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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:Hello. Good evening. So nice to be here with you. I was just feeling joy just to be a part of the community again. I was up at the ten day session at the monastery, and several people in this room were also there.
Jogen:I've been sharing that there was a not super common convergence of determined people, people who were very inspired in this retreat, and that draws a lot out of the teachers. And it made for a particularly strong retreat, which is very pleasing. Many people touching fundamental reality. I want to share a bit with you about the Affirming Faith and Mind poem, read some of the stanzas, maybe give you my interpretation of what it's saying. And then I'm interested in dialoguing with you.
Jogen:How do teachings like this land? What does that bring up? How are you receiving this kind of teaching? How might you apply this kind of teaching? So this I did Gensho last week talk about affirming faith and mind?
Jogen:Yes. Did he give background on the text or No. No. Okay. So this is a Zen poem that I believe is from something like the year September.
Jogen:And it's commonly attributed to one of the people in our lineage, a third ancestor, Junji Seng Khan. Some of the scholars would say probably some of it was written by this person, but there were things that were added on or evolved over time, as is the case with texts that are transmitted over time. And this chant, Affirming Faith in Mind, my favorite translation of the title is, Inscribing Trust in the Heart. Isn't that beautiful? Inscribing trust in the heart has been considered a guidepost, a reference point for the heart of Chan or Zen teaching for a very long time now.
Jogen:And so it's an important lineage chant for us. It doesn't cover everything about the spiritual life. It's not comprehensive. It's really just about the essential point of the absolute, we could call it, right, and how our life is that, actually. The first line says, The great way is not difficult for those who do not pick and choose.
Jogen:When preferences are cast aside, the way stands clear and undisguised. So the great way is your life that is not superimposed with should be's, should have been's, could have been's, and all of the other concepts that grow out from there. In a way, the Great Way is describing the potential to move through life in gratitude and non opposition. The potential to live a life that is not a continual fight. Potential to live a life where we're not feeling, thinking, acting as if the universe is broken in some way.
Jogen:And it's also describing the path of practice, the great way. I mean, there's many ways in this life. Right? You can think of just people live their lives in so many different ways, develop different styles to survive or to cope or to find eke out some happiness, eke out some security. People do that in all kinds of ways.
Jogen:All kinds of ways that we can try to eke out security and happiness. But the great way is bigger than particular conditions. That's the thing that's being pointed out here, is that a lot of means of happiness We work very hard at these means of happiness and security, but they are it's comprised of different components, and even if one component is removed, the whole thing falls apart. This one condition changes that kind of happiness can just bottom out. So if you're a violinist and you injure your hand and you cannot play anymore, Right?
Jogen:Or if all your life you've hung your happiness and well-being on the success of someone that you love, and then they fail or they betray you. And so many you can give infinite examples of conditioned happinesses and securities that we work very hard to assemble and hold together, but that that could easily come apart. And even if they don't, if we're fortunate, and I hope that you are fortunate with your conditioned happinesses. I have been pretty much. Because they're conditioned, there's often anxiety about them.
Jogen:There's the anxiety that they might come apart. My relationship is really good, but what would happen if they changed? And my work is really awesome, but what if so and so left? What would it be like to be in the office then? Or happiness gets based on our health.
Jogen:Right? I feel really good, so then I think really good about myself. But you can't maintain feeling really good. Something will take that away eventually. So the great way means something larger than all of these conditioned ways.
Jogen:It's not difficult if we don't pick and choose, it's saying. Now, if we hear this kind of thing and think that we're supposed to be some kind of zen robot that just says yes, yes to whatever comes our way without any any of our own essence, without any of our own vector, that's ridiculous. You're not gonna succeed at being a person that has no opinions. You will fail at being a person that doesn't prefer vanilla over chocolate or whatever your preference is. It's actually not what it's saying.
Jogen:It's not saying, become sort of bland and be okay with everything, and then you'll be really happy. Pick and choose is the suffering of life is happening, and I'm wobbling against it. No. No. No.
Jogen:No. No. No. Not this. Not this.
Jogen:Okay. No. No. No. No.
Jogen:No. That, that. Yeah, that, but it's not quite good enough. Not that. Pick and choose is the wobbling of the mind that believes that the phenomenal world contains perfection for more than a few moments.
Jogen:Pick and choose is the anxiety when we're always deciding whether we're going to experience our life or not. I'm gonna make that concrete. We're just we're gonna decide whether we're gonna really show up in a particular relationship. And the mind goes back and forth, Am I treated right? Okay.
Jogen:Am I treated right today? Did they say what I like? Am I in the mood? There's all these conditions, and so we pick and choose. And so it's like we strobe in and out of engagement.
Jogen:That strobing in and out of engagement or that strobing in and out of the willingness to experience life, it prevents us from seeing that actually there's one taste that runs through all experience, and that actually tastes good even when it tastes bad. So this says, When preferences are cast aside, the way stands clear and undisguised. Right? That is something really profound and something really basic. So you wake up and you look out the window and you go, another cloudy day.
Jogen:But you don't have to do this. You don't have to do that. You could just open the window and experience the colors gray. Feel how that articulates your your feel your mood a little bit. You're free to not pull away from life with the decision that it's the wrong life to be happening.
Jogen:And when you drop that, the first thing you get is, well, it's just a cloudy day. But then you get the opportunity to go beyond even the sensory, the merely sensory, which you don't have the opportunity to do with the discriminating mind. Next line says, Even slight distinctions made said earth and heaven far apart. Heaven, for Chinese ancestors didn't mean like some pearly gate place where you go forever and are always, I don't know what you do up there. I've always wondered, what do you do?
Jogen:I'm never gonna find out. I'm a terrible Buddhist. But heaven means more like spaciousness in Taoist cosmology. Right? It means openness.
Jogen:It means Spaciousness is probably a good equivalent for us. Even slight distinctions, when we operate our discriminating mind, the freedom, the intuition that life could be profoundly peaceful is accurate. It's not diluted. It's accurate. But as soon as the discriminating mind operates, then this becomes not that.
Jogen:And that becomes somewhere else. Even slight distinctions. We can, talk about this, and the chant says that's probably not that helpful. We can talk about this, but this actually has to be a matter of direct experience. That's why I emphasize this profound yielding into what is is so important.
Jogen:To not make a slight distinction, then what is life? And the last stanza, and I wanna open it up and see how this lands for you, says and in a way, these are saying the same things from different angles. To flounder I think that should be flounder, but I don't know what floundering is or foundering is. So this is just a translation. Because don't fish flounder, or is flounder a kind of fish?
Jogen:Both. Flounder, and there are fish that are flounder. Is that correct? Yeah. Okay.
Jogen:Now I'm really confused. Let's translate this as, to vacillate in dislike and like is nothing but the mind's disease. Pretty contrary to what is taught to modern people, you are taught to vacillate and like and dislike makes you intelligent. Right? To show up and be full of opinions about things and people you don't even know is a mark of being sophisticated.
Jogen:And to vacillate and dislike and like is nothing but the mind's disease. Because not to see the way's deep truth disturbs the mind's essential peace. And that's the real point. That's the real point. This chant is valuable to you if you want such a thing.
Jogen:If you don't want such a thing, fine. You can flounder in floundering and make a podcast. Many things you can do with floundering and floundering. Not to see the ways deep truth disturbs the mind's essential peace.
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.