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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:Okay. Welcome everyone. Good evening. Thanks for being here. It's nice to see new faces and familiar faces and all of us together supporting each other today.
Speaker 2:I'm especially grateful for everyone who week after week does the setup and takedown of this Zen Do that we transform this space into a place of Zen practice. I was running late today and got to just waltz in and it was all done. It's beautiful and it's such a wonderful gift from all of you. So that's just, it's a, it's kind of a miracle every time. And hello to the Zoom world.
Speaker 2:It's always good to see everybody. Let's take refuge together. I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha.
Speaker 2:And if that means anything to you or not, that's okay. It may come to mean something to you. But taking refuge in each other right now with whatever is happening, that we all just happen to come together today to support each other in being still or relatively still or just quieting down a little bit, that there were no, you know, not a lot of demands just to be here and appreciate each other, just sitting together. It's all that needs to be done. What a what a gift, what a refuge that is.
Speaker 2:So today I wanna talk about, just sort of bring a little bit of the monastery to you this week. We have started at the monastery in Klatzk and I a traditional for us yearly retreat called Grasses and Trees and the Great Earth. And it's a retreat in the Zen tradition we do what's called session and that means we are sitting in silent meditation pretty much for a week at a time. Usually all that sitting meditation takes place in a zendo like this, but for this retreat, it's really mostly outdoors. And so I left Great Vows And Monastery.
Speaker 2:The Zendo is a giant circle. If you've ever been there, there's a big meadow to the rear of the Zendo windows and a pagoda. And so from the pagoda all around is a giant circle of, I don't know, fifty, sixty people. So that's beautiful. And then, we sit in the evening, we sit in the morning together, begin, the sitting periods during the day together, and then sometimes, the bell rings after maybe a period or a little bit of time and then people are encouraged to go out into the forest with a little tarp with your little cushion or bench or whatever you have or need and find a spot in the forest.
Speaker 2:There's quite a few acres to find a spot and settle in and quiet down in the arms of the forest. And it's very powerful, to begin to see and feel the connection that's always been. That's we've never been separate from the earth. We are the earth, we are made of the earth. And it's something that often just reveals itself if we let it.
Speaker 2:And so I hope to bring some of the teachings of that in tonight. And I hope that at the end, I will leave enough time to hear from you. I'm sure many of you, if not all of you, have had some experience of nature being a teacher. And so in that retreat, there are teachers, but then there is the teacher, which is where we all come from. So the Buddha was born under a tree, and as part of his quest to relieve suffering, and he engaged in a great many austerities and really put himself through a lot of painful experiences, At one point he recalled a very natural mind state of peace from his childhood that happened while he happened to be resting underneath the tree.
Speaker 2:It was a very hot day and he sat under the rose apple tree and just was able to be at peace and relax and wondered, I wonder if this is it. I wonder if this is actually okay. Why am I so worried about this? Why am I scared of this peaceful state? So then when he came to his determination to sit in meditation until he could truly see the truth, he could really see, realize and awaken.
Speaker 2:He would not get up from there until he did. Again, he sat under a tree to do so and he realized awakening upon seeing the morning star. And said, I together with all beings are awakened. Together with all beings. Together with all beings.
Speaker 2:Includes all beings. Nothing is separate. So in the grasses and trees session, we allow that communion with nature, the all beings of all beings to be our teacher, to remind us how it is. So this morning, we're in this big circle, there were some deer who came out of the woods and they're like, what? And then they just sort of are like, oh, it's those beings.
Speaker 2:They're so fearless around the humans at Great Vow. But it was two young adults and a and a youngster, and they seemed, you know, initially confused, but they we were so still that then they started playing. They were sort of chasing each other, and the little one and the big ones, and they were just kind of running at each other, and the little one was scampering, and they go on their way to eat all the fruit off of our trees. But there's plenty, there's plenty for everybody. Are we awakened with them?
Speaker 2:Are we awakened with the mosquitoes of which there are some? Are we awakened with what we would call insentient beings like rocks or dirt? What a miracle is dirt, by the way, if you really, you know, right? Put seeds and then we get life. It's impossible.
Speaker 2:Are we awakened with that? Is that also who we are With what we would call insentient beings? If I am so awakened along with the Buddha, then how come I don't feel like that all of the time or even much of the time? So what is sentient and insentient anyway? So in Buddhist cosmology, there's lots of ways to categorize these things and many, many traditions do that very thing, the categorizing.
Speaker 2:Some would say sentient beings are all the beings in the six realms of existence. So beings in hell realms, animals, humans, beings in what we call jealous God realms like Hollywood or Washington DC, and then heavenly realms. All of them are subject to delusion, to suffering, and to what's called the wheel of Samsara, the ongoing and ever continuing cycles of suffering. So you could also say that sentient beings are contrasted against Buddhas, like there's Buddhas and there's sentient beings, that Buddhas have managed to see through this once and for all. For instance, Dogen, who, is our first ancestor in Japan in the 12 hundreds says, those who greatly enlighten illusion are Buddhas.
Speaker 2:Those who have great illusion and enlightenment are sentient beings. So that that's the way he differentiates it in that sentence, that if we have illusion, even though enlightenment is all around us, then we're subject to that wheel of suffering still. But, and we also say, at least in this tradition, that all beings have Buddha nature, all beings share the pure potential of this vast and endless universe, this spacious, this ever changing, ever flowing mystery. It's right here now and cannot be pinned down, cannot be boxed up, cannot be adequately labeled ever. So I will throw down some Dogen tonight.
Speaker 2:Allow it to wash over you. Just enjoy the poem that is the teaching of Dogen. And with that, just like with many of our chants that are sometimes opaque, that we may not understand what they're talking about, I believe there's part of us that knows exactly what they're pointing to. So the same is true of these teachings. So, Dogan says, When all dharmas are the Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, life and death, Buddhas and living beings.
Speaker 2:When the 10,000 dharmas are without fixed self or without self, there is no delusion, no realization, no Buddhas and no living beings, no birth and no death. So in that line, he, Dogan is listing these ways of being, these contrasting ways of beings. There can be Buddhas and living beings. There can be life and death. There can be realization and delusion.
Speaker 2:And then there's practice. So this is the view of the myriad things. This is all the different things. Sometimes it's very important to differentiate things. So we sometimes refer to this myriad of things as the 10,000 dharmas.
Speaker 2:When he goes on to say the 10 when the 10,000 dharmas are without fixed self, there is no delusion, no realization, no Buddhas, no living beings, no birth and no death. What does that mean? How is that possible? What is he talking about? So we can perhaps see it another way or view it another way, experience another way, be it another way.
Speaker 2:If these 10,000 dharmas are without a fixed self Perhaps that means they're just changing all the time. It's not fixed, it's permeable. They're arising and disappearing all the time. All the time is birth and death, isn't it? If we look, if you just dig up a one foot square piece of earth, you will see birth and death arising and disappearing all the time.
Speaker 2:Everything is made up of other parts and do not exist independently. How is there a tree? It's made of everything. This is what we mean when we say there's no such thing as a table, right? Just parts of wood, nails, glue.
Speaker 2:And actually all of that is just molecules. It's only called a table. That's why we call it a table because that's useful to label these 10,000 things. So I can go to IKEA and find some very strange word to call it a table. Strange to me, not being Swedish or Nordic.
Speaker 2:Where is IKEA? Is it Sweden? Yeah, thank you. Okay. Where is IKEA?
Speaker 2:I don't know, I'm gonna sidetrack a minute. It's like being in a casino. There's no clocks. You can't figure out how to get out of there. You got a big cart or a big bag, grab stuff.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I needed that. I hadn't thought of that in five years, but I need that right now. So if there's no such thing, if this is so, if there's no such thing as any of this, then what are we calling delusion and realization? What are we calling Buddhas and sentient beings? What are we calling birth and death?
Speaker 2:What even dies? A couple of the deer have been hit by cars and died nearby the monastery recently. It seems like cars are their only predators these days. One was an adult and it took just like, I think less than a day, maybe a day before you could see pretty much the whole skeleton. And as the skeleton was being revealed each day, I thought I could identify a broken pelvis.
Speaker 2:So that was my story about what happened, that the deer was hit and ran for a while before lying down near a little pond down the hill from the parking lot and dying, which is not a bad place to die. The turkey vultures were literally circling in the area And each day the bones were moved around a little bit by the various creatures who were sustained by that body, who were alive because of that body, were living all this new life anchored in that body? The lives of the bugs, the plants, and the offspring of that deer. What actually dies? When we can see everything is just transformation.
Speaker 2:What a, what a, I wanna say what a hopeful message, but like that's not even what I mean. It's Something that I realized recently was that not knowing is optimism. That if I can really just honestly not know that that is an optimism that is not Pollyanna and like, oh, everything's going to be okay or it'll all turn out the way I want it to. But if I don't know, I really don't know what's going to happen. That means anything could happen.
Speaker 2:That means it's all transforming, that whatever the pain of this life is right now being composted or burned or dissolved by the elements, by space. It's already underway. And that's a very optimistic when I think I know and I'm pretty sure it's all going to be terrible. Now there's a pessimistic view. That can be a cynical view, but there's an odd security in it, isn't there?
Speaker 2:Like, oh yeah, I know it's not going to turn out well. But to be in the quality of one of our guiding bodhisattvas, Jiso bodhisattva, the unflagging optimism is not just putting a bow on things. It's this deep not knowing and the faith that comes from just observing, just observing the transformation that's happening everywhere all the time. Just look, just go outside and look. I mean it's happening everywhere, it's happening in here.
Speaker 2:What dies? Chosen Roshi, one of my teachers, she has always collected roadkill at the monastery. She is a physician, so she has that excuse, but she'll collect and dissect it for the benefit of the residents to really see the compounded nature of life. Many people don't have caused any opportunity to look into the body of an opossum or an owl. And so that is an opportunity to see clearly that everything is made of something else.
Speaker 2:And that, you know, it's everything is much more complicated than we could possibly think it would be. So what really is there? If there's nothing real in the way that we think And if that's all that there was, what kind of life would that be? What kind of outlook would that be? Well, it's all empty.
Speaker 2:This is just all an illusion. It doesn't matter what we do. Nothing is real, so what's the point? Thankfully, that is not Buddhism. That is nihilism.
Speaker 2:And the infusion of compassion into this fleeting world is half of the practice, our human expression that can only exist coming from each of our human hearts and hands. So Dogen would say that there is, that there are Buddhas and beings, but he would also say that there's sentience in everything, that there is dharma, there is truth in everything, that there is something sacred in whatever is arising. And he would say that everything is or can be our teacher. He says, We should pray that the trees and stones give voice to the Dharma for us. We should hold in our hearts the wish that the fields and the villages also give voice to it.
Speaker 2:We should ask it, ask it of the pillar of a temple. We should have the walls and fences explore it thoroughly with us. So letting all of the 10,000 things be our teacher, the trees and the stones, walls and fences can speak, can impart the Dharma. Another translation of that may be easier to hear. You should entreat trees and rocks to preach the Dharma, and you should ask rice fields and gardens for the truth.
Speaker 2:Ask pillars for the Dharma and learn from hedges and walls. In earth, stones, sand, and pebbles there is to be found the extremely inconceivable mind which moves the sincere heart. So that's what's happening at Great Vow this week. People sitting in nature, open and willing to learn or at least willing to show up to mosquitoes one Hundred 1, Trees 304, attending the lecture of the ravens and the baby swallows. The whole earth is full of teachers.
Speaker 2:We need only to open the eye that sees deeply into this, which requires us to open our hearts as well to be touched by this life. Thank you. So I'd like to just invite you to share maybe your own experiences of nature as a teacher, a moment that touched your heart. I'm moved to say that I brought some apples from the monastery grounds that have fallen. We are a little bit of a skeleton crew this year and some of our groundskeepers are getting trained up.
Speaker 2:So we have a great many fruit trees that are deeply generous. And so I went around and collected some of the apples that fell on the ground. Now these are the, I believe the best apples on the entire monastery grounds. I know where the tree is and I have brought these to you that these apples have offered themselves freely. They didn't know, the tree didn't know where they were going, whether they were going to the belly of a deer, the ground beneath them, into a card of Vancouver, Washington.
Speaker 2:It's just giving. And so that's a beautiful teaching from nature.
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.