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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.
hogen:Evening. We start by taking refuge. Take refuge in the Buddha. Take refuge in the Dharma. Take refuge in the Sangha.
hogen:One of our chants, which we call Fusatsu, which is taking the refuges, taking the refuges in the precepts, always says that I take refuge in what is most true, what will liberate us from suffering. And so we're taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. It means what do we go to for support? What do we go to for wisdom? What do we go to for confirmation?
hogen:And so taking refuge in the Buddha means to find that in us which is indissolvable, that within us is always reliable, always present. And the dharma is all those teachings that point to liberation, all those teachings that point to freedom. And refuge in the Sangha is that we trust, we have faith, that love and kindness and connection and relationship is a foundation for liberation. So we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, in the transcendental qualities. Now, Jogan Sensei was at the monastery this weekend.
hogen:He teaches on Wednesday night here, and he did a nice thing on Thanksgiving is coming up and Christmas, the holidays are coming up and Hanukkah is coming up. And so he was talking about relationship. How do we use practice in a way that will be a benefit to us in relationship. And I'm interested in how do we use this chant that we've been chanting, affirming faith in mind, in relationship. How does it work that we can manifest this chant, firming faith in mind?
hogen:And so, in a way we can say that the dharma is all about relationship. It's all about connection. If we're just sitting like a lump in a cave somewhere without any connection, either psychically or physically, we might be satisfied and happy, but it's not very alive. Because relationship is where life happens. Life happens in breathing.
hogen:Life happens in the mixture back and forth. Life happens in seeing and being seen and hearing and being heard and moving back and forth. Life happens in a relationship. If there's no relationship, know, in a way you could say the absolute truth has no relationship because it's inclusive. But, you know, our lives are about relationship and holidays often are about, especially about relationship.
hogen:People are going back home or celebrating something in their family or going to Thanksgiving at Great Vow, or you're going to go to the retreat at Bells Mountain, or you're going to to Rohatsu, any retreat. So I think it's helpful to look at this sutra that we're look we've been reciting, affirming faith and mind, from the perspective of relationship. Because it absolutely is appropriate there. So the first line, the great way is not difficult for those who not pick and choose. So imagine if you were going to go home and see angry Uncle Ned, who has been watching Fox News, and is angry and righteous.
hogen:It is so easy to get into a fight and argument with them. You know, they are stupid, are not being reasonable, nothing they are saying is going to work. It is so easy just to fall back into those old patterns just so quickly. But what if you went with no prejudice? What if you went and saw a group of people with no opinion, pro or con, who said, okay, I'm just interested in finding out who this person is.
hogen:You know, they are who they are. They think what they think. They're they're already kind of fixed in whatever views they have. And I have no opinion about it except I'm just curious. Who is this person?
hogen:What is their state of mind? The great way is not difficult if we don't have an intention to try to get reality to confirm with our opinions. To try to get people who are unreasonable to suddenly become reasonable according to me. To get people who are hard hearted to suddenly become kind according to me. But if we go and meet people without prejudice, without being bigots, without already having opinions of I know what is right and you should agree with me, suddenly everything goes much more easily.
hogen:They are still who they are, but instead of righteousness, we have been replaced with curiosity. Instead of instead of I know, I'm right, Who is this person? If we want to know somebody's state of mind, we have to listen to everything they say. And they already have their state of mind and they'll either share it with us or they won't. We start sharing it with us and we start arguing with them, we don't really hear them.
hogen:You know, we say, oh, you shouldn't think like that. You shouldn't hear that. You should But if we want to really know what people are thinking, then then when preferences are cast aside, there's a possibility of relationship. There's a possibility of, well, who is this person? Now, at some level, I may think they're totally crazy.
hogen:Yeah. Well, that's that's their right, their karma, their their life. So the first line of the session is life is not so difficult. If we say, okay, I am curious. I am willing to set aside all of my shoulds and ought's.
hogen:The world according to me may not be the best standard. Now how do we do that? First off, we have to have some we have to be centered in ourselves. We have to have the ability to be present with ourselves without prejudice. That's what meditation is about.
hogen:Can we feel? Can we breathe? Can we be present here without that inner critical voice of you could've, you should've, you would've, you know, you're not inadequate, there's a better you someplace else. That voice is quiet, if we're not paying attention to that voice, if we have some centeredness in our self, then we have the capacity to meet the craziness of the world without getting at war with it. So, the first part of this sutra just says, the great way is our relationship, our connection to the world is not difficult if we don't have a lot of picking and choosing.
hogen:And as soon as we start picking and choosing, as soon as we start having preferences, No, no, no, I don't like you to say that. No, no, no, don't want you to think that. No, no, no, I don't want that to be the way it is. No, no, no, I don't want reality to look like that. As soon as we let go of those prejudices, that as soon as we're no longer bigoted ourselves, something we can allow things to be as they are, and then we can respond to them as they are, instead of getting at war.
hogen:So if you're at you go to a holiday dinner or you go to home and you're talking to people, as soon as there's slight distinctions are made, the next line, as soon as slight distinctions are made, I'm right, you're wrong. I know better, you know worse. You know, you may be a you're a narcissist, and I am an open minded, clear, you know, open person. As soon as we start thinking that, immediately the war begins. The old habits start.
hogen:So what if they're a narcissist? You know, who cares? And then do you. So what if they don't acknowledge you? Who cares?
hogen:You know? It's making a difference to me. When we are centered in ourselves, and we say, Okay. I am I I recognize right here, this life, this body, there's something centered. There's something in contact with the great mystery.
hogen:There's something right here. Then people like us, they don't like us, they get into They say, you you should be different, you shouldn't be different. And yet, we can take things in, and yet we have a center of gravity that allows us to, well, sometimes move in one direction, but come back to the center, move in the other direction, come back to the center. I was young, they used to have those dolls that were weighted on the bottom. I forgot what they're called.
hogen:Weeble Wobble. Were they called? Weeble Wobble. Wibble Wobble or there was another name Jumbo or Dumbo or something. And you could punch them and you know they would you punch them and they go flop and they flop back up and punch.
hogen:Bobo doll. Bobo doll. Lots of names. So if we could have the aspiration to be more of a Bobo doll instead of of a righteous stick. Know, we mostly would like to be a righteous stick.
hogen:Know, I am right and everybody else is wrong and you're not going to budge me. But if we just say, oh, okay, I'll go that direction, oh, okay, I'll go that direction, without losing our center. If we don't have a center, we just get blown off and we get confused and we get lost and we get reactive and we But if we have a center, and that center is what our meditation practice is about, What is it that's right here, that's always present, that's present whether we're thinking easy thoughts or hard thoughts? What is it that's always present? And that's something we can verify for ourselves.
hogen:To founder in dislike and like is nothing but the mind's disease. So we're talking to people and we say, I don't like what you're saying. I don't like what you're saying. You know, I'm right. You are wrong.
hogen:I don't like what you're saying. What you're saying is going to be bad for these people, and bad for those people, and bad for those people. I don't want to hear that. I don't want you to think that way. I don't want you to be who you are.
hogen:I mean, telling somebody who is bigoted and prejudiced, they don't want them to be bigoted and prejudiced has doesn't have much success. Know, a bigoted prejudice person would say, I don't want you to be a bigoted prejudice person. You you're not going get very far. Just the fact that we don't like something, just the fact that we are in opposition to something doesn't make it better. Just the fact that that it doesn't mean that that if things are are unskillful that we can't, with great clarity, go out and march.
hogen:It can't It doesn't mean with great clarity we can just hold our hold our particular position without getting at war. The pattern that often happens is, you know, I I don't like something. I don't like you. I want you to change and you to be different. And this person feels afflicted, feels imposed upon, feels, can even feel like a victim.
hogen:And so the victim then changes around and they begin persecuting somebody else. They begin victimizing somebody else. And that victim feels righteous and wants to hurt somebody else and get even. And then the person who got hurt wants to also get even. And it goes around and around and around.
hogen:And in this tradition we call that Samsara. The endless cycle. Endless cycle of becoming. How do we step off the wheel? How do we step off the wheel of constant, I'm, you know, I'm fighting, I'm defending, I'm fighting, I'm defending, I'm fighting.
hogen:And this sutra just says, the way to do that is in your own mind, your own mind, you learn how to find a place of equanimity, stillness, and steadiness in your own mind. You learn how to find a place that has, that is, you can rely upon. One of the signs I think of a really mature person is we begin to know that we can rely upon our own compassion. We can rely upon loving kindness. We can begin to know, Oh, just like, you know, I've done thousands and thousands of talks.
hogen:So I know if I step forward, I can rely upon something in there that has done thousands of talks because it's been tested over and over again. If we do the same thing with loving kindness and we are practicing, we are centered, we are in touch with loving kindness, and then we get in a different situation, we have confidence I can rely upon. I can rely upon the loving kindness that's here, the clarity that's here, the power that's here, the centeredness that's here. And then we can bring those qualities to every circumstance. Now, chant says the way is perfect like that space where there is no lack and no excess.
hogen:There's two different ways of looking at that. If we take a step back, and we take a step out, we take a step away from I, me, and my. Each of us has our own particular body, own particular clothing, own particular house, our own particular way of thinking, own particular conditioning. That's just the way it is. You know?
hogen:It's all we didn't choose any of it, we inherited it all in a way. But let's say we take a big step outside of that. Let's say we just say, Okay, that's fine, I'm gonna let that go. I'm gonna take a big view. I'm gonna take a big view of the Earth from outer space and see that blue sphere with the little white thin white line around it.
hogen:And I'm gonna look at that whole earth. And I'm gonna see, oh, the whole earth is one one fluid system back and forth and up and down. There are volcanoes and there are earthquakes and there are typhoons and there are hurricanes and there is rain and there is drought and there is one big system. It all you know, there is a lot of rain over here and there is a drought over here. There is a rumbling of the earthquake over here and then there is a tidal wave over here.
hogen:And we see it's all flowing together. Suddenly we can begin to say, Oh, my little piece of it is just part of this giant hole. My little piece of it is just part of this karma of flowing back and forth, flowing back and forth, flowing back and forth, which has been doing it for millennia. You know, things rising and falling. So on one hand, we say we can look back really big and say, oh, the great way is just is just nature.
hogen:Nature is unfolding. You know, storks build nests and human beings build cell phones. Nature is just unfolding. Nature is just thoughts coming out of nowhere, earthquakes coming out of nowhere, volcanoes, etc, coming out of nowhere. All that is nature.
hogen:On that level everything is okay. On that level. But when it gets down to our personal level, our personal level, our when we don't see that there is a fundamental okayness, we don't see that somehow it's all connected. If something goes down on the right, somebody comes up on the left. Somebody goes down on the left, somebody comes up on the right.
hogen:If something if it's dark here, it's light there. If we don't see that yin and yang, if we don't see that whole rhythm, then we begin getting fixated on our small view. Our small view of I am right and what's going on out here is wrong. Which is different than I have some tasks I need to do in my life. I have some tasks that I am called to do.
hogen:I have some music that I must make, some art that I must pass, some dance moves that I must make, some buildings that I must build, some floors that I must clean. It's very different than the righteousness of what everybody else should do. You know? I'm dancing my dance, not because nobody else is doing it, not because somebody else should be doing it, I'm dancing it because it's my life, my dance. Hirata Roshi, my Zen teacher, he says, when you do something personally 10,000 times, becomes it yours.
hogen:Something you really know it from the inside. Changes you. It becomes your life. But if we only do it two or three times, we don't really get the nitty gritty part of it. So on one hand, we have the big view where everything is interlocked, everything is kind of moving, right, yin and yang are constantly going up and down, birth and death, life are all constantly moving.
hogen:On the small level, we are called. We are called. And how do we know what we are called to do? First off, what's right in front of us. What's the only time we can act?
hogen:What's right in front of us? When we are really confused because our mind is in the past and future, when our mind is thinking, what about this, what about this, what about this, what about this, about this, what about about this? We can't really see what's called for right now, what's needed right now. And if we make the best decision now, and the best decision now, and the best decision now, we end up with the best outcome. If on the other hand, we're not paying attention to right now, instead of worrying about the outcome, thinking, okay, what's the outcome over here, you know, will I be rich and famous and be loved and everybody happy, We're not paying attention to what's right there.
hogen:We miss something essential. Miss something essential. So the dharma is about how do we not miss something essential which is our life, which is this breath, which is this moment. The only time that there can be. And that's the choice to choose and reject is our self.
hogen:Am I really rejecting the deep wisdom, the deep experience that is right here? Now one way of doing Zazen, which I always like, is if I want to feel something, somebody says something to me and I'm deeply touched, or I see something and I'm deeply touched, At one point, because it's been up at the monastery, we've been talking about this, I was reading Bury My Heart of the Wounded Knee, which is about the horrible betrayal and genocide of Native American people. And you read that and you Oh, it touches you so deeply. You feel it so deeply. So then, Zazen is, I really want I want this experience.
hogen:I want to to get quiet. I want to feel. I want to feel this so deeply. I want to feel that relationship with someone. I want to be quiet and be still and allow myself to really know what it's like from the inside.
hogen:We can't do that if our mind is just busy. We can't we can't really get still and say, okay, I want to taste this. I want to taste this joy. I want to taste this bitterness. I want to taste this life right to the core.
hogen:We can't do that if we're just running around all the time with our mind someplace else. So we stop, we do Zazen, we come into the breath, and then what gives us an opportunity to become really intimate with our own life, really intimate with our own practice, Our choice to choose and to reject prevents our seeing this simple truth, this simple truth of the depth of our own experience, the depth of our own experience, and the truth that is in that experience. Striving for the outer world, well as for the inner void, condemn us to entangle lives, as calm as all is one and by themselves, false news will go. So we go to dinner, we go to Thanksgiving dinner, and instead of seeing the whole family system, and kind of being amazed at the whole family system, you know, there's lots of different roles and in a family system everybody has different roles. Instead of seeing the whole system and saying, oh, isn't it interesting how it all all fits together?
hogen:You know, I'm too a part of that system. Instead, we only can see our part of it, or a chunk of it, the part we don't like. So, by not seeing the the the system, by not seeing the big view, we then fall into embattlement. So when you when you go to whatever place you go for the holidays, whether you're at the monastery, when we'll have a lot of people and you'll be sitting at a table with people talking about thanksgiving, Everybody has a certain wisdom. Everybody.
hogen:Even the even people who I regard as very twisted, have a kind of wisdom. And can I hear that? Not because I want to be like them, not because I want that to be anything, but there's a there's a wisdom there. And sometimes the wisdom is about what not to do. Sometimes the wisdom is about what happens if you if you are caught by delusion.
hogen:And sometimes the wisdom is about opening and awakening. So, this big view, which is tolerant, which is curious, which is alive and relational, is I think part of the essence of dharma. As Kodo often says, it's a movement from me to we, as our state of mind. Our state of mind from me is me, my things, the stuff I own. But then when we practice we begin to realize, oh my life and the life of everyone is intimately connected.
hogen:And of course, everything we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch is experienced right here. Right here. You pursue appearances, you overlook the primal source. So it's interesting. If you go to a dinner, or you go to You go see your old schoolmates, classmates, or you you go back to your old office or job or go someplace else.
hogen:The first thing we all notice is how people look, you know. And so we kind of size people up. We see them, we say, oh, that person, you know, they're they're dressed in this way, that means their hair is that way, that means, know, we size people up from our vantage point. It's kind of the way that human beings are made. We're always sizing people up.
hogen:But if we pursue appearances, if we if we pursue, if we think, oh yes, that person is really lovely and we are caught by the handsomeness or loveliness of that person and we don't really look at who they are, we get very confused. We see somebody at a dinner who's a gnarly, a gnarly, grumpy old person, and we we get caught by their appearance, we get caught by the tone of their voice, and we don't have the ability to actually see into their heart. If we look deeply into everybody's heart, there's always a softness. There's always a someone says it's buried a thousand feet, I agree, But there's there's always an aspiration for happiness. Everybody wants to be happy.
hogen:Some people have given up and turned into rocks. Nonetheless, it still is there. So when we just pursue appearances, we we know we're no longer looking deeply. We're no longer seeing. In the Buddhist tradition, they talk about the five dharma eyes, the five eyes.
hogen:And the first eye, first way of seeing the world, is just our ordinary way, you know, we kinda look around and we see people dressing in black and brown and we see the lights. And, you know, great, good good way. The second way, when our mind begins to calm down, we know more about the emotional, our emotional life, and we've had some some years, we begin to to recognize the emotional quality, the texture, the emotional not good, not bad, just the emotional texture. Some people are cooler and some people are warmer, some people are more gregarious, some people are quieter, some people are more expansive. We begin to see that emotional texture.
hogen:If we keep practicing and we don't just get involved with that, we can also begin to see their aspiration. What are the hopes? What is the vow? What is at the core? Below their personality?
hogen:What's been moving this person? What's been driving this person for their whole life? Sometimes at the monastery and down here we'll do way seeking mind talks. And a way seeking mind talk is when somebody comes up and they just talk the sangha about their their whole life, Their whole life as a search for truth. Their whole life.
hogen:From the time they were a young person in their crazy twenties, you know, into their decrepit seventies. You know, the whole thing as a search for truth. And so, as we practice, we begin to see the flower in the bloom, or if we see the bloom in the bud, we can see beyond just the emotional texture of things into the vow of different people. And people have different vows, and people have different aspirations. If we have the clarity of mind to actually see further than that, we can begin to see the interconnection which I was talking about earlier, that we're all connected.
hogen:We all have a particular karmic pool. We all have a particular group of people that we are connected with which is related to the rest of the world, but there's a whole pool of people. And if we look even deeper than that, we can see the inherent perfection in all things. And if we look even deeper than that, we can see the spacious, bright, inclusive emptiness of all things. If we pursue appearances, we kind of miss all of that.
hogen:Yeah, I'm just going on alone. So I think you can take this particular sutra that we've been chanting and say, okay, how can I apply that to the particular problems of relationships that I have, particular challenges? So it's a it's a very You know, as I keep saying about dharma, dharma has to be verified. It's not just good philosophy, it's not just good advice, it has to be verified. The only way to verify something is through our own direct experience.
hogen:May each of you practice and verify what's most important to you.
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 zendest.org. Your support supports us.