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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 morning everyone. Thank you for coming to practice here at Great Vow Zen Monastery, to all of those of you who are joining online. Today I would like to talk about an essential element in Zen practice, essential element in any spiritual practice, essential element of being a human being which is the cultivation of patience. We live in a pretty impatient time, we can order something online and get it the next day, pretty soon we'll be able to get something the same day, maybe within just a few hours. In the time that we don't need to go without the answer to a question because increasingly all of human knowledge is in our pockets.
Speaker 2:So we really don't have to even go without knowing anything or we at least have the, we can at least accumulate knowledge, or trivia facts quite easily. And we all experience the, or most of us experience the mobile device as part of our inpatients. There's been a there's a study that we pick up our phones a 144 to a 186 times per day and, that's not in twenty four hours because of course we're sleeping for part of that. So it's about 10 to 12 times per hour. About five, let's see, translates to five to 10, every five to ten minutes of our waking lives on average.
Speaker 2:So we have a constant distraction from boredom. Constant distraction from boredom. And of course boredom is uncomfortable. Tolstoy I read a Tolstoy quote that boredom Tolstoy called boredom a desire for desires. And this is a challenge for our practice.
Speaker 2:Our our, the way that our attention is being trained. We are undergoing training of our attention and we do that here in the Zen Do, we train our attention to come back to where we're trying to direct our mind that could be a practice and we all just experience that in the Zen Do. I didn't experience it in the Zen Do, I was writing the talk, you all did. But we've all experienced that as we're meditating, we're working to train our attention to return to whatever object of, we'll call it object of meditation, our breath, sound, however we're coming back to, whatever our method is. That's a training of attention.
Speaker 2:And we have another training of attention that is happening all day every day which is the training of attention to pay attention to the notifications or the enchantments of our phones. And there are billions and billions and billions of dollars spent to, get our attention in this way. So much so that it used to be that they would, advertisers would or and those who market our attention would do it by time in minutes. Now it's fractions of a minute. Now it's seconds, now it's fractions of a second.
Speaker 2:Just our every sliver is part of the market of our attention. So no wonder we have a hard time. No wonder we have a hard time because this tool that is so valuable in so many ways is also one that is challenging for the way that it shapes our spiritual practice. Our our phones are extraordinarily good at capturing and holding our attention. And the videos and design are such that they draw us into deep concentration.
Speaker 2:I'll be looking at a phone watching a video and somebody's talking to me. They don't register. So I'm completely drawn in to the phone or whatever is holding our attention. So there is a kind of concentration training that is happening. We are training in concentration but the object is one that is optimized for entertainment.
Speaker 2:So when we come to sit down and concentrate on something more subtle like the breath or our body sensations we find it difficult. I know how to concentrate. I've been trained to concentrate but here there's no puppies or kitties. No puppies or kitties. Maybe we should get a puppy for the Zen Do.
Speaker 2:That seem like a good idea? And I'll follow around and watch the puppy. I'm taking note of the nodding happening in the Zen Do. So the second challenge is to the to our practice is that our coping with boredom or just or our training in distraction in this way, distracting ourselves from from boredom blocks out our shifting into the awareness mode of mind. So we have two, there are many powers of mind but two fundamental ones are concentration and awareness.
Speaker 2:Concentration is like narrowing a flashlight into a beam. Awareness is like a lantern. It illuminates wide, a wide field. So both illuminate but in different ways. So our concentration illuminates things in in a very pointed and focused way, concentrated.
Speaker 2:And awareness like a lantern illuminates where where this field of light. When there appears that nothing is happening, being in line at the grocery store, being in traffic, sitting at a table in a coffee shop until a friend arrives, It is so tempting to check our phones or get caught up in our habitual thinking. Waiting in line impatiently. Why is this happening to me? Why don't they have more checkers here?
Speaker 2:They're being cheap, that's why. They won't hire more workers and away we go. So we're living in a world that constantly trains us to reach for stimulation, to expect immediacy, and to resist the experience of what's happening. So what does Buddhist practice have to say about this? In our particular stream of Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism of which Zen is an expression, We have a model of spiritual development called the six Paramitas or six perfections.
Speaker 2:These are aspects of mind and heart that we can cultivate and be cultivated as we practice. Some Mahayana texts say that aspects like patience and the Parmidas are are bases of training, bases, foundations of training that our our training happens, our spiritual development happens. So these six perfections are and you will not be tested but just to give you a sense of them, giving, dhana, we you hear dhana sometimes around here dhana dhana paramita dhana is generosity or giving. Giving, ethical conduct, joyful effort, meditation, wisdom, and patience. And we can look at these in a sequential way and in a dynamic all at once way.
Speaker 2:So from the sequential way perspective, and these are both skillful ways to approach and understand our experience. From the sequential way giving starts first. And in the Pali Canon, the oldest texts of Buddhism, the Buddha always encourages people to practice generosity, giving. And why is that? Well giving loosens our habitual preoccupation with ourselves.
Speaker 2:We begin to think of others, notice others, what do they need and we act and then ethics arise. We we notice other people and that they're, in need in different ways. We act more ethically, become more inclined to ethics. We become more patient and joyful and then bring that into meditation which develops wisdom and understanding. It's a very sequential kind of way.
Speaker 2:There's also an all at once view which is that these are all simultaneously in playful dynamism. It's not a sequential way. It's not like we fill up our giving and then we can start to fill up our ethics pot and then we fill up our you get the idea. So they're in dynamic relationship and there is a progression. We could experience it as a progression.
Speaker 2:So the Paramitas are a wonderful reminder that our practice is not just about meditation. Sometimes especially those of us when for many years I didn't live in the monastery and one of the things, one of the great plagues of being a householder practitioner is am I practicing enough? Right, and having some idea that my practice, I'm either doing enough Zazen, not enough Zazen. And the Paramitas developing giving, ethic, practicing ethics, joyful efforts, all of these things are practiced too. So it's very important to, it's a very important perspective to bring into our practice.
Speaker 2:Sometimes our meditation Paramita might be a slog but our giving one of our time of our attention of our of our listening presence maybe that's one that we really shine One that's really developed and we can celebrate that part too. Their holistic view of our path, of the path, the Buddha way. They are a balancing view of the path that how can we develop in a balanced holistic way that allows us to, develop wisdom and compassion and fulfill our vows to, help all beings that we encounter. So we may find ourselves being frustrated in certain areas and so there may be some nutrients missing, the nutrient of joyful effort. So that brings us to this third paramita called kashanti translated as patience because once we begin actually practicing generosity, ethics, meditation and all the rest, we discover something that practice is difficult.
Speaker 2:Other people are difficult. Our own minds are difficult. Life doesn't cooperate with our plans and so we need patience. And we don't practice patience or kashanti because difficult things are an interruption to my practice. Difficult things are where patience becomes practice.
Speaker 2:Chozon Roshi often says there is no waiting in Zen. No, there is no waiting in Zen. This is because every circumstance that we find ourselves is an opportunity to practice. So here we for the purposes of discussion, we can delineate between patients and waiting as inpatients. Waiting assumes that there's some other time or some better life.
Speaker 2:There's something better. Impatience or waiting. Assuming there's some other time or better life, it's just thoughts. It's just an idea of some place better. Patience is meeting our life just as it is.
Speaker 2:We may have a goal, hopefully we have a goal, a vow, a way that we orient our life, things to do. And what we have to do, or our goal or our vow is not manifesting or it's or it's taking its own sweet time. There's a great Tom Petty song called The Waiting where he keeps saying, the waiting is the hardest part. Waiting impatience, waiting impatience is painful, it's suffering. It's based on I want things to be different than they are.
Speaker 2:And these ways that we want them to be different are just ideas in our mind. It should be different than this. I'm gonna just put up with it until it is or I'm gonna distract myself until it's until it is or it's where the distance between how how I'm experienced how it is and the way that I my idea that there's suffering all the way there. That distance is suffering. It also assumes that there's some other time.
Speaker 2:There's no other time. There's only now. The eternal now. There's an idea that there's a future. That's a thought.
Speaker 2:We hope there's a future. I hope there's lunch after this. But there's no lunch right now. There's just this. Just this talk.
Speaker 2:Just this moment. So, what are we waiting for? Can we let go of this? Can we let go of this wanting things to be different than they are? So, we let go of this?
Speaker 2:Are we so, can we be present with the way things are? One way that we can do this is just to, disentangle ourselves from the projections of the way it should be and tune into more of what is happening right now. You can ask our what is what can I learn from this? What is this growing in me? How can I practice right now?
Speaker 2:How do I wanna be right now? What is being experienced right now? And this can be on the meditation cushion. This can be in a disagreement with a friend. This can be waiting in the line in Safeway.
Speaker 2:What is being experienced right now? Another translation of Keshanthi is endurance. Endurance. If we're gonna go really all the way, all the way on the path, We have to we need endurance. You all already have it since you sat through Zazen, even those moments of wanting to do something else, be somewhere else.
Speaker 2:Even something as little as putting up with an itch on your nose is the practice of patience, it's how we develop it. Patience is not an idea, it's something that we can live, that we do live and that we cultivate in our Zazen. In a very visceral way we're practicing patience. It's very important that we establish this in our practice and notice when we're being, notice when a patient arrives, a patient and patients arises. This talk was inspired by a lengthy quote from that I read from Alan Wallace on my phone, on social media.
Speaker 2:So we're all in the same boat. We're all rowing this boat. So Alan Wallace was talking about how many Tibetan llamas. He described how Tibetan llamas of the highest order is how he described it, avoid coming to America to teach because Americans are so impatient. They want to skip all the preliminaries, all the foundation laying, and they want to get the highest teachings.
Speaker 2:And he said this impatience reflects the consumerist culture and it's impediment. And some of the lamas are like, I'm not gonna put up with that, I don't want that, I don't wanna deal with you, I'm gonna just stay here. So that was really, it got me thinking about, you know, our challenges in our culture. Our consumerist culture and our, the environment in which we are trying to practice. And hopefully we can have compassion for the challenges that we have because of the culture that we live in.
Speaker 2:And some practitioners had difficulties, all practitioners throughout history have had difficulties. And practicing some because warfare had broken out and their monasteries were being burned. That's a big distraction in practice. But we have something that is, because of our culture as we talked about it, as I talked about at the beginning of the talk, it's a challenge. But that builds a sense of impatience in our practice and saying, you know, I wanna skip over all this preliminary stuff.
Speaker 2:And this can show up when we want to use our practice to avoid uncomfortable emotions or character work that we need to do, psychological, material that needs to be, integrated, healed. Or we have our ideas or perfectionistic standards about the perfect teacher, the perfect teachings, the perfect monastery, the perfect weather, the perfect meditation session. That's all impatience. So patience is being present with what it is and doing the best that we to meet that. We want to skip the foundations and of things that are needed in our practice, working with the inner critic.
Speaker 2:It's important it's important to practice, you know, establishing loving kindness, stopping the war inside. Sometimes people say, I want the wide open emptiness nondual practice. Loving kindness can be the wide open emptiness nondual practice. The deepest meta practice is completely non dual, there's no separation. And in that case there's no meta, there's no meta practice and no non meta practice.
Speaker 2:Sometimes this is the nutriment that's needed in order for us. Ayakaima says, the jhanas, the deep meditation, deepest states of meditation are inaccessible without loving kindness practice. That's how Gaye Kema teaches it. So noticing and practicing, cultivating patience. So that's being patient with ourselves and our own development.
Speaker 2:And then of course there's patience with others. I thought it was difficult here. Patience with me, how about patience with other people? This is where we develop it. We develop patience by interacting with other people.
Speaker 2:There's lots of ways to do this, allowing people to have their own path, allowing people to be who they are and how they are, allowing others to be in process, having a wider view, allowing others to deal with their own karma and things will happen and that people are where they need to be, right, where they need to be on the path where they are. Patience with others comes from recognizing people's common humanity and that we're not separate from them, that they're also having difficulties just as I'm having difficulties. And recognizing, and allowing compassion to be the way that we respond to others and their foibles. Recognizing when we have the basically the foundational belief, I want you to be different than you are. That's suffering all the way.
Speaker 2:And patience with complexity is something that the Dalai Lama has said, the practice of patience with complexity. The complexity of two or more human complexities were already complexity right here, this surging flowing knot of karma and comes in contact with another and becomes completely entangled in the moment. Two karmic streams coming together and getting tangled like having two, you know, two sets of earbuds in your pocket. They're in there for like ten seconds and they're totally tangled. Coming together with another human is just like that.
Speaker 2:We just become completely energetically and karmically together. So having patience with that complexity as we kind of figure out how we are together. We bring together our parent personality, our family of origin, our experiences, our blind spots, all of it. So yes, we need patience in all of that. So we need patience and yet there also is a time to act, right?
Speaker 2:We have to act at some point. So how does patience fit with that? So the Dalai Lama says it like this, he says, Since patience or tolerance comes from an ability to remain firm and steadfast and not be overwhelmed by the adverse situations or conditions that one faces One should not see tolerance or patience as a sign of weakness or giving in but rather a sign of strength. Since patience or tolerance comes from an ability to remain firm and steadfast and not be overwhelmed by the adverse situations or conditions one faces. One should not see tolerance or patience as a sign of weakness or giving in but rather as a sign of strength coming from a deep ability to remain firm.
Speaker 2:Responding to a trying situation with patience and tolerance rather than reacting with anger and hatred involves active restraint which comes from a strong self disciplined mind. So we do need to act. Human beings have things to do. We have vows to fulfill, raise a family, do a job, get an education, learn an instrument, get enlightened. And this strong firm mind that the Buddha that the Buddha that this Buddha, old Buddha Dalai Lama, the Dalai Lama says, his holiness the Dalai Lama.
Speaker 2:This Buddha says that a strong firm mind is important. It can help us to fulfill this. It can help us to act. And, sometimes that our acting is to set boundaries, to establish boundaries, not be patient with others but to set a boundary or actually set a boundary with patience and wisdom. There's a time to be patient with others foibles and a time to act.
Speaker 2:Our patience is not just patience, our practice is not just patience, it is in relationship with the other Paramitas, wisdom for one, so that we respond to skillful ways, in skillful ways knowing when to act and knowing when to let be. For example, when a child is figuring out how to how to tie their shoes, we can patiently wait while they tie their shoes. They're just learning. But we act when they're gonna run out in the road. We don't practice patience then.
Speaker 2:We practice patience in the recognizing, here's where they are when they're this age, right? That's where the patience comes in. It's the understanding, the broad understanding. So that's how patience manifests itself, it's not completely, let's just see how it all turns out. Right?
Speaker 2:So it's a wise and compassionate thing to do to stop the child from running into the street. For others, if we are being mistreated or we see others being abused or harmed, there is a time to act. Acting is the parmeetah of energy and wisdom both to prevent someone from being harmed, stopping setting a boundary that needs to be set, but also the karma is heavy for the person doing the harming. So it's compassionate for all involved. And some and and we rely on Sangha to help us know when to act or others and wise people.
Speaker 2:In the Mangala Sutta there's all these references to associating with the wise and having good spiritual friends. That's part of our wisdom. We don't have to only rely on our own wisdom. There's the wisdom of of others including people who have been doing on the path for a long time to help us know. So this is patience is the most important of all the Bodhisattva practices because without it all others will eventually fail.
Speaker 2:It's from Norman Fisher, the Zen teacher. Patience is the most important of all the Bodhisattva practices because without it all others will eventually fail. We might ponder that, is that true? So we're returning to where we began, you know, we live in a world that tells us that boredom, that non entertainment, non stimulation is a problem to be solved. We bore if we're bored, we reach for some kind of of of way to focus our attention away from what's uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:And we reach for our phones, reach for distraction. If we are uncomfortable we want it to go away. If someone isn't behaving the way we want, we want them to change. The patience offers us another possibility, not passive waiting, not resignation, but the ability to stay present with what is happening without immediately needing it to be different. So sometimes patience means just letting be, sometimes it means acting, sometimes it means setting a boundary.
Speaker 2:Wisdom helps us know the difference and the perfection of joyful effort helps us act in a way that is based in kindness and and leads to benefit and awakening for everyone. So perhaps, maybe this week, we can notice where am I impatient? Where am I impatient? Where do we get hooked in in impatience? What am I trying to hurry about?
Speaker 2:What's the hurry? What am I trying to make go away? And then, for a moment, can we stay? Can we just stay with what's happening? Because there's no waiting in Zen.
Speaker 2:No waiting in Zen. So, this is our practice. Thank you.
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.