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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.
Jogen:Okay. Being one with Buddha, being one with Dharma, being one with Sangha, thank you for your presence here tonight. This is the second to last talk on the perfections. So I've been doing a series on the six perfections, which is a pretty important teaching in East Asian Buddhism and in in the West. And tonight, I'm gonna do talk about the perfection of wisdom.
Jogen:So that leaves effort for last. So one, could do this talk and emphasize that if we just really pay attention to our life and the way life goes, that wisdom grows. And that might be a very good angle on it. But with the perfection of wisdom, we're talking about a wisdom that generally doesn't happen from just going through life. It's not the wisdom that's just earned from maturing, adulting, getting older.
Jogen:It's different because this wisdom really depends on our interest in it. We have to be in sensing a there is a possibility of another way of knowing, experiencing ourselves in the world, And then we have to, in a way, incline towards that. We have to make ourselves available to that. So for Zen practicers, knowing stuff about interdependence and emptiness and all of these beautiful ideas, if they inspire us to realize what they mean through our own experience, then they're a value. But the ideas themselves are just simply not liberating.
Jogen:They won't help us when we're sick, dying, having a spat, having a dictator. They don't help. So we go into and beyond our own experience. That's the direction of the perfection of wisdom, often called prajna paramita. Prajnaparamita means something like wisdom.
Jogen:Now sometimes people just do let me put it this way. Sometimes, just decides to awaken in somebody. It just happens. And so that's why we can't get too, you know, prideful thinking that if you're a Buddhist, you corner the market on wisdom because because, it's just not like that. This is a feature of reality, and it can just awaken in somebody, like an Eckhart Tolle kind of person.
Jogen:Right? If he's an example of when that's very potent, there are many, many, many, many people we will never know who wisdom just decided to wake up in them or some mysterious causes and conditions. But in terms of what I want to incline towards that, that that these realizations sound like they would make my life less suffering like, then the other perfections are foundational. So I believe, Myo Yu talked about the perfection of morality. Right?
Jogen:Basically, good heart. Right? Which when we talk a good amount, a good heart that leads to remorseless behavior or reduction in remorse on a deep level in oneself. With a reduction in remorse on a deep level in oneself, one can concentrate at more and more refined levels, whether that's single pointed or wide open. It's all concentration.
Jogen:And then awareness can open up. Master Hong Jogen said to empty and open out body mind as expansive as the sky. So I want to use a framework from a very old text. It's called the Zogchen Tantra. And it's a framework that as far as I know, mostly only the great teacher Longchimpa commented on it.
Jogen:It I think it addresses or points us in the direction of what's meant by Prajnaparamita. This is called the four binds of reality or the four samaya. And in a way, that means that, reality promises this is the case. These are four immovable features of reality, and they are ineffability, timelessness and spontaneity. That's like my you know, I have a slash mark there, timelessness, spontaneity.
Jogen:Unity or non separation, and then openness. So ineffability. Whatever arises is beyond words. The gulf between our thinking mind and what things actually are is amazing. And so, the great yogini, Naguma, prayed to her teacher, may I continually recognize that everything that arises is beyond words.
Jogen:It's like life is a grand, vast, unfathomable dragon, and our thoughts are these little fish biting at the scales. So practicing the stance of ineffability, I'll back up for a second. This is not just a concept, it's an attitude by which one can inform life. These four. Sometimes, in some traditions, this is called the view.
Jogen:I think stance is nice. To take the stance and appreciate through that stance that everything is ineffable means appreciating that your experience cannot be adequately summarized. It can't be adequately imagined. It can't be adequately assessed or analyzed. You could spend the rest of your life trying to imagine or describe a piece of breakfast sausage, and even the most marvelous poet, prose writer would not give you anything close to the actual experience of a breakfast sausage.
Jogen:It's just words. It's just words. And this is true on a daily basis. All that we go through, all that happens in us and through us, all that we do in the world, at best, our imagination, our summaries, and our analysis is partial. Like, what a weird thing that somebody has, I don't know how many moments you have in a day, moments of very rich life, and we sum up our day with, it was okay.
Jogen:Or how was your vacation? It was really good. Now, a way, that is wisdom in itself because how could you possibly convey the richness of what you go through? It's beyond words. It's always the case.
Jogen:Every conversation we have with somebody, we're stepping into the insurmountability of our aloneness and the ineffability of experience. You're communicating a vibe, not the thing that happened to you. At best, our imagination, summaries, and analysis are partial. Often, it's complete illusion. The word breath is not the direct experience of breath.
Jogen:The image of our bodies and the thoughts and judgments about them at best are a snapshot from a particular angle. That's what a memory is, right? It's a snapshot from a particular angle. It's what a news bite is. It's a snapshot from a particular angle.
Jogen:At best, I think the the body is a very interesting thing to look at this because in practice, you'll begin to expose that you carry an image of the body. It's kind of a mental image of the body that's just not the body. Right? Everybody has a little bit of body dysmorphia. The body is happening all the time.
Jogen:The body is a visual perception. It's a tactile experience. It's continual flow. So taking the stance of ineffability means placing less stock in our habitual thoughts and images of ourselves, people, place, things, experiences. And it's not doing that because, oh, somebody said thoughts are limited.
Jogen:It's letting life express itself. This ineffability has a kind of fragrance of wonder. We really appreciate that I can't boil things down no matter what I experience with my mind, then we realize our task as practitioners is just to let life speak. Continue, just let life speak. There is another level to, this of the four binds of reality.
Jogen:Ineffability on the path of awareness means tolerating that awareness can be open to, but it cannot be understood. Awareness neither exists nor doesn't. Awareness is neither a possession of oneself nor is it separate. Awareness is neither ordinary nor extraordinary. It cannot be grasped.
Jogen:It can't be understood. And so, this precept is given to yogis to encourage them to give up philosophy about the nature of mind because ultimately, it just hits a dead end. The mind can't go beyond itself. Right? And this was, described by an old master as just used to be a child of wonder.
Jogen:At this. This that becomes more and more naked, clear, and bright through doing our practice. So that's ineffability, and, we can practice that. We can appreciate that. The second of the four binds, again, I'm using this to give us some appreciation of what the perfection of wisdom is, is timelessness or spontaneity.
Jogen:We are now. The future will be now. The past was now. We can't go anything or anywhere other than now. Our fantasies about the future happen now.
Jogen:When we get there, it will be now. When we think about what we should have done, it will be now. You're kind of, stuck in eternity. You're totally stuck in eternity. You can't leap out of it.
Jogen:We're always in timeless freedom. Or if we appreciate this its freedom, if we fight against it while we live in regret and future projection. I I had a discovery in a retreat I was in sometime about a month ago. I discovered that one of the things the brain likes to do is auto intoxicate on anticipation. To continually think about what's next that might be good and get a little like brain juice.
Jogen:There's a probably little chemical high and it can do that continually. And we can live in auto intoxication of anticipation all the time. We're free to auto intoxicate our whole life. We're free to dwell in the past no matter how painful. Nobody can stop us if we don't.
Jogen:And we're also free to be here now where all of that is illusion like. You deepen your sense of the value of this stance of timelessness when you come into such vivid presence that you realize, what why would I want to live in that swirl? Why would I wanna live in that haze of memory continually when this is so fresh? This second bind of reality also has an aspect of spontaneity and that part of that is freshness. Everything everything presents itself fresh.
Jogen:Everything prevents itself. Right now, all of us have a 100% of life. It's fully just presenting itself. And how much of that are we doing or controlling? I make this big deal about being people, but, like, how much are you actually doing each day?
Jogen:What do you do? What do you do? Somebody says, well, I'm an accountant. Yeah. But numbers were already there and calculators were already there and like, it's kind of already there how to figure out how to move them around and charge somebody an invoice because you move some numbers around.
Jogen:It was all already there. Yes, somebody taught you, but or for me, I'm a I'm not a very good cook or I'm a good cook like one one in five times. Sometimes I get lucky and it comes out okay. But the other times, my partner is just polite or just happy that I finally cooked. But when I was the cook at the monastery, one of the things that was just so, beautiful to me was the universe already provided all these amazing flavors.
Jogen:Like nobody made cumin. Nobody made brown sugar. Nobody made the taste of squash. And so as a cook, you could get all like proud of how good you are, but you're just moving stuff around. How amazing.
Jogen:It all just happens. Prajnaparamita has an aspect of yielding the sense of control to let things happen because they are anyway. I bet it would be very hard for you to pin down a moment that you made a choice. I know you can see that a choice seemed to be made. You seem to settle on left rather than right or grad school rather than, I don't know, trade school.
Jogen:But was there a moment that you made a choice? I bet it'd be hard to pin down that moment. Spontaneity is an appreciation of life as this beautiful mystery that doesn't need a self. Like, think of a tree. Where is the self in a tree?
Jogen:What what part of a tree is the self? Where is the control unit of a tree? And someone might think I'm not a plant. Fair? So the stance of spontaneity is in a way, appreciating the folly of control or taking a long enough risks to see that mostly life just just happens when we get out of the way.
Jogen:And so, letting what arises arise as we practice in our Zazen. So timelessness and spontaneity. The third bind of reality as an aspect of Prajnaparamita is unity or non separation. So experience and awareness are always exactly the same. It's not that something happens and then the mind goes, oh, I noticed that thing that happens.
Jogen:Or thought can do that, but there actually was no gap between the happening and the knowing. We don't actually experience any separation. We experience what happens when the mind simulates it. In the in the first moment of hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, even thinking, there's no there's no separation. It's just intimate.
Jogen:And then very quickly, the mind labels, thinks I like it, I don't like it, we have a feeling about it and there we are in the sense of separation. Just like the body is not divided. No perception, the perceptual function of the mind divides the experience of body into parts, but the mind never says or the the body never says, I'm a foot, not a hand. It's a seamless whole. It's undivided.
Jogen:Inner and outer are seamless. If we weren't continually, making the territory, the boundary of I'm I am in here and my mind stops at the edge of my skull or something and everything else is out there, there would be a sense of, of unification. Right? A sense of integration. And it's a little bit like a piece of fabric.
Jogen:Well, here's a piece of fabric that's handy. A piece of fabric. This is the moment, and, I'm a ripple, and you're a ripple. And I don't lose the sense I know I'm this ripple and you're that ripple, but also I'm, a fabric, and you're the fabric. And I can know them both at the same time, and that's always going on, both the ripples in the fabric and the fabric.
Jogen:But we love our little crinkles, and we're very, worried about the success, failure, pleasure, happiness, death of our little crinkles, and so we basically forget about the rest of the fabric. So we could say as a stance, this unity or non separation is relaxing of dividing mind, and the wisdom is discovering how that operates in you. Right? Is is to study how self and other, subject and object pop up for you. And you practice that with sense objects.
Jogen:What how is it that reflexively, I have a sense of me that. What is the genesis? What is the action? Can you catch it in action, the action of me that? Why is your body a that?
Jogen:Nice. You know, language is the great kind of trickster. I said I said, why is your body? Why is it even your body? Where is the belonger of a body?
Jogen:Where is the owner of a body? Point out that which the body belongs to. You never can and you never will. It's undivided. And to really study this, to really appreciate it, and there are a number of koans that, are about this.
Jogen:For example, the greatly misunderstood, the sound of a single hand. In a way, all of the foundational koans are a way of taking if this has curiosity for you and giving it a form to really put energy into. But you could just be really curious about how does me that happen? Start with start with the body. How does it become that?
Jogen:Why do we objectify ourselves? I promise you, if you stop objectifying yourself, your limbs aren't gonna fall off. Nothing will go numb. In fact, when the body is not objectified, when the body is not objectified by the body, it functions much, much smoother. I learned this through, my own suffering.
Jogen:So the stance of unity is a relaxing of dividing mind, a study of the me that, the reflex of me that, allowing things to resume their harmony in oneness. This is why Rumi can say, It's like walking into a crowded room and becoming the noise. So there is no noise. And this is not featurelessness. This is not this, unity is not some kind of mystical or meditation experience where everything kind of goes away and you're in a formless place.
Jogen:It's not it's not that, but it doesn't exclude that. Some of the old luminaries would call this the one taste. One taste. I like the wrinkled fabric metaphor better. But So with this, bind of reality, we are reminded, and this is vital because this is something that meditators tend to struggle with, maybe for a good while, is that awareness is not saying the word awareness is not pointing to something that hovers apart from life.
Jogen:There is nothing that's hovering apart from life. Life is completely invested in life. Life is completely entangled in life. And yet there's the clear, boundless brightness. But it's not a sterile retreat from experience.
Jogen:The last of the four binds of reality that I'm using to explain Prajnaparamita, unfortunately, is openness or spaciousness. Now, first of all, openness means things happen simultaneously. Okay? So right now, you can hear these words and you feel your body without any special effort. It's happening simultaneous.
Jogen:The moment is appearing with with simultaneity. Everything is because the moment because awareness is wide open, everything is welcome all at once. Right? You are still feeling your body and hearing these words and seeing these seeing these colors. If any one of them went away, you'd freak out.
Jogen:You'd be like, did somebody put something in my tea? And where can I buy some more? So the stance of openness, has an aspect of being space, of holding space. If awareness was like a person, they'd be like the warmest grandma ever that invited all you all the people in that you were like, she's she's kinda weird, grandma. And grandma's like, no.
Jogen:Everybody's welcome. I'm not afraid. Not minding how they were dressed or where they came from. Awareness in itself just has this total openness, And that aspect of our being is always functioning, but what happens is, the fearful mind comes in, the insecure mind comes in, the mind that divides life into threat and benefit comes in, and then that great openness is, you know, it's what allowed anything to happen anyway, but so what? We're on the level of nope.
Jogen:Which, of course, sometimes we have to not invite our weird friends in. Is my metaphor making any sense? The weird friend? No. No.
Jogen:Yeah. Okay. There's one nod. The stance of openness is a place where one can verify for oneself that when we don't align with the fearful mind, we actually navigate life moment by moment with a kind of grace and frictionlessness. It's the exact opposite of what the fearful mind thinks will happen.
Jogen:And so it narrates a whole life or lifetimes. In Dogen Salzberg Sensei, a long time ago teaching on the Heart Sutra, said, Prajna wisdom is space. I encourage, I don't, it probably been a couple of weeks since I was like, pay attention to space, pay attention to space. In your meditation, include space. Right?
Jogen:So this path of awareness is open. Openness is the ground of being. Because of openness, I can utter these words. Because of openness, you can feel your back. Because of openness, everything.
Jogen:When I was a kid, I somehow, was curious about things like people would talk about God that created the world, and I thought, well, what created the space that God came into? And what created the space that created the creator of the space that God came into? And I was just like, my mind was kind of blown. Like, how did this happen? And I knew that the idea that, like, there was a beginning was just strange.
Jogen:But maybe that's like a a good Western koan. Like, I'm I'm serious. Yeah. Okay. The koan is, god created the universe.
Jogen:What created the space for god to create the universe? That'd be a very good koan. The other thing that's vital, especially for a practitioner of a path like Zen or Zogchen, which does not emphasize, like some schools of Buddhism do, that you're a being full of little naughty bits and desire and all this stuff that maybe you should kind of get rid of and not have it anymore, and then everything would be okay. Now we're concerned about the naughty bits. But the emphasis on Zen is discovering the utter purity, the indestructible purity of your being.
Jogen:That quality, we sometimes call it mind or awareness. This means, and this is a transmission of confidence that no matter, how much you have been a crabby, disrespectful, immoral person, this dimension of your being is never stained in the slightest. You cannot blemish it. Now, you are responsible for your karma, and by that by that, I mean, whatever you've done will have an effect that you will experience. At least the Buddha thought so.
Jogen:You could check that out. But that's the karmic dimension. We have to be fully responsible for it. But even the karmic dimension of a demented serial killer, they have this pure, lucid perfection of being in them, and they could drop right into it if they had the right circumstances. Alright.
Jogen:That happened in the Buddha's sangha a long, long time ago. There was this dude that was so twisted that he walked around with like a necklace of the ears of the people he killed. And for some reason, he would he was impressed by the Buddha's vibe and his his monk's vibe, and he was like, can I do this? Like, even me? And the Buddha, it's think seeing how this is a real demonstration of openness.
Jogen:I mean, this guy had bloody ears around his neck or, like, dried ears. Kinda like, I was at the pet store today, and you could buy dried ears for your pet. It was like a garland of dried pet ears. Okay? And the Buddha knew those were human ears, and he was like, yeah.
Jogen:I'll teach you. And he recognized his true nature. You could look up the story. It's Angulimala was the name of this guy. He still had to deal with his karma, but he knew nirvana.
Jogen:This means practically when you are sitting, there's no excuse if you have a ton of thoughts, this pure dimension of being is still there. You could just drop into it if you had enough confidence. This means even though you've done x y z and you did a b c, okay, you have to clean that up in in the realm of consequences, but you're not, you're totally welcome here in the in the Buddha club. You're a you're a you're a gold star member of the Buddha club, even if you've been a real lousy sucker because you have the pure nature of being. So when you sit, don't think, oh, these thoughts are bad.
Jogen:I shouldn't have these thoughts. Or, oh, these are really good thoughts. You don't need to do that. They're just say they're just let them sail through, and they sail through by virtue of this openness. Ineffability, timelessness and spontaneity, unity or non separation and openness.
Jomon: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.