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New podcasts every Tues, Thurs and Sat. Here you can find talks from various teachers involved with the Zen Community of Oregon. We share talks from our retreats, as well as our different weekly offerings between Great Vow Zen Monastery and Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple.
Zen Community of Oregon's purpose is to express and make accessible the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha’s teachings, as transmitted through an authentic, historical lineage. To support and maintain Zen Buddhist practice in order to realize and actualize our Buddha nature in everyday life.
For more information, please visit zendust.org.
Hello, and welcome. This is the Zen Community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddhadharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.
Speaker 2:Good evening, everybody. Excellent to be here with you tonight. This is going to be the last talk for now on the Paramitas. The Paramitas are naming Buddhist virtues, elements of the path, ingredients of awakening, qualities of the heart mind when it's not bound up in the ego. There's different ways we could talk about it, and there's many different ways that these have been talked about, could be talked about.
Speaker 2:I each time I was aware I was taking a particular angle on a Paramita. They are invitations for discovery rather than dogmas, as is most of the teaching, I think. And today is the perfection of effort, the final one of the six. I think the Sanskrit is virya, similar to like vigor. And we could think of this as in reference to the other five Paramitas.
Speaker 2:This is vigorous or right effort in relationship to generosity, integrity, concentration, wisdom, patience. And this is multidimensional. In a sense, the perfection of effort is so personal, nobody else would know if it was perfected by you. It would be not so easy to tell from the outside because this is not about quantity of practice, This is not about the form of practice. This is not about trying hard or not trying hard.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of subtlety here, so I I hope to present this in a way that displays the the subtlety of it. So the first thing I wish to say or emphasize is your effort is perfect already. It's already perfect. You're free to think, no, it's not. It could be better and that's that's part of your effort right there.
Speaker 2:But your effort is perfect already. It's exactly what it is, and it will morph in response to itself, and that's perfect. It will painful efforts inform efforts, and slack efforts inform your efforts, and easeful efforts inform efforts, and wondering and talking about effort informs effort. Effort learns from effort and refines effort. For example, nobody told me to, you know, concentrate so hard I got bloodshot eyes when I would do retreat.
Speaker 2:It definitely didn't say that, but I had to learn that. Effort had to awaken effort to effort. That's what's happening. That's why it's perfect because it's a it's a intrinsically self educating process. So all effort is perfectly good effort.
Speaker 2:If you meditate for twenty seconds a week, that's perfect. If you meditate for twenty hours a week, that's perfect. And that effort will inform effort, and it will it will change. Your effort is perfect, but if you feel otherwise, then the rest of the talk's for you. So one of the things that I feel is important is, again, it's not an external measure of what the perfection of effort is or right or actually the term right in the Eightfold Path is really a translation of like noble or upright.
Speaker 2:It's not right as in correct versus not correct so much as aligned effort. The vital thing is overcoming the obstacles to doing the practice that you want to do. If you have in your heart that you want to engage this path or anything for that matter in a particular way, the vital thing is overcoming the obstacles because the gulf inside oneself between what one deeply wants to do and what one is doing is very painful. And from that that gap between what one deeply wants or even needs to do and what one does do, that's where, you know, punitive inner critic stuff comes in, and that's where, low self esteem comes in, and that's where all of that comes in in this particular way because there's a gap between what we really want to be doing and what we're doing. And in a way, the thing to start with is listening close enough to hear that wish.
Speaker 2:In terms of contemplative practice, it's not so easy to listen very closely to the depth of one's wish to do it because it will generally disrupt your life. If you really listen to the wish, it could be that you will have to change the way you go about things and nobody likes change, actually. So overcoming the obstacles to doing the practice that you wish to do is the part of the perfection of effort. Just overcome them. I'm a lousy kind of like coach type person.
Speaker 2:I I don't know how to motivate people. It's a handicap as a teacher. It was never hard for me to be motivated in the practice. I just thought, oh, this works. Why wouldn't I do it?
Speaker 2:And I remember when I was really young asking Chosen Roshi, can I do too much Zazen? And she said, at this point, no. You can't do too much. I said, great. That's basically all I'm gonna do.
Speaker 2:I was in a monastery that was appropriate. Or in a way, the kind of, oh, how can I overcome it? There's this, there's that. It's all in a way like just excuses that maintain the gap to just finally just do what we actually wanna do in our heart. When you overcome obstacles to doing the practice that you wish to do, your heart will be happy actually.
Speaker 2:Your mind might not be so happy, your body might not be so happy, but your heart will be happy. You could translate this to any domain of life actually. When you really do the thing you really wanna do, if you happen to be someone who really wants to do something, not everybody is, you're not supposed to be that kind of person. If you're the kind of person who really wants to do something and you do the thing you really wanna do, your heart will be happy. You might be tired, you might be crabby, you might feel all kinds of things, but your heart will be happy.
Speaker 2:That's the, the best feedback. So there's an old saying that a day spent practicing the way in one sleep soundly. Right? It's it's like something in us is at rest because of that alignment. And there's all kinds of details that, you know, cause we have body minds that get pinged by the world.
Speaker 2:But on the heart level, and this is, you know, a recursive thing, so you overcome obstacles and you feel the satisfaction of that, and it makes it easier to overcome them. So effort informs effort. Now, the old masters who were often speaking to young men. Okay? Context here really emphasized kind of heroic, passionate, vigorous effort.
Speaker 2:Right? So the word vigor is similar to the word virile, is similar to the word viagra, is similar to the word vivisection. I don't know if that's relevant. So they really emphasized again mostly, hardly anybody made it past thirty five, two thousand five hundred years ago in India, I think. So they're mostly young people and they said, work hard, work really hard, and in that context, you would have left your family.
Speaker 2:You would have stepped out of a very tight role bound Asian culture, which still exists to this day, very prescribed in some ways. And so they would say work hard, and they would use metaphors like practice the dharma as if your hair is on fire. As if the metaphor is your hair is on fire, you would so urgently do something about extinguishing the fire on top of your head, you should practice in that same way. Or, Buddha had a metaphor that you're in a house that's on fire. Interesting.
Speaker 2:The world may be a house that's on fire. Well, what can you extinguish? You might be able to put out some of the world's fires for a little while, but what can you extinguish? So when it's when we're emphasizing the passionate side of it, it's like, is there, is it resonant in you that you can really commit to releasing yourself from bondage? You can really commit to releasing yourself from bondage.
Speaker 2:How much of life do you want to spend afraid, dissatisfied, disconnected, and frustrated? How much of life? All of it could be spent that way. I bet you know somebody like that. Somebody in a later stage of life who's like frustrated, disconnected, dissatisfied, afraid.
Speaker 2:Maybe there's many material relational accomplishments externally, but on the heart level, that just came with them year after year after year. If you don't face it directly with spiritual practice, it just doesn't change. Right? So to commit to release oneself from bondage, we have to actually keep impermanence in mind. How much of life do we want to spend?
Speaker 2:Afraid, dissatisfied, disconnected, frustrated? What does it take to get fed up? You have some faith or you wouldn't be in this room. So the convergence of the faith and the fed up, something is really possible there. The this aspect of the perfection of effort also is about, like, sustaining effort.
Speaker 2:Sustaining effort, how to keep it alive day after day, here after year, decade after decade. Right? Sometimes our our enthusiasm for anything is very bright, and sometimes it's dim. That is natural, but how to keep it how to keep it burning? It's good to burn steady.
Speaker 2:People sometimes think of monasteries and temples and such as places that especially spiritual people go, but I think it's the opposite. I think you go there because you're not all that spiritual and you want a lot of help. You're like, I like the idea of being really dedicated in my practice. I need your help. Please accept me.
Speaker 2:Please help me do that. So it's good to burn steady. So perfection of effort, again, doesn't mean that you are on fire with this, but just to continue. Because your way doesn't look like someone else's way. There is no external I I think the stories where they talk about masters who sat for ten years on top of rocks in the snow, I think that is actually not so helpful to a lot of people because they can't see themselves in it.
Speaker 2:One in a thousand people can see themselves in the person who does some kind of heroic effort. But steadiness is something that everybody has the ability to find in themselves. On the other hand, it's good to blaze when you have it. Everything has seasons of life. Passion comes and goes.
Speaker 2:So when you are really enthusiastic, lean into that. This is true in every domain. I think it's really true in the Dharma as well. Really lean into it. In our, world, as I like to mention, sincerity is seen as kind of a sucker's game.
Speaker 2:And so people who are really dedicated and do something 100%, sometimes people think we're naive. Who cares what people think because you live with the consequences of how you spend your energy, not them. The oft repeated, I guess it's technically a simile of the Buddha around effort, is not too tight, not too loose, like tuning the string on, a guitar or something like that. Not too tight, not too loose. And then there's there's a sweet spot in any given tuning.
Speaker 2:There's a sweet spot where the note is clear. It's it's not it's unmistaken. We we hear, we feel when an instrument's out of tune even if we're not trained. So to speak to, too loose, what is that like when our effort is too loose? Well, one clue that effort may be too loose is we feel that afflicted mind is frequently just happening to us.
Speaker 2:The world is reaching in and disturbing us, right, and we feel, victimized by that. We feel that that just that just happens to us. Right? It's too loose. We are not leaning in enough on our agency around what kind of state of mind we have in response to circumstances.
Speaker 2:We're losing our resilience. Right? Because effort and circumstance and our effort are both shaping mind continually. We have both of these at every moment. Have effort, excuse me, we have environment and circumstance, it's shaping mind, and our own effort is shaping mind.
Speaker 2:In a way, coming in, I don't know, the directional thing is not all that helpful. Interesting. Some environments are supportive, some are less, and yet our effort to shape mind. Sometimes we have agency around both. We can choose, change our circumstance to support our effort, to not have afflicted mind.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we can only change one. Right? The early teachers of ZCLA, so that includes people like Joe Quebec, John Dido Lohrey, Bernie Glassman, Chosen, many others who went to do really beautiful things with the Dharma. They practiced in a neighborhood in Los Angeles. At the time, there were drive bys every week, drive by shootings.
Speaker 2:Chosen would sometimes leave session to go attend to a gunshot wound. So they were constantly dealing with, violence, gunshot, noise all around them, not to mention the traffic and the air quality of LA in the eighties. Very strong group of practitioners, very admirable group of practitioners. They were not hot house flowers. They all demonstrated all demonstrated have the the magic of the dharma in some way with how they've what they've created.
Speaker 2:It's too loose if If you're in a war zone, I should mind my own business. Don't I don't know what it's like to practice in a war zone. But in the circumstances most of us are in when we lean towards the environment is afflicting my mind, where our effort is too loose. The other thing about too loose that is, actually a harder obstacle is that we tend to begin coasting in our practice when we become peaceful or calm. Or among the teachers group, we know that when someone disappears, the first thing is not that they have illness, but the first thing is they fell in love.
Speaker 2:Why does this person suddenly have no interest in their dharma practice? Oxytocin is the reason. And so what what happens is we get lax because in a way we feel like I've arrived, I got what I wanted, and then because that peace was still in the realm of conditions, it was still dependent on the reverberation of effort, it just goes away. Right? And we miss an opportunity for a deeper peering into self nature.
Speaker 2:The purpose of calmness is not calmness, it's the ability to see deeper into what this is from the Zen point of view. If you just want calmness, then there's lots of ways to get that. Man, I hope that your Zazen has tranquility in it. I know I know mine does and I love that about it. I hope it does like bring you some of that.
Speaker 2:Let me, go to another register now and talk about, Dharma practice or Zen practice altogether as just medicine. Okay. Now I'm not inventing a metaphor here. The Buddha spoke about the Dharma as medicine, and people would say the Buddha is the great physician, and Buddha diagnosed the human condition and gave really like, I'm making kind of a gesture that's almost like an acupuncture needle, a very exacting remedy for human suffering. This is what Dogen said about our situation, and I'll comment on it it a little bit.
Speaker 2:This is from a very important text in our school called the Fukan Zazenge. Means universally recommended instructions for Zazen. And interestingly, this is one of the first things that Dogen wrote, and he wrote it as a kind of like leaflet to just hand out to lay people. He just wanted to like circulate this writing. Right?
Speaker 2:This is after his monastic training. He said, the way is basically perfect and all pervading. Just your life is basically like all pervading, like it's not lacking anywhere. There's nowhere it's not reaching. The way, the Tao, the truth, the Dharma is basically perfect and all pervading.
Speaker 2:He says, how could it depend upon practice or realization? How could the perfection of life, of the way depend on you doing or not doing something? That would be very flimsy if it depended on us, us flaky human beings. How could it be contingent not only upon practice, but even on realization? He's saying, how could There's really no words.
Speaker 2:They all fail. How could the divine gift that is life even depend on enlightenment? He continues, the Dharma vehicle is free and untrammeled. What need is there for concentrated effort? He says, indeed, the whole body is far beyond the world's dust.
Speaker 2:That is, in a way, to say, your true nature is never stained by anything that has, will, or could arise. And then he says, who could believe in a means to brush it clean? Lots of people do. In fact, there are many traditions. You could go in the library and find 42 books that talk you talk to you about how to brush your heart and mind clean.
Speaker 2:Who would believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from one right where one is. What's the use of going off here and there to practice? Some of you have done this very miserable thing called going to retreat. That was a joke.
Speaker 2:What is the use of going off here and there to practice, Dogen says. And he's not just being provocative. These are real questions. But here's the punchline. And yet, if there's even the slightest deviation, the way is as distant from your experience as heaven is from earth.
Speaker 2:If the least like or dislike arises, in other words, if the discriminating mind arises in us and is not seen for what it is, the mind is lost in confusion. Now, these these words are the words of a lifetime to really clarify, appreciate. Understanding in this way, effort is not to get, to get a state of mind that's free of suffering. It's not to get realization. It's not to get to be a better, different person.
Speaker 2:It's not to get rid of something. Effort is just the medicine in any moment of coming of realigning with what one actually is. And it's just realigning. Effort is a response to the entangled trouble causing heart mind. No entangled trouble causing heart mind, no need for effort.
Speaker 2:Right? Practice is a medicine, a response to pointless wishings and complaints. If that is happening, a moment of practice brings us back into alignment. But you're not a sick being. You're not a sick being.
Speaker 2:You're not a lacking being. Dogen would not accept that you're an unawakened being. The way is basically perfect and all pervading. What need is there for concentrated effort? It is never apart from one right where one is.
Speaker 2:So the perfection of effort is right where one is. Whatever one is, right where one is. And so you don't have to carry around this thing called practice that's like I don't know. What do we carry around that gets between us in life? I feel like I'm holding up a sign.
Speaker 2:A phone. What? A phone. A phone. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Practice is not like carrying around a phone, where you take pictures of yourself, send them to friends, and admire them later. It's not like that at all. Practice is not like a place where you can buy stuff or get enraged by stuff or never miss out on stuff. That gets between us and life. Practice is intimacy with life.
Speaker 2:In a way, practice is the obsolescence of practice. We only need practice in the absence of practice, but when there's practice, there's no practice. It's just life because the way which you are is perfect and lacking nothing. And Dogen should give a disclaimer. Hi, I'm Dogen.
Speaker 2:I spent, you know, fifteen years getting calluses on my rear end from sitting on a meditation cushion so much. So when people make these kind of teachings, the context is important. Finally, I wanna talk about drawing on, the collective or broader broader span of support as far as the perfection of effort. So self heroicness creates ego. Right?
Speaker 2:And if you meet somebody who really believes that whatever they accomplished in life, it was all them, and they rose above this and that, it's There's a kind of arrogance to somebody who feels like, I did it all by myself, and then you look out and say, you could too. Right? So if our effort leads to us completely depending on ourselves and our own so called agency, it's actually wrong effort. That's called the practice of separation. That's called duality.
Speaker 2:So at some point in either China or Japan, probably I think China first, an interesting concept arose, and it was used to kind of name the flavor of different sects or flavors of practice. On one hand, there was other power, and on another hand, there was self power. Right? The idea of self power is that there is a power each of us has that is the force of our own aspiration and creative working. And probably more people underestimate that than overestimate it.
Speaker 2:Right? Sometimes I'm with somebody in a meditation interview, and the thing they need to hear is try harder, or I believe you could just try harder. And then they go back to the cushion, and they come back, and they go, you were right. All I had to do was try a little harder. It's not true for everybody.
Speaker 2:And try hard doesn't mean try tightly, but So on one hand, there's self power, which is often emphasized emphasized in Zen up to a point. It's the force of your aspiration, your desire, your wanting not to spend your life afraid, dissatisfied, and disconnected. But then there's other power. And originally, other power referred to sects that open they encourage a practitioner to open their heart to basically spiritual forces beyond the person. And so you could think of Christianity as other power, right, or or devotional traditions as other power.
Speaker 2:One one, acknowledges personal limitation, and instead of grinding against personal limitation, opens up to something that is outside of that limitation and that grinding. And there's different ways to do that. We could think of other power really broad broadly. Some of you have that kind of resonance with the non local spiritual energy. Right?
Speaker 2:You might have learned it in one religion, and you could transfer it to this one and leave all the stuff behind that you don't like. So that's one aspect of other power. Another is, yes, there's other power, and guess what it is? It's the people in your sangha. There is other power.
Speaker 2:Guess what it is. It's listening to a dharma talk. There is other power. It's working with the teacher. It's interesting to think.
Speaker 2:I I wrote that self power takes us to the limit of self power and can take us pretty far, but then we hit a limit because the self that's making the effort becomes the barrier. You might recognize this in your own zazen. The self making the effort becomes the barrier, although it gets you to an important place. And then we have to surrender, and other power carries us past that limit. And that limit could be that which carries us over could be someone burps in his endo.
Speaker 2:It could be pain in your knee. It could be the smell of incense. It could be a beautiful thought. We don't know what it will be. Self power takes us to an important place.
Speaker 2:Other power can carry us past the limit. Eventually, the dichotomy collapses. But it could start the other way that we begin with surrender. Right? And that takes us to a certain point, but then we realize, no, I am underapplying my own agency in this.
Speaker 2:Right? And then self power takes us further and beyond. So the perfection of effort is nuanced as you can as you can hear. I'm not sure what its message is. I'm not sure what mine is either.
Speaker 2:Maybe maybe the the the heart of my message is continue. Please continue. And listen closely to what really is in you, and then make mistakes, and do what it takes to figure out how you actually apply that. How do you actually apply that? Some people are on the side of underestimating.
Speaker 2:Some people are on the side of overestimating. It's okay. It's all perfect, and your effort will inform your effort. So those are the Paramitas. I'm done with those for a while.
Speaker 2:Generosity, integrity, concentration, wisdom, patience, and effort. K. What do you think?
Speaker 1: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.