At Once Here and Disappearing - Jomon Martin, Zen Teacher

In this talk, Jomon reflects on the first of Frank Ostaseski’s Five Invitations—“Don’t Wait”—and explores what death can teach us about living fully. Drawing on the Zen teaching Identity of Relative and Absolute (Sandokai), a traditional koan, and a meditation on the elements, the talk invites listeners to consider the constantly changing nature of body, mind, and world. Through contemplation of earth, water, fire, air, and space, we are reminded that we are not separate, solid selves but expressions of a larger unfolding reality—at once here and disappearing.

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Jomon: 00:00

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.

Jomon: 00:23

Good evening, Thank you for being here. And if you'd like to take refuge with me, you're welcome to do that. I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha.

Jomon: 00:43

We're so lucky to get to do that. So

Jomon: 00:51

I

Jomon: 00:54

feel like a little bit like flying by the seat of my pants here. We'll see how this comes out, but continuing on the theme of the five invitations by Frank Ostasevski, which is discovering what death can teach us about living fully. Frank Ostasevski was and has been spent much of his career, his life leading a hospice program with the San Francisco Zen Center. And so his book really is a beautiful way to bring to all of us some of the things he's learned along the way. And the five invitations are: don't wait, welcome everything, push away nothing, bring your whole self to the experience, find a place of rest in the middle of things, and cultivate don't know mind.

Jomon: 02:13

So I wanted to share a little bit from the first invitation, don't wait. I was looking to see what I might share about this time and it led me into one of the primary teachings,

Jomon: 02:37

one of

Jomon: 02:37

the ones that we chant on a fairly regular basis called Identity of Relative and Absolute. So I'd like to sort of weave that into this teaching on don't wait. And I've been inspired by a meditation on the five elements. It's one of my favorite meditations. The Buddha actually did teach this.

Jomon: 03:05

And so as I was reading in here about Ostaszewski's, he has a beautiful description about the elements in relationship to the process of death. He talks about the elements and how bodies dissolve in that process. So that's what led me to the identity of relative and absolute. So I want to share a little bit about that and we'll get to chant it actually together in the course of this talk which will be fun. And you don't have to understand it at all.

Jomon: 03:38

That is not the point. I might share a little bit about koans because koans are always an exploration of that simultaneity of relative and absolute. Koans are a part of our Zen practice. So it's a real salad of a, you know, talk maybe. So just bear with me tonight.

Jomon: 04:12

So the section in the five invitations on Don't Wait, he has a sub chapter called At Once Here and Disappearing. At Once Here and Disappearing. And so I'll read some from here about the elements. Many spiritual traditions and cosmologies including that of the ancient Greeks have suggested that all life is composed of four basic elements: earth, water, fire and air. The Zohar, a Jewish mystical text written in the thirteenth century saw these four elements as the foundation of all substance.

Jomon: 05:07

Other worldviews including Indian thought and Chinese philosophy speak similarly of five or six gross elements. Buddhism notes that each is an ever changing process rather than a static thing. Each is an ever changing process rather than a static thing. All of these components are said to dissolve when we die through an interdependent process of body and mind. The four elements are more than physical form, they are emotional and mental states, creative processes.

Jomon: 05:44

They have a spectrum of characteristics: earth's hardness and softness, the fluidity and cohesiveness of water, the coolness and heat of the fire element, the stillness and motion of air. Sometimes medical explanations of the signs and symptoms of approaching death are just too sterile and foreign. I often have felt the model of the four elements useful to call to mind as family members keep vigil through the long days and nights of their loved ones active dying. It is a way to understand how we release our identities and their component parts, the gross physical elements of the body, thoughts, perceptions, feelings, conditioning, all dissolving. So he goes on to share a little bit about a couple in their mid-40s, a married couple Samantha and Jeff and her Samantha's husband Jeff was dying.

Jomon: 06:49

And so he's sitting with her and their life together had a lot of contact with the natural world. They would go camping and backpacking quite a lot. And so he says, Samantha and Jeff had lived in nature, they knew its ways and language and did not see it as something apart from themselves. I took a risk and suggested that Jeff perhaps was in the middle of it, all of it, which is what he loved about being in nature. His body was in a very elemental way made up of earth, water, fire and air, so in dying he was returning to the nature they so loved.

Jomon: 07:29

So he kind of moved through all of the elements with her and allowed her to kind of see the elements in him as they were changing and dissolving and so she could see the solidity of the earth element and yet, you know, he was always so hard headed and stubborn but all of that was softening and he was also solid but yet losing its strength, being drained of energy unable to support itself anymore. And so in this book Ostasevski says, I thought to myself of a few lines from the Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut and I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud, it is what we are. So he goes on to say, As the earth element form dissolves, it gives way to water. The person who is dying may then experience an inability to swallow fluids, urinary or bowel incontinence, and the slowing of blood circulation.

Jomon: 08:39

So she was able to give him sips of water in the previous days and then later just ice chips. Now she had to keep his mouth moist with a sponge because he just couldn't take in any more liquid, any more fluid. Now the water element was dissolving giving way to fire. When this happens the body's temperature fluctuates. Infections may give rise to fever or a slowing metabolism may cause the skin to become cool and moist.

Jomon: 09:13

So he notes that as Jeff came closer to death his hands and feet became cooler. The heat gathered in the center of his body toward his big heart. Scientists theorized that somewhere in our galaxy long ago a star exploded throwing out masses of gas and dust. This supernova over billions of years eventually formed our solar system. The poets would say we were once bright stars now cooled, sunlight congealed into human form.

Jomon: 09:43

The fire element was dissolving giving way to air. At this final stage of physical death people frequently exhibit dramatic changes in breathing patterns, slow and fast breathing with long gaps between exhales and inhales. Sometimes the only thing left in the room is breath. Death is much like birth in that way, with everyone's attention naturally focused on the simplicity of breath. What becomes undeniable when we sit with people who are dying is that fragility and impermanence are in the nature of life.

Jomon: 10:19

It's all always coming together and falling apart, not just the physical properties of life and not just at the time of death, and it is possible to hold it all in love and compassion. So that is a little bit about the four elements or five if you count space. He actually says a beautiful, says this in a beautiful way in here that I don't know if I'll be able to recreate it. But that basically that earth dissolves into water, water dissolves into fire, fire dissolves into air and air dissolves into space. So we can see that the elements and how what seems to be separate and different dissolves into oneness and has never been apart actually from oneness.

Jomon: 11:23

And it's all constantly flowing and changing and transforming. So there's a beautiful line, this the bridge to the identity of relative and absolute. There's one line in it that always jumps out at me and it these two lines really. The four elements return to their nature as a child to its mother. The four elements return to their nature as a child to its mother.

Jomon: 11:57

So that's that dissolving. What is it? Where do these elements, what do they dissolve into? What a beautiful question. So this fundamental teaching called the identity of relative and absolute is also sometimes known as or translated as the harmony of difference and sameness.

Jomon: 12:25

Which I kind of like that better. Identity of relative and absolute like really what's that about? The harmony of difference and sameness. Oh yeah, okay. Or the merging of difference and sameness even.

Jomon: 12:42

That's even cooler, maybe. So in Japanese, the word is sandokai. Sandokai. San means plurality, diversity, difference, and is associated with the Japanese concept of ji, relative reality. Do means sameness or equality, oneness or commonality and relates to the Japanese concept of ri absolute reality.

Jomon: 13:14

And then kai is sometimes translated to mean shake hands or an agreement. And I can only think of the name Frank Ostasevskiy now, but it's another author who's written a book on various chants that I'll think of his, Shohaku Okamura, says that the word Kai originates from, maybe it's Chinese originally or ancient historical Japan in which when an agreement was made the sort of figures of an agreement were written on a maybe piece of wood and then that piece of wood would be broken in half so that each party could then sort of prove what they had agreed on, would fit together and that that is also part of the word kai, the origin of that, kanji of that word. SANDO kai merging of difference and sameness. So the person who wrote this is Zen master Sekito Kisen, that's the Japanese pronunciation although this was a Chinese teacher, Shoto Shi chan, who lived from July to July. And in our lineage was the eighth Chinese ancestor.

Jomon: 14:43

Shi Tao Shi Chan also wrote Song of the Grassroof Hermitage if you are a fan of the chant book and that particular chant. So let's do the chant together. If you have a chant book handy it's on page 10 and I think you're all ready. You've had you know one and a half practices an hour and a half ago. It's totally going to work.

Jomon: 15:24

So before we start, let me just say that do not try to understand this chant with your thinking mind. Just allow the words to wash over you and if you you know, you can let that line stand out about the four elements but you can also just see what if any other line might grab you or stand out for you or infuriate you or whatever. Whatever your experience is fine but no need to try to think about it too much. Just experience it and allow your own sound to contribute to the whole room as we chant this together.

Jomon: 17:20

The character and appearance difference sounds distinguish comfort and discomfort makes all words one. The brightness distinguishes good and bad phrases. The four elements return to their nature. Child to its mother, fire is hot when moves, water is wet. Earth hard ice, ears hear no smells, tastes.

Jomon: 17:48

Salt and sour each is independent of the other cause and effect must reach the great reality the words high and low are used relatively with There is darkness but do not try to understand that darkness within darkness. There is light but do not look for that light. Light and darkness are a pair like the foot before and the foot behind in walking. Each gym has its own intrinsic value and is related to everything else in function and position, ordinary life. Absolute as a box, and it's literally absolute works together with the relative like two arrows meeting in midair.

Jomon: 18:45

Words you should grasp the great reality. Do not judge by any standards. If you do not see the way you do not see it, As you walk on it, when you walk the way it is not near, it is not far if you are deluded. You are mountains and rivers away from it. I respectfully.

Jomon: 19:10

Those who wish to be enlightened. Do not waste your time by night or day.

Jomon: 19:18

Beautiful. That was beautiful. Thank you, everyone. So just kind of mark in your mind if there was anything in there that stood out. Want to hear about that in a moment.

Jomon: 19:41

So the one and the many both are true, both are true. They fit together as a box and its lid. They're related and yet independent. So koans, which is part of our Zen tradition, Chan and Zen, and primarily some lineages more than others engage in koan practice. And koan the word basically points to a public case, like a legal case, and koans elucidate some aspect of experience and usually include aspects of both absolute and relative and require us to grapple with them as separate or not separate and our thinking minds are kind of flummoxed by this.

Jomon: 20:40

So a koan is a really good way to get a sense of our habits of problem solving or our need to understand or be right about things. It's really brilliant human technology that just causes all of our usual ways of grappling with an issue to just show themselves quite obviously and then fail. So I wanted to share also a koan that is kind of befitting our theme of death. And koans are usually structured in a way that is often a conversation either between a teacher and a student or two teachers or student and some community member and in their back and forth there may be some reference to these levels of absolute and relative. They may be speaking of that directly or usually quite indirectly.

Jomon: 21:45

So Emperor Su Tsang asked national teacher Hui Cheng, so the emperor is sort of the ruler of the nation, the political seat of power and then the national teacher is the sort of Zen teacher in residence basically, the Chan teacher in residence, so is the sort of spiritual advisor to the emperor. So the emperor asks the national teacher Hui Chung, after you die, what will you need? So that question to me suggests a close relationship, a relation of care, When people are getting older and maybe they're sick or dying and we want to ask them, what do you want after you die? What can we do for you? How can we honor you?

Jomon: 22:39

After you die, what will you need? So the national teacher said, Build a seamless monument for me. Build a seamless monument for me. The emperor said, Please tell me, master, what the monument would look like. The national teacher was silent for a long time.

Jomon: 23:14

Then he asked, Do you understand? The emperor said, I don't understand. The national teacher said, I have a disciple to whom I have transmitted the teaching, Tan Yuan, who is well versed in this matter. Please summon him and ask him about it. After the national teacher passed on, the emperor summoned Tan Yuan and asked him what the meaning of this was.

Jomon: 23:46

And this is a very evocative and symbolic and metaphorical answer also that you don't have to understand, can't right away understand. South Of Xi'ang, North Of Thanh, in between there is gold sufficient to a nation. Beneath the shadowless tree, the community ferryboat, within the Crystal Palace, there is no one who knows. So I'll just kind of restate their exchange. Emperor Su Sung asked national teacher Hui Chung, After you die, what will you need?

Jomon: 24:29

The national teacher said, Build a seamless monument for me. The emperor said, Please tell me, master, what the monument would look like. And here's this emperor, he could probably build it, anything. He had every, you know, capacity at his disposal. But the national teacher was silent for a long time and in that silence was saying something, offering the emperor something, an answer in the silence.

Jomon: 25:03

Do you understand? The emperor said, I don't understand. So then the national teacher says, Well, after I die, go and find out. Keep asking about this. My successor can help you with this.

Jomon: 25:21

So that's what he goes and does. So think about it, how could you build a seamless monument? How would you build a seamless monument? What even is that? A seam is where you join two sides of a thing or two different parts.

Jomon: 25:37

So how would you do it? This is how you might carry around a koan. This is how you might practice with a koan. What is a seamless? Anything.

Jomon: 25:48

How can anything be seamless really? How could there be a seamlessness in something or a boundlessness in something? And what is it that divides or differentiates anything? When do we start seeing differences? Is there a way to stop doing that?

Jomon: 26:15

It got me thinking about times that I have recommended to people in my professional capacity, recommended to people to maybe check out a 12 Step group. And there are, I've noticed, a couple of different ways that people might enter into that experience from the results that I hear or the comments in moving toward or away from that suggestion. And it's something like, Oh, I went there and, you know, they were way worse than me. You know, just that I didn't identify with anything anybody said. It was just, you know, all those people were having a totally different experience than me.

Jomon: 27:07

That's one way to go about it. The other way is, oh my gosh, it's amazing that I'm not alone. I share an experience with other people. And so sameness and difference, it could be the same group and a person might approach it with looking at it through one of those lenses and we can perhaps shift our lens as well. Sameness and difference.

Jomon: 27:44

And it's not just Zen that's kind of preoccupied with this, It's many spiritual traditions that really question these tension of seeming opposites of sacred and profane or being separate or together. I've been listening to Richard Rohr, who is a contemplative Christian, and I think it's because I've been attending my mom's church. I just want to try to find a way to language what it is that I'm doing in a Christian context but also perhaps because we're about to be adopted by a Christian church, the United Church of Christ. And so good to remind myself of that language. I feel like as a Zen practitioner, I've learned more about my Christian upbringing than I ever did when I was living that.

Jomon: 28:56

But I heard this wonderful story that Richard Rohr, who is a Franciscan friar, been a Franciscan monk, and he's like 80 now. And I don't know when this story happened but he tells the story about being in Thomas Merton's retreat property which was apparently many acres in Kentucky and he was there for a forty day retreat and so he got more and more comfortable venturing out into the distant woods of this land. And apparently on that property, which includes a church and the monastics and there's also these outlying recluses that live really far out there that don't talk to anybody. They only come in for Christmas and Easter. Apparently the congregants in the church will really be looking at the recluses to see have they lost their minds or are they glowing?

Jomon: 30:05

It's like one or the other. And so Richard tells this story about walking out into the woods and he sees one of the recluses walking around who's in full monk habit and he's like, you know, kind of puts his head down, doesn't want to interfere with his silence, but then the guy like sees him and recognizes him and he's like, I don't know how he recognized me, he must not be that much of a recluse. And he starts like yelling and waving and saying, Richard, Richard. He runs up and he's like, you can preach and I can't. Just tell the people.

Jomon: 30:45

And he points up into the sky and says, God is not up there. And then he says, God bless you and walks on. Just tell the people. So this not distance, not separate and there's a line in another of our chants that says, You are not it but in truth it is you. So this piece of the universe that is also not separate from This presence, this intimacy that is right here, that can only be here, couldn't be anywhere else.

Jomon: 31:41

So I'd like to close with an elements meditation, if that's all right, if you'd like to make yourself comfortable. Shift a little bit, whatever you need to do. We'll just do a few minutes of an elements meditation. Notice the way the body settles as we sit and just feeling the solidity and the weight and the gravity of the earth element in the body, the places of contact on the floor, and the very subtle sort of downward movement if anything else. Or even just the solidity of this mountain like posture.

Jomon: 32:49

The weight of the bones, the muscles, the physicality of this body. Feeling the stability. And maybe in this place of contact, can you notice a blurring of that line of when the body begins and ends and the cushion or chair or floor begins and ends? If we close our eyes and forget that we have the sort of outline of a body, the sensations may not have a very clear shape, but just feeling the solidity and this connection to the earth, not separate from the earth. And now see if you can notice the sensation and the presence of water.

Jomon: 34:30

This human body is mostly water. Where do you feel the moisture? Perhaps in the mouth, the eyes. Maybe there is a sense of having to go to the bathroom even. Or the movement of the blood flowing sometimes that's palpable in the hands.

Jomon: 35:09

Feeling the pulse in the body, the movement of water. Maybe there's also the sensations of dryness. We can notice that, the lack of moisture. This water is not separate from all the other water everywhere on this planet has moved transformed from the sky to the ground to the air. This water, not separate from any of the other water, wants to flow just like all water.

Jomon: 36:16

And now noticing the element of fire, the sensations of warmth or coolness. Where do you feel warmth or coolness? Perhaps in the extremities of hands and feet or in the core of the body? The places where clothing is retaining our body heat. And that all of this heat, this energy comes from the sun.

Jomon: 36:55

Every measure of energy originated with the sun. Every bite of food that our bodies turn into the energy of heat or warmth, the sun. So feeling this warmth and or coolness and noticing the element of fire, perhaps a slight noticing of the rising of heat. That subtle rising of energy or dissipation. And now noticing the movement of air through the breath, the movement no different from the wind.

Jomon: 38:06

We can imagine the air of the body The air of the body is not much different from the air in say the inside of a vase. The inside and outside, it's not that important of a distinction. It's all the same air. The same is true for the air that we're breathing. And we share the air with plants, the ocean transforming carbon dioxide and oxygen.

Jomon: 38:54

And the air moves through our blood throughout the body. No different from the air outside. We can also bring into our awareness the element of space and spaciousness in this dissolving. The elements dissolve, separate into endless, boundless space, constantly separating and coming back together. What is your experience of this?

Jomon: 39:59

And so as we close that brief meditation, just offering yourself some appreciation for your willingness to be here and practice together to take care of your own practice and then with your presence, you are helping everyone. And I just want to close with this little paragraph from the five invitations. He says, It's funny we all pretty much agree that life is in constant flux, yet we prefer to cling to the illusion that we ourselves are solid things moving through a changing world. Everything is changing except me, we tell ourselves. But we are mistaken.

Jomon: 40:50

We are not only the small solid selves we have taken ourselves to be. We are not the accountant, not the school teacher, not the barista, not the software engineer, not the writer, nor the reader of this book, at least not exactly as we imagined, not separate and apart. We are in flux, we are made up of dancing elements, We are like everything else at once here and disappearing. Thank you.

Jomon: 41:26

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