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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.
Hogen:Take refuge in the transcendental values of the universe. We call them taking refuge in the Buddha, taking refuge in the Dharma, taking refuge in the Sangha. We've been working on a series called Turning Problems into Wisdom, and hit it from several different perspectives. But what we talked about earlier is stopping, slowing down, looking directly, seeing what the bigger view is, how the different components come together, and then acting essentially. Now in the, chant, we have this list of problems in the world.
Hogen:Do you remember the list at all? Illness, fear, disappointment, and violence. Old age. Old age. Wars, disaster, climate change, species extinction.
Hogen:And the question for all of us in my mind is we've got those kind of things. We have our particular limitations and failures. How do we turn them into wisdom? It's got to be practical. We've got to be able to to make this real because if we're just sitting here philosophizing and it doesn't have anything to do with our real life, how do we turn our problems with bills?
Hogen:How do we turn our problems with addiction? How do we turn our problems within insecurity, lack of confidence? How do we If we don't have a handle on that, then practice just becomes, you know, another another good exercise. You know, exercise is good, but it doesn't go very deep. So so that's the the thread of this particular thing is how do we turn problems into wisdom?
Hogen:Now, enough, Koda and I were on a meeting last Tuesday or Wednesday, and the septic system came up at Great Vowel and we were saying, you know, it needs to be pumped out, it needs to be looked at. People were saying, no, no, no, it's okay. And then the next day or a couple days later, the whole thing shut down. So our whole septic system, that is 17 toilets, six to eight showerheads, the kitchen, all the sinks and the laundry, everything all stopped Because there was a collapse in the main line that goes out to the septic tank. The way it goes is there's the all the facility, all those things, they go into one pipe.
Hogen:That pipe goes into our septic system. The septic system then pumps it up into the field. And that one pipe, we don't know what it is. We're still processing with it too, but it stopped. It blocked.
Hogen:So suddenly, we have 17 toilets all being flushed and going nowhere. We had a problem. I mean, a genuine big problem. And we have a session, a long retreat beginning tomorrow. And we have 25 people living there.
Hogen:And we had, you know, our 25 people or so came in addition. So we had 50 or 60 people there this morning. It's a problem. Really, a genuine problem. So our practice is how do we turn it into wisdom.
Hogen:Now, we can't just say, oh, I'm going turn into wisdom and not deal with the problem. You know, I mean, we've got to deal with the problem. So turning into wisdom is partly dealing with the problem. The way that we dealt with the problem is we first off, Ginsei and Miyoyu caught discovered the situation. We saw this black stuff oozing up out of the the gym showers.
Hogen:Realized there was a problem. And we called a Mr. Rooter person who came and spent seven hours trying to to route out the septic system. Couldn't do it. And fortunately, fortunately, we are so blessed because of our good karma, because of all the things that have happened over the last, you know, few years.
Hogen:A guy named Jeff shows up and says, I can help you out. And then a guy named Eric shows up and says, I can help you out. So we we realized that the problem was probably somewhere out in this field, probably 200 feet somewhere in the field that was collapsed or somewhere in the field that was blocked. We couldn't get down there. So they said we can get an excavator.
Hogen:So they got a giant excavator, which just happened to have the ability to call somebody up and bring an excavator. They had the skill to know how to do it. We dug a 10 foot deep hole yesterday. One of the people happened to know how to dig a 10 foot hole with skill so it didn't collapse on you. We went down there.
Hogen:We were able to take a saw and saw through the cast iron pipe. Water just spewed everywhere, and it was all sewage water. And it just sprayed out. Eric was down there and, you know, he just says, yeah, that's the way it is. That's the way it is.
Hogen:And, you know, between we had some other equipment there, we had some pumps there, we had saws there, we had these guys, all of whom showed up. And some of the wisdom that we learned, not only did we learn about our septic system, more about that, that's definitely wisdom, you know, knowing about your own septic system is definitely wisdom. But we also learned that, oh, our whole Sangha could just rouse itself, move together in harmony, work work to to solve this problem, and to seeing the harmony that we were able to to bring to bear, the focus, the attention, is wisdom. And we've learned a lot about our septic system. We have a lot of awe now for for the people who we were working with, you know, Jeff and Ginsey and that's wisdom, is to have awe about the wonderful experience that people bring to this.
Hogen:To have awe about how healthy community can move together in harmony. There was nobody was It was a crisis, but nobody was melted down about it, nobody got angry about it, nobody was cursing or anything else. We just said, let's just deal with this. And that to me is a manifestation of wisdom that comes out and becomes evident with crisis. So, that kind of wisdom, we're we're doing our best to solve the problem, if we couldn't solve the problem, well, that's there things are that would happen then.
Hogen:But the wisdom is meeting it, seeing it clearly, responding appropriately with equanimity and clarity. And to me, that's practice. That's what we're all doing here. We're all we're all clearing their minds and and finding clarity and equanimity so that we can respond to the challenges of our particular world. Respond the challenges that we face in a most effective and skillful manner.
Hogen:Now one of the things that we talked about a couple of weeks ago is it's really important to know what belongs to you. What are the problems that you really can deal with? You know, we cannot deal with the snowstorms in Japan. Japan is some places that are under 10 feet of snow. That's not our problem.
Hogen:There are lots of problems that are just not our problem. If we feel compelled, we might donate something to the International Red Cross. We might donate something to the the White Lotus program in in The Ukraine. We might donate something, we might we some people in our song have even gone to The Ukraine or to gone to Poland to help with refugees. That's great.
Hogen:That's wonderful. But that means they said this is my problem. This is what I want to put my energy behind. And so they do it. So knowing of all the problems in the world, all the problems in our life, what are the ones that I'm gonna put my energy into?
Hogen:I'm gonna focus my attention on. I'm gonna put my resources. Is part of how we return the problems that we personally face into wisdom. So that's part of what we've kind of an entrance to what we've been talking about the last last few weeks. Is that up to date?
Hogen:Is that a recapitulation of what I've been saying? Okay. Now, we have this chant that we do, we have this dedication where we just listed everybody in the world who is suffering, old age, sickness, and death. We all get to face that. We don't quite realize we're going to face that until it actually comes upon us.
Hogen:There's an interesting study I was reading one time about The study was this. People were given a series of questions. And in group a, they were told the answers to the questions. And in group b, they weren't told the answers to the questions. So then they asked both groups, they said, how difficult are these questions?
Hogen:Know, on a scale of one to 10, how difficult are these questions? Well, the people who knew the answer said, oh, these aren't so hard. Anybody can figure that out. People who didn't know the answers said, oh, these are really difficult, you know. How would how would somebody do that?
Hogen:So, when we think we know what's going on, we think we we know it it prejudices in a certain way. It prejudices that we can't see a problem clearly. Great to have life experience, but to have a mystery of, oh, here's a mysterious thing. I don't really know what's going on. Then it gives us the creative power of investigation.
Hogen:And so, the first principle we're going to talk about tonight is the creative power that comes when we really don't know. As soon as we know things, we begin to block them off. Oh, yeah. I got that one down. Oh, yes.
Hogen:I know this. Oh, yeah. This is the way it should work. Oh, yes. The way people should treat me.
Hogen:Oh, this is the way it should happen. And it stops our creativity. It stops our lively engagement. It stops our ability to respond. Now, it is good.
Hogen:I have a lot of experience with plumbing and electrical work. It's good to have that experience. You don't don't You can't, you know, you don't wanna negate the wisdom you have. But when we have the attitude going forward, oh, yeah. I know how this is gonna work.
Hogen:If you work with plumbing, you're always wrong. You know? You're always wrong with plumbing. We used to say plumbing is driving. It means matter matter What problem you've got, unless you're a professional plumber with lots of supplies, you always have the wrong thread.
Hogen:You always have the wrong shape nipple. You always have the wrong fitting. You always have And then just So, knowledge is great and when it becomes an obstruction, we can't truly investigate. So, what do we actually know? You know, none of us know how our body works.
Hogen:Have trillion cells in our body. We don't know how it's digesting things, if it is digesting things. We don't really know. We don't know how we think. We don't know how, you know, how the the sodium pump works.
Hogen:I mean, how is our heart beating? We don't know. We've we've read in a book, oh yes, you know, the liver has 21 functions. Here are the 21 functions of the liver. But not one of us can experience the 21 functions of the liver.
Hogen:I can't remember exactly how many functions there are, but there's something like that. I read it in a book. So it is it is the mystery and we start the mystery, the investigation of mystery, by being present right here, dropping our assumptions of who we think we are. We are mysterious beings. I don't know what I thought I'm going to think next.
Hogen:I don't know. And my memory, oh my god. You know, I guarantee that if we walked out of this room right now, we would have 10 different memories of what went on tonight. Our memory is is the way memory works is is not we never we never remember anything in real time. We only remember a little snippet and then it becomes creative.
Hogen:So we might might remember a little snippet from tonight and somebody asked you about it and then suddenly the brain weaves a whole story around it. If we actually If we recognize memory is like that, we never get into arguments. Because, you know, we're never really sure. Am I really right? My my memory of the events, I mean, it's Having been married for forty years, I highly recommend not being sure what whatever who who said what and what was right.
Hogen:You know? Somebody says, yeah, you you really blew it. You said that that that I said, okay. Well, that's how it seems. We don't have to defend ourselves because my memory is so fallible.
Hogen:All of our memories are fallible. Fallible. It's part of the mystery. So part of the mystery of being a human being. So we sit down here, we're doing or meditating.
Hogen:We don't know how we're breathing. But we all know we're breathing. We don't know how the body ended up in this particular shape. And yet, it has a particular shape at a certain level. We don't have any idea.
Hogen:Our digestion is working or not working or semi working. But it's mystery. We've got to pour things in, trying to make it better. Gonna try to pour things in or keep things out, trying to make it better. Know, sometimes it sort of works.
Hogen:It's a mystery. So, we we set, sit in Zazen sitting in mystery. Sitting in mystery. And that mystery is an entrance gate to wonder and awe. How did this being end up here like this, with this mind, with these thoughts?
Hogen:I don't know. I don't know. I want to get really quiet and feel. I want to get really quiet and see what really is here. Our thoughts are all, you know, bifurcated.
Hogen:Our thoughts, The nature of thought is to discriminate between this and that. You know, this is a computer, this is a hand, this is a whatsits, you know. So the place that is not discriminating, it's not sorting things out is the mystery. I'm going to sit in the mystery and the quality that's helpful to sit with is not the quality of suspicion because sometimes we're afraid that you know if things are mysterious and we get suspicious and we're not sure. But the quality of curiosity, the quality of of kindness, the quality of of warmth and investigation.
Hogen:If somebody comes and we meet them and we're suspicious of them, we're kind of hostile to them, we've already set up our rights and wrongs, we've already put up a wall, we can't really know who they are. Now, it doesn't mean to say we have appropriate boundaries, of course. We have to have appropriate boundaries. We have to know, you know, these are my clothes and those are your clothes. Know, I'm not wearing your clothes, you know.
Hogen:This is my house, that's your house. I'm not, you know, you're not in my house. But, that that kind of appropriate boundary is really, really appropriate, really important. But there's a mystery. I don't know.
Hogen:I don't know. I'm not sure. I want to investigate. I wanna I wanna feel deeply. That's one thing that we can do if we're not freezing ourselves with the inner critic, with all the assumptions, we're not freezing ourselves with our failures, we're not freezing ourselves with should be different, then we can soften and we get really curious.
Hogen:What is it that's alive right here? I'm alive. Isn't it curious that I'm alive? How'd that happen? We can read in a book, for the last forty million years couples have paired off at exactly the right moment, exactly the right time in order to have offspring, in order to have the next generation come.
Hogen:For the last forty million or however many it's been. That's pretty mysterious right there. Know, in order to be us, it took 40,000,000 generations or 40,000, whatever the number is. That's pretty mysterious. How did that happen?
Hogen:How did all those couples get together at just the right time in order to end up with us? We're a mystery. So we sit. We learn to sit. We learn to feel the body, not as a frozen bunch of failures and muscles and tension, but to feel the curiosity of life that is flowing in and out of us.
Hogen:The breath is breathing us. Our being breathes all the time. And so, we come, we do the Zaazen, we calm the mind down, we stabilize the mind, we bring it into the present moment and then we watch with mystery. Oh, look at this. Look at this.
Hogen:And, instead of having that that suspicious, critical failure, instead, we become a mysterious being. Isn't that interesting? And then we begin to act, not out of reactivity, not out of all the stuff that we have built up, but out of curiosity, out of openness. The nature of mystery in this case is not fearful and tight, it's mysterious and open. And so then the heart opens.
Hogen:Now, in order to do that, of course, we don't just go out and, you know, talk to the first aggressive, violent person on the street and say, I'm all open. I'm all loving you. You know, please. That isn't isn't doesn't work that way. We have this a healthy, safe container for that exploration.
Hogen:And as we learn more about it, can discover there are lots of other healthy safe containers that we can keep that investigation going. And eventually the whole world can become a healthy safe container for us. But that's a developmental thing. That's not something that we sort of get in our mind and say, oh, I'm going to ignore all the appropriate social boundaries and just launch off. So, have to start right here, right now, with our Zazen in this moment.
Hogen:We just did a Joseph and I were in Florida, and the joke down there was, it was in Tallahassee it was 21 degrees, so much colder than it was up here. So we went to Florida for the cold weather. We were going to go to the Chan Center of Tallahassee, which is one of the Chinese teacher named Guangu, his center, we were going to do a two or three day presentation. It got cancelled, at least the in person part, because of the cold weather, so we did it all online. And we were also in Tampa, we did a four day retreat in Tampa and a few talks in Tampa at the Florida Community of Mindfulness.
Hogen:And we got to go to the Ringling Brothers Museum, highly recommended, in Sarasota. It used to be the summer home for Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, which is, you know, long gone. And I completely forgot why I was telling you this. It had a point to it. Anyhow, it was a great trip.
Hogen:We learned a lot. You know, never know where you're going to go. We had the really good fortune of some friends of ours, Fred Epsteiner and Angie Parrish. Fred and I were practitioners at the Zinsit of Rochester fifty five years ago. We were both in residence there and maintained a connection.
Hogen:It's so wonderful to have friends you can just move in with. We were there for two weeks living with them and we all had a great time. It's wonderful to have people like that. Wonderful people like that. It's a lot easier if you have nothing to defend.
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.