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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.
Speaker 2:Morning everyone. I wanna start by taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, the transcendental values. So thank you for being here this morning. On Sunday mornings, we always have a little chanting, a little meditation, and there's in with the Dharma talk and lunch. And today is July 5, as you all know, and I hope you had a great day yesterday, July 4.
Speaker 2:The fireworks last night were spectacular. Anybody who hasn't been to the Klatzkine fireworks, I highly encourage you to come. They were only fifteen minutes, not forty minutes like they were in Washington DC, but if you're right up close, they're really amazing, really amazing. July 4, as you all know, is the the date, the approximate date where the 13 original colonies signed the Declaration of Independence. It was actually signed May 2, it was not ratified till August, it was But the fourth is the day we celebrate.
Speaker 2:And we celebrate theoretically we celebrate freedom from British rule, that was the original original impetus, and we'd celebrate that with, you know, actually John Adams suggested that the July 4 should be celebrated with fireworks and picnics and barbecues and should be celebrated with dancing and should be celebrated with joyous activity, and we've been doing that for two hundred fifty years now. The nice thing about the Klatsch and I event was we got to affirm, you know, affirm old friendships, meet new friendships, meet new friends, a fantastic magician, my my very favorite part of the whole thing, Craig Martin, really quite an astounding person. I learned that Klatzkow is noted for blowing things up. Tracy or somebody was telling me that people make mortars around here and blow up refrigerators and other things, it's one of the things they're known about. We all assume that freedom is good, you know.
Speaker 2:We assume that that because we separated from England and Canada didn't, somehow we made a good choice. We somehow thought that Canada, historically, was somehow a lesser country, it was less violent, it was less aggressive, more peaceful than those of us who rebelled. And we separated out of a desire for freedom in in '23, and then we went to war with Britain in 1812, and then we had the Indian Removal Act in 1830, and then we had the Mexican American War in 1846, and then we had the Civil War in 1861. And if you talk to half of those combatants, it was always about freedom. Perhaps if you talk to both sides, both sides are trying to be free or whatever the empathy whether it's free from tyranny or free to control or free to dominate or free to expand or free to own slaves or free to be free.
Speaker 2:So what is freedom? That's the that's the What is freedom? We celebrate freedom, we celebrate July 4. What is freedom? Freedom for what?
Speaker 2:Freedom to do what? Now in my experience the modern cultural American ideal and perhaps the worldwide ideal, but I'm a modern cultural American, the basic freedom that that that is touted in the media is I should be free to be able to do what I want. I should have the freedom to pursue happiness, pleasure, comfort, satisfaction, wholeness in whatever way I wanna do that. I should be free to drink myself to death, I should be free to smoke cigarettes, I should be free to do whatever I think will make me happy. And if I have the resources and the and the freedom I can achieve my goal and if I if I do it right, if I get the right resources, if if I make the right choices, if I am free if I am free, if I make the good choices, I will be happy and that's the result of my freedom.
Speaker 2:And we set up secondary goals of course to achieve that freedom. Okay, I'll get a house, I'll get a better car, I'll go traveling, I'll get a career, I'll get a partner, I'll get wealthy. I'll even I'll even set up the criteria of I will get meaning in life and then I'll be free and happy. So we set up these secondary goals as a way of trying to achieve our primary goal of being free and being happy and being satisfied and being content. And so freedom then becomes basically like a donkey with a carrot, know.
Speaker 2:We're holding out this possibility, and if I just do the right thing, if I just go to the right place, if I just get the right education, I just have the right partner, if I just if I just if I just if I just and we start on the the treadmill of the aspiration for liberation. And it goes around and around and around. And as you know, we are able to see this so clearly yesterday, you know, crude people think that excitement is the is liberating. I'm just excited enough, I'm happy, if I'm happy, I'm that's great. And more sophisticated people have other pleasures.
Speaker 2:So that that kind of of thread of I will in the pursuit of happiness, I am the one who can choose, will smoking make me happy or not? Will drinking make me happy or not? Will will acquiring land from other people make me happy or not? Will money make me happy or not? And as you know, culturally, when people are making those choices they often choose to be small, they often choose to be anxious, they also choose to be reactive, we often choose.
Speaker 2:We choose to say no. Too much trouble. I won't be happy if I do that. I don't feel like it. I'm too tired.
Speaker 2:I don't care. And because of our our fantasy of what's going to make me happy and satisfied on the outside or the inside, we often become either megalomaniacs on one hand or we become small and tight and narrow. We choose the familiar over the mysterious. You know, I don't care. Saying I don't care is a kind of choice too.
Speaker 2:It's a choice of an aspiration for a kind of freedom. Oh, I don't care about that. I will find freedom and satisfaction and indifference, which is pretty small. Somebody comes to me and says, no, thank you. I don't want it.
Speaker 2:I don't want it. I don't want it. So on one hand we have the aspiration for freedom is, I want to get something, and the other hand the aspiration of freedom is, I don't want to get anything, I want to hold on to my narrow self. And we use either one extreme, you know, bigger is better, and on the other extreme, small and tight and narrow, anxious. All the considerations that hold us back.
Speaker 2:So the question in Dharma circles is, is it possible that maybe there's a different way of looking at freedom? Is it possible that there are other freedoms that are more satisfying? Is it possible that that we could have a different aspiration? In Buddhism, we talk about that the fundamental freedom is to be free of greed, anger, and ignorance. To be free of small minded selfishness.
Speaker 2:To be free of the small crusty protected little armadillo of I, me and my. And to be able to practice generosity, to be able to practice kindness, to be able to practice love, to be able to feel sympathetic joy. From what we call worldly view, it's kind of a strange word, but from a cultural view happiness is a function of getting. Or maybe it's a function of getting rid of. I don't like that, I'll get rid of it, and then I'll be happy.
Speaker 2:But from a dharma perspective it's a different matter. That habit is not about I'm going to get this thing, I'm going to get rid of this thing, I'm going to hold on to this thing which I can't hold on to, I'm gonna hold on to a handful of water which drips through, I'm gonna hold on to my little tight circumstance, I'm gonna hold on to my body, I'm gonna hold on to the way things are right now which is impossible, and then I'll be happy and be satisfied. So we have a different view of liberation. A different view of liberation. It is possible to find a place that is spacious, liberating, open, appreciative without in the big struggle of, I gotta get it, I gotta get rid of it.
Speaker 2:It is possible through direct insight, through practice, through looking clearly to find, to experience, to recognize a deep completeness, a deep wholeness that is inherent, that is not lacking. And that's not just a mental idea. You know we could have the mental idea of I want freedom, I want to do what I want to do, I want freedom to exploit my neighbors, I want freedom to fight wars, I want freedom to protect myself, I want freedom to vote, I want freedom to tax, I want We can have all those ideas but when we drop all of that, we can find a direct intimate confirmation of the inherent wholeness, of the inherent completeness of who we are. And that inherent completeness is not some small frozen thing, that inherent completeness is that we begin to recognize that who I think I am, and all of these impulses, and the world are not two things. So as we all know and talk about, you know, we're all looking, we see something, we hear something.
Speaker 2:There's there's the object we're seeing, there's the act of seeing, there's the the seer. The seer, the act of seeing, the seen, the hearer, the act of hearing, the heard. They're not separate. You can't separate the act of seeing from what is seen. You can't separate the seer from what is seen.
Speaker 2:Everything that we see, hear, smell, taste and touch is our life. If we see, if we have even a glimpse that everything is our life, everything is is I'm in relationship with it, then suddenly this small minded modern cultural view of happiness and getting what I want doesn't make any sense at all. As you slightly different thread. As you all know, there's the in Buddhism we talk about the eight worldly winds, know, things that go up and down, know, people like us, they don't like us, we're feeling good, we're not feeling so good, we're feeling like we are well resourced, we're not well resourced, know, things go up and down, pleasure and pain. Regardless of your life, you will feel pleasure and pain.
Speaker 2:Regardless. Whether you have every sick thing you ever want, you will still feel pleasure and pain. Whether you have nothing you want, you will still feel pleasure and pain. One of the fascinating books is One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. They talk about that in the Russian gulag.
Speaker 2:Terrible terrible terrible horrible conditions and yet in the midst of these terrible horrible conditions Ivan Denisovich was able to have a day where he was totally at peace. Because his mind, our minds can change. Our minds can recognize, can wake up to, can become awakened, can become enlightened to the pristine inclusive nature of things. And then of course that nature we respond, do what we need to do. But we're not in opposition.
Speaker 2:So the difference is from a small minded view of freedom, freedom is something to be gotten, freedom is something to be protected, freedom is something to be fought over, freedom is something that has an acquisitive element to it. From a dharma perspective, freedom is non separation. We're already connected to the world. The beauty and the joy of the world is our joy, that's what they call sympathetic joy and other people's happiness is my happiness. They're not separate.
Speaker 2:Now how do we do that? We we can understand that as a cognitive level. It's easy to understand that we're not separate from anything. We just look at the the probably magnificent lunch that we'll have in a few minutes and we kind of trace each of the elements back and goes back from the table to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the cook, from the cook to the shopper to the shopper, and it goes back and realize in order to have a meal it takes the entire world. If we look trace it all back Our lives are the same in order for us to be alive right here, right now.
Speaker 2:It took the entire world. All of our grandparents, all of our great grandparents for what? Four hundred thousand years? A million years? So in Dharma we say, Okay, by practicing, by practicing, by coming together, by quieting the mind, by looking directly, we can recognize something that is inherent, something that is undisturbable, something that is undisposable, something that is reliable, more reliable than diamonds.
Speaker 2:There's a chant that we do called continuous practice and it says, you know, that this one day is more precious than a pearl, more precious than lots of money, more precious than all the great things you can have because all the great things will come and they'll go. But this one day, the isness of this one day always reliable, always here, always precious, always to be used wisely. So we talk about practice as a way of coming back into the present moment, feeling the body with the body, resting where we're at, letting the mind's constant, I want, I want, I want, I need, I've got to protect, I've got, letting that go. Letting that go. Coming back to the sacredness of this breath.
Speaker 2:The sacredness of this life. The sacredness of this unique moment in this day, it will never come again. It will never come again because it will never come again. It's totally worth, I was gonna use the word value, valuing, but valuing kind of means you're gonna hang on to it. It's totally worth appreciating.
Speaker 2:Appreciating the flow of life that is always always always happening. Whether things are up or down, whether we get what we want, we don't get what we want, it's always happening, the flow of life. That's the foundation of dharma. That's when we come and we meditate. We say, okay, I'm gonna let go of all that junk at least for a few minutes and at least at least I'm not gonna believe it.
Speaker 2:You know, we can't we can't not think, but we can we don't have to believe our thoughts. Our thoughts are crazy. And I can come back to the sacred experience of this moment right here. Now the idea that there's a thing called this moment is a silly idea because there's only right now. There's nothing.
Speaker 2:You can't you can't step outside of right now to look back on it. You can't say, okay, I'm gonna take a few seconds in the past and look at the present. I'm gonna go a few seconds in the future and look at the present. You can't do that. You can't step outside of the present moment.
Speaker 2:It's impossible. And yet the mind is constantly thinking, what's going to happen next, what's going happen next, what's going to happen next, what's going happen next. Part of the recognition, part of the awakening of Dharma is to recognize, Oh, oh, right here, right now, this is the apex of life. Right now. I could not be better than I am right this moment and it changes.
Speaker 2:Right this moment and it changes. Right this moment and it's gone. Right this moment. Right this moment. Right this moment.
Speaker 2:There's not a better you in the universe someplace else. There's not a better you in the universe someplace else. There's not the the one that is stronger or lighter or wiser or more compassionate. There's not That person does not exist. There's only right here in his pristine purity and clarity.
Speaker 2:And that's part of practice. We have to verify that, we have to know that for ourselves. And so we come, we sit down, we learn to body mind art too, so we have a posture that is erect and stable, allows us to breathe fully, We feel the body in this moment constantly changing with the breath, constantly changing with the breath. We let go of the junk and we find that deep place of respect and loving kindness and compassion and sympathetic joy that is always right here and recognizing that as awakening. And then, awakening is not enough in itself, it has to function.
Speaker 2:Because if we just say, oh, I've I've got this wonderful beautiful pristine life and it's sacred and there's this moment and we're just sitting there like a lump. Who cares? So what? It's got a function and it functions because we're not separate. And so our life is the very things that come towards us.
Speaker 2:People say, oh, would you like to do this? Yes. Oh, would you like to help here? Yes. Oh, would you like to go there?
Speaker 2:Yes. Yes. And so our life becomes a yes. Okay, I can do that. Yes, I can meet that.
Speaker 2:Yes, I can fail in this way. Yes, I can succeed in this way. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Instead of no, no, thank you, you, no, thank you, no, small, small, small, small, small, make me smaller, make me smaller, make me more And so, by practicing, we come into the moment, we begin to calm down, we recognize what's always present and we begin to say, Yes. I can respond to that.
Speaker 2:Yes. That's my life. Yes. Yes. Somebody needs something.
Speaker 2:Yes. Somebody needs some help. Yes. Somebody has an invitation. Yes.
Speaker 2:And so the liberation that we talk about in Dharma is not a liberation that is just one day's liberation, it's a liberation that is the practice of the inclusive nature of mind and the responsive nature of our life. Yes, Yes. You want that? Okay. Yes.
Speaker 2:And of course you know we we have to learn skillful boundaries and all that stuff is of course very appropriate. But our fundamental attitude, fundamental attitude is, oh, of all the places in the world I could end up being, here I am in my life, with all of my particular challenges. Yes, yes, yes. So that's the liberation that I think that we we need to be celebrating. It's worth fireworks.
Speaker 2:It's worth it's worth.
Speaker 3:Blowing up refrigerator?
Speaker 2:Blowing up refrigerators. You know, I think there are people in the world that that is deeply satisfying. I think it's a little limited. So I yeah, that's my July 4 message. July 5 message.
Speaker 2:Any comments, insights, objections, clarifications? When this happens and I always ask these questions, think, oh, everybody's understood it so well. It's great. Oh, great. Great confidence.
Speaker 2:Great confidence. Great faith. You all have great confidence. You all have great faith in the sacredness of this life. May you give it away.
Speaker 2:Where's your missed microphone? Rinso, would you give the fastest one? Would you get the microphone, please? Mercury.
Speaker 3:Lakey and Swift.
Speaker 2:Lakey and Swift Mercury. Would you give it to I forgot your name. Audrey. Audrey. Thank you.
Speaker 2:I should know that by now. Thank you, Audrey.
Speaker 3:Thank you,
Speaker 2:Roshi, for
Speaker 3:your talk. Something I'm struggling with right now in regards to tapping into that feeling of fullness internally is trying to differentiate it from I can do everything myself. I I'm totally practically self sufficient. I don't need anything from anybody. If I do, I need to feel guilty about it.
Speaker 3:And trying to counteract that wisely by recognizing that I am reliant on other people for emotional needs.
Speaker 2:For everything.
Speaker 3:Maybe you have some words you can share about navigating that without the benefit of seeing completely clearly.
Speaker 2:Well, first off, it's just reality. You you couldn't talk in that microphone without Renzo and a thousand engineers and, you know, somebody gave you somebody fixed your glasses and somebody, you know, made your earrings and somebody I mean, everything we do is dependent upon everybody else. This is a myth that we're we can do anything by ourselves. It's a myth. There's nothing we can do by ourselves.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. So is that true? So I'm swallowing right now. Did I do that by myself? Did I do the swallowing?
Speaker 2:Well, it was a thought, but how did that thought connect to to a certain anatomical movement? I don't really know. I'm waving my fingers, I kind of know they're waving, how did that happen? Sort of a funny thing to do. So on one hand it's just let me just look really closely, we are never separate.
Speaker 2:We are never separate. And the idea that I can do things to other people's help is patently untrue. Now, the other side of that of course is we each have our own karma, we each have to respond to our own life. We have to respond a 100% to our own life, but that response is inclusive. So you're responding to your family, you're responding to your garden, you're responding to the insects, you're responding to the world, you're responding.
Speaker 2:And that can only be a very intimate personal response and yet it has to include all those beings. So the the Dharma way we understand it cognitively, that's that's fairly easy to do, we have to start looking every time we feel like I'm separate, I'm separate. Is it really true? I can really do anything on my own? And yet we have to do everything on our own.
Speaker 2:So be curious, investigate. The worst answers are dogmatic answers, this is the way it is. The best answer is just investigate. See for yourself what's true. You're so smart.
Speaker 2:You're so so insightful. Great. Use that. Thank you. Anybody else?
Speaker 2:No. Your steam door? Yeah. Please say your name. I Some people I know, some people I don't.
Speaker 2:I should know lots of people's names, I don't know them.
Speaker 4:Dur. Yeah. Thanks, Hogen. So the point here is when let's say you have an extensive social, and you're invited to a wedding, and you're invited to a bar mitzvah, when do you know to say yes and when no, you have a lot of invitations?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. How do you do that? So we always respond. You get six invitations to weddings and bar mitzvahs and baby showers, you will only go to one of them at a time. You might decide to do all six of them during the course of the day and you know spend ten minutes every place or you might decide to spend one, but you will make a decision.
Speaker 2:You will make a decision. So then the decision is okay, partly, well, what do I want to? What affinity do I have with these people? Partly it's, will be the best use of my time and energy? Partly, you know, we have all these things that we consider and we will make a decision.
Speaker 2:It's that we you can't avoid it. So you go into something mysterious, oh here's all these complications, here's all these possibilities, knowing a decision will be made one way or another. I'll just keep an open mind and an open heart and try to pay attention.
Speaker 4:If
Speaker 2:if yes is open, great. I mean, you know, we're not we're not talking about agreement. Somebody says here, give me a thousand dollars. You don't have to say yes, here's my thousand dollars. Somebody says here, go go to bed with me, yes, I'll go to bed with you.
Speaker 2:That that's that's stupid. But the possibility that we can respond affirmatively, no, is an affirmative response, you know, I'm clear, no. That's not appropriate, no. That's an affirmative response versus I'm afraid. So we will make a decision, so make the best one you can.
Speaker 2:As if you had another choice. People make terrible decisions, you know. But they make terrible decisions because they just And of course, if we make a terrible decision, what do we have to do? We get to turn it into wisdom. We have a thousand failures and they all become wisdom, they all become, oh yeah, now I know all about failure.
Speaker 2:Somebody comes to me and they're wracked with failure, they're wracked with personal distress, oh yeah, I've been there, I know what that's like, oh yeah,
Speaker 4:you know,
Speaker 2:it's just stuff and we're no longer afraid. And then we could be of we could turn our failures and our limitations into wisdom and then we turn all of the mistakes of our life into wisdom to help others. And suddenly the disaster that we thought our life was, something becomes a whole blessing. We turn it in that way. Anybody else?
Speaker 2:We're required to spend five more minutes in here before Alright. I guess we yeah. Would you like to see something? Please.
Speaker 5:Yeah. What
Speaker 2:what is your name?
Speaker 5:My name is Michal. Yeah. Very very nice to meet everybody. Yeah. So yeah.
Speaker 5:I love I mean, I'm tortured by it, but I also love the indecision process. So that really resonated. And and talking about freedom, like, what came to me was maybe the freedom to just be present with the industry and not not knowing which direction. Because as he as he said, it it will always resolve one way or the other. It's impossible for it not to unless we live infinite living.
Speaker 5:Sure. But yeah. I think I'm so curious about this relationship of knowing what decision is. It's the one that will nurture myself and others. And there's always a fear of making a mistake, but we we always will make mistakes.
Speaker 5:So, yeah, I don't know if it's it's more of a question not more of an observation. I don't know if there's a question there because I've struggled with this for
Speaker 2:my whole
Speaker 5:life. Mhmm. But if you would like to respond.
Speaker 2:Sure. Thank you. Those are those are those are great questions. You obviously have a lot of wisdom. Sometimes it's clear, this is what I need to be do to do.
Speaker 2:Somebody comes to you and you say, okay, let's do it. And sometimes, somebody comes to you and and there's there's sort of a blank. And sometimes somebody comes to you and you say, nope. If there's the blank piece, when we don't really know what to do, sometimes it's just not the time to make a decision. Sometimes that's the sign, oh, not ready yet.
Speaker 2:The soup has got to cook some more. It needs some more ingredients. So sometimes I think that that period of just waiting is kind of hard because we we want to resolve things, we want to If we're waiting and we're full of fear about ourself and anxiety, it becomes really aversive. If we're waiting and just saying, okay, the universe isn't quite there yet, I'm not right there, and we're just waiting in that that mystery, that's a very different experience. So when we're waiting out of small minded fear, I wanna make the best choice, I don't know what the best choice is, I should do here, should that's kind of a torture.
Speaker 2:We never know the future. We do not know the future. The probability is very high that I will stop talking here in just a moment. But we don't know the future. Know, we have the probability of things and you know as you know with probability the closer something is the more likely our prediction is going to be accurate.
Speaker 2:You know, if we say okay, I will stop talking next year, it's it's harder, I mean, you never start, I mean, you never start talking, so you may never be able to stop talking next year, you never know. So when things are really close, we can make predictions that are appear highly accurate, but when we begin into the future it's always unknown, it's always a mystery, it's always unknown. And so we're trying to predict the best outcome means what is the best way according to me things should unfold here? And we don't know. Not knowing is most intimate in that way.
Speaker 2:So sometimes there's a clear decision, yep. And sometimes there's a waiting, let's wait, let's cook for a while, let's wait. But if you wait in equanimity with alertness then when it's time to make a decision it will come. If you're waiting in frozen fear, the decision may may come and pass in a way. And of course whatever we do it's gonna fall apart.
Speaker 2:You know? Whatever we do. So don't get too excited.
Speaker 5:I love it. The idea of waiting like equanimity. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Welcome. Okay, we've done our allocated time. Thank you all very much. Appreciate it. Let's finish with the four Bodhisattva Vows.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Zen Community Oregon podcast, and thank you for your practice. New episodes air every week. Please consider making a donation at zendesk.org. Your support supports us.