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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 Buddhadharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.
Jogen:Thank you all for being here. I'm always impressed when people have a glorious day like today and they decide to choose to come and practice. It really says something important about your priorities. We are continuing to go through book Art of Living, like that, by Thich Nhat Hanh. Great book, and we've been kind of looking at it systematically.
Jogen:And the way, of course, I do this is I just take the theme from that particular section and we try to make it alive and elaborate on it. And the section that we're looking at right now is a strange title called Are You a Soulmate of the Buddha? So And then it it talks about It basically is drawing from a sutra called the Kalama Sutta. The Kalama Sutta is a one of the classic Pali Canon texts and it comes from the Angutra Nikaya I think the the threes whatever that 3.65 for those of you who are interested in that. And the Kalama Sutra is is one of the pivotal sutras of the dharma and it basically the Buddha goes to this village where the Kalamas are and the Kalamas say you know people come to all the time and they say my teaching is the very best teaching and those other people they're quite of they're inadequate.
Jogen:They're they're they're not good. And then somebody else comes along and says no no no my teaching is the best teaching. Those other people, they were misleading you, were mistaken. And somebody else comes along and says, my teaching, my teaching. And everybody, they say, well, what is true?
Jogen:All these people, they all can't be right, can they? Here's exactly what it says, just just to give you a flavor of the original text, the English translation of it. There are some monks in Brahmin's mineral sir who visit Kasappa, Kasapputa, that's the town they live in. They expound and explain only their own doctrines. The doctrines of others they despise, revile, and pull to pieces.
Jogen:Then some other monks and Brahmins too, Venerable Sir, come to Kasapputa. They also expand and explain expound and explain their own doctrines. The doctrines of others, they despise, revile, and pull to pieces. Venerable sir, there is doubt. There is uncertainty in us concerning them.
Jogen:Which of these venerable monks and Brahman spoke the truth, and which falsehood. So, especially in this day and age, you know, you can look on the Internet and you can find somebody espousing everything. I mean, somebody is adamantly about aliens or lizard people or, you know, Christianity, one sort of many different flavors of Christianity or Buddhism. There's there's there's some somebody is advocating something. Somebody advocates everything.
Jogen:And so it's a reasonable question to say, well, okay, what how do I how do I know what is appropriate, what is true? How do I know what I want to what what I want to follow? The Buddha first often responds saying, Yeah, you're right. It is confusing. You you listen to all these people, it is confusing.
Jogen:That is true. You're you're you're accurately reflecting the mind of thoughtful people. But then he says there are some things that each of us can do. There are some ways that each of us can begin to investigate that will show us a way of approaching this problem. And one of the analogies he gives, he says, look, if I have my hands closed behind my back and I say that I'm carrying a jewel in my hands, do you believe me or not?
Jogen:And I said, well, of course, we how can we believe you? We we we just have to take it on faith. But if I bring it out and I show you and you can see it for yourself, then there is something that you can, you can believe the jewel, you can believe I have a jewel. So if you can't experience it for yourself, you can't actually have confidence and faith in it. So then he says, well, what can we have confidence and faith in based upon our own direct experience?
Jogen:And that's where the the the nice peace comes from, which you often hear on the on the internet in mistaken ways. Here's what the Buddha says, Come, Kalamas, do not go upon that which has been acquired by repeated hearing, nor tradition, nor upon rumor, nor upon that which is in a scripture, nor upon surmise, nor upon an axiom, nor upon specious reasoning, nor upon a bias toward a notion that has been pondered over, nor upon another seeming ability, nor upon the consideration this person is our teacher. Now, what does that leave? So, don't go on tradition, rumor, don't go what's in the scripture. Well, that's interesting.
Jogen:All religious traditions are polycanon or different different books that people are saying, here is the word the truth is and this. Nor on surmise, nor upon an axiom, nor upon specious reasoning. I always think that in medicine, until the modern era, medicine was based upon specious reasoning. So, you know, Galen's humors, they would take us some blood and they would watch blood and it would separate out into four different colors and they said, oh, that these four colors, they mean different things. You know, the black means that there's some some illness and, you know, the red and the white and the And there's a specious, an unclear, a a a suspicious, a a faulty reasoning between saying, okay, I see this thing.
Jogen:My explanation for it is And we have all these conspiracy theories, for example. People see contrails, the the streaks in the sky. Some people do it. They say, okay, I'm going to make some, what I think is a reasonable assessment of these, and then I'm going to make an interpretation of it, and then I'm going to project it into the future, and therefore I'm afraid. Specious reasoning.
Jogen:Specious reasoning is the the hallmark of our our culture, right now. And we can, you know, expand upon that quite a bit. Nor upon a bias, that something has been pondered over. Nor upon another seeming ability. Nor upon saying, okay, I heard it from a really good source.
Jogen:So the Buddha says, okay, all those things are just ideas in the mind that we have to know for ourselves in our own direct experience. And that is the foundation of faith. Our own direct experience. Now what does that experience mean? Of course, we all have lots of experiences.
Jogen:But the Buddha says, look, the foundation for true faith is you have something and you say, is this something going to lead to reduction of suffering and increase of happiness or not? And he says, Okay, let's take anger. If you are angry, does that lead to an increase in suffering? Does that lead to an increase of disharmony, an increase of suspicion, an increase of of aggression and in peace or not? You can see for yourself.
Jogen:He says, well, is the is not being angry? Is not being angry? We will talk about what that might mean. But does not being angry lead to an increase in aggression, suspicion, etcetera. You can see for yourself.
Jogen:So the test is, can we try something out and see, is it lead to harmony, loving kindness, the four immeasurables that we chanted right at the beginning of the sutra, beginning of the evening? Or does it lead to aggression, despair, suspicion, doubt, suffering? Now, so the first postulate of of dharma, you know, we talk about the four noble truths. The four noble truths. First one is there is traditionally in in Buddhism one zero one, they say life is suffering.
Jogen:That's that's not a very good translation, don't think. But we can say challenges. Challenges, obstacles, problems. And we can ask ourselves, is it true that from my own direct experience that everybody I know of, including me, has problems? Is that true?
Jogen:I think the answer is pretty, pretty clear for most of us. Maybe some of you know people who don't have any problems, but I've never met somebody. So when we take a a postulate like that and we say, okay, I want to verify this. I want to see, is this true? Then we have have a begin to have a ground of confidence, of faith.
Jogen:Now, the Buddha says that loving kindness The beginning of the chant that we did this evening, it says there are four of the four attributes: loving kindness, sympathetic joy, compassion, and equanimity. So he says, let's take each of these. Let's take loving kindness. Does the presence of loving kindness lead to an increase of suffering or a decrease in suffering? Does the presence of compassion lead to an increase in suffering or a decrease in suffering?
Jogen:Does the presence of equanimity lead to an increase or decrease in suffering? Does the presence of sympathetic joy. We can break these down a little bit. If with our own experience we say, Oh, loving kindness actually leads to a reduction of suffering, leads to a reduction of aggression, leads to reduction of confusion, then we have reason to have faith from our own direct experience in loving kindness. Now in the Buddhist tradition we talk about that loving kindness is not just a thing, that it's important to differentiate it before we call the near enemy of loving kindness.
Jogen:So the the four immeasurables, they're called, the four immeasurables, sympathetic, joy, love and kindness compassion equanimity the four immeasurables all have have states of mind that kind of pretend that look like them so for example a loving kindness the the imitator of loving kindness is kind of grasping passionate, I want. I want. I want. I want. I want.
Jogen:And you know, that's what soap operas are made of. All soap operas are made of, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want. That's not loving kindness. Loving kindness is about has the foundation of acceptance, appreciation, and honoring. So we have to make sure that we're not getting confused by saying, okay, loving kindness is is the grasping I want, I want, I want, I want you to be mine, I want you to to be with me forever, or I want you to and you know, the the hooks that get in there.
Jogen:That's not loving kindness from our from the Buddhist perspective. Simultaneously, equanimity, the the the the near enemy of equanimity, the the thing that that that looks like equanimity but is a fake, is indifference. Often people will be have a there'll be a tragedy, there'll be discomfort, people will be suffering and they say, well I'm cool, calm and collected. There's an equanimity which is responsive, which is engaged, which realizes the oneness and the connection of all things. And there is a fake equanimity of frozenness, indifference, flatness, which is not responsive and not does not see the the connection of all things.
Jogen:And there's sympathetic joy. Now, I I think it's very important to realize that when we talk about sympathetic joy, excitement is not happiness. I was looking at a bulletin board for a big marquee for a college, local college, and it's full of all these excited people saying, this is joy. This is joy. Come to our university and you will feel joy.
Jogen:You know, anything that has joy has an opposite. So people who are really excited, they go to an amusement park and you feel so stimulated and so thrilled and then you crash. Up and down. Happy, unhappy, unhappy, happy, crash, burn. They come together.
Jogen:So the joy that the dharma talks about, the loving kindness the dharma talks about has no opposite. It's like impermanence. Impermanence has no opposite. Think about that. Impermanence has no opposite.
Jogen:We think, oh, there's this thing called permanence, know, But but nothing is permanent. It has no opposite. It's all impermanent. Same thing is true with loving kindness. The the the true loving kindness that we talk about, the sympathetic joy that has no opposite.
Jogen:It has it has doesn't have up and down. It has as a foundation of acceptance. Non acceptance is not loving kindness. Non responsiveness is not equanimity. So the Buddha says, okay, take these fundamental things, apply them, and see, does this work?
Jogen:Does this lead to a reduction of suffering? And again, excitement is not a reduction of suffering. Temporary abatement of craving is not is is, you know, on one level, it's a reduction of suffering. We're really hungry to get something to eat, but it doesn't go to the depth that a spiritual practice goes. K.
Jogen:Now, so Kalamas, so people, so all of us, the basis of faith in this tradition is on direct experience. If we are meditating and we are our mind is present and we are really paying attention to what is going on right now instead of the infinite stories, instead of the infinite past and future that the mind can wander away in the infinite fanities. We're actually paying attention to what's going on right here, right now. In that experience or in that presence, there are experiences that you know for yourself. And the foundation of dharma is the knowing for yourself based upon experience.
Jogen:That, for example, when you are meditating and you hit a place of great calmness and clarity, is that salubrious or not? Is that is that a reduction of suffering? Is that healthy? If so, we think, okay, calmness and clarity is a foundation that I can I can, have faith in? So this, thing that Thich Nhat Hanh is talking about here is says, you should use your intelligence and critical mind to carefully examine everything you see and hear, and then put the teaching into practice.
Jogen:It helps to liberate you from suffering, then you can believe in it. So he says, it's really important that we have a critical mind. So if we have we hear that there are alien intelligences that are guiding us all. Is there a way we can put that into practical? Is there a way we can verify that?
Jogen:Is there way we can know that is true or not true? If we say, that's the realm of of speculation, that's the realm of a story, I can't verify that or not. He says, then that's not a foundation for a practice. You can't verify it. So that's the thing I like about the Buddha Dharma.
Jogen:Verifiable. Verifiable. With our own intelligence. With our own experience. Now the problem of course is you've got to practice.
Jogen:If you don't practice, you can't verify it. You know, it's like verifying that running makes you tired. As soon as you run, know you know for yourself that running can make you tired, without a doubt. But if you never run, you just imagine it, then you can't really verify it. So I think all the basic postulates of dharma are verifiable.
Jogen:You know, we talk about the heart sutra, we often chant that here, form is no other than emptiness, all things are fluid. We have to verify it. We have to know for ourself with our own being. Not just our thinking about it. Not just our mind spinning around.
Jogen:We have to know it. Just like each of us knows that we are breathing. We know we are breathing. Once we know we are breathing, we can investigate that knowing, we can investigate the breath and we see, oh, the breath has many parts. The breath has an in part and an out part.
Jogen:The breath has a fullness and an expansion. The breath has an emptiness. The breath has movement, the breath comes out of nowhere and goes to nowhere. Once we have verified something, then, with the verification, we can begin to investigate more and more deeply. And the purpose of this is to find the heart being at peace, to find liberation so that we can be of service and responsive to our world.
Jogen:So he says that when you do all that, then you're, according to this this interesting language, you are a soul mate of the Buddha. The other piece I think is very, very, very nice is that with anything, if we if we have a belief and we are not continually growing, the belief goes becomes a dogma and becomes really uninteresting. If we think all practice is is breathing, we just are just doing that over and over and over again. That's fine at first, but it gets really boring. So it's important that we have that we're constantly enriching and investigating and looking at things so that each thing that we encounter, we verify it, but then as we keep practicing and as we see more and more deeply into things, oh, it opens up.
Jogen:There's a richness to it. There's a something interesting to be seen. And it is the case that when you first start practicing, you might discover very interesting things. And after twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years of practice, you still discover really interesting things. It's always opening up.
Jogen:Always opening up. There is no end to it. So that's how, you know, practice stays alive if we are continuing to have new new insight, if we're continuing to to expand our appreciation, our depth of understanding. So we we've got to, you know, any anything we think of as dogma, if we don't don't, really know it with our heart, we come as dead. Okay?
Jogen:So that's the kind of essence of that little little paragraph. Soulmate is a very interesting word. I don't know what it means, really. You know, they have the idea of a soul. It's not a Buddhist idea.
Jogen:It's just an idea. And they sense that there's a something in us that is impermeable or something in us that is stable, something in us that is unchanging, something some essence of us who who is kind of who we truly are. We can find out with our own direct observation that if we're looking inside saying, Who am I? What is the essence? We can't find anything.
Jogen:There is space there. And yet, we know that there's an experience. So we have to look into that direct knowing, a direct knowing without having the belief of, oh, this means. You have to see what is it really revealing and showing us, showing to us. That's the foundation of dharma.
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.