aware. Now, one of the things we can be aware of is the magic of language. Can be aware that words, they cast spells. Right?
• 8:31
  Spell, spelling. Language casts spells in the absence of awareness. And there's a particular word I want to explore with you, a particular phrase. Consider the thought or utterance the world. How many times a day do we think the world?
• 8:59
  The world is Or we hear the words, the world, and we get a picture that equals what the world is. What happens when someone says, the world? What happens when you think, the world? What rises up in you? Indifference?
• 9:33
  Curiosity? Dread? Sadness? Anger? Hearing the world, does apprehension arise?
• 9:49
  Or disappointment? Maybe for some people it's duty, calling. But what is the world? What is the world? Is it one of these great cedars in the forest?
• 10:12
  For some beings, that's a world. Is it all the life energy within a single inhalation and exhalation? Why wouldn't that be a world? Everything is within that. Is the world the mysterious dark bliss of sleep?
• 10:45
  Or is it what leaps into being when we wake up? Or are you a cut and dry kind of person? The world is just a material reality where beings compete and destroy each other for resources and don't tell me otherwise. Very cheerful outlook. Is the world a pastiche of all the media impressions we've taken in?
• 11:19
  How many ideas and feelings about the world do we have, places we've never been, people we've never met but images came through our magic portals? Is the world the pastiche of all the media impressions we've taken in? Is it a pastiche of all the experiences we've had? Is the world the beliefs we've accumulated plus the media impressions plus our memories? Is that the world?
• 11:59
  Someone might say, is the world a thought? Then you might ask, is there a world without thought? Find out. Thought is not mandatory. Is the world the memories of experiences we've had plus what has been communicated to us about other beings experiences of the world?
• 12:30
  Is the world what someone with a PhD says it is? Or is the world what someone with a dharma robe says it is? Whose experience is the true world? People don't agree on what's going on. Is there more to the world than experience?
• 13:11
  You run up against something perplexing then because what would that mean for there to be an unexperienced world? Now maybe this is just more language magic, filling up space, using up air. No. Maybe not. Consider instead of there being the world, that there are myriad worlds.
• 13:52
  But notice that the mind goes something like, cool, myriad worlds. I hope I can go to one someday. I'm always on the lookout for like a good sci fi series because I always want to go to a new world. But that's not what I'm talking about. Now, do have a point with all this.
• 14:20
  When we, through the magic of language and the absence of really reflecting on this, believe there's this big old thing called the world. And I have whatever feelings and accumulation and shifting sense of what that is. Then I feel like I'm just this tiny little thing that moves around in this vast place. Just like this little ant. Someone told me the only thing they really like about living in New York is that I feel like a little ant.
• 14:56
  They like that feeling. Finally nobody knows who I am. But what if it's not quite like that? What if actually you are vast and worlds are moving through you? What if you contain myriad worlds?
• 15:25
  All the places and beings of your life come forth for you through this body, through this brain, through these sense organs. If there was no body, no brain, no sense organs, you would have no experience of anything whatsoever. The old master Zuan Shah said, the whole universe is the true human body. All the places and beings of your life come forth for you through this body. You are a very intimate cause of everything.
• 16:10
  No body, no brain, no senses, no experience. What is the world? It has to be something you experience. So reflect on this. This is why your practice matters.
• 16:30
  Sometimes when we have magical thinking and we do these chants like, the dharma is so beneficial, aren't I doing the most awesome beneficial thing? Sending magic rays of goodness out into the world. Think I'm into magic rays of goodness. But the magic is that beings come forth through your body, mind, and senses. There is no other way.
• 17:02
  There is no other way. If body mind is a brightened body mind, things and being appear in that brightened medium. Beings are not apart from their appearing, what would that mean? If body mind is a loving body mind, beings appear through that medium. You think of, you hear about, people who are so accomplished in loving kindness that people walk into their ashram and they start weeping because they can feel the vibe of love.
• 17:44
  They're coming into being through that being's medium. That's experienced. Being's a world of thing coming to life through a grateful body mind. You get a different world. A playful body mind.
• 18:05
  It's not dog eat dog then. A settled body mind. Things aren't the same. A humble body mind. We don't just see people to compete with.
• 18:25
  We are seeing, experiencing in accord with what we are being experiencing. World we get is the mind we have. Now that doesn't mean we don't have some shared reality and that I sort of live in some weird sci fi bubble. I do sometimes, but the, can I say, meaning of what arises, the flavor of what arises, the It's hard to put words to? The chant says, I sincerely advise those who wish to be enlightened, do not waste your time by night or day.
• 19:33
  So because you're not a tiny drop in a big bad world, you embrace myriad worlds. You can take responsibility for that. And practicing the way of dharma is cultivating your sphere of actual experience Towards a sphere of just these are just words, integrity, creativity, love. What's your actual field for expression of creativity, integrity, love? Many beings, things, places, moments co arise through you.
• 20:25
  You're an essential ingredient. Just like you're an essential ingredient for them. There's a concept in dharma of affinity. And affinity means, those beings that arise in our sphere are not there on accident. It's not a mistake.
• 20:49
  Of the millions of beings, of the millions of things that could come towards us, these did. Therefore, this is mine to respond to. And the Shantideva chant is encouraging us to lean into that. May I be a bridge, a boat, a ship for all beings to cross the water. And the easiest thing in the world is to think, Yeah, I should go on a pilgrimage way over there and help those people.
• 21:30
  And meanwhile, we still have a grudge against so and so. Or meanwhile, the plants are dying in our office. Meanwhile, we ignore the street person outside the grocery store. What is our actual field for the expression of love, creativity, and wisdom? Our culture has no shortage of the need for that.
• 22:09
  So to lean into that, and to be freed of excessive self concern in taking responsibility. There's this beautiful old writing by Dogenzinji where he's talking to the people in the monastery who have lots of responsibility. And he says, You're very fortunate to be the Tenzo or the bookkeeper or whatever it is because you cannot dwell on your own spiritual accomplishment. Put aside thoughts of your own spiritual accomplishment and ideas about your practice and just take care of beings. And they were monastics so they took care of beings in this form.
• 23:02
  You know, the way that even something as profound and in itself pure as the practice of dharma can become can become narcissistic if we if we twist it about me. Can I ring out of this? So your life is not some small tiny little drop. And that means the people we relate to also are not small tiny little drops. They contain myriad worlds.
• 23:42
  They encompass so many beings. Funny when I see like this image of the news, when I hear the phrase the world. And it's like, oh yeah, what matters is what's happening somewhere else. The real. The real is whatever is the most painful thing that the media can show us.
• 24:19
  If we positively benefit even a single person because a person is unbounded, that's a profound act. The Buddha and again, Dogen Zenji would say things like, if you understood what we understand about the benefit of generosity, you would never pass up a single moment that appears before you. Have you understood the merit of generosity, the mysterious causation? So there's a lot that could be said about how do we practice in everyday life. But, the worst idea is that you're going to leave and try to protect this little bubble of mindfulness.
• 25:07
  No. Keep TikTok out of my bubble of mindfulness going keep Netflix out and not going to text my girlfriend for four days and going to let my cat in this bubble and some Thai food. Do you ever think about your practice as a little bubble? You're going to keep something inside. You're going to protect something.
• 25:36
  Now, is something to be said for respecting and not dissipating practice energy which I hope to talk about a little bit tomorrow. But if you practice like you have a little precious bubble of dharma and everything is a threat to that, what's the point? That doesn't work even in the monastery. I mean, you think that this isn't a place you get to have a little dharma bubble. It really all becomes like, the old metaphor is curdled milk.
• 26:17
  It becomes like curdled Curdled milk is sort of gross. Nobody likes it. You kind of open your fridge and you're like, Damn. When we hold our practice as this precious thing that we don't want others to disturb, the nutritious milk becomes curdled milk. Though each of us has a sphere of connections, of affinities, of responsibilities, and to live into that.
• 26:59
  Not perfectly. To live into that as the field. Bodhisattva's field is a field of living beings. This is why you can't just like practice in your bedroom online and be doing real practice. Sorry if I offend anybody.
• 27:27
  There's a time for practicing in your bedroom, that's great. But there has to be interaction with beings who press our buttons and who reflect ourselves to ourselves. I'm going read a poem by, again by this person TK. And TK likes to use the word love. And so for the official Buddhists in the room, I say something about the word love.
• 28:02
  You could think of it as devotion to the most beautiful. Or you could think of it as the the the beauty and the fullness of undoing the sense of separate self. Or of the the radiance of mind that remains when we see through. So, I will read the poem. A man walks by my doorway.
• 28:39
  His shadow crosses over the lintel. Swift as that, a human life passes. Swift as that, a human life passes. If you are not undone by love, then quick, act. The chance will be lost and your shadow will pass over.
• 29:01
  Inside you there are a 100 songs ready to burst out like startled birds. Inside where? You know, inside life. But after all, where are you? Don't claim credit but be the notes.
• 29:18
  Be the string of pearls that makes up a fragment of God's melody. Forgot to do a disclaimer about that word but you can handle it. You love a friend. You love a lover. You love a child, a sunset, a painting, your parents, a beauty.
• 29:42
  Each of these occasional immediacies makes you. Each of these occasional immediacies makes you. Each one is a time signature. The relative duration of pitch or a ghost note. All rhythmic value.
• 30:02
  They are wonderful. All these things, a friend, a lover, a child, a sunset, a painting, all the things we love. They are wonderful. They are signposts. They are not yet that love which undoes.
• 30:18
  These other momentary loves are like sparks rising up from a nighttime campfire. All bright and burn, then gone. These other momentary loves are like sparks rising up from a nighttime campfire. All bright and burned and gone. But there is a love that is pure flame.
• 30:47
  Fire is the origin of sparks. This is the origin of fire. Those who are true lovers of love call it the source of all, untouched by any. In the night sky openness of your life, enjoy the bright and burn moments, but dwell in the splendor that overcomes in love. Live so that life becomes the altar of love where you bow your head.
• 31:23
  May it be so. Live so that life becomes the altar of love where you bow your head. A woman wakes in the desert. She has no idea how she got there. There is desert in every direction as far as the eye can see.
• 31:43
  The desert goes on forever. That is this human life. How will you live in this world so that it is not as an exile? How will you live in this world so that it is not as an exile? A bird flies overhead, its shadow passing along the desert sands.
• 32:13
  Its shadow passes over me. That is a human life. It is also a spark of love. So I have a few random things to say. One is, someone at home might think you're here and you're just sort of, intoxicated and disconnected from the real.
• 32:52
  But it could be that you're more connected to the real than you've ever been. So, take stock of what is clear and apparent to you. And if there is something of value that's clear and apparent to you, pray that you don't lose it. Pray that you don't forget. You have a mind ripened for meditation.
• 33:27
  And I have a suggestion for the remaining sessions of sitting. I actually have two suggestions. First is, there's an old teaching in Zogchen that says, Excessive clarity leads to aggression. Sometimes after we've been practicing as much as we've been practicing and as we're going to be something in us knows we're going to be transitioning to the awkwardness and the realness of connecting with each other and being back out in the world. We can get kind of aggressive, get some kind of claws and spikes.
• 34:12
  Well, so called scales. The mind gets kind of judgy and defensive. So a wonderful way to transition out of this retreat would be to now spend the remaining time doing loving kindness practice. If you don't have that kind of defensiveness or fear, fear is one of the things that Buddha taught loving kindness as an excellent antidote for, then don't worry about it. But why not?
• 34:49
  It's interesting that now that the mind is more clear, a practice like that might surprise you in its power. So to be caught up in cultivating and appreciating a love vibe. Otherwise, I suggest practicing awareness directly knowing impermanence. It is very common to stop hearing the word impermanence as pointing to this very texture of existence and think, oh yeah, you keep reminding me that like my stuff's going to go away. Thanks.
• 35:42
  Thanks Buddha. The word impermanence is pointing to actually everything right now is popping in and out of being if you would just look. Actually things are continually phasing into and out of existence if we would really just look. This is your body. This is your mind.
• 36:05
  So to directly focus on impermanence when you have a more steady and clear awareness is of good good merit, let's say. Because it's seeing impermanence that undoes clinging. Not just the idea that we want to. So that would mean if you're working with the breath, you still are experiencing the breath but hone in on its particulate quantum nature. Using all these fancy words but it's not fancy.
• 36:42
  If you're working with sound, really don't just focus on the sound, focus on the impermanence of sound. If you really have a stable awareness, look right at the mind, the thinking mind. Hold space and just witness its phantom ephemeral show. You could stop being afraid of thought or considering it an enemy of meditation. Awareness seeing impermanence is a wonderful practice.
• 37:14
  So we've been practicing the dharma which gives life to life. We'll give your life life. It gives hope amidst despair. It can bring bliss amidst aggression and sanity amidst craziness. So I wish you all the good supports of the path as you continue.
• 37:40
  I wish us to be able to make good use of them. And I encourage you to verify for yourself the ending of vexations. Vexations, anxiety, aggression, greed, all the stuff, all the human stuff, you can know what it means to end those. It's not a theory. Please practice well.
• 38:13
  Thank you.
• 38:21
  Jomon: Thank you for listening to the Zen Community of Oregon podcast, and thank you for your practice. New episodes air every week. Please consider making a donation at zendest.org. Your support supports us.