Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / One--What is that? - Kisei Costenbader, Sesei

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One--What is that? - Kisei Costenbader, Sesei · 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.
• 0:29
  Kisei: Refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. And I take refuge in Sangha. So throughout the summer, we're looking at this book called The Hidden Lamp and reading one case a week. And today's case was case six.
• 1:04
  It's called Cannot So I'll just start by reading the Koan. It's a little longer one today. And so it reads more like a story, but there are some really good Koan lines in here. And then we'll have a little, I'll give a little talk and we'll have a space for discussion. Bada Kundala Kesa was a wandering Jain aesthetic famous for her debating skills.
• 1:45
  Whenever she came to a new place, she set a branch of rose apple in the ground and put out the word that whoever wished to debate her should trample the branch. When she was 70 years old, she came to Savati and the Buddha's disciple, Shariputra, came forward to engage her in a public debate. First, she asked a series of philosophical questions to Shariputra and he was able to answer them all. Then he said, You have asked many questions. I would like to ask only one.
• 2:28
  She said, Yeah, please, please ask Venerable One. He asked, One, what is that? One, what is that? She was unable to answer. He said, If you don't even know that, how could you know anything else?
• 2:57
  If you don't even know that, how could you know anything else? And began to teach her the dharma. She was so moved by the teachings that she fell at his feet and asked to take refuge with him. But instead, he told her to come and meet the Buddha. The Buddha recognized her spiritual maturity and said to her, One phrase that brings peace is better than a thousand words that have no use.
• 3:27
  When she heard these words, she was freed and became an arhant. Then the Buddha ordained her saying simply, Bada, come. So a lot happened in that story. And let's, yeah, let's start with the beginning. Let's start with what we know of Bada from the story.
• 3:56
  We have a strong, very confident woman, confident in her debating skills. And it sounds like she's going from town to town and very capable linguistically, very intellectually adroit. She can win debates. She has this kind of confidence that she can really meet anybody who comes forward with questions and probably has been able to do that for most of her life as this wandering Jain is a form of spiritual practice, Jainism, in India at the time and still is a spiritual practice. And so when we encounter her in the koan, she's about 70 years old.
• 4:59
  And I wanna read a little bit of the commentary. So each of these koans in The Hidden Lamp, there's a case, some of the cases are much shorter. And then there's a commentary by a contemporary teacher. And this commentary is by Beth Kanji Goldring. And she tells a little bit of the history of Bada.
• 5:26
  So I'd like to share that with you. She says, One of the great beauties of Bada's story is that like the stories of Angulimala, the murderer, and of Milaripa who practiced black magic, it speaks of transformation within this lifetime. Whatever harm we have done, however great, it is possible through sincere effort sustained by wise teaching to put it fully behind and to enter into freedom, compassion, and intimacy. Bada's story speaks to us not only of realization but of redemption. As one who has done harm in my life, I treasure this possibility.
• 6:13
  Bada Kundala Kesa's early life illuminates this. Bada came from a prosperous middle class family and was kept insisted on marrying him. In some versions of the story, an innocent person was executed in his place. Shortly afterward, her husband told Bada he wanted to fulfill a promise to a mountain deity. He told her to come with him and wear her most precious jewels.
• 6:53
  Then he led her to the top of a cliff and tried to throw her over. She, having asked to make one last bow to him, threw him over instead. Repulsed at where her passion had led her, Bada turned away from the world. During her ordination as a Jain ascetic, as a special penance, each hair was pulled out individually by the roots, a group back curly, hence the name Kundalakhesa, curly haired. So when we meet Bada, she is seasoned in her life.
• 7:42
  So after she had her hairs ripped out as part of this, taken out one by one by the roots as part of her ordination, she started to wander the countryside and go to towns and practice debate. And that became her main form of spiritual practice. So when we meet her, I'm curious, like how many debates has she won? I'm also curious what's continuing to drive her. She seems quite driven even at 70, she's throwing down that rose apple branch and inviting anyone to come and debate her, ask her their spiritual questions, engage in philosophical debate.
• 8:43
  So you could say like maybe there's a mixed motive like many of us. Maybe her debate is part of her spiritual vows. Maybe that's part of how she feels she's helping to liberate others from their fixed beliefs or to spread the dharma as she's received it. Or is her debating part of a protection strategy, a way of staying like a healthy distance away from people by engaging in a form of argument and intellectual skill. So like all koans, like all stories in the dharma, these questions are also for us.
• 9:35
  Do you ever find yourself engaging in arguments or debates? Do you ever want to show someone how right you are? And what is your intention when you do that, if you do that? I don't love debating. I'm not very like great at quick, intellectual, verbal adroiteness, but I can feel myself at times like really wanting to be right when my partner and I like have a disagreement about something and I wanna like prove it that I know the way home or the best way home.
• 10:30
  And often, you know, what's my intention there? It's totally ego driven. I want to prove I'm right and then I want him to say he's wrong and I'm right and that feels good or I think it will. And yeah, maybe sometimes there can be a feeling of, Oh yeah, I'm helping liberate this person from their fixed beliefs. But am I actually reinforcing my own fixed beliefs?
• 11:12
  And is it a form of protection? That's an interesting question. When or if you engage in debate or argument or some kind of verbal gymnastics around trying to be right with a loved one, a friend, is there some form of protection involved? Or can it just be for fun? Now back to the story.
• 11:49
  In the story, Bada meets Shariputra, who's one of the Buddha's disciples, and he breaks the rose apple branch and they start to engage in debate. And it starts with Bada asking him philosophical questions. And we don't know the content of her questions from this story, but we do know from the story that Shariputra is able to answer them all in a way that must be satisfying to her. So she moves on to the next question. And then he asks in this exchange if he can ask one question.
• 12:36
  And he says, One, What is that? One. What is that? I would say that's one of the koans in this story. And it's, you know, when I read that and I've been playing around with this one all week of one, what is that?
• 13:05
  It's like moo, like one. It just stops the mind. It doesn't make any sense to the rational mind. Like, doesn't how do you respond to a question like that? One.
• 13:22
  I mean, my mind's just like, I can feel my mind kind of just draping over the one, and then there's a what hits that? I go, what? And I imagine this is exactly what happened for Bada. She gets this awkward question and her mind maybe stops for a moment. She can't answer.
• 13:53
  One of my, dharma sisters at the monastery, she would often say to us when she was giving a guided meditation, press clear on the calculator, referring to the mind and have that image with this one. What is that? It's like pressing clear. I can't quite follow it up with any other rational thought. But we engage, I love koans in this way.
• 14:35
  We can engage this koan on a lot of different levels. So there's that level of it being like a Mu koan, a kind of breakthrough koan, a way that stops the mind and brings us back into presence, back into the mind before thought awareness. And also we can use the intellectual mind or the rational mind to work into this koan. So we have this koan one. I'm just getting back from leading a sashin on interdependence.
• 15:18
  We did an interdependence sashin over Independence Day and highlighted that teaching from the Buddhist tradition that we are interconnected. And that's a teaching on oneness. And there are many ways in, and some of the ways in are more based in direct experience and some of the ways in are more based on contemplation and all of that is welcome in the Buddhist tradition. We use our rational minds to contemplate the dharma. And so Thich Nhat Hanh has this beautiful meditation that he calls looking deeply.
• 16:02
  And the way that I've heard him talk about it is he holds up a piece of paper and he invites like people whoever's listening to the meditation to look deeply into the paper. And he said, When I look deeply, I see the clouds. I see the rain. I see the sun. I see the sky.
• 16:26
  I see the earth. I see the tree. I see the person or people who cut down the tree. I see the factory where the tree was made or the paper was made or manufactured. I see the people who are driving the cars to and from the factory and or trucks or trains.
• 16:51
  And I see the people who fed those people. I see the people who are those people's family members, You know? And and it can keep extending out and out and out of how many beings are whose life goes into a sheet of paper. And he said, if you look deeply enough, you got the entire world. And that's true with every being.
• 17:18
  We can look deeply enough and start to see everyone reflected there because it's just this link of connection, connection, connection, connection, connection. Well, that in and of itself is a beautiful meditation on interbeing. That's the phrase Thich Nhat Hanh used for interconnection or interdependence, interbeing, as for within each other, contained within each other. And Chozumaroshi would do this exercise as an exercise before eating. So she would invite us to choose some part of the meal, maybe a nut or a raisin or oats, whatever you're having, and to do the same exercise, to look deeply into your food and to contemplate or remember all of the labors, all of the beings that went into just that one item in your meal.
• 18:24
  And then she would invite us to practice gratitude. It's like a way of opening up inner connection. And sometimes when we do that, naturally gratitude arises. So that's one way of connecting to interbeing and connecting to oneness. There's a sense of non separation when we look deeply into something and see all the life that's there too.
• 18:53
  Even though we call it paper or raisin, there's so much life. There's so many beings' lives that are contained within that being, that word, that life. But then there's also other ways of contemplating interdependence that are more based in our direct experience. So we can open to oneness just right here through our senses. If you open your eyes at anything that you see when you open your eyes and really look, take in, receive, like the computer, the other people on the screen.
• 19:43
  I see my window, walls, books. All of that is inseparable from your life, all that you're seeing. Sometimes we make this distinction of like, I'm in here, I'm seeing what's out there and what's out there is separate from me because I'm in here. But like the sense world doesn't quite work that way. It's a habit of mind to think that way, but really like what we experience through the visual field, through hearing is all, it's a seamless life.
• 20:23
  It's like, our eyes, it's like, where do our eyes stop and the screen begin or the sky begin or the space in the room begin. It's like, oh, one continuous experience, one continuous life. And you can do that in any of your senses. You know, even the body, you know, we have this feeling of, oh yeah, like my skin bag. We were chanting the song of the grassroot of Turmitage during the sashimi.
• 20:55
  And the last line in that chant is do not separate from this skin bag here and now. So people were enjoying calling their body a skin bag for the week. But it's like, does our skin stop and the air around us begin? Like in the felt sense, we can look and say, well, there's my arm and there's the space around my arm. But the felt experience is actually quite hard to distinguish because the felt sense of boundary is made up of contact with air or contact with chair or whatever you're sitting on, cloth, clothing, whatever is touching your skin.
• 21:43
  So there's this direct experience of, it's not like a concrete line that's like my skin ends and the rest of the world begins. The body is also permeable. Our felt sense extends even beyond the skin of our body. And that's another way of opening to oneness is seeing that actually in the direct experience, there is no separation. It is one field of experience.
• 22:23
  One field of being, everything we encounter is part of this one life. And then another way of connecting to one or oneness is by looking back at the sense of I am, which is usually that feeling of separation. And when we do that, if you do that, like look back and see, like, is there one there? Who is looking through these eyes or hearing these words? And this is a koan that can be contemplated for our entire lives because we have this sense of, well, me, I am.
• 23:22
  But when we look, we don't quite land on a solid eye. We look and sometimes nothing happens. It's just like, woah, nothing's there. Or we encounter a kind of spaciousness or we just end up back in the senses, which is interesting because there's not some solid eye that we're, like, finding when we look. And and so that kind of contemplation can open us up to the ground of being, ground of awareness itself from which all experience comes and is inseparable from.
• 24:20
  But when we know that or when we have a taste of the openness of mind, big M mind, our shared mind, and we see that, oh, everything that arises, including our body, including our thoughts, including the sense of I am, it's all happening in this field of awareness. It's another way in to opening that field of awareness. So those are all contemplations, practices for one, what is that? But let's get back to Bada in the story. And Bada couldn't answer.
• 25:06
  And yet in the story that non answering was an opening. Here's somebody who is so used to always having an answer, a good answer, a way of wordsmithing her way to victory, But this time, nothing. Silence. No word comes to her mind. No sounds grace her tongue.
• 25:40
  She doesn't know. And perhaps that was a relief. Perhaps it brought up shame. She always has a response. Perhaps she was so stunned in her not knowing that she forgot herself for a moment, lost her control over the debate over her own mind, and simply was right here in bare awareness.
• 26:17
  Not knowing is most intimate. Pema Chodron has this saying, Mind the gaps. Because there was a gap. Things were going along. She thought she was pretty much in control of this debate and suddenly is asked a question that she can't answer.
• 26:46
  And then again, like this is an invitation, like, has that ever happened to you? Have you ever been going along? Maybe you read something or somebody said something to you or something happened and it just kind of stunned you. You lost track of what you were doing or what was happening. And there was this gap.
• 27:13
  The part of us that likes to be in control thinks like that's some big mistake and those things shouldn't happen and we should make sure those don't happen anymore. But from a practitioner's point of view, and that's part of what PEMA Children's slogan comes from, it's like, oh, you just had a moment of forgetting yourself. Linger there for a moment. Enjoy it. Let's make more of those.
• 27:43
  Familiarize yourself with those gaps, those gaps of knowing, those gaps of being in control or being run by the mind mind or some part of the mind, the thinking mind. Maybe you can remember a time when your mind stopped and what happened? What did you do next? So the Koan continues that the mind stopping moment really fundamentally changed Bada's life. She became receptive to the dharma.
• 28:42
  And after listening to Shariputra teach, she wanted to ordain. She wanted to take refuge. And she meets the Buddha and the Buddha says to her this one line, One phrase that brings peace is better than a thousand words that have no use. And those were like here, Bada already quite open, receptive to the dharma. And then she hears this phrase and it really opens her mind.
• 29:26
  And she has a kind of realization, an awakening experience. This is another koan for us. We have the koan of one, what is that? And then we have the Buddha's phrase. One phrase that brings peace is better than a thousand words that have no use.
• 29:54
  One phrase that brings peace. Have you ever experienced a phrase like this? A phrase perhaps that stops the mind or opens the heart or offers some kind of solace, some kind of peace. That's the intention of metta practice. We say phrases and they sometimes can stop the mind or replace thoughts with thoughts of loving kindness.
• 30:44
  They open the heart and they offer a kind of refuge. And often in practice, these lines come to us. We hear them in a chant or a song. We come up with them on our own, you know, as we're practicing, and working with our minds and then, you know, some way of responding to whatever the challenge or insight is that arises in our minds. Sometimes a phrase comes that helps us stay connected to that insight or work with that challenge.
• 31:31
  So I want to end by reading some of questions that were at the end of this chapter. So with each of these koans, the book has a few questions, so we can contemplate these together. First one is, how do you know when to stop talking? How do you know when to stop talking? And the next one, how do you give up the knowledge that keeps you apart from others?
• 32:10
  And they have knowledge in quotes. And then the last one, what does not knowing have to do with intimacy?
• 32:30
  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.