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New podcasts every Tues, Thurs and Sat. Here you can find talks from various teachers involved with the Zen Community of Oregon. We share talks from our retreats, as well as our different weekly offerings between Great Vow Zen Monastery and Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple.
Zen Community of Oregon's purpose is to express and make accessible the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha’s teachings, as transmitted through an authentic, historical lineage. To support and maintain Zen Buddhist practice in order to realize and actualize our Buddha nature in everyday life.
For more information, please visit zendust.org.
Hello and welcome. This is the Zen Community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddha Dharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.
Kisei:I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, and I take refuge in Sangha. So I wanna do something a little different tonight. Tonight is, or today is the day that we in the Japanese Zen tradition, Soto Zen tradition, we celebrate the Buddha's Awakening. So December 8 is the day, which happens to be today. And it's traditional that people are sitting Rohatsu this week.
Kisei:Rohatsu is usually a week long retreat, week long sashin in the Zen style. And it's the time of year, the retreat of the year, where we're really celebrating the Buddha's Awakening, recognizing that we too have the capacity for awakening to our true nature, for realizing our true nature. And it's also a celebration of the end of the year, the end of the practice year. So I wanna tell a little bit of the Buddhist story. So this will be more of a story time.
Kisei:And I wanna tell the different ways that the Buddhist story is told within the Buddhist tradition. So in the Zen tradition, we have this short, pithy story of the Buddha's Awakening. The way it's often told is that the Buddha is sitting under the Bodhi tree through the night, on the night of the full moon in December, and at the rising of the morning star has an awakening experience, realizes himself and says, I together with the great earth and all beings awaken. I together with the great earth and all beings awaken. So often in the Zen tradition we have these stories of awakening that are kind of like a moment.
Kisei:The Buddha sees the morning star, which is Venus. And at this time of year, this year, Venus is a morning star. Venus is rising before the sun. So we see Venus as a bright star in the east. And the Buddha, what the Buddha recognizes and how the Buddha expresses it is something that we can take up as a koan.
Kisei:This is really phrased as a koan. I together with all beings and the great earth awaken. It's a phrase of deep connection, inter being, non duality. And it's also an invitation that we too can recognize ourselves, can realize awakening, realization that the Buddha had is something that any being can awaken to. We too can know ourselves as infinite.
Kisei:So that's the Zen version of the story but I wanna back up and tell more of the Buddhist story. Like what led to this night of sitting under the Bodhi tree and seeing the morning Star and having a realization. It wasn't just like one day the Buddha decided I'm gonna go sit under that tree over there and I'm just gonna look up at the sky and then wow, I'm one with all beings. How wonderful. Now I'm gonna teach others.
Kisei:It was like our own lives. It was a process of really grappling with deep questions, making major life decisions that really set out on this path. And the Buddha's story, and this is something that's interesting and part of what I love about the Buddha story is it's not recorded as a narrative anywhere in the original texts, at least that we have. With the oldest source texts that we have right now to this date is the Pali Canon, which is the Pali language. And there is like these little snippets that the Buddha tells his story of his life, little snippets of his life that led him to enter the path, to become a seeker.
Kisei:And then the different struggles that he had and challenges. But it's never told as like one story. It's like, oh, he tells this part of the story in this context because he's trying to make a point and then he tells another part of the story in another context. And so modern scholars have tried to find all of those references and put them together in this hodgepodge puzzle of the story of the Buddha's life and awakening. And, you know, something that's fun about that is it has more of a mythic quality.
Kisei:It it has qualities that you'll find in mythology and in fairy tale. It has qualities of the hero's journey, but it also has deep dharma teachings. And I feel that it's saying something about the human experience being on the spiritual path. That's part of why I want to share it because I feel like we'll see, it acts like a mirror. We'll see echoes of the Buddhist story in our own lives, parts of it perhaps.
Kisei:And maybe there's some teaching in here too that is relevant for us as we're sitting here in this moment and grappling with the questions that we're grappling with and sitting in the uncertainties that we're sitting with. So I like to begin the story with the Buddha's birth, and actually before the Buddha's birth. So let's begin with his mother. His mother's name was Mahamaya. Maya means illusion or dream.
Kisei:And part of how Mahamaya is kind of famous in the Buddha's story besides being his mother is she has this really poignant prophetic dream shortly after the Buddha's conceived. And she has this knowing after the dream that she's going to have a son, that she's pregnant and that she's going to have a son. But the dream is, and it's said that she has this dream on the full moon, she's sleeping in the palace and she felt herself being carried away by four spirits. And she's carried to this great lake in the Himalayas. And they bathe her in the lake and they clothe her in heavenly cloths and they anoint her with perfumes and place flowers all around her.
Kisei:And soon after this, a white elephant appears holding a white lotus flower. And in some stories it says that it has six tusks and it pierces her side and she wakes up. And like I said, she has this sense of being with child. And so she tells her husband that she had this dream and her interpretation and that the husband, King Sudhana, the Buddhist father, he says, Oh, we have to go to the town seer and have them interpret this dream. And so they do and the seer says, basically confirms what Mahamaya already had the intuition of, that she's pregnant with a child.
Kisei:And he adds this other element. He says, The child is going to be a great being. And in that, he says that could happen in two different ways. He'll either found a new religion or set out as a renunciate and found a new religion, or he'll be a great king. And the Buddha's father really wants him to be a great king because the Buddha's born the story, he's born into royalty.
Kisei:So his father is the head of his clan. It's not necessarily maybe how we thought of think of royalty, like when we're thinking of Europe and the monarchies. It's, you know, a little smaller scale royalty, but they still, you know, were well-to-do. They were the head of their clan. And and so the the Buddhist father wants him to follow in his footsteps to to take over the kingdom, the palace where they live.
Kisei:And and so he really goes to, like, somewhat extreme measures to try to make sure this happens. And I think this is, you know, we also see this in fairy tales in movies where there's, like, a prophecy and then the people who receive prophecy are trying to manipulate conditions in order to achieve what they want of the prophecy. And so that's what the Buddha's father does, and who knows if that actually pushes him in the direction of becoming a religious leader, because it almost seems that way. So what the Buddha's father decides to do is to really spoil his son. And, well, that's what we would call it today.
Kisei:He shelters him. He keeps him mostly in the palace walls and really gives him anything that he could possibly desire. And the Buddha, in talking about this, he said, and this is a story that he's telling his monks. And he said, monks, I lived in refinement, utmost refinement, total refinement. My father even had lotus pawns made in our palace, one where red lotuses bloomed, one where white lotuses bloomed, one where blue lotuses bloomed, all for my sake.
Kisei:And then he goes on to talk about the clothes that he would wear and how his sandalwood came from, like the place that had the best sandalwood in all of the area. He continues and says, like, had a palace for the winter. I had a palace for the summer. I had a palace for the rainy season so that I was never uncomfortable. And they held a sunshade over me day and night to protect me from the cold and the heat and the dust and the dirt and the dew.
Kisei:So really protected. And at some point, as happens with all of us, we start to question. And so he starts to question it and becomes a little disillusioned by his life of ease and lack of challenge, luxury and refinement. And there's a story in the Pali Canon where he talks about one night, there's this great often parties at the palace, and he has many beautiful women are there, and there's lots of delicious food. Basically he, like all night long, was able to partake in whatever his heart desired.
Kisei:It was there and available, and there was music and dancing. But he wakes up and people are just kind of sleeping all over the place, it's kind of a mess. And he just looks at the situation kind of from a different perspective. Maybe you've had this before. And and just kind of asks, like, what am I doing?
Kisei:Like, what are we doing? Is this really satisfying? And so that kind of pokes a hole in this life that he's living. He starts question it. And then he has this desire to go beyond the palace walls.
Kisei:So he convinces his charioteer to take him out into the city. And so he goes out into the city, and this is when the Buddha has the experience of what's called the four sites, which has become a pretty popular teaching in Buddhism. And so he has the four sites. He sees somebody who is sick. He sees somebody who's aging and he sees a corpse.
Kisei:He sees someone who's died. And in each of these, like he had been protected from. He had been protected from sickness, old age, and death. You know, extreme sickness. Like he sees somebody who's coughing and wheezing and bleeding and just like very, very overtaken with illness.
Kisei:And each of these sights that he sees, he asks his charioteer, Well, what is happening with that person? Like, he feels some disgust rise up in him of, like, oh, that's what the body looks like? Oh, that's what somebody's body looks like? And the charioteer tells him, well, yeah, that's somebody who's aging. He's they're in their later years of life.
Kisei:They're hunched over. They're wrinkly. And the Buddha is like, you know, takes that in and realizes in that moment, oh, that's gonna happen to me. That's gonna happen to everybody that I love. And then he sees a sick person and has that same experience of feeling disgust, asking his charioteer, well, who's that?
Kisei:What's that? The charioteer telling him, well, that's somebody who's sick. And he has it touches him very deeply, this recognition like, Oh, that's gonna happen to me. And here in retelling the story, he says, Here I am, I'm in the height of my youth and in the height of my health and yet I'm disillusioned with health. I'm disillusioned with life to an extent because I know that I'm going to die.
Kisei:And I know that everyone I love is gonna die. And I know that I'm gonna get sick. I know that everyone I love is gonna get sick. And, you know, he feels uncomfortable about this disgust that arose in him. And he's, you know, he's trying to make sense of, like, okay, this is gonna happen to me, but here I am living this life of, like, kind of delusion now.
Kisei:Like, I'm just pursuing comfort for comfort's sake and it's not really bringing me any closer to resolve this fact that I'm gonna die, I'm gonna get sick, I'm going to age. Like why aren't people talking about this? Why aren't we more consciously living as if that were going to happen? And so that's what really touches him. And then the fourth sight that he sees is a renunciate.
Kisei:He sees somebody sitting under a tree, content. And this person has the robes and has shaved the head, which is common in India. There were people practicing renunciation before the time of the Buddha, during the time of the Buddha. And so he sees somebody who looks content and that's what really touches him. He sees somebody and they look just like, oh, they seem at peace.
Kisei:Like they seem to know something about a more reliable happiness than the happiness of just pursuing sense pleasures like he has been doing most of his life, all of his life. And so this kind of disillusionment and longing for the holy life develop simultaneously. And so he eventually makes a difficult decision. He no longer feels like he can live in his father's house, live this life of being sheltered and protected and pursuing just sensual pleasure over and over again and feels like he really needs to resolve or come to terms with what we would call impermanence, come to terms with his own death, to really see into, to find that contentment that he saw on the face of the renunciate. And so, you know, you can think about this in your own life, right?
Kisei:Like I said, this story has a mythic quality. So, you know, maybe you too have had an experience at some point in your life of just feeling or coming into a recognition that you're going to die or you're going to get sick maybe because someone in your life was sick or died or was aging. Or maybe it came about another way. I think this experience of the Buddha parallels an experience a lot of people have when they come to practice of any kind, the seeking mind awakens or they decide they want to start meditating, there's often a balance between or some relationship between a feeling of suffering, of really coming into relationship with one's own pain and suffering and discomfort and spiritual questions. And then also a sense of hope.
Kisei:And that's where the saw the renunciate and there was a sense of hope, like, oh, there is an answer. And sometimes we get that sense of hope through reading a book about Buddhism and something resonates or having a meditation experience or some kind of peak experience that opens the door and says, oh, like there's something else beyond maybe what I currently knew. And I'm curious about that. And so those are, you could say, two of the things that happened when the Buddha encountered these four sites. So he decides to leave.
Kisei:And I imagine it was a very difficult decision. He did have a wife at that time. He had a child, but he needed to leave this shelter and protection of his father's house. And I'll talk more about his relationship with his wife because there are a lot of different stories out there and more that we're becoming aware of. But let's just stay on the Buddhist track for now.
Kisei:So he leaves, he shaves his head, he puts on the robes of a renunciate, and he goes seeking for teachers. He goes seeking to learn this path. He has this image in his mind of the contentment of the renunciate and he's looking for that. He's looking for And he also has these questions. So he's looking for that, but he's also looking for like, what will really help me face the reality of my own death?
Kisei:Like, is there a truth that will allow me to be okay with that or to like, you know, find some answer, some kind of knowing? You know, in Zen now we say to know what doesn't die, what's always alive. And that's part of what the Buddha's Awakening opened up is that knowing. But so he starts and he starts with these great meditation teachers. And his first teacher's name was Alarakalama.
Kisei:And he's studying meditation with this person. And he studies meditation and he achieves the state of the dimension of nothingness is how he describes it, which is one of the jhanas. So for those of you who are familiar with the concentration states that are spelled out in the Pali Canon, there are eight jhanas. And his first teacher brings him to the seventh jhana, and then his second teacher brings him to the eighth jhana. But the Buddha has this insight and he realizes, well, these are conditioned states.
Kisei:They don't bring me true freedom. I experience a kind of freedom when I'm in that state, but when I get out of that state and I'm functioning in my life, like that knowledge isn't there. So it's a kind of conditioned freedom he's like, That's not what I'm looking for. And so he has this funny phrase. He says, So dissatisfied with that Dharma, I left.
Kisei:So he learned the Dharma from these two teachers and it didn't quell his thirst. He still felt unresolved in his question. So he continued. And next, what we think chronologically is that he met people who are practicing austerities. And so he becomes a kind of renunciate ascetic.
Kisei:He starts practicing austerities. And I wanna read some of how he talks about that period of his practice life. So he's on this journey, we know, for about six years from the time that he leaves his father's house to the time that he's sitting under the Bodhi tree. And so he's studying with these teachers and mastering these practices, but I'm sure, like for all of us, it took him a while, even though he was dedicating all of his time and energy, it took him a while to develop concentration to the degree where he could enter these later Jhana states. And so he does that, and then he meets these practitioners who are practicing austerities.
Kisei:And so he gets these different ideas in his head of things that he can do to perhaps bring him closer to awakening. And so here are some of the things he did. He says, Suppose that I, clenching my teeth and pressing my tongue against the roof of my mouth, were to beat down, constrain, and crush my mind with my awareness. And so he tries that and he says, That didn't work. I just ended up feeling a lot of pain and discomfort.
Kisei:That must not be the way. And then he comes up with another idea. Suppose the eye were to become absorbed in the trance of non breathing. So he tries to stop his in breaths and his out breaths and his nose and his mouth. And as he does so, he says these loud rushing wind sounds start happening in his head and his ear holes, he says.
Kisei:And it causes him much pain again. And he says, That must not be the way either. And then he says, Well, what if I go with just a handful of food a day? And he keeps trying on these different practices and coming to basically the same insight every single time. But it's interesting when I read these because as somebody who practiced a lot of meditation and lived at a monastery, there were definitely times where I was like, suppose I, I didn't say it quite that way, but I'm like, notice myself pressing my fingers together and really just trying to stop thinking.
Kisei:Like, okay, they keep talking about non thinking, the mind beyond thought. What if I just crush my thinking mind? And you know that works for like a couple seconds and you exhaust yourself and then thoughts come back in proliferation. So it's like, okay, that must not be the way. And so at the end of him kind of giving the discourse of like all these different austerities he practiced, he says to himself, like, I actually haven't gotten any closer to what I was looking for, to the knowledge or vision worthy of the noble ones.
Kisei:And so then he asks, could there be another path to awakening? And so he says that in one story that he tells in the Polly canon, and in another story, which is connected, he has this memory while he's still practicing watching his father plow the fields. And the fields of grain, they're golden and they're swaying in the wind. And he's just sitting under a rose apple tree and he's a child, probably 10 or 11. And he says he just, without even trying, he has this memory of entering what he calls the first jhana.
Kisei:So he enters just this state of joy and pleasure in in being just being itself. And he has this thought, well, could that be the path to awakening? Just, like, resting in the state of being itself where there's pleasure and joy and simply being aware. And then he follows up and says, that is the path to awakening. So he has this kind of clarity now after doing all these other practices that that memory, this very pure memory that surface is showing him something about the path to awakening.
Kisei:And then he asks himself really following up on that thought, am I afraid? Am I afraid of this happiness that isn't born from sense desire but arises simply from being? Am I afraid of this happiness that has nothing to do with unskillful mental qualities? And then he says to himself, I am no longer afraid. I am no longer afraid of that pleasure that has nothing to do with sensuality, nothing to do with unskillful mental qualities.
Kisei:Then he says, but it's not easy to achieve that pleasure with a body so extremely emaciated. So then he takes some rice and porridge and is now, like, inspired of feeling, okay, I know the direction to move in now. This memory of being a child, being simply happy at peace, just sitting under a tree, like that's the way. And I find this interesting just as I've practiced and as I've worked with people on the path, like a lot of times people do have this recollection that arises at some point in their practice life of like a pure memory or memories from childhood. And they're often different than the Buddha's sometimes.
Kisei:And I think it tells us something about our path. Like, you know, sometimes people have memories of just like asking themselves questions like the koans. Like, oh, I used to ask myself, like, who am I? Or people have memories of different kinds of ways they would concentrate that they weren't really recognizing it was concentration. Actually, somebody last year told me this story of their brother teaching them how to meditate when they were hunting And they would wanted to go hunting with their brother who was older than them and they were like seven or eight.
Kisei:And their brother said, well, you have to get like really quiet or really still or the animals aren't gonna come out. You're not gonna get you're not gonna see any animals. And so the child really wanted to see animals. So he, like, learned to to be really quiet and really still and and realized, like, when he started meditation, like, oh, this is something that I knew how to do when I was a child. So sometimes we have that feeling different aspects of practice.
Kisei:Like we have this memory of like, Oh, used to know how to do this. This is something I know how to do. Like, have this memory as a child. I used to love to look up at the night sky. I grew up in a place that didn't have a whole lot of light pollution.
Kisei:And so I would look up at the night sky and I would like play these games with the stars. I'm like, oh, they're moving. Oh, no. No. They're still.
Kisei:And then like, can I see the space between the stars? And so when I started meditating and actually chosen, did a guided meditation the day that I did my first sashin, and she did something with the night sky. And I was like, Oh, that's what I used to do as a kid. So sometimes that happens, that we have these memories come forward that tell us something about who we were as children and what we knew, the wisdom that we knew. And it often has something, it's pointing us in a direction of what this spiritual path is about.
Kisei:So after having this memory, the Buddha resolves to sit under the Bodhi tree until he awakens. And during the time that he's sitting under the Bodhi tree, it's not like, oh, now it's smooth sailing. He figured out what to do and now it's smooth sailing. He actually encounters all sorts of difficulties, challenges, which are called, in the telling of the Buddha's story, they're called Mara's armies. And Mara is this kind of alter ego figure that appears, that tempts the Buddha.
Kisei:Sometimes it's depicted as a figure that kind of comes from the outside. Sometimes it's a figure that's depicted as like in the Buddha's own mind, but it's a kind of tempter doubter voice. And also voices like challenging the Buddha about their aspiration for awakening. And this also, I feel like happens to us when, for any of you who've done retreat practice or even that resolve sit, to do meditation. Sometimes we encounter parts of us that really don't want us to do that.
Kisei:And I think of that as Mara. And so Mara manifests, as the story goes, like there's restlessness. The Buddha experiences a lot of restlessness in his body and in his mind. There's all sorts of temptations that arise. He sees images of Mara's daughters, these apparently beautiful women, and all the things that the Buddha left at the palace, like the sensual pleasures that he had so readily and had given up.
Kisei:All of those desires emerged during this time where the Buddha's really resolved to awaken. And he said he's not gonna move until he realizes himself. I'm sure he moved some. So all of these things happen throughout the night, throughout the nights. It's said he's had for seven days, which is also just a symbolic number.
Kisei:But then on the night of his awakening, he tells a story and it's broken up into three watches of the night in one story. In the first watch, he has an insight into impermanence. In the second watch, he has insight into karma or cause and effect. And then the third night, he has a realization into that there's no fixed self. And these are called the three marks of existence.
Kisei:And when he talks about the third watch or in each of the watches, he has this line that Chosen Roshi, my teacher, would often like to recite because she said it tells us something about the minds that we're cultivating in this practice. And he says, With my mind thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability. I directed it. So he's doing what we call now Vipassana practice, where his mind is concentrated, it's bright, he's not thinking about other things. He's able to direct his attention and he directs it toward the Four Noble Truths.
Kisei:So he recognizes suffering and he discerns, oh, this is stress. This is the origin of stress and this is the cessation of stress. And this is the way that leads to the cessation of stress. So he has this insight into the Four Noble Truths, which lead him to seeing through how the mind works. And he calls it the fermentations of the mind, how the mind ferments.
Kisei:And then his awakening poem in the Pali Canon, which is found in the Dhammapada, he says, Through the rounds of many births I roamed without reward, without rest, seeking the house builder. Painful is birth again and again. And then he says, House builder, you're seen. You will not build a house again. All your rafters broken, the ridge pole destroyed, gone to the unformed.
Kisei:The mind has come to the end of craving. So he really, I love this analogy. It's one I think of a lot. He saw that the mind just builds these houses and then it lives in them. And they're like our limiting beliefs.
Kisei:So this thought arises or this belief arises, and then we kind of build a house around it and we look for proof that it's happening or we interpret situations that like whatever that core belief is, is the way things are. And then we like live in the prison of this house and he just, he saw through that. Another way you could say it is he saw the ground of mind. And instead of making like these thoughts the ground, he saw the ground of awareness itself. With a kind of confidence and clarity, like, oh, this is how the mind works.
Kisei:This is how suffering happens. This is how limiting beliefs form. And that's the story of the awakening. And then after the Buddha awakens, Amara appears again. Amara is like, Well, nobody saw that happen, so who's gonna believe you?
Kisei:And the Buddha touches the earth and the earth rises up as a goddess and says, We, we witness, we were here. We bear witness to the Buddha's Awakening. And then the story continues. The Buddha questions whether or not to teach. He remains seated for seven more days.
Kisei:Apparently a storm blows in and the snake king, the Naga king, rises up and protects the Buddha while he's sitting, while he's continuing to sit after his awakening. So there are depictions and statues that you may have seen of the Buddha with seven snake heads surrounding him. And that image of the night or the week after the Buddha's Awakening. Musalinda is the name of the Naga King. And then it's also said that he ascends to the heavens before he teaches any humans on earth.
Kisei:He ascends to the heavens and the first teaching he gives is to his mom, to mother Maya, who actually died in childbirth. So she died shortly after the Buddha was born and he was raised by Mahapajapati, which was his aunt, who became the first woman ancestor, the first teacher in the woman's lineage. But he teaches this very profound teaching on nonduality that's like a very, very thick sutta called the Afatamsaka Sutra, or the Flower Ornament Sutra. And he gives profound and flowery teaching on nonduality to his mother and all the beings in the heavens. And he said that the beings on earth aren't ready for this yet.
Kisei:So it's hidden until a thousand years later when somebody discovers it. It's like hidden in the mind. It's called treasury, mind treasury. They talk about that more in the Tibetan tradition, but there are a few suttas or sutras in the Mahayana that are said to have been discovered later after the Buddha passed when we were ready for them. And so then he finally gets up and the first teaching he gives is on Vulture Peak and it's the Four Noble Truths.
Kisei:And he gives the teaching to his five practitioners who first kind of criticize him, but then they realize that he had some wisdom, had something happen, had some transformative experience, and they become his disciples. And then he returns home. It takes him six years to return home. And his wife and son actually join the Sangha and his aunt Mahapajapati. But there's one more story I wanna read.
Kisei:This is Yosodara's Path. So Yosodara is the Buddha's wife. And in some tellings of the story it says that he abandons his wife. But this story is a little different. It says, Yosodara was Siddhartha Gautama's wife.
Kisei:In one of the less well known stories told about her life, Yosodara, the Glorious One, and Siddhartha had been married many previous lifetimes. The night that Siddhartha left home, Yoseidara had eight dreams that foretold his awakening and so she allowed him to leave her. They made love before he left and their son, Rahula, was conceived. For the next six years, Yasidara remained pregnant with Rahula and although she did not leave home, she traveled the same spiritual path and experienced the same difficulty as her husband, Siddhartha. She gave birth to Ruhula, moon god, in this particular story on the full moon night of the Buddha's enlightenment.
Kisei:She prophesied that Siddhartha had awakened and that he would return in six years. Later, she and her son, Rahula, both became part of the Buddhist Sangha. So although that story is a little less fleshed out, I think it tells another dimension of the hero's journey or the spiritual path that sometimes the spiritual path involves like this leaving, needing to go somewhere else to seek for. And sometimes it's more of this inward journey. And sometimes it's both.
Kisei:It's both like there's these external factors that we face, and then there's also image of pregnancy of nurturing our spiritual practice in the dark, in the not knowing. And I feel like in Zen we emphasize that dimension, that like the spiritual path, my teacher used to say, it's without measuring sticks or guardrails to tell us like where we are. We're just like, you're feeling our way. What is the next step? Where am I being oriented now?
Kisei:So it has this quality of moving sometimes through the dark, listening without the thinking function of the mind leading so much. And then sometimes we feel, like, drawn to or like we have to resolve certain questions and we must go meet certain teachers or study certain things. And that's also part of the unfolding of the spiritual path.
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 zendust.org. Your support supports us.