{ "version": "1.0.0", "segments": [ { "speaker": "Speaker 1", "startTime": "0.88", "endTime": "12.4", "body": "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": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "60.739998", "endTime": "96.08", "body": "True meaning. Affirming oneness with Buddha, affirming oneness with Dharma, affirming oneness with Sangha. Open with a poem. A man walks by my doorway, his shadow crosses over the lintel, swift as that a human life passes. If you are not undone by love then quick act." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "96.895004", "endTime": "111.4", "body": "The chance will be lost and your shadow will pass over. Inside there are a 100 songs bursting out like startled birds. Inside where? You? No." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "111.88", "endTime": "134.815", "body": "Inside life. But after all, where are you? Don't claim credit but be the notes. The string of pearls that makes up a fragment of the divine melody. You love a friend, you love a lover, you love a child, a sunset, a painting, your parents, a beauty." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "135.535", "endTime": "162.835", "body": "Each of these occasional immediacies makes you. Each one is a time signature, the relative duration of pitch or a ghost note. All rhythmic value. They are wonderful, they are signposts but they are not yet that love which undoes. These other momentary loves are like sparks rising up from a nighttime campfire." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "163.395", "endTime": "182.58", "body": "All bright and burn then gone. But there is a love that is pure flame. Fire is the origin of sparks. This is the origin of fire. Those who are true lovers of love call it source of all untouched by any." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "184.315", "endTime": "211.96501", "body": "In the night sky openness of your life, enjoy the bright and burn moments but dwell in the splendor that overcomes in love with a capital l. Live so that life becomes the altar of love where you bow your head. A man wakes in the desert, he has no idea how he got there. There is desert in every direction as far as the eye can see. The desert goes on forever." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "212.445", "endTime": "231.79", "body": "That is this human life. How will you live in this world so that it is not an exile? A bird flies overhead, its shadow passing along the desert sands. Its shadow passes over me, that is a human life. It is also a spark of love." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "241.69499", "endTime": "259.79", "body": "Having done session, we are more aligned. Aligned with self, aligned with isness, aligned with truth, aligned with love. And what is self? What is truth? What is isness?" }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "259.79", "endTime": "314.95", "body": "What is love? Maybe we can't answer or maybe we shouldn't answer and yet we have a sensibility of being aligned. Alignment might be uncomfortable. Another word for alignment is atonement, at one ment, coming into right inhabitation of the life that we actually live and are actually responsible for. Sometimes at one meant means at one meant with painful things that we have to acknowledge and we have to take responsibility for." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "322.665", "endTime": "371.91", "body": "Sometimes that one meant is at one meant with realities of our life stage or circumstance. Close enough to the truth of what is moving us and moving through us that it is difficult to turn away. Capacities we have to consent to their slip away because of our life stage or circumstance. Or capacities we have to take responsibility for. At one minute might be feeling just how much a really lived vow to awaken will take of us." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "375.815", "endTime": "416.03497", "body": "And that might be really scary. That might be more than we thought it would be. That might be an ask to let go of something we never thought we are even holding on to. It might ask everything of us. The fruit of at one ment with these revelations is that now we have a clear source of meaning." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "417.7", "endTime": "481.32", "body": "When we don't really know what our spiritual task is or we don't really know the heart of the matter for us, then it's so easy to get caught up in trivial things or it's so easy to wish there weren't just trivial things. But sometimes this at one minute puts us right up against what is definitely not trivial which is the work that is ours to do. On Hogan's door there's a beautiful phrase it says, better to have a challenging life with meaning than an easy life without it. Because so easily an easy life because it doesn't provoke the heart, it doesn't provoke us to more heart, it just becomes a cozy pit. And life doesn't let that last all that long." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "488.655", "endTime": "517.265", "body": "Having done session we're more aligned with the great mystery. It's not the great mystery because that would imply some object that you get to look at. Something you can touch and write a book about. Something so close we can never look it in the face. Yet there's the blessing of the clouds parting and it looking out of your face." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "527.905", "endTime": "562.13007", "body": "Alignment with great mystery, we are suffusing in is ness, in stillness. Suffused by is ness, by stillness. And knowing alignment with great mystery with our ordinary faculty is mental fabrication. But just like doubting it is mental fabrication. There's never a gap in this." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "566.77", "endTime": "604.875", "body": "And yet there's there's alignment. Minds love talking about experience. Maybe the point of of words is simply besides the practical go left not right is is we make the internal external and then our external becomes someone else's internal. So there's an exchange of energy. We don't really say anything to each other." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "611.035", "endTime": "636.025", "body": "Not about this at least. Great mystery, you can't really tell anyone about this. Best we can do is fumble and grope with words like I'm doing here. We tell people and we express to ourselves alignment with great great mystery by being. It's not that it's not communicated." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "638.985", "endTime": "684.01", "body": "Our openness to people, our comfort with silence, Our tolerance with messiness, our wondering at the flowers, the blue sky, our wondering at our own weird thoughts. Or are being spring loaded with responsiveness. The evidence of this alignment expresses itself. It's not found in a memory, an accomplishment or something we could tell somebody. In fact, you may never get to know it." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "701.825", "endTime": "756.505", "body": "The reason I belabor this point is we're in alignment with this but wanting an object, wanting to say, have something to say or show about something totally scrambles us. And then that alignment is lost in our object fixation, in our show and tell, in our doubtful needing of evidence. But there's no doubt unless you doubt. Alignment with great mystery. And, the ancestors said basically a human mind is made of doubt." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "757.225", "endTime": "813.875", "body": "The human realm is characterized by doubt and anxiety. We can't so as much walk to the tea table without a big plan for what we're gonna do when we get back. Perhaps from session there's a realignment with qualities like contentment, acceptance, gratitude. If you feel even a little more content or accepting or awake to your abundance, even a little bit more, is it because you got something from sitting here? Did contentment or acceptance wander over and sit in your lap?" }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "817.235", "endTime": "838.855", "body": "Well, maybe that's a poetic way to think about it. We stopped, we closed our mouth for long enough and then contentment just wandered into our lap. And it's kind of just like that. That's interesting. But is it because you dusted something off?" }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "839.815", "endTime": "868.935", "body": "Or because you touch some state? What's the nature of contentment, acceptance, gratitude? Is it an addition, a subtraction, neither? This is really vital. The point of Dharma is not contentment, but contentment is an essential ingredient in our soup." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "872.77496", "endTime": "910.62", "body": "Because without contentment we actually reject Dharma. Some degree of contentment, some degree of divine discontent. A realignment with contentment, gratitude and acceptance. You know, people of even a hundred or two hundred years ago looked at our life, they'd be like, oh my God, I can't believe what you have. And that would be so embarrassing, wouldn't it?" }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "911.26", "endTime": "927.725", "body": "Because we would know, all I think about is what I don't have. My God, how long do your relatives live? What kind of healthcare do you have? But I have to pay what? But you're not doing bloodletting?" }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "927.725", "endTime": "960.165", "body": "I mean, if people of two hundred, three hundred years ago looked at our life and they were amazed at our abundance, we'd probably so embarrassed with how privileged and entitled we live. We hurdle in metal objects across the world and we're really upset if there's an hour delay. How how could they? How dare they? I paid $300 to hurdle across the world in a metal" }, { "speaker": "Speaker 1", "startTime": "961.52496", "endTime": "961.845", "body": "bird." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "971.52", "endTime": "1013.97504", "body": "The archetype, the symbol of simplicity, the the barefoot Jesus, the wandering monk, this image is not so much what they don't have, it's that they are fully alive in their nakedness. And this alignment part of the point is here you are doing absolutely nothing and you're just full of life's energy. You really can't improve on this. You can get a little bit more excited. Can get stimulated more in a different way, but it's not gonna get better than this." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1014.135", "endTime": "1041.615", "body": "It just could get different. Different kind of configuration of life energy. Anyway, realignment with contentment, gratitude, acceptance. We can vow to not so easily let this get lost in the marketplace. It's really quite a challenge, know." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1041.775", "endTime": "1089.43", "body": "Rumi's students didn't leave his retreat and walk out and see billboards everywhere for what they needed to purchase in order to be a cool person. And Dogen's students didn't get on their phone to call their mom and get bombarded with ads for the cool sneakers they could buy or the next retreat or the next drug they could do. The world is not a place of spiritual truth. It's all the more meaningful to actually carry the state of mind of it's all good. People just believe so easily their apocalyptic story to carry the truth, it's all good and there's some problems." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1093.865", "endTime": "1125.735", "body": "The world does not preach contentment, gratitude, acceptance. Although, if our Dharma eye is open, we are seeing that it's preaching that. It's preaching the necessity of that. That's a real challenge in the world we live in. Contentment, gratitude, acceptance, feel and affirm if you agree with me that this is sobriety." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1134.4701", "endTime": "1162.345", "body": "If we can etch in our bodies the evidence that this is enough. And then we're really empowered because when we have toys that's wonderful but if they're taken away, okay. This is enough. And our toys do get taken away. Or they lose their luster for us no matter what they are." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1167.69", "endTime": "1211.035", "body": "Yeah, but the source of luster never loses luster. It's just luster. We have been aligning with this lineage actually through becoming its body. We become the body of the lineage when we practice in this way. Its body which in one form another may go back to before time was recorded, before history." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1213.115", "endTime": "1266.335", "body": "And alignment with this lineage and becoming its body is alignment with Bodhisattva Vow. So we've been tending and composting our own illusions this week. But as we're nearing the ending of session, do you feel the heart wanting to shine out? Do you feel a movement in you, turning towards giving that energy back, giving expression to that energy? Do you feel like a wanting to share or celebrate the the brightness or relief or humor that came out of the work you've been doing?" }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1270.99", "endTime": "1305.73", "body": "Some people are such good practitioners they really are just in the groove until the very last moment. Hogan said when he was young in session, this is not just Jogen's virtue, it's also the container he was in. He would not literally not know who was sitting across from him or next to him because in session they were encouraged and he practiced in such a way that they were so focused. You did not look up, you did not look to the side, you were just so focused. How beautiful that would be then to open your eyes and see these radiant Buddhas who've been supporting you all week." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1314.3049", "endTime": "1368.44", "body": "I was saying that because part of this Bodhisattva vow beginning to bubble in us has to do with understanding the seeming reality of other beings. Our our interdependent life. So we've aligned with the Bodhisattva Vow and its essence here. We could talk about, yes, there is this aspiration we can cultivate called the Bodhisattva Vow that basically says, if I fixate on my own spiritual development, I get in the way of it. Or if I fixate on my own spiritual development, it will stop at a certain point because becomes my peace, my enlightenment, my freedom and we're reinforcing that there's someone here that needs to be free which is the delusion." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1369.32", "endTime": "1386.985", "body": "And so the Bodhivatsatva Vow says, just really think and practice in such a way that you think what's of the highest benefit for beings? What really helps them? What really helps bring peace of mind? What really help brings harmony? What How do people find meaning in this world?" }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1387.41", "endTime": "1403.01", "body": "And then commit yourself to that. And along the way do your practice but that actually is secondary to this other thing. That's an understanding of the Bodhisattva vow. But it's actually an energy. It's actually something that is humming in your belly or your heart." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1403.865", "endTime": "1451.65", "body": "It comes out of Zazen, it's not a high philosophy. Hong Zhi's writings and every single one of them, almost every single one in that collection he talks about this. And he was a man of classical Chinese philosophy, so his way of talking about it is the alternation of yin and yang or of essence in its expression. So he always talks about drop down into the source, let go into stillness which is vibrant, is potent with energy. I'm sure you've noticed that even though there's something in you that's tired, there's something in you that's potent with energy from being in stillness." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1456.3551", "endTime": "1489.0549", "body": "And we put that potency into the practice but also has an imperative to be expressed in day to day life. And he, in his writing celebrates how that overflows into beneficial action naturally if we don't get in the way. If our life isn't configured around selfishness. This is one of the selections from the the record of Hongzhi. This one's called All beings are your ancestors." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1492.655", "endTime": "1521.545", "body": "Fully appreciate the spaciousness of all things. Fully appreciate the spaciousness of all things. Then all hearts are free and all dusts evaporate in the original brilliance shining everywhere. Transforming according to circumstances meet all beings as your ancestors, as your family. Subtly illuminate all conditions magnanimous beyond all duality." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1522.3451", "endTime": "1555.835", "body": "Clear and desireless the wind and the pines and the moon and the water are content in their elements. Without minds interacting wind and pine or moon or water do not impede each other. Essentially you exist spaciously and have the capacity to respond outwardly without being annoyed. You really said that. You exist spaciously and have the capacity to respond outwardly without being annoyed like spring blossoming, like a mirror reflecting forms." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1556.35", "endTime": "1590.48", "body": "Amid all the noise, not avoiding the noise, not, you know, finding the teaching in the Dharma or the book that points to some hermit in a cave and thinking, yeah, that's the right way to do it, can run away. Amid all the noise spontaneously emerge transcendent. Fully appreciate the spaciousness of all things, aren't they? What what's your experience like right now? Not your interpretation of it." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1590.48", "endTime": "1615.47", "body": "That's not interesting. What's your experience like right now? It has no weight. It has no edges. It doesn't stay and yet there's always experiencing so it doesn't go." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1618.99", "endTime": "1648.69", "body": "Each thing is bleeding into each thing. Right? Your thoughts aren't separate from the room, separate from the sound, separate from your breath, separate from my voice, separate from your body, separate from any anything. Appreciate the spaciousness of all things. And it may be that we're just having a beginner's taste of how free and open this could be." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1657.1699", "endTime": "1692.0249", "body": "He says, then all hearts are free. So, from the basis of fully appreciate the spaciousness of all things, then all hearts are free. All dusts evaporate in the original brilliant shining everywhere. If my state of mind is that of looking within and looking out and seeing only conventional truth that is suffering, wrongness, a world of solid and separate things. Then this perceiving of mind inside and outside, it imprisons beings." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1693.865", "endTime": "1719.075", "body": "Beings are imprisoned by our idea of who they are. That's why you don't like to go home and visit your parents very often, unless you're lucky. And if you like to go home and visit them, it's because some way that they behold you, frees you. It's spacious. You're allowed to really be what you are or the best in you is seen not only your quirks." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1722.4349", "endTime": "1766.44", "body": "But when when our mind is dusty, beings arise in that dusty mirror and we miss see them or we partially see them and they feel that. And they react to that, we react to the reaction and it doesn't go so well. We have politics. If my state of mind is I look in and I look out and I see a wrong self with suffering that's solid and separate, then that's I do that to the world too. My interactions with them shore up their sense of suffering, their intractable wrongness." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1770.44", "endTime": "1801.85", "body": "It's not love to agree with each other's illusions. That is not love. And if that's empathy, I don't even want empathy. I don't reject someone's experience. Just like I don't want someone to reject my experience." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1804.505", "endTime": "1850.89", "body": "But it's it's it's simply and this is not a diminishment experience. Hongjo continues, so based on fully appreciating the spaciousness of all things, not having fixed views of beings anymore or less of them, he then says, transforming according to circumstances meet all beings as your ancestors. Meet all beings as your family. That's a really high bar of spiritual functioning. I noticed how easy it is for me to be hooked on my agenda and be too busy to meet somebody with love." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1852.65", "endTime": "1875.7899", "body": "But I actually wasn't too busy. I was just hooked on my agenda. Sometimes a totally shallow agenda. Gotta get to brunch by 10:15. Transforming according to circumstances meet all beings as your family." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1876.0299", "endTime": "1917.695", "body": "That really brings us up against just what a deep challenge and meaningful challenge it is to live as a spiritual person. The sort of diluted cultural permission to disregard people that we don't value, that aren't our our people. Now, if we were to observe Hongjo, would I would love to do that. I just wanna go back in time and observe Rumi or Dogen and be like, how does he treat his cat? He vomited on your rug." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1918.575", "endTime": "1935.83", "body": "He scratched your new chair into shreds. He's not grateful. How do you treat him? Even must have had challenges with this or he wouldn't be teaching it. If it was easy, it wouldn't even need to be said." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1939.625", "endTime": "1976.835", "body": "He says, subtly illuminate all conditions magnanimous beyond all duality, transforming according to circumstances. Rigidity is the enemy of our spirituality. Not to toot the horn of the lineage but one of the real beautiful things is it's been so flexible that it's permeated the whole globe. There's a Zen center in Podunk wherever because because we emphasize a real flexibility. We're not we're not so rigid that we can't invite people in." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "1983.1699", "endTime": "2004.5851", "body": "Rumi has a poem that says something like, if you've never sinned, you can't roll with us. Something like that. Rigidity is the enemy of our spirituality. We're firm at what matters and flexible in how we live that out. What matters?" }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2009.4199", "endTime": "2027.5349", "body": "What matters? I I don't like have the the knowledge and think that you should guess it. That's a very personal question, what matters? The tradition does say this opportunity matters, this meeting. There's a Japanese phrase, it's something like, one moment, one chance." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2030.335", "endTime": "2060.8152", "body": "And so, those people that I was too caught up about brunch to stop and really be present with, I might not get another opportunity to connect with those people. That's real. You could say, one moment, one chance, one test. One test. Although, reality is graceful so we get opportunities over and over to meet the test." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2068.38", "endTime": "2094.4302", "body": "Magnanimous beyond all duality. Magnanimous beyond all duality. Really this is not done with our personality. I think that can be a real burden and maybe a reason why people go, Bodhisattva Vow, no thanks, just going for Nirvana. We get out of here." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2096.11", "endTime": "2118.045", "body": "I've dealt with beings, done did that. This is not done with our personality. Personalities are made of preferences. Your personality does not do free open heart for all beings. That will meet a limit because it has preferences." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2119.66", "endTime": "2145.695", "body": "This magnanimity, our biggest heart, it comes from our biggest heart. Just just talk to any parent who's had a big family who's really honest and they'll say, oh, you can easily observe they like some children better than others. And the children can see that too. Maybe that's one of the tragedies of human life. But nonetheless, they can love them equally." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2146.815", "endTime": "2169.185", "body": "Can't like them equally, Love them equally, that love doesn't come from their personality to rising from a deeper source. The same with the teacher who manifests equanimity, doesn't have evident favoritism. They do like some people better than others. That's just the way it is. That's just what a personality is." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2170.945", "endTime": "2199.9348", "body": "They are not based in that therefore, magnanimity is possible. That's possible for us too. When we're awake we can lead with that. In a way we we stay relaxed in that that clear warmth Even as the personality kinda makes its noise, we stay relaxed in the clear warmth. That's a practice, not something we're supposed to have down." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2203.63", "endTime": "2240.7302", "body": "Magnanimous beyond all duality. Of course that means self other, good bad, this one sexy, this one's not, this one's smart, this one's not, this one annoys me, this one doesn't. That's how a personality experiences the world in terms of duality. It's like we are tenders of the personality whereas without practice the personality is just sort of running the show. It's at the wheel." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2242.6501", "endTime": "2285.025", "body": "All of this is very easy to say and probably a lifetime if not lifetimes to really deeply live and that's meaningful. Hungry keeps going, clear and desireless, the wind in the pines and the moon in the water are content in their elements. Without minds interacting wind and pine or moon on water do not impede each other. This basically means, what's it like without a fixed agenda? How do we become free of fixed agendas?" }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2288.0798", "endTime": "2333.365", "body": "Well, I think we have to see that the world is not going to serve our agendas. Even if temporarily it serves our agendas eventually, The way we want things to be is not gonna be what we get. Our agendas are just this bringing forward this big clamor Just bringing forth this big lugging around this big obstacle. And probably we have to suffer, we have to be stymied enough. For me, my monastic training was years and years of being stymied." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2333.7651", "endTime": "2344.78", "body": "My teachers stymied me. My own arrogance stymied me. My sangha mate stymied me. Sometimes my body stymied me. That's compassion." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2349.9", "endTime": "2373.7349", "body": "Those of you who've raised children, hopefully your children stymied you. Or if you've raised students, they stymied your your agenda and then, okay. What's actually here? What's actually moving? What's the harmony in what's already unfolding without my carrying forward my fixity?" }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2378.51", "endTime": "2413.42", "body": "Clear and desireless, the wind and the pines and the moon and the water are content in their elements. No fixed agenda sometimes means you hold fast to your agenda because you're not fixed on left or right. And no fixed agenda means sometimes you put it down, that's desirelessness. It's optionality. Don't hear the teachings of Dharma on desirelessness about becoming sort of dry inside." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2413.42", "endTime": "2460.215", "body": "That's not what's being talked about. It's optionality, it's actually availability to be delighted. He continues, Essentially you exist spaciously and have the capacity to respond outwardly without being annoyed, like spring blossoming, like a mirror reflecting forms. Amid all the noise spontaneously emerge transcendent. So to think about the Bodhisattva vow, which could be understood as a safeguard from selfishness spoiling the fruits of our practice." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2462.77", "endTime": "2504.925", "body": "First of all, don't let the ground of compassion be neglected. And the ground of compassion is vibrant stillness, is vibrant emptiness. And going forward from session, you're spring loaded with this love that's bottled right from the source. And sometimes it's a full keg and sometimes it's a just a little bottle, still spring loaded. What's the right use?" }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2504.925", "endTime": "2549.95", "body": "What's the high use in your life of this energy that's of benefit to beings? To whom and in what way can we spread hope, humor, possibility of sufferings, relief, meaning, peacefulness, beauty, wisdom. This practice is taking responsibility for going into society and shining. That's also what it means to be a Bodhisattva. You and I and anyone else who does this practice is empowered to shine in a particular way." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2559.025", "endTime": "2620.8152", "body": "And doesn't have to be lofty, might already be the very life that you are living. So this is circling back in a way to honesty. There are times where we really have a rarefied clarity in session. The alignment is alignment with what's really true, but that's rare and so we start to to leave and get back into our ordinary habits and the ego begins to try to reclaim its territory. The container lifts and conditioning starts to come back and our aspirations, the the the higher functioning that we know we're capable of starts to get clouded over by thoughts like, yeah but, no I'm two." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2622.815", "endTime": "2667.53", "body": "Or my favorite is, I'll start when I'm 50. You defer it. How difficult it is to live out what we verify to be true. How difficult. How difficult to manifest as the person of this moment, the person that we are now rather than the person of the past." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2668.97", "endTime": "2714.31", "body": "I really appreciate how difficult that is. The outgrown and the obsolete, even though outgrown and obsolete it tugs at us. Memories of how we used to be are like ghosts. They're like ghosts that want to be brought back to life by us assuming their ways and shapes again. How difficult it is to manifest as the person of this moment rather than a person of the past." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2717.5898", "endTime": "2757.0151", "body": "And may it sting, I think it does sting. And the disparities between what we what we see and the pettiness we sometimes see come out of our minds, mouths and our actions. This stinging is our honesty. Everybody wants to get rid of the inner critic but not all inner feedback is wrong. Honesty could also be called, humility." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2759.735", "endTime": "2795.935", "body": "A Bodhisattva vow could be called humility. Humility in this case is, how can I be helped to break free from my own self centeredness? Don't translate self centeredness as, no fun stuff. That's not what's being said. How can I be helped to break out of the culturally sanctioned trances of rushing, distracting, boasting, apparently that's cooler now?" }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2795.935", "endTime": "2825.925", "body": "People are into people who are just like, I'm a badass. I'm so good at stuff. There's some there's some internet word for it, can't ever remember them. Culturally sanctioned trances, rushing, distracting, boasting, mindless, accumulating, comparing, despairing, competing with others through just trying to get better in whatever domain we feel we might have a shot. Our bodies, our minds, our bank accounts." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2827.46", "endTime": "2860.55", "body": "How can I be helped to break out of the culturally sanctioned trances? Probably the culture is currently stronger than our practice. So shouldn't be like coming to a halfway house where we go back out, we get completely intoxicated and confused and we have to come back here to sober up. It really shouldn't be like that. It's okay that it has that function sometimes but it really shouldn't be." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2860.71", "endTime": "2898.71", "body": "Should be coming back to deepen not just not be drunk. So I'm I'm speaking to that aspect of our hearts that really is in the contact with how valuable what we're doing here is. It's really in touch with the import of it. It can make sense to that level of being. People sometimes think of ordained people as superior or accomplished." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2900.2852", "endTime": "2933.4949", "body": "And they may be accomplished, but I think of ordination as an act of humility. Please help me take and sustain a freer, more magnanimous shape. I need bells, whistles, robes, vows, a building, teachers. I need books, I need food, I need lots and lots of session. I need people to look at me and project on to me and think that I am accomplished so that I can feel the disparity between how I actually am inside and how I'm seen." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2941.86", "endTime": "2985.965", "body": "Venerable Kogen Carlson used to say, Be ordained into your life. We need some, we need structures, we need engagements that aren't floppy, that help us stay magnanimous. Another way to say that help us suffer and see what suffering is left. So given our personal nature and ingredients, what can help us take a freer and more magnanimous shape? I guess I'm just putting out the question for those who haven't thought about it in this way." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "2989.565", "endTime": "3049.855", "body": "Sometimes people think, I wanna be a nurse because it's really good pay and everywhere you go, nurses are needed. And maybe actually the deeper thing is we're being magnetized towards our hearts being broken, towards being brought to the edge of our capacity. It's really not about the paycheck. So consider in this fragile time of sobriety about making commitments to show up in your life in a magnanimous way. And just just bringing forth a bigger heart, trying to make it to stabilize that somehow." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "3051.57", "endTime": "3092.35", "body": "Or consider reaffirming the commitments that you've made to this in the past. People want to know how they can sustain the state of mind of session and the first mistaken way that they think of is how can I do as much meditation? Or how can I protect? But it's actually more about what can I give that sustains the heart of practice? It's more how do I live my life so that I don't leak the clarity out." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "3093.845", "endTime": "3134.855", "body": "It's not about how do I freeze freeze dry the meditation state. So there's a handful of hours of this session remaining and you might be experiencing that the mind gets more energized, more chatty, more restless. And that may be some of this Bodhisattva juice frothing. That's not an obstruction to Zazen. You could practice appreciating busy mind as just empty symbols." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "3135.88", "endTime": "3156.855", "body": "Just raise of weightless energy. The thought of tomorrow night is not tomorrow night. The image of the thing is not the thing. You know, I was thinking about this, realized we make we make prisons out of the beautiful things that we desire. We make them into prisons." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "3158.2148", "endTime": "3194.02", "body": "We always desire something in the future. We turn that something into a prison because that makes us incomplete right now. So whether it's a garden, a lover, a nap, a movie, a whatever, and getting locked and fixated on in the future, that thing is then therefore a prison because this gets drained of color. And our anticipation doesn't make the thing any better. Our anticipation doesn't bring it any nearer." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "3195.3801", "endTime": "3248.93", "body": "We know that. To appreciate busy mind as empty symbols, just rays of weightless energy. It's just, it may correlate to something you do later, it may not. And just to reiterate, you might have become at one with some reality of your life, at one with some imperative, at one with some dilemma. And there is, some benefit in using clear mind to carefully think, to carefully think through the imports of what we've seen." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "3260.135", "endTime": "3306.78", "body": "The teacher who wrote this poem I opened with TK, he said that every real shift in consciousness has to have a correlative change in behavior or else that shift in consciousness cannot be sustained. So you might reflect on these things and encapsulate and implant it in your heart. And there's no need to think it to death because sobriety is fragile, but practice will continue. Maybe so, may practice continue. Practice continue." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "3307.18", "endTime": "3325.185", "body": "The weird fantasy of finally I can stop practicing. It's so weird. Just think about that. Yes, it's like sometimes the burner is high and sometimes it's lower. You don't always, you can't always be full blast flame." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 2", "startTime": "3327.345", "endTime": "3357.685", "body": "But it's not like you can just stop once you've started. So, let's live into that. Thank you for your practice this week. May all beings seen and unseen, known and unknown, whether we get evidence or not be benefited by purification of our own hearts and the evidence of that through the effortless ways it just shows up." }, { "speaker": "Speaker 1", "startTime": "3405.175", "endTime": "3420.2302", "body": "Thank you for listening to the Zen Community of Oregon podcast, and thank you for your practice. New episodes air every week. Please consider making a donation at zendust.org. Your support supports us." } ] }