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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. So we are continuing our series on the Paramitas, given that it is, we are approaching the vernal equinox and that is a tradition in some forms of Japanese Buddhism to celebrate the Paramitas, the perfections. Can we name them together?
Jomon:The Paramitas, the six Paramitas? Anyone? Generosity, which means joyful effort, patience, that's also, yes, joyful effort exertion, patience, generosity, meditation, concentration also meditation. Yes, wisdom, and ethical behavior. So we've gone through generosity, ethical behavior.
Jomon:Why don't you? Patience. You're gonna see what it is? Somebody's dragging a chain or something. Yes, can hear.
Jomon:You can bring a chair over if you like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's the important part. So we've done the first four: generosity, dhana, ethical behavior, seela, patience, kashanti, joyful effort, virya, and now we're gonna cover tonight meditation, samadhi, understanding or wisdom, Prajna. So Samadhi and Prajna, and feel free to move those of you who may need to, you just adjust however you need to.
Jomon:Yeah. Samadhi and Prajna are together in another list. So another way to slice the pie of the eightfold path actually. Samadhi and Prajna, you can slice the eightfold path into eight pieces or you can slice it into three pieces. Sometimes the Eightfold Path is divided into three: Silla, Samadhi, and Prajna.
Jomon:Ethics, Concentration, and Wisdom. So you could distribute the eight pieces of the pie among those three. Silla being right livelihood, right speech, and right action. Samadhi being right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. And prajna, right view, right intention or right understanding is another way that it's said.
Jomon:So they all work together. They are embedded in each other and they function together as we'll see and as we've been seeing. So the Paramitas of meditation and understanding, that's what I'd like to talk about tonight. And we'll just see how far we get. These are really big, you know, topics, so we can touch on them a little bit tonight and it's just nice to talk about them, just nice to recall, to recollect what we're up to.
Jomon:So one direction to potentially take a conversation about meditation is to really get into the specifics of meditation on posture, on mind and breath, and that would be a good thing and probably we should do that at some point. But I'm kind of coming at it from a little more like 20 or 30,000 feet rather than the specifics. So more like what is meditation? One of the really sweet ways I like to conceive of meditation, to practice meditation, is to remind myself that it is just being with what is. It's just being with what is.
Jomon:And we make it so hard. It's amazing. It's just being with what is. We could also say that it is sitting down to greet yourself and whatever it is that you're bringing in that very moment. Anything is fair game.
Jomon:Anything is okay that you're just taking the time to take your own temperature and see how it is in this moment, that it doesn't have to be different than it is. This is like catching up with a friend that you haven't seen in a while. I don't know, you probably wouldn't say to them, Wow, you should probably get a haircut. It's like, Hey, what have you been up to? You may be calm when you go into meditation.
Jomon:You may be wound up when you go into meditation and just seeing what's here, seeing what it is. I also like to recall that this is something that Chosen Roshi says that it's really like being more of a receiver than a transmitter. If you think of sort of radio, that it really is about just receiving each moment and the transmitting is thought. Thoughts are of course also part of it and part of life, but they are ephemeral and we can loosen our relationship to them when we're sitting, just receiving. So here is, I believe I read this recently, it probably was here, One of my favorite quotes on meditation by a meditation teacher named Bob Sharples.
Jomon:Apparently he wrote a book called Calming the Mind. I've only ever seen this quote by him, but it's so wonderful. He says, Don't meditate to fix yourself, to heal yourself, to improve yourself, to redeem yourself. Rather, do it as an act of love or of deep warm friendship to yourself. In this way, there is no longer any need for the subtle aggression of self improvement.
Jomon:In this way, there is no longer any need for the subtle aggression of self improvement, for the endless guilt of not doing enough. It offers the possibility of an end to the ceaseless round of trying so hard that wraps so many people's lives in a knot. Instead, there is now meditation as an act of love. How endlessly delightful and encouraging. I certainly hope our meditation is endlessly delightful and encouraging.
Jomon:If it's not, that's okay too. We've all had those days. So I want to share a similar quote from Pema Chodron. She's a wonderful Dharma teacher. And it may be that she originated this turn of phrase, the subtle aggression of self improvement, but she uses it here too.
Jomon:I just wanted to share this as well. When we start to meditate, we often think that somehow we're going to improve, which is a subtle aggression against who we are. But loving kindness toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. It means we can still be crazy. We can still be angry.
Jomon:We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or I or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.
Jomon:Curiosity involves being gentle, precise and open. Actually being able to let go and open up. Gentleness is a sense of good heartedness towards ourselves. Precision is being able to see clearly, not being afraid to see what's really there. And openness is being able to let go and open.
Jomon:These are maybe, this is maybe like a news flash. I mean, kind of is for me, you know, like this really, really, it can be just that friendly. It can be that without an agenda. It's hard to believe sometimes. So John Cabot Zinn, I don't think I have a quote from here, but he's one of my lineage, guess, from the secular course Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction.
Jomon:He uses the metaphor of soup in a pot that our thoughts, emotions, and sensations are just the ingredients. And the pot that holds it all and transforms it all is awareness. We don't even need to do anything. We need to have a fire or anything. It's all naturally transformed by awareness, just being with what is.
Jomon:Another metaphor is a waterfall. Instead of being barraged underneath the water like the fire hose of thought or intense experience, whatever it may be, you don't try to stop it. You just maybe take a step back, take a step behind it, aware that indeed there is a waterfall and that there is also some space around that waterfall. So are we seeing the world from within this lens of thought, the belief in the thoughts, as opposed to just seeing thoughts as thoughts? I like the metaphor of a diving mask.
Jomon:Like, if you've got a diving mask on, you can't see around it. It's just, this is my view and that's it. And so it would be very convincing to think like this is all there is, but we can take it off and say, Oh, that's just that's just a view. That's not the whole truth. Meditation is nontransactional, although the advertising world and our own enculturated capitalist minds would probably have us see otherwise.
Jomon:Of course the beautiful people on Google whenever you hit Google images for meditation, it's, yeah, this is bliss. On a beach with a waterfall. And then it feels like, Oh, there's something wrong if I'm really just churning about this thing someone said to me earlier today. That's not how it looks like in the pictures. I must be doing it wrong.
Jomon:Although that said, there is a strain of Zen Buddhism that our family tree is part of that would say meditation as well as practicing with koans is a means to achieve insight or enlightenment, Rinzai. In So to Zen, the school of Dogen Zenji, this is the school of nothing to attain Za Zen as enactment of who we really are. We already are Buddha. And in this American setting, if I may generalize about meditation students, Zen and secular, we tend to find that people are just way too hard on themselves. Like just probably true for most people.
Jomon:Too hard on themselves. Way too hard. So the qualities of meditation I think can be best emphasized are this just, it's gentle, kind attention. Can we just offer ourselves and our life gentle, kind attention, whatever's here? Another beautiful way to say that is grandmother mind.
Jomon:Grandmother mind. I often picture like a grandparent sitting in a park on a bench watching the grandchildren play, they're taking on the roles and making the rules and climbing on things and the grandparent is just, you know, watching it. It's like those are how we watch our thoughts. There's just affectionate like, Aw, isn't that cute? As well as a childlike curiosity too.
Jomon:What is this? What is this? Oh, I did have a John Kebat Zinn reading because I would also add dignity as another important quality of meditation. So I do want to share his beautiful words about dignity. When we describe the sitting posture the word that feels the most appropriate is dignity.
Jomon:Sitting down to meditate our posture talks to us. It makes its own statement. You might say the posture itself is the meditation. If we slump, it reflects low energy, passivity, a lack of clarity. If we sit ramrod straight, we are tense, making too much of an effort, trying too hard.
Jomon:When I use the word dignity in teaching situations, as in sit in a way that embodies dignity. Now everybody go ahead and do that now. Sit in a way that embodies dignity and just notice what your body naturally wants to do. When I use the word dignity in teaching situations, as in sit in a way that embodies dignity, everybody immediately adjusts their posture to sit up straighter, but they don't stiffen. Faces relax, shoulders drop, head, neck and back come into easy alignment.
Jomon:The spine rises out of the pelvis with energy. Some people tend to sit forward away from the backs of their chairs more autonomously. Everybody seems to instantly know that inner feeling of dignity and how to embody it. Perhaps we just need little reminders from time to time that we are already dignified, deserving, worthy. Sometimes we don't feel that way because of the wounds and the scars we carry from the past or because of the uncertainty of the future.
Jomon:It is doubtful we came to feel undeserving on our own. We were helped to feel unworthy. We were taught it in a thousand ways when we were little, and we learned our lessons well. So when we take our seat in meditation and remind ourselves to sit with dignity, we are coming back to our original worthiness. That in itself is quite a statement.
Jomon:You can bet our inside will be listening. Are we ready to listen to? Are we ready to listen to the currents of direct experience in this moment and this one and this? Sitting with dignity right now. So that's what I'd like to say about meditation.
Jomon:Meditation. Everybody looks so dignified now. It's delightful. So wisdom. Saying words about wisdom, about prajna, you could say is already lying.
Jomon:So I want to share a teaching about this from Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. This a book called The Roots of Goodness. Well, it's on the teaching of The Eight Qualities of a Great Being by Dogen, and the commentary is by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. Kosho Uchiyama Roshi lived from 1912 to 1998. He wrote a lot of books, including the book Opening the Hand of Thought, which is a fairly popular book.
Jomon:He offered practice to a great many laypeople, and I wanted to share with you what his session were like, the seven day retreats. He called them session without toys, and they still carry on this tradition in some centers from that lineage. I went on their website and this is a description of their session without toys. We practice in complete silence following a 4AM to 9PM daily schedule that consists simply of fourteen, fifty minute periods of Zazen, with one hour periods for Oreoki meals and a bit of personal time. We quote, We don't get to play with anticipating a beautiful service, like chanting there's no chanting getting the work assignment we want or putting our Dharma questions to a teacher.
Jomon:No sansen, no talks. We've got only the cushion, the wall, the bell, and our own hearts and minds. Session without toys. Although there's a session going on right now at the monastery and we all sat down for the time of the Tei Show or the Dharma Talks and he's like, You know, I'm just going to tell you to listen. We're doing sound practice.
Jomon:That's it. There's nothing to say about it. So no talk. We're just going to sit and listen. So that's what we did.
Jomon:But before I share from Uchiyama Roshi, I want to mention about his teacher who was Koto Sawaki, known as Homeless Koto, not because he was homeless, but because he had no home temple and would just go to wherever he was invited. And he lived from 1880 to 1965. And he had an extremely hard childhood and took refuge in a monastery at Eheji actually, Eheidogen's founded monastery. He became a teacher traveling wherever he was invited and one of his quotes is, Heaven and earth give themselves. Air, water, plants, animals, and humans give themselves to each other.
Jomon:It is in this giving themselves to each other that we actually live. Whether you appreciate it or not, it is true. It's a little bit like prajna wisdom. Certainly generosity. So Uchiyama Roshi, his dharma heir is Shohaku Okamura, who's a translator who lives in Indiana.
Jomon:I think this is where they do that sashin I told you about. Okay, here is the piece I wanted to share with you about Prajna wisdom. So he's on the topic of practicing wisdom from the eight qualities of a great being, which includes wisdom. And part of that, this is the Dogan quote here, True wisdom, like a strong and durable boat, will ferry you across the sea of sickness, old age, and death. It is like a brilliant lamp that lights up ignorance and darkness.
Jomon:It medicinal for all who are sick and infirm. It is like cutting down the tree of ignorance, hatred, and cravings with a sharp axe. For this reason, it is important to increase even more the wisdom derived from hearing the dharma, contemplating deeply and carrying out true actions. If there is one who embodies wisdom, though he or she is only human and sees with the human eye, that person is one who can see. This is called wisdom.
Jomon:So what I'm gathering from this collection of commentary, I think this is a series of talks he gave, and this guy likes to just kind of riff on stuff. He kind of goes off into like wild little side quest topics, So I'm actually dialing it in a little more. This is a wide ranging response, but he says, When I hear those full of it priests playing to the audience saying, 'There's nothing you can say in words about Zazen. I just want to peel the skin off their faces. Of course, wisdom as it is talked about in Buddhism is different from say intelligence or knowledge.
Jomon:On the other hand, it isn't that there is no connection either. So he's like, let's stop being so otherworldly about wisdom. Let's look at what's practical about wisdom, prajna wisdom. So in Buddhism, wisdom is defined as kantaku nogi. Taku means to select, that is to choose or select what is better.
Jomon:But the kan in this word, kantaku, means to make the best selection. So selecting what is better here becomes markedly stronger in meaning. As I've mentioned many times before, Buddhism never speaks in half measures. Consequently, in this case, kan means to make the absolute best choice. Now if we say choose this rather than that and then say, and even more than this, that other, there's just no end to choosing or selecting.
Jomon:If we separate and select until we can't possibly make any further selections, ultimately we arrive at a place where we simply give up selecting. That is the sense of the opening lines in the Dogan's teaching. The great way is not difficult for those not attached to preferences. To arrive at the true way is not difficult. All you need to do is stop making preferences.
Jomon:That is, you winnow through and distinguish all the differences and pursue that as far as you can until it is clear that there can be no more. In other words, while seeing differences, we let go of the discriminatory thoughts in our head. This is no longer just simple discrimination, nor is it nondiscrimination. That is where the difficulty of Buddhist wisdom lies. So it's a little tricky.
Jomon:Okay, so here's where he gets extremely practical. He's talking about one of the verses that we typically read. One verse in Tozan Ryokai's Hokkyou Zanmai reads, A silver bowl filled with snow, a heron hidden in the moon. A chilly metaphor, the bright moon, the white heron, the snow, a silver bowl, all of them white and shining brightly. How can we possibly distinguish one from the other?
Jomon:Despite that, snow is snow and the white heron is still a white heron. Both are white, yet they are undeniably different. That's the important point here. Undeniably, we wouldn't want someone who can't distinguish miso for the soup and kuso for the toilet. The color looks similar, even the texture may be similar.
Jomon:Still, no matter how similar they may look or feel, I don't want anyone in my kitchen saying afterward, Well, I meant to make miso soup for breakfast, but instead I made poop soup. Most naturally we must make distinctions, yet we can't really say that they are absolutely different either. They are both made up of atoms with electrons flying around protons and neutrons. No one would say this nucleus from a meso atom is simply delicious, but this nucleus from a pile of poop stinks. After all, if we go to the ultimate reality of life, there are no distinctions.
Jomon:At the same time, there is most definitely a difference between the pile of miso and the pile of poop. Looking at everything in this way is to understand the meaning of wisdom in the Buddhist teachings. Still, even though there are differences, those differences are seen from our human perspective. From the perspective of a fly, perhaps there are no differences between the two. They both taste great.
Jomon:When all is said and done, each of them, both miso and poop, is a natural phenomenon. I don't know if that helps or not. Zen teachers do. There are many references in the teachings about poop. It is part of life.
Jomon:Nothing left out. So Prajnaparamita, and we know that Paramita means perfection or the other shore is sometimes depicted also as a goddess or is called the mother of all Buddhas. And it is referring to this primordial potential, the fact of our inherent Buddha nature, our birthright Buddha nature. Buddha nature pervades the whole universe existing right here now is something that we chant routinely. Pervades the whole universe.
Jomon:That's you, that's me, that's poop, that's miso, that's everything. Ever changing, constantly flowing this life force that infuses all of our human categories. We make these categories, we just make them up. As Hogan says, Truth is not a thing. One of his students made cards, hopefully we'll be able to sell them pretty soon in ZenWorks, that says News on the top and then the headline is Truth is not a thing.
Jomon:They're so cute. Or like the Jewish practice of not spelling out the word God that you can't really say a word about it. So here's a poem by Hafiz, a Persian poet mystic of the fourteenth century. It's a little achy to even reference Persia right now, Iran, and just the pain of the fact that there's a war, we're making a war on Iran right now. Someone should start laughing.
Jomon:I have a thousand brilliant lies for the question, How are you? I have a thousand brilliant lies for the question, what is God? If you think that the truth can be known from words, if you think that the sun and the ocean can pass through that tiny opening called the mouth, oh someone should start laughing, someone should start wildly laughing now. That's the poem. And yet, there is something intimate, direct, nearer the near, available to all of us.
Jomon:A little more from Uchiyama Roshi. He was expounding on some more of Dogen's teachings and he mentioned one of the teachings about taking care of the true dharma, taking care of the true dharma, which is to say not losing sight of the fully functioning, the truly functioning life force. When the word dharma comes up, dharma as in the 10,000 dharmas like a bench is a dharma, a dog is a dharma, any of all of our things, the objects, the 10,000 things, the dharma is the lowercase dharma. When the word dharma comes up he defines it as jitsubutsu, the true reality of life. He says, Human beings have a head and the head speaks words.
Jomon:The words serve as a medium for communicating in a rough way. You could say you say, Could you give me a light? And someone responds by giving you a lighter. There is a realm in which people can communicate with one another. So what is referred to as the existence of humankind is nothing more than a convention or rule that unfolds as people who share the same language use it to form relationships.
Jomon:Everyone takes that very life force they are living and projects it into that limited framework called humankind. To express it another way, humankind is nothing more than a theoretical or abstract concept. So what is alive right now? What is alive right now? What is alive and peeking out from behind the curtain of convention?
Jomon:This is why mistakes can be so funny, especially when we're being so serious about stuff. It's reality peeking out from under our thought coverings about we think we've got it all under control. And finally, another example of this Prajna wisdom, another person from our, well, Uchiha Maroshi is not in our lineage. I didn't have time to look and see where our lineages diverge. So he would be a distant cousin.
Jomon:But this is a great, great, great, great grandparent here, Prajnathara. I want to tell you about Prajnathara a little bit to close. Prajnathara was Bodhidharma's teacher. Bodhidharma was the ancestor in our lineage who went from India to China and met up with Emperor Wu. They had an encounter in which Bodhidharma said, the emperor asks, you know, what, hey, I've built all these temples.
Jomon:How much, you know, merit do I get for that? And Bodhidharma said that that results in no merit, that there was nothing holy even in the highest teachings, but there's nothing that has extra Buddha nature. So it's perhaps also important to note about Bodhidharma's teacher, Prajnathara, is that some scholars think that she may have been a woman. I love that. I love that she's in the men's lineage just sitting over there.
Jomon:And I love the idea that the fiercest depiction, you know, he's the one that picture with the big, great big eyes, the fierce bearded Bodhidharma. If his teacher was a woman, I just think that's really cool. Even though that too is a construct, here's Prajnathara said to have been an orphan who lived on the streets and she didn't even know her own name so she called herself Neklas. She made her living by begging and one day she encountered her teacher, Punya Mitra, who could see something in her despite her extremely humble circumstances. She became a powerful teacher in Southern India where she encountered Bodhidharma's father who was a king there and she then later met the son, Bodhidharma, who would become her disciple.
Jomon:Bodhidharma had women disciples too, which is another reason why I think it's entirely believable that his teacher was a woman, just P. S. One day a king of Eastern India invited Prajnathara for a meal and asked her to recite some sutras over the meal, basically to sing for her supper. But she declined and she turned that usual role this is the usual role of a Buddhist teacher, a dharma teacher, or any kind of holy person. I'll pay for you, I'll, you know, make a donation if you offer some teachings.
Jomon:And she said no. And the king asked, Well, why don't you recite sutras? Prajnatharas said, This poor follower of the way does not stay in the world of subject when breathing in and has nothing to do with the world of objects when breathing out. I am always reciting the suchness Sutra in millions and millions of volumes. She is distinguishing the lived experience of breath that if we were to describe it, we could never have enough words, could we, to describe a simple breath.
Jomon:And that that is where the teaching is and not the convention of the language conventions of the teachings beyond words and letters. Prajnathara is breathing without self or other. Thus the world is just as it is. Is Prajnatharas teaching alive right now? Is it true right now?
Jomon:This poor follower of the Way does not stay in the world of subject when breathing in and has nothing to do with the world of objects when breathing out. I am always reciting the Satchna Sutra in millions and millions of volumes. And this is from Dogen, Before there ever was movement and stillness, being and non being, there has always been Buddha nature and no Buddha nature. It is not metaphors, images, or thoughts. Indeed, it's not like anything.
Jomon:Don't be deluded. It is nothing other than what you do morning and night. It is not metaphors, images, or thoughts. Indeed, it is not like anything. Don't be deluded.
Jomon:It is nothing other than what you do morning and night. Thank you. 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.
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