Speaker 1: 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: I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in this hunger. Welcome, everyone. Thanks for being here this evening.
We just finished a, our annual meeting this afternoon. We had 50 or 60 people from around around the around the Sangha. You know, we have people in from Plum Blossom in outside of Vancouver, and then was here from Bells Mountain, and people were here from Corvallis, and people were here from Heart Of Wisdom, Great Vowel, Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night. So we had a whole panoply of interesting people, there's so much going on in our sangha. Was just tiring to hear the whole list of you know, all the meetings and events and everything else that were happening.
Just it was just So if you want to get involved in the sangha, know, you can get involved by only by coming and attending sittings like this, or taking service positions, or being on some kind of committee or other, or lots of ways of being involved. The Buddha said that that in order for a community to be alive and vital, or in order for the Dharma to be alive vital, it needs Sangha. And Sangha is relationship. So it is not possible to actually have a real deep spiritual practice without relationship. We have to have relationship.
We have to have we have to have the practices is engaged, it's active, it's expressed itself through relationship. So if we have, if we're working on cleaning up our own our own habits of mind, if we're working on touching the the deep oneness of all things, if we're working on knowing knowing loving kindness, it needs people. And so, however you you whatever community you have, you need a community. We're human beings who are made for community. So we happen to have a rich readily available community.
You're welcome to participate in in any aspect of it. We're continuing to do the Mangala Sutta. And for those of you who are new, the Mangala Sutta is a classic Sutra from the Theravadan school. It's part of the Pali Canon, the the the complete corpus of the Buddhist teaching. I think it's part of the thing called the Kundra Nikaya, one of the five five baskets of teaching.
And it's called the highest blessings. So we've been going through the Mangala Sutta. Did we chant that this evening? Yeah. Okay.
You chanted that this evening, talking about all the different blessings that we're we're down to respectfulness in humble ways, contentment and gratitude, and hearing the Dharma frequently taught, these are the highest blessings. So when we are practicing, first thing we do is we of course calm ourselves down. We we we learn how to be present. Learn how to be present with some equanimity. And then we open our eyes to the world.
We open our eyes and see the world is vast and unique and different. The world is filled with growing things and filled with moving things and filled with stars and clouds and space. And it's out of calming ourselves down, opening our eyes with mindfulness that is the the progenitor is the of respect. Respect is not some some it might might be, it might not something the military teaches you. You know, you got to act in a certain kind of way and then that's respect.
But the respect that we talk about in a spiritual practice is that that with a calm mind, with a really open heart, with a mind that is connected, that's in relationship, then genuine respect and appreciation comes forth as a a as a natural phenomenon. So what does that mean respect? It means we everything in the universe has its place. You know, the bricks have their place, and the walls have their place, and the floor has its place, and all the people have their places, and all the clothing has its places, and our glasses have its places, the stars have their place. Everything has its place, and everything occupies its place perfectly.
Everything occupies its place perfectly. So it's easy to see right here, right now, there is not a better you somewhere else. You know, we think, well, here I am kind of half present broken a little bit. There is not a better you anywhere else. Nowhere else.
Nowhere else. And you can't see the world any different than you see it. In this moment, you see the world as you see it. You hear, you see what you see, you hear what you hear. It's You see it exactly as you see it.
It can't get any better. Isn't that amazing? It can't get any better. It'll be different in the future, and it'll be In that in each moment, it'll be perfect. But there's no better you somewhere in the future or past.
There is no other you because there's only this experience. And you can't, doesn't get any better. It will change. It will change. So the respect that we're talking about is seeing everything has its place.
Everything is scintillating in its own, you know, is ness. It's it's alive in its own is ness and it could not be different in this moment. Could not be different in this moment. It will change. The future will not be the same.
So that respect that we're talking about from a spiritual practice is a respect that is based upon mindfulness, based upon awareness, based upon having a really open heart. Respectfulness and humble ways. So if we if we boil all our practice down to one thing, It's to reduce self centeredness. To let go of self centeredness. Most of the time we go through the day, I mean my, I mean my, what do I gotta get, what do I do?
Do I like it? Do I not like it? I mean my, I mean my. If we said that all practice is to reduce a self centeredness, then what's left? What fills us in?
If we reduce self centeredness, what fills us? Why? Everything else. Instead of thinking, this is the most important piece right here. This is the most important piece I will cherish, will protect, this is the most important piece, I will I will fight off any threat, this is the most important piece, and I'll put a cocoon around myself to try to make myself feel whole and complete.
We cut out the whole world. But if somehow we see that, oh, maybe it's not about me. And what's left? Why the whole world? Instead of having the mind turned in trying to to look and protect and see.
We open our hearts. We open our mind. We open our lives. The humbleness that that this is talking about is not somebody groveling on the ground or crawling up the steps of the temple and or it's about it's about letting go of our self centered fixation. Of course, we'll take care of ourselves.
Of course, we'll feed ourselves. Of course. But letting go of our self centered fixation so that the world can fill us. So that, you know, we we hear the birds that you're saying. So that we feel the calmness of the room.
So that we feel life everywhere. The humbleness is I'm going to let go of my obsession with myself so that I can be filled with the world. Now we all know what it's like to try to relate to somebody who is full of look at me, look at me, I'm special, you know, I know. We all know what it's like to to try to relate to somebody like that. Somebody who's a narcissist who who is so obsessed with himself and how they're appearing and trying to manipulate the world to get them to see to see them as they want to be seen.
I mean, now, I'm talking about something futile. So much of our lives, we we're trying to manipulate the world and people to see us like we like like we think we like them to see us. Totally hopeless. Totally hopeless. So we have respect, relationship, humility.
We are all basically, you know, the same. You know, we got little bits and pieces here that are different, you know. But you know, if you look at a picture, an old picture from twenty years ago, all these bunch of people in there and you don't know them, they all look the same. You know, there is these pictures in Japan. Every time they do a big event, they line everybody up out in the front of the temple and take a picture and then a picture of 200 little heads, you know.
200 little heads, they all look the same. You know, some of them are a little lighter, a little darker, some little hairier, some of them not. At at at at the at a fundamental level, you know, we're all just the same. We have basic anatomy. It's all anatomy is the same.
There are anatomy books that describe, you know, our anatomy, and they're describing not the the picture in the book, they're describing you and you and you and you and you you and me. Basically the same. From one view, from one view, we're just these little boxes that go around eating and shitting, you know, all day long. So to actually see that we are not special, we're all in the same boat. We all want to be loved.
We all want to succeed. We all want to to grow. We all want to to be appreciated and have connection. We're all like that. One of my friends, mentors, exemplars Byron Katie, and she says, know, you listen to people talk after a while, the complaints are always the same.
Always the same. She's been doing this for forty years, and she says, forty years of the same complaints over and over again, you know. All of our complaints. When we begin to recognize, oh yeah, it's just stuff, it's just my stuff. I just gotta it's not particularly special.
I'm not special. I'm not special compared to everybody else. Then it's easy to relate to people. One of the things I think of, I'm always impressed with the Dalai Lama. You know, there's these classic stories of the Dalai Lama going to hotels and just talking to everybody equally.
Know, it doesn't make any difference between who he's talking to. He's just trying to talk to everybody. We're on the same boat. He's he's from his vantage point, doesn't seem to be. We think he's special.
I think he's special. But from his vantage point, we're all in the same boat. So this is the kind of humbleness and respect that this sutra is talking about. Humbleness and respect. And then, what would it be like if I was not worried all day long about myself, about my future, about what I have done, if I'm worried about where I'm going to go and and you know, the kind of person.
If we're not worried about that, what would it be like if we were worried? Imagine just going through the day completely unworried. That's called contentment. And so the practice is we come in here, we sit down, we do so Zen, we bring our minds into the present moment, we experience our life, the only life we can experience, the perfect life, there is no better life. We completely experience it.
We are are not busy thinking, there's a better life someplace else, but rather we are completely one. That's called contentment. There's no worry. It doesn't mean that we don't do anything. It doesn't mean we're not going to be proactive.
It doesn't mean we don't respond. But the contentment of being without an inner critic, being the contentment being without the judgmental comparing mind, the contentment of of realizing that, oh yeah, I could not be different than I am in this moment. That doesn't that doesn't obviate vow. So contentment is not something I say, I'm gonna make myself content. I'm gonna breathe deeply and slow down.
And it's true. You can breathe deeply. You can slow down. You can stop the mind from from ranting and raving. You can, you know, what we do with anybody who's if you work with mental health, if somebody comes in, they're really tremendously agitated.
You slow your breath down, your feet, your body, that works. But the contentment that we're talking about here as spiritual being has got to go way beyond that. It doesn't have to, but it can go way beyond that. The contentment that, oh, everything the way it is right this moment could not be different. It's perfect.
It will be different in the future, but you could not see what you can't you you could see what you see right now. You can't see something else right now. You can't feel something else right now while you're feeling what you're feeling. I mean, if you get this, it's such an amazing thing. You can't be somebody else.
There's no better person in the universe that you can experience than the one you are experiencing right now. And it's gone. It changed. You can only see what we can see right now. Wow.
Now, that's a kind of your dynamic contentment. That's a kind of very alive place of respect. Alive place. Instead of half being present saying, well, I could be better, I could be listening better, I could talking better, I could be doing this better, I could be doing that better, I really didn't know well in the past what's gonna happen to me in the future. Right here.
Right here. Right now. That's the kind of contentment. Now, contentment, people sometimes think, contentment means, okay, I'm I'm I'm now going to be a content lump, you know. I'll be a nice lump I'll be just sitting here content, know, watching my navel and being content.
You know, that that is a dead state. That is not that is not the goal of spiritual practice. We're not interested in being lumps. We're not interested I am not interested in being a lump. I hope none of you are interested in being lumps.
It is true that if we can sit down and we calm ourselves down and we actually are present that things are revealed to us, that we can begin to see the world in different different levels, different ways, things are that the mystery appears in lots of ways. It's a very dynamic state. It's good in the beginning to calm down, slow down. Great. Great.
But that's not the goal of your spiritual practice. Spiritual practice is about seeing something, penetrating into something, recognizing this sacred moment that can't be different and being content and appreciative and satisfied. Right now. Right now. Right now.
The only time we can experience anything. So the contentment again is not being a lump. People think I'll be content. That means I won't do anything. I'll just sit there and be indifferent to the world.
I'll be content in all the the the great the great challenges of the world. I'll just ignore them. I'll just be content with things as they are. Nothing is Nothing stays the same. So even the idea of I'll just be content and stay the same, that doesn't stay the same.
Everything is flowing. So we have to be content with the experience of being us in this body right here with with the the powers, with the the movement that we experience. It's got to do something. That movement is alive. That movement has a a karmic trajectory.
That movement, we're sitting here in this moment, only time there is no future and yet it's not stagnant. It's it's a dynamic, a dynamicism to it. It has a movement to it. In this in this moment, it's a movement. That movement is is a way of we have to be constantly responding.
Responding. And the response comes from deep inside not as a reaction to what's outside. It has to come from our own deep sense of aliveness. When we touch our own deep sense of aliveness, we are alive. Somebody says, oh yeah, it's all empty.
Oh yeah, you know. Nothing exists. There is no self, you know. You don't you don't belong. You're just a figment of your imagination.
It's just the dream like nature of reality. You know, you don't exist. I mean, that's when you know, the classic stories that the teachers will come and whack you on the head and say, is that true? You know, is that really true? We're alive.
What we think of as alive might be have some different ways of looking at it. When we are alive and we appreciate the alive, we appreciate the tingly aliveness of this moment, Incumbent in that, as a part of it, is a kind of appreciation. The universe is creative. It's always creative. You know, we're it's creative every moment.
This this ting of life is a creation. And, the gratitude that this chant talks about is the gratitude that comes from seeing, oh my goodness. How in the world did this happen? I didn't have anything to do with it. Somehow here I am, the only way I could possibly be.
Here I am. Wow. Wow. Shantideva says, you know, it's like finding a jewel in a pile of shit. That somehow when all the dross and all the difficulties of the world and ourselves, we we can We come to this realization of right here, there is something dynamic, alive, it's a gift.
Our life is a gift. Sometimes we talk about the gift of our life. I talk about, well, what did it take for you to get here? Know? I mean, on a horizontal level, took your own gasoline and cars and it took roads and pavement and you know electricity and all those things.
And then on a historical level, it took all of your ancestors. The last what? Three thirty thousand years, three hundred thousand years depending on how you're counting. And I was amazed at this, but I always think about for the last, let's say three hundred thousand years, couples had to come together exactly the right time with exactly the right person to have progeny. And the next generation had exactly the right time with exactly the right person.
And and it went on for for millennia. Millennia. It's impossible. It's a miracle. If you just think about the the probability of meeting any person in this world, where it's 8,000,000,000 people, very very low.
And you think about the probability of meeting those those those generations of people all meeting at exactly the right time and having enough resources to raise children. It's impossible. When we we see that we begin to say, oh, wow. It's impossible, but here I am. It's a gift.
It's a gift. This life is a gift. A sacred gift. You didn't cause it. You didn't say, oh, yes.
Now, I'm gonna be in there. You can't find you anyhow, but you didn't cause this. Somehow, we appeared with this particular our particular karmic bundle. So this chant, respectfulness in humble ways, contentment and gratitude, are all part of the the depths of being willing to sit and to feel deeply and to experience this life as Dharma. We call that the Dharma.
We call the the teaching of the truth the Dharma. These are these are not some some esoteric thing that you know, somebody thought of and said, oh, that's a great that's a great thought. I think I'll write it down. I have a a book outside of my office right now, which is called the think the book of philosophy. And it's a wonderful compilation.
It has It starts off with the pre Socratic philosophers. Actually starts off with Lao Tzu and people way back then. And every two pages or sometimes every one page is a new philosopher. And it kind of goes through the east and the West and it goes, you know, all the way from the ancient Greeks up to to I forgot who the last person is. Fouquet or somebody.
Every page, somebody's saying, well, you could think about it way, or you could think about it that way, or you could think about it this way, or you could think about it this way, you could think about it this way, it could think way, you could think this way and that way and this way. You could The whole book is filled with ways of thinking about about reality. You know, that's not the dharma. That's not the dharma. The dharma says, okay, let's pay attention to the direct experience right now.
There's a mystery there. There's a tingling aliveness there, and we can relate to that experience with appreciation and gratitude. Because our minds are so fixated, you know, we grow up we grow up learning, you know, learning how to behave, learning how to how to relate to the world, learning about the world, learning about out there, learning how to have have skills, we become conditioned. Many different ways become conditioned. And so, when we're talking about the Dharma, it's trying to remind us whether I'm reading it, whether I'm talking about it, whether you're hearing it.
It's trying to remind us, look directly, look directly, look directly. Open the heart. Feel that we are not separate. That we are connected to everything else. Look directly, look with know that for yourself.
Verify that. The thing I've been telling people at the where I've been talking lately is just verify it. Verify it. Verify it. Confirm it.
You know, it's so easy to stand up here and wax eloquent about something, but if unless it resonates with your heart, unless you have verified, oh yeah, that really it does, that is my experience. So what? Just another philosopher. So we come, we practice, we look, we engage, we look more deeply, we engage, we verify, we verify, we verify, we open the heart and then we respond to the world and the world responds to us. Here in the Dharma frequently taught, these are the highest blessings.
So the so the Dharma, you know, the the Dharma is this is truth, and there's the Buddha Dharma, the truth as taught by the Buddha, there's other kinds of Dharma. There's there's the there's the Dharma of rocks and minerals, and there's the Dharma of of genetics, and there's the desire of Dharma of, know, this is the way bodies work. But the the Buddha Dharma specifically targets how our thinking, how our mind, how our awareness, how our that which experiences experience, specifically is about that level of understanding. Of course, that's not separate from anything else, but still you can you can look at it in that way. So the Buddha Dharma is an a collection of teachings by the Buddha and and subsequent subsequent masters from lots of different traditions, trying to express, trying to put in words something that can only be experienced, trying to put the wordless into words.
And so, in in a lot of the the Buddhist canon, it's flexible, it's valuable, you know. There's the the Theravadan tradition that has the Pali texts, but then there's the Chinese tradition, the Tibetan tradition, there's other Southeast Asian traditions, there's the Japanese tradition. And each of these tradition, people are trying to put the the fundamental thing, the fundamental thing that is not conditioned into words that we can hear with a conditioned mind. And so, keep trying. Every generation tries it.
I'm trying right now. Everybody keeps trying and adapting because we hear things differently. We're not ancient Indians. And so, the Dharma is flexible, adaptive. And so, when we're listening to it, we have to listen to that, listen from that core core of business and try to give life to whatever we're talking about.
These are the highest blessings. May you all you all are blessed, you know. One the things I like by my friend Guagu, he has on his website, he says, you're you're already free. You click on his website, that's what you get. You're already free.
You're already free. You're already free. So congratulations. Anybody have anything they'd like to add to this or tweak it or offer anything else? Sure, Jocko loves to run-in the room.
Yeah. And we ask you to say your name, Liza. So What would you like to add to this?
Speaker 3: Hello. My name is Liza. I am wondering I really connected with your the way you articulated the difference between philosophy and the dharma, and, like, that direct experience of like, that spark of aliveness. And I'm currently endeavoring to kind of be in the depths of society and maintain that connection with that spark. And it's it's kind of hard, especially when there's just, like, so much sensory information.
And so, you know, obviously, meditating is a good way of continuing to connect with that spark. And I'm wondering if you have any suggestions of ways of touching into that in the moments when I lose it or I feel overwhelmed or, like, my mind is ruminating on something
Speaker 2: or things
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: Now, Liza's a drama teacher in her own right. She finished a three year retreat. She's a accomplished person. So, if a student came to you and asked this question, please, how would you respond? I mean, I'll be happy to respond, but I want I want the genuine thing here.
Yeah.
Speaker 3: Think I would invite them to pause and take a breath and maybe, like, look look at the trees blowing in the wind or, like, feel the sunshine, like, kind of tune into that natural arising of life that's happening in the moment. And with the thoughts, like, to to name the thoughts or, like, to to really Yeah. Almost like call out. Like, really articulate that, like, okay, thoughts are happening, like, story's happening. And I've been trying to do that today and still feel overwhelmed.
Speaker 2: Great. Well, that is the experience. And it's interesting, there's a wave right now of an old Japanese, or maybe it's probably Chinese, teaching of forest bathing. Where, you know, they say people go out into the woods and stand by the trees. We do this in grasses and trees retreat every summer.
Stand by the trees, calm yourself down, feel the life energy that's around you, feel the life energy of the trees and plants. Resonate with all of that. That's one way of one way of doing that. Another practice is the practice of of labeling. When we label something, we're less likely to identify with it.
So we label thinking. That's thinking. That's thinking. That's not me. That's thinking.
We can we can label, oh yeah, I'm being very judgmental there. But then, we can say the one who is aware is not being is not the judgmental one. We can begin to create some separation between our our fixation on our own views and our awareness itself. One thing I like to do, which we can all do right now, it's very simple. You close your eyes right now, and you look and see what is the visual field behind the closed eyes.
Just call something out. What do you see?
Speaker 3: Hogen. I see you. Hogen.
Speaker 2: Alright. There's a there's a an image there. So, what's it made of? What does what what's it made of? What's the image made of?
Anybody else, what's it made of? What are you seeing in the visual field? This is not hard. You're alright. Sauce.
Apple Apple sauce. Alright. You take what you get. Alright? It's it's like flickering.
Static. Flickering, static. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's orbs of residual light.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. I can't hear that.
Speaker 3: Orbs of residual light.
Speaker 2: Orbs of residual light.
Speaker 3: Light and shadow.
Speaker 2: Lights and shadow. So you know
Speaker 3: Colorlessness. What? Colorlessness.
Speaker 2: Colorlessness. Color? Color? If you look, the visual field is completely active with your eyes closed. There still is the visual field there.
It's just seeing different things. And a lot of people, they're looking really closely, looking closely and minutely at it. You see, it's made up of an infinite number of flickering parts, flickering ons and offs, the flickering white and black or flickering color. It's made up of small little snowflake static flickering. Now, you can see that, you can recognize that, know, it's both moving and you can't find movement, it's still inactive.
And then, you feel in your body. And you say, what is the smallest feeling in my body? The smallest feeling in my body. What is the sensation in my hands or my chest or my belly? What's it made of?
What's the smallest the smallest particle? And you'll find it's the same thing. And you can do that with the ears. You listen to sound, and you say, what is the smallest, most tiniest sound I can hear? The flickering of business.
And then, you begin to realize it's all made of the same stuff. The whole world is made of the same stuff. Everything, the same stuff, flickering energy, constant motion, you can't find it alive and yet there can't find a particular place that's alive. The whole world is like it. Everything that comes in is like that.
So, I do that in my sleep. I do that at night. I do that. You kind of say, oh, what's the what's the whole world made of? Check it out.
Check it out. So when I am aware of that, what's gonna bother you? It's just the same stuff. It's just shaped differently. Some is shaped like a Liza and some is shaped like a Broken, you know.
Same stuff. Mhmm. So that's one way of of just not being thrown off is same stuff. Then the other way the other way, which is a little more exciting is you look and think, who is the one who's distressed? Who is the one who hears?
You can't find anybody. You know that. You can't find anyone. So there's distress, but there's nobody being distressed by it. Stuff.
The Dharma is is deeply deeply rich rich. So many different direct experiences and Roshi has one to share with us, and we'll Thank
Speaker 1: 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 zendesk.org. Your support supports us.