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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.
Chozen:Welcome everybody to Sunday morning at the monastery. I probably have more than I can actually talk about this morning, and I'm a little jacked up about it it's so exciting. It's kind of a multimedia presentation. And it's like at a rock concert because you're all going to, like, join in. So most Thursday evenings at Great Vow we have a class night and dessert.
Chozen:It's one of the two times during the week we get dessert. It's very exciting. And this week four residents presented on a teaching called the Four Measurables, or the Four Boundless Qualities, or the four Brahma Viharas, the four Divine Abidings, that if we practice in this way our life will change. We will be able to live in a relatively heavenly realm. They teach us how to have a loving, balanced, and calm experience of life, even in the midst of difficulties and change.
Chozen:And the pace of change right now in this country seems to be speeding up, but impermanence has always been true. And each of the four people gave a very unique and interesting talk. It was really a wonderful night. Sometimes at the monastery we have a tendency to jump from topic to topic and from practice to practice, like each sashin has a different theme, partly because Western minds like variety and choice rather than repetition and the same old, same old. So you know we have a loving kindness retreat, we have a sound retreat, we have an ancestors retreat, and so on.
Chozen:Today I'd like to stick to that same theme that we were working on on Thursday, at least for three whole days, and open up the Divine Abidings a bit more. So our work here with the four immeasurables here at this monastery began when Hogan and I went to a meeting in Dharamsala with His Holiness the Dalai Lama years ago with some other Western Buddhist teachers. And so there were people from all the different traditions: Theravada, Mahayana, including Zen and Vajrayana. I think about 30 teachers altogether. It was kept small so it could be intimate in our discussions with His Holiness.
Chozen:Every morning sitting was offered. So I went to the sitting and discovered that the only other people who came to sitting were Ajahn Amaro and Ajahn Sumedho who were from the Thai Forest tradition. And that at the end of the sitting they chanted a sutra I had never heard before, the Medha Sutta. And I found it very beautiful, I brought it back and began to study its origin. And we began to practice loving kindness here.
Chozen:And at first, as many of you have heard, there were objections like, This is not Zen. But it is what the Buddha taught, and we're here to practice what the Buddha taught as effective in our life. So we began practicing loving kindness, and that's now a regular part of our programs. Loving kindness is one part of the four measurables. So in the children's program, we started doing a little version of lovingkindness, of metta, and that's on your slip here.
Chozen:So we're going to chant it together. A few people have heard it here. I think this might be Soten's melody. It came from Oh, from Serebin, right. And it's now chanted in Tampa at the Community for Mindful Living where our friend Fred Epsteiner practices, and they have a very big children's program.
Chozen:So we're going to do this and then we repeat it with you and with me. May I be filled with loving kindness. May I be free. May I be peaceful and at ease. May I be happy.
Chozen:May you be filled with loving kindness. May you be free. May you be peaceful and at ease. May you be happy. May we be filled with loving kindness, may we be free, may we be peaceful and at ease, may we be happy.
Chozen:So this is yours to keep and use, put on your altar maybe at home. And once you've sung it a few times it's in there, you know how melodies get in there, and it will be available whenever you need it. So the reason that I brought metta practice in is that I realized that the wisdom aspect you know, wisdom and compassion are the two basic aspects of our practice that the wisdom aspect is emphasized in Zen practice, particularly in the Rinzai tradition. But there's actually nothing taught in traditional Japanese Zen about the heart practices. So we began Metta practice and now it's offered every Friday night through ZCO online.
Chozen:And sometimes people pick it up as their practice for a month or a year and have seen profound changes. If you want to know about that, you can talk to Rinso, who talked about how he hated it at first and then how it changed him. It's a practice that's always available when our heart falters, when our heart turns sour. So the four measurables provide immeasurable relief of the kinds of suffering that all humans experience in life. And there's an example that I like to use, which I talked about in the Thursday night class, to help us remember how each aspect manifests and how they're a little bit different.
Chozen:So loving kindness is a fundamental kindness. The word love in our culture is so contaminated that maybe we should call it fundamental kindness. So the example is there's a woman who's pregnant and the parents feel love and kindness towards the infant even though they haven't met it. And they don't know its personality, its quirks, its charms. They haven't met it, but they feel kindness and love towards that infant.
Chozen:And so an example of practicing in that way is to send loving kindness to each person in the Zen do. When you're sitting or to each person waiting in line in front of you at a long line like in the grocery store or the post office. Or sending loving kindness to everyone you pass, all the strangers you pass as you're walking down the sidewalk in the city, or to each driver on the road. And I always add to the loving kindness phrases when a driver tries to cut off me and other people, may you arrive at your destination safely and not kill yourself or anyone else. And then the second of the four measurables is compassion.
Chozen:So the analogy is when a baby is born and the baby is hungry or tired or cranky or screaming, the parents feel compassion for its distress and they try to do their best to relieve the baby's suffering. So calm in compassion means with, as you pointed out in your talk, Rengyo. And we feel the baby's pain and we're moved to act to try to relieve it. In medicine now they're drawing a distinction between empathy and compassion and calling compassion appropriate for a health care provider or a parent to feel with but not to be drawn into. And empathy is being framed currently as feeling the other person's pain too much and being incapacitated by it so that you can't have the objectivity that's needed to work with their compassion in an appropriate way.
Chozen:So if a baby is crying and the mother breaks down crying and can't stop, then that's too much. Mother has to feel it and understand it and then do what's needed for themselves and the child. The third is sympathetic joy. So when the baby learns to crawl and then learns to pull itself up and walk around on the furniture, you know, the couch or the coffee table, and then they are able to let go and sort of balance and totter and make a few tottering steps and then boom down. And then right away they try to get back up again.
Chozen:And they smile at everybody they're so proud of themselves. It makes us smile in sympathetic joy because we feel their joy in what they're able to accomplish in their life. Then equanimity. The analogy for equanimity is when the child grows up and leaves home to go to college or travel abroad or hangs out with questionable people or gets married to one of those questionable people or when you don't know how things are going to turn out in this country, when your child grows up, what life will they have in this country, etc, etc. This is when the quality of equanimity has to be summoned.
Chozen:Equanimity is defined as a balanced state of heart mind that embraces all beings equally, free of attachment, aversion, or bias. That is a very big state of mind, And not one that embracing all beings equally free of attachment, aversion, or bias. We can use that as a standard in our country, for example. Is this how we live in this country and how we treat people? I used to have an aversion to earthworms when I was college age and how they go into these spasms of wiggling when you try to pick them up, which is to help them escape from birds, right?
Chozen:And they'd have which end is their head. But one of my boyfriends in college helped me to overcome this by giving me a garter snake. I like snakes. They're not that different, snakes and earthworms, except snakes have a front end and a back end, eyes and so on. So he gave it to me because I had to feed it, earthworms.
Chozen:So I had to dig up earthworms and put them in the terrarium for the garter snake. So I got over my aversion to earthworms completely doing that. And now I do what we call earthworm suicide patrol when it rains very heavily here, and the earthworms have to come up out of their burrows so they don't drown. Then they try to escape across the sidewalk and then they get dried out and they die. So we try to find them before that happens and put them under something so they won't drown.
Chozen:I still have, you know, if I'm picking up and they start, like, Ugh, they're wiggling, I just have to control the slight aversion that arises when that happens. But this is what our practice is about. It's detecting things like slight aversion when it's slight, before it turns into something major. Because that's when we can work with it or counteract it. This is exactly oh, before that children sometimes manifest these qualities of the four measurables naturally.
Chozen:So when our grandson, who is now a teenager, was age four, he saw a baby donkey and he went, Oh! Like that, it was so cute! He just loved it. He was like, Oh! He was in awe of it.
Chozen:And then one of our friends had a daughter who was four years old, and she came over to our house. So she was about this tall, and we had a little dog, a little Shih Tzu called Mickey. And Mickey was so delighted to see her that he jumped up and put his paws on her chest, and she backed up. And I got Mickey away from her, and she said to me, I love this dog, but I don't like it. So that's what we're talking about.
Chozen:You know, not liking earthworms, but learning to love them. Love them so that I can learn to like them. So these qualities are all innate to us, these four immeasurables. But they can be covered up or twisted by the effects of difficult life circumstances, by reactive thoughts and emotions that arise because of our history with whatever. So this is why our practice is so important.
Chozen:Because when we sit in silence for long periods of time, we can witness our harmful thoughts towards ourselves and others. And over time more and more subtle unwholesome thoughts. And then through various practices like our inner critic work, unwholesome thoughts directed towards ourselves, or the work of Byron Katie's challenging, is that truth or is that delusion? The Buddha himself practiced with the enemies of the divine abiding. So now we have to recognize the enemies.
Chozen:You can get your little blue or green piece of paper or white. So this is a bit small, but I think you can read it okay. These are the four measurables. So let's look first at loving kindness, which is on the bottom under the seated figure. Loving kindness, metta, unconditional friendliness, benevolence, goodwill.
Chozen:See, so it has nothing to do with romantic love. And then there's the far enemy and the near enemy. So the near enemy is very interesting because that often fools us. So the near enemy is conditional love. I'll love you if.
Chozen:And then the far enemy is just ill will. So can you see how those work? The near enemy is the one that's harder to discern, because it seems like love but it's not quite really love, not total friendliness or goodwill or benevolence. So then let's go to compassion, which is on your left, on the figure's right. The wish or willingness to bear or remove suffering.
Chozen:So the near enemy is pity. So pitying someone puts them below us, right? Not on equal footing with us. Poor thing, she can't help herself. You know, there's all kinds of examples.
Chozen:And then the near enemy is cruelty. The near enemies are kind of obvious, but the far enemies aren't always obvious, and that's something we have to work with. The near enemies are the ones we have to work with. The far enemies are obvious. Then sympathetic joy, to your right, rejoicing in the good fortune of living beings, of other beings.
Chozen:So the near enemy is exhilaration. Oh, I'm so excited that this happened to you. And the far enemy is jealousy. So sometimes we use the near enemy. So I'll give you an example.
Chozen:I used to. I've worked with it a lot because I have written some books. If somebody published a book on a topic I was going to write on, I would feel jealousy. I could feel that flash of jealousy, No, no, that's my domain. I would do a better job, blah blah blah, whatever the mind says.
Chozen:So meeting that person, I could substitute exhilaration, Oh, congratulations on your book. I hope it does well. And you can tell I'm doing the voice tone where you can tell it's not sincere. But really what's underneath is jealousy. So we have to be able to detect what's underneath these more subtle, difficult emotions.
Chozen:And then equanimity on the top, upaksha. Unshakable balance of mind rooted in insight. So the near enemy is indifference. So this is something that we have to be a little careful about in our practice, is indifference. Oh, I read the news.
Chozen:It's just too terrible, and I'm not going to solve it, so I'm just not going to get involved. And we all know aspects of indifference. And maybe when we're suffering ourselves from deep depression, we can't bring up any emotion at all and we just feel indifference. We withdraw. And then paranoia.
Chozen:Okay. You work that one out. But I tried to make this so you could stick it on your mirror or have it around and just review it. So through studying the four measurables, we can become aware of when we slip into states of heart mind that are called the near and far enemies of the Divine Abidings. I'm just going to ask a question: Is there anyone here who has never experienced thoughts of ill will?
Chozen:Thank you. The next aspect of the four measurables is our unit, I don't know a better word, our geography, the expanse of our practice of the four measurables. So in The US, many people's concerns focus on themselves and then expands to their romantic partners and then to their families. But in Japan, the unit of concern is the group. And I just heard a talk on this by a sociologist who is Japanese, and he talked about this very thing: that Japanese children are trained to see the group as themselves and themselves less important than the group.
Chozen:And we have the opposite in this country. So who do we call our people? Do our our people include U. S. Citizens?
Chozen:Some U. S. Citizens? The people killed in the war we started in Iran that were American service people? Or everyone who's been killed in Iran and in the other countries as that war has widened to other countries?
Chozen:What is our scope of practicing the four immeasurables, our scope of concern? We deliberately practice, like when we do metapractice, we deliberately practice on widening the scope, assessing what my scope is, and widening it. So we start with ourselves, like with loving kindness practice. And that's very hard for people often to start with themselves. And then to those we care about, and then to neutral people, like people we meet on the street or in the grocery store, and then to those that we feel are enemies.
Chozen:And then we eventually expand in all directions, in all the geographic above, below, and in the four quadrants: above and to all beings in the sky, and below to all beings in the earth, and to the earth itself. So we saw pictures that the Artemis two crew sent back from their excursion around the backside of the moon. And all astronauts, even the ones that are in the space station in the space station can't get that view. They can see the curvature of the earth, but they can't get the view of the entire earth. And one of the things that has moved the astronauts who have gone further distances is to see earth rise behind the moon.
Chozen:They say that's just amazing. So all astronauts have described awakening experiences, true awakening experiences, when they view earth from space, when they view the entire earth and every being contained within. They feel love for this earth. They feel part of one people. So this has been studied and it's called the overview effect.
Chozen:And this term refers to the intense. I'm going to give you the technical definition. The intense psychological, cognitive, and emotional shift experienced when viewing Earth from space. Small and fragile. Astronauts commonly describe the Earth as a small, fragile, and beautiful blue marble or tiny pea, emphasizing its vulnerability.
Chozen:Lack of borders. A major realization for many astronauts is that national boundaries, political and cultural divisions are invisible from space, highlighting humanity's shared existence. Sense of unity and connectedness astronauts often report feeling a stronger connection to all of humanity, reducing nationalistic viewpoints. A glimpse of divinity. Some astronauts describe the experience as a spiritual or overwhelming moment, seeing the planet as a paradise, or a living, breathing organism.
Chozen:Deep emotional impact, many astronauts report being moved to tears, experiencing a permanent change in their perspective on life and their values. And many of them are compelled into environmental work. So those who wish to awaken, maybe we should all send you up into that view. But it can become our view through this practice, through the practice of the four immeasurables. And I would like you to chant what's on this big sheet of paper?
Chozen:This is the Buddha's teaching on the cultivation of thought. This is his teaching on the four measurables. So this is before he was enlightened and he studied the kinds of thoughts that came into his mind, just as we do. And he decided that he should divide them into two classes. And he was aware that when we think thoughts over and over again, they dig deep roots into our mind, and then our mind kind of runs down the wagon of our mind, you could say.
Chozen:This is the way he talked about it. The wagon of our mind gets stuck in those ruts and goes running down those ruts. And so practice enables us to see that beginning to happen and to lift the wagon of our thoughts, our mind, lift that wagon up and put it on a different course, a wholesome course. So that's what he's talking about here. And I've put some marks above and below when our voice goes up or down.
Chozen:So we'll do it a little bit slowly because you have to be able to follow the marks. So I'll just give you an example of how it goes. Before I was enlightened, it occurred to me. Suppose I divide my thoughts into two classes, I will sit on one side, thoughts of sense desire, thoughts of ill will, thoughts of cruelty, and thoughts of envy. So that's how it goes.
Chozen:And where you see a wiggly line, down below you see a wiggly line, Then they have abandoned the thought of renunciation. Okay? Everybody got the idea? Okay. Sutra on the cultivation of thought.
Chozen:Before I was enlightened, it occurred to me. Suppose I divide my thoughts into two classes I will set on one side Thoughts of sense desire thoughts of ill will, thoughts of cruelty, and thoughts of envy. I will set on the other side, Thoughts of renunciation, thoughts of loving kindness, thoughts of compassion, and thoughts of sympathetic joy. What thoughts lead to my affliction, my obstruction, obstruction of others, obstruction of wisdom, cause difficulties and lead away from Nirvana. Disciples, whatever a person frequently thinks and ponders on, that will become the inclination of their mind.
Chozen:If they frequently think and ponder on thoughts of sense desire, thoughts of ill will, thoughts of cruelty, and thoughts of envy, then they have abandoned the thought of renunciation to cultivate a heart of sensed desires, a heart of ill will, a heart of cruelty, and a heart of envy. If they frequently think and ponder on thoughts of renunciation, thoughts of loving kindness, thoughts of compassion, and thoughts of sympathetic joy. Then they have embraced the thought of renunciation to cultivate a heart of loving kindness, a heart of compassion, a heart of sympathetic joy. Then they dwell serene in equanimity at home in the divine abidings. So this is also for you to take home and chant if you would like to.
Chozen:I've always loved this sutra because it shows that the Buddha practiced just as we do. He had a mind like ours, and gradually he changed it. So I'd like to finish, with some very interesting neurological research from the California Institute of Technology. They and other researchers have quantified the speed of the human brain at which it processes information. And it reveals that we may not be as sharp as we think we are.
Chozen:So the study has revealed that the speed of human thought is just 10 bits per second, much less than we would imagine. Our brain processes thoughts I'm kind of reading from the research our brain processes thoughts one at a time, making it a slow and crowded queue. So the researchers, Zeng and Meister, have highlighted in their published paper that there's a contrast to the way the peripheral nervous system functions because it processes gigabytes of sensory data in one second. Despite the richness in our mind's eye, our photographic memory, and our unconscious processing, which goes at gigabytes a second, the brain really operates at a sluggish pace when it's thinking, which rarely goes above 10 bits a second. According to the researchers, the brain processes at just under 12 bits a second while solving Rubik's cube blindfolded, and around 10 bits while playing a strategy video game.
Chozen:So that's our max. That's actually not our standard operating speed with our thoughts and processing. So I'm going to play a short Instagram. Social media can be very informative. I don't use TikTok, but Instagram.
Chozen:I have learned a lot from Instagram. As long as you learn to pick what you follow. So let's see if we can look at that and hear what she thinks. This is a psychologist, and she talks about this same research in a slightly different way. And she's very excited about it.
Chozen:It's very cute and the implications. Can you see that? Okay. I want to make sure that you can hear it. I'm going to put my okay.
guest1:Information so incredibly fascinating, and it's gonna change the way that you ultimately perceive your entire reality. So research in neuroscience teaches us that our brains can process up to 11,000,000 bits of information a second, but we can only consciously receive 40 of those. Right? So 11,000,000 bits a second versus 40 consciously, meaning that your reality is dependent on the 40 bits of information that your brain is consciously receiving. Now what determines the 40 is the filter in your mind that's called your reticular activating system, and this filter is determined by your subconscious beliefs and the beliefs and thoughts that you feel to be the most true about who you are or who other people are or about the world in general.
guest1:So whatever you repetitively believe and what you repetitively think and the neural pathways that are the strongest set the filter for the 40 bits of information that you consciously receive. Right? So if you think that you're not good enough or if you think that you're not worthy of success or if you think that life is always out to get you, what your filter sets as in what you see in your reality are things that prove your beliefs to be true because your brain is wired for efficiency, so that's what it's trying to do. And when you can change the thoughts and change the beliefs, you reset the filter and you start seeing things differently. The things that you're looking for that are positive are actually already there.
guest1:It's just that the filter is set to not see them. Think about that. Okay. I want you to listen carefully because
Chozen:I didn't get it. I know. I had to watch it several times. Do you watch it again? So our beliefs I'm kidding.
Chozen:Oh, okay. You didn't get it, yeah. Because it wasn't in your screening bits, the ones that you allow in. So she said exactly what we said about our innate Buddha nature. Did you hear that?
Chozen:It's all there, but we screen it out. It's all there, but we screen it out. She says that at the end. I'm going to play it one more time because I had to listen to So listen to this from the point of view of why we stay so stubbornly stuck in suffering and why we believe our thoughts about suffering rather than the thoughts that arise from the four immeasurables. I can just play the sound.
Chozen:No. Her enthusiasm is contagious. Okay, ready?
guest1:So I find this piece of information so incredibly fascinating and it's going to change the way that you ultimately perceive your entire reality. So research in neuroscience teaches us that our brains can process up to 11,000,000 bits of information a second, but we can only consciously receive 40 of those. Right?
Chozen:10. 11,000,000
guest1:bits a second versus 40 consciously, meaning that your reality is dependent on the 40 bits of information that your brain is consciously receiving. Now what determines the 40 is the filter in your mind that's called your reticular activating system and this filter is determined by your subconscious beliefs and the beliefs and thoughts that you feel to be the most true about who you are or who other people are or about the world in general. So whatever you repetitively believe and what you repetitively think and the neural pathways that are the strongest set the filter for the 40 bits of information that you consciously receive, right? So if you think that you're not good enough or if you think that you're not worthy of success or if you think that life is always out to get you, what your filter sets as in what you see in your reality are things that prove your beliefs to be true because your brain is wired for efficiency, so that's what it's trying to do and when you can change the thoughts and change the beliefs, you reset the filter and you start seeing things differently. The things that you're looking for that are positive are actually already there.
guest1:It's just that the filter is set to not see them. Think about that. Okay. I want you to
Chozen:So we can think of all kinds of thoughts that could be that filter, like the world is going to hell in a handbasket or most people are fundamentally kind. We have the ability. That's the amazing promise of our practice to change the fundamental way our heart mind perceives and processes, to change the few gates that we use to think and form emotions and make decisions, the gates that the Buddha talked about in this sutra on the cultivation of thought. And we can make a great change in our experience of our own life and ultimately in the lives of those around us and all beings. Thank you.
Chozen:Oh, so hold on just a second. So we're going to chant the four Bodhisattva vows. Its relevance to what we just talked about or learned about is: Beings are numberless yes, true I vow to free them. And the next is, Delusions are inexhaustible. So the way we really should be aware of this is, beings are numberless.
Chozen:I vow to free them from my numberless delusions so that we can all enter the boundless gates of dharma, which are always present, including on Instagram, and realize the awakened life and live it. So that's what these mean and how they're connected. They're all connected. Thank 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 zendust.org. Your support supports us.