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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.
I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma, and I take refuge in Sangha. Start with a poem. This is called Succeeding to the Ancestors' Samadhi. Have you discovered the ancestors' Samadhi?
Speaker 1:This place where everything is happening, nothing is ours. You're in it right now. You actually can't escape for it is your life. Well, Sachin is cooking. Do you feel like you're getting cooked?
Speaker 1:That analogy worked today. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes sasheen is like a stew. The stew of the ancestor Samadhi, the stew of the earth's deep meditation, the deep meditation of sky, floorboard, birdsong, rain.
Speaker 1:If we open our awareness, everything we encounter is in Samadhi, the Samadhi of itself. I think this is often why we find peace in the natural world. As the trees are always in Samadhi. The rain is always in Samadhi. Doesn't know anything about separation.
Speaker 1:The earth is always in Samadhi. The floor, the walls, starting to sound like Dogen. And everything is inviting us in. Everything is inviting us home. So I wanna share a koan.
Speaker 1:This is found both in the hidden lamp which is the collection of, koans from the women ancestors. So it's case 17 in the hidden lamp and then it's also in the Mumankan case 42. And it's called the woman in Samadhi. Long ago Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom went to a gathering of Buddhas. By the time he arrived all had departed except for Shakyamuni Buddha and a woman who was seated in a place of highest honor next to the Buddha deep in meditation.
Speaker 1:Manjushri asked the Buddha, why can a woman sit by the Buddha when I cannot? The Buddha replied, well just bring her out of Samadhi and ask her yourself. Manjushri circled the woman three times, snapped his fingers, raised her up to the Brahma heaven and employed all his supernatural powers. But he was unable to bring her out of Samadhi. The Buddha then said, even a 100,000 Manjushiris wouldn't be able to bring this woman out of Samadhi.
Speaker 1:But down below past 1,200,000,000 lands as innumerable as the sands of the Ganges River, there is a Bodhisattva called Mommyo, Delusive Wisdom Bodhisattva. He will be able to awaken her. At that very moment, delusive wisdom emerged from the ground and paid homage to the Buddha. Then he went over to the woman, snapped his fingers once. At this she emerged from Samadhi.
Speaker 1:So this ancestral story is a folktale turned Kawan that Mumon Eikai who's the compiler of the Mumon Khan put in his koan collection. So now it is a teaching story, a koan that probably hundreds of thousands of people have practiced with, and who knows before. So Mumon Eikai was alive eleventh century. He was probably one of the more famous Rinzai teachers at that time. So that long ago people have been working with this koan and if you are engaged in koan practice or going through koan curriculum you would encounter this koan, you would practice with it.
Speaker 1:So let me I want to talk a little bit about koans and the Muam Khan. The Muam Khan literally translates as the gateless gate, the gateless gate. And that's you could say what koans are all about. So from one side, and this applies to sashin, this applies to practice, From one perspective, from the perspective of our our small minds or our small self, we often feel like doors are closed or the gates are locked. We're like standing at the edge and like how do I get through?
Speaker 1:How do I get through to just feeling my breath? Just being the breath. Just being one. We keep talking about this one mind. How do I get there?
Speaker 1:That is usually what's in the way that I get there. But we have these, you know, these sense of there being locked gates. Maybe we experience it more as physical. Like, oh, like I'm here and life is happening out there. Or if I just could get, feel different somehow.
Speaker 1:Or sometimes we experience them as mind gates, just habitual thought patterns that seem to lock us out, that seem to separate me from world, me from other, me from my body, from my breath. But on the other side, the side of oneness, the side of the ancestor Samadhi, there's no gate. It's all open. And sometimes we seem to find ourself on that side and then there aren't even sides. There's just breath, heartbeat, beating, breathing.
Speaker 1:There's just this, this, this, this. Cohons are tricky because they set us up. They can activate our sense of separation. Suddenly we have three or four characters and we start identifying with them maybe. They can activate our sense of separation or confusion or resistance.
Speaker 1:They can activate the intellect or the critic. For me this koan activates a sense of longing. I wanna be that woman in Samadhi. But in the midst of their activation, activating all of our habit patterns, ways of reading story, our ways of making meaning, they also reveal light. They reveal the light of the teachings.
Speaker 1:They reveal something about our true nature. And the truth is that light shines through all the other things that they've activated. So in this story, we have a woman in Samadhi sitting by or on, in some translations, she's actually on the Buddha's seat. When I first encountered this koan, I was like, finally, an image of a woman in deep meditation. The tradition is so full of stories of the ancestors, many of whom at least in the early years when I started practicing were were men.
Speaker 1:And so we have even in the Fukanza Zengi, as written by Dogen Zengi, he talks about Bodhidharma, nine years of meditation. He talks about the Buddha, seven years of meditation. So in this koan we have a woman in Samadhi. And for me that was a big deal. Something in my body was like, oh I can too fall in love with meditation.
Speaker 1:There was this, I don't know if this was said to very many people, but when I first came here somebody said to me, the only way you can sit through Kinhin is if you are in such deep Samadhi you don't even hear the bell. It's like okay. So then I would look around when people were sitting, I'm like, they didn't even hear the bell. The lies we tell ourselves. But there is something compelling about that.
Speaker 1:Like, really, you can be in that deep meditation. Someone said it also like you're one with the bell. You can be in that deep of meditation that not even a 100,000 Manjushiris could get you out or wake you up. Something compelling. At least it was for me.
Speaker 1:So Manjushri, the other major character in this story is the teacher of the past seven Buddhas. So he's been around for a long time, that's the one way we can think of it. He's the Bodhisattva of wisdom. He's been around for a long time and he's been in the teacher role for a long time for eons, eons, thousands and thousands of years. So he's pretty accustomed to being able to tell people what to do and they do it.
Speaker 1:And then we have Momyo, delusive wisdom bodhisattva. I don't know much about Momyo besides their appearance in this koan, but an interesting turn of phrase, delusive wisdom. So there are many ways that light emanates through a koan, through through this koan, And for today I wanna just linger with this woman in deep meditation, in Samadhi. Yesterday Bancho talked a little bit about Samadhi. Actually, in a number of our chants we're chanting about Samadhi.
Speaker 1:In the Song of Zazen, Hakoine says, I'm not gonna remember it. Well, he talks about it. We'll chant it later. And we have it in the Komyozo Zanmai reference to Samadhi, and then Dogenzanji in the Fukanza Zengi is also referencing the ancestor Samadhi, succeed to the Samadhi of the ancestors. So we're encountering this word Samadhi, and yesterday Bancho defined Samadhi as meditative absorption.
Speaker 1:Meditative absorption. Another way we define Samadhi is unified mind. Chosin would often quote master Shengyang and talk about how the mind progresses, our perception of the mind might progress during sashin. We might start out with a scattered mind in the beginning of the retreat, and then it becomes more one pointed as we're, like, redirecting our attention back to breath or sensation, sound. And then we have unified mind, because breath and awareness are one for periods of time.
Speaker 1:It's actually always one, we just think it's not. And then even from there, from unified mind, then even the sense of breath and awareness drop away, and we call that no mind. And those are both states of samadhi, unified mind, no mind. So unified mind, body and mind are unified, breath and awareness are unified. Talking about oneness.
Speaker 1:How often at this stage of sashin we've had tastes of samadhi, of unified awareness. And you know one of the things about unified awareness is that that voice that's saying, I'm in Samadhi. Isn't there for a moment. So we're not we're not tracking it. So you may have had lots of immersions even just like split second immersions immersions into this oneness because it's our nature.
Speaker 1:We're actually in it all the time. And that mind isn't there saying, look at that you did it. Or you didn't do it. You should do this. Or just it.
Speaker 1:So often at this stage in Sashin, and we're all tasting this on some level, our awareness is more subtle, it's softer, spacious, lighter. Usually one way I track that just as somebody who's watching the Zeno is we start showing up a little later to things, so that's something we can rein in. But it's like oh that sense of time or urgency maybe we're moving a little slower or there's just a little more space and lightness. And in Zazen you may just already be feeling an invitation to deepen, to immerse, and it might not feel like so much work anymore. And one of the things I was really loving this morning is just the feelings of the bottom of my feet.
Speaker 1:Like, there's so much more sensation now that I'm aware of than when we first started Sashin. And so when doing walking meditation it's just like, ah, wow. It's a whole universe in each step. So things become more interesting. Like this, we're we're experiencing much as more subtle awareness, our sense world is more alive.
Speaker 1:You might go outside and colors just pop. The flowers are suddenly like, so beautiful, or the sound of the rain, or the taste of food or tea. This is the universe of the samadhi of the universe, like rising up in our awareness. And you have full permission to dive into it, to familiarize yourself with this aspect of mind. So it may have been earlier it felt like you had to, like, push or work hard to stay with the breath or with sound or just in the flow of present moment experience.
Speaker 1:Now perhaps it's more of a sense of resting into. So usually that's a shift we start to experience in the latter part of sashin. It's more of a resting into, an easing. Because, I don't know if you know this, but the body is already breathing. At the beginning of sashin it's like, oh, I gotta make it happen.
Speaker 1:Gotta feel it all the way down into my hora or into the earth. But now it's it's like, oh yeah. My body just it already knows how to breathe. And same with, like, we're already hearing sounds. You don't have to go reach out and make listening happen.
Speaker 1:The sounds are just happening in this field of awareness. I'm I'm pointing out what's obvious but it's funny that it's not always obvious. Right? It's like part of what the magic of this practice, it opens up what's already here. Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:It's been here all along. Our awareness is already awake. It's already aware. Yeah. So this is true at the beginning of Seshi and it will be true when we leave, and it's true right now.
Speaker 1:But now we can really immerse in it. So that's one aspect of awareness is this aspect of just getting to, or aspect of Samadhi, really getting to deepen into your practice method. Another aspect of Zazen Samadhi is that our Zazen is all inclusive. And you might have already started to notice this because like I said it's it's obvious. Like our senses aren't divided up into like, oh, there's seeing and then there's hearing.
Speaker 1:You know, we talk about it that way, but it's one field of awareness. Just like I was before I came here looking at images of the earth from space, and when we see the earth from space we know it's just one whole. We see like this blue green globe. It's beautiful. But it's not divided up into like countries and people and animals and wars.
Speaker 1:It's just one blue green earth. That's the same with this life. Our visual fields is just one field. It's one field of color, light, sensation. But, you know, habit mind is like, that's a person and that's a floorboard and I like that and I don't like that and that person should stop doing that movement thing they're doing and duh duh duh duh duh.
Speaker 1:And that's like that's what we see. We just see all of our what we put on top of it. But as our awareness softens, we start to see just the field, or we can start to just relax and let seeing happen as one continuous field of awareness, of seeing. And similarly, like, as we do that, and we can we can do this together. So you don't need to be in a particular posture to open your eyes and notice, and just let your eyes rest open.
Speaker 1:And take a receptive gaze For this moment, relax or release the tendency to particularize, to name. A soft gaze, just allowing sight sensation. And then notice that you're hearing sound. You don't need to do anything to turn on hearing. So just allowing sound to also be included in this field of awareness.
Speaker 1:Again, relaxed, receptive, seeing, hearing. And then notice that you're also feeling physical sensations. And just include the sensations of the body now in this field. You don't have to make any particular station happen. You're just allowing the body to express body sensation in this field of awareness, touch, movement, pressure, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:And you can include taste and smell. They're also just happening. And thought also happening in this field of awareness. And again, just relaxing any tendency to name, separate, particular eyes, And just letting sensations happen, letting the sense of self happen in this field. And then if the mind gets grippy around a sensation, just notice if you can soften.
Speaker 1:Maybe the image of taking the backward step for a moment, just disidentifying with and allowing sensations to just come and go through this field. That's another way of practicing Tsa and Samadhi. Awareness is one field. Dogen Zenji has this phrase, self fulfilling, self realizing Samadhi. Hung Jir says, in this field, our life emerges.
Speaker 1:In this field, it is fulfilled. Koan Ejo in the treasury. We call it the practice of the treasury of luminosity, the chant that we're doing in the mornings every other day. But it's it's actually it's the kom yozo zanmai and zanmai is samadhi. So it's really the Samadhi of the treasury of luminosity.
Speaker 1:And even that word treasury, that's the same zo as in jizo. So you could also translate it as the Samadhi of the womb of luminosity. Yeah. Or another way that that Zoh is sometimes translated is the treasury instead of treasury hidden. The Samadhi of hidden luminosity.
Speaker 1:Which feels true. This luminosity. It's it's dark and luminous. But Koan Ejo says, this Samadhi is the seat of awakening, the ocean of awake awareness. This zazen is the Buddha's own practice, the sitting as awake awareness.
Speaker 1:Yesterday, Vantra said something to the extent that the Fukan zazengi gets better with age or matures with age. And often that's true these these teachings that we have in the Zen tradition they're subtle. And so as our practice matures, they're richer and richer. It's also true about practice, like as our practice matures, the Zen itself becomes richer. And I I know some of you who've been practicing for a while, and it seems seems like you're encountering that.
Speaker 1:There's so much here. There's so much that we're habituated to not seeing or noticing. I think with Zazen getting better with age and time, it doesn't mean we're just like blissed out all the time. It's that there's there's this faith that emerges, this embodied faith, this faith that comes through experience, which I I would imagine even if this is your first sashin, you have a lot more faith in this practice today than maybe you did on the first day. Because you've you've been through it, your body has been through it.
Speaker 1:You're seeing how it unfolds. And faith is born from experience. Faith in Zazen is born in it from experience. And part of that is the faith that we can try things, that we can make too much effort and just know what that's like. We can get caught up in grief or fear and know what that's like.
Speaker 1:We can make too little effort and know what that's like, and nothing is wrong. That's all the field of faith, the field of this practice. We we find our way, we learn to really trust that nothing is wrong, that we can experience our lives. So so much of what sashin is, what daily practice is, is learning to trust the practice, to trust the rhythm of the breath, to trust the field of sound, to entrust ourselves to the field of awareness, to swim in this ocean of awake awareness. So coming back to the koan, this is this trust.
Speaker 1:This is the thing I see in the woman in Samadhi. She's let go into meditative absorption. She's exploring that. Maybe some would say she's stuck in Samadhi, and she doesn't seem too concerned about that. Even though all the other Buddhas left and she's on the Buddhist throne and even though Manjushri is really upset, she just keeps sitting totally devoted to resolute stability, absorbed in what's happening.
Speaker 1:And all of Manjushri's antics are part of the field but don't seem to disturb her even if he upped his ante a 100,000 times. So this Manjushri character if we brought this into our own theater of our own mind You could think of that Manjushri character as the part of you that thinks it knows. Yeah. Maybe it's a pusher, maybe it's a striver, maybe it's that inner teacher voice that can get mean or pushy. And in talking to many of you I think you know I think we're all familiar with this part.
Speaker 1:The part that wants to control our practice, the part that thinks it knows the way to enlightenment or the part that has some idea of what practice should look like. Like what should be happening. And the thing about this part is it's it's smart. It's the Bodhisattva of wisdom. And it's, you know, it's gung ho on awakening.
Speaker 1:It's learned all the different techniques. It's listened to the Dharma Talks, the podcast, however form you take them in. It's read the books. It knows how to be wholehearted or has an idea of what wholehearted looks like. It's used to efforting maybe.
Speaker 1:Sometimes maybe uses force or criticism, or yells the different teachings at us. Like, maybe you're absorbed in the breath and then it's like, wait was that a fixed belief? You should investigate that. Or are your shoulders aligned with your ears? Okay.
Speaker 1:This Samadhi is good, but, like, are you enlightened? Is this really gonna get you enlightened? Or you're not good at this. That was just three breaths, and now what? We're thinking again.
Speaker 1:That can be our inner monjushri. Thinks it knows what to do, thinks it knows what will get us what it thinks we want until that thing slips away and then it has its eyes on something else. Remember how we felt two days ago when you were waiting in line for sansen? Let's get back to that state. I think we skipped dinner that night.
Speaker 1:No. And this Manjushri voice can also take on the tone of the inner critic and sometimes can just be mean, putting us down, saying unkind, untrue things about us. The thing about the inner critic or the inner manjushri voice is that it never has the whole picture. They think they can measure progress but really how can you hold a measuring stick against the infinite? That's what we're doing here.
Speaker 1:All of those techniques and strategies for judging our practice don't apply. They just can't. And that puts us in this predicament that this part maybe that we're so used to believing might not be saying the whole truth or might not be seeing the whole picture. And often if we're meeting the critic there's probably fear or some form of vulnerability nearby or underneath. So be gentle with yourself.
Speaker 1:This practice, it can bring up our defenses and it can also touch our deepest fears, hopes, longings, wants, vulnerabilities. I wanna read from a a poem by one of the first the early Buddhist women. This is an a newer translation that's there's some liberties taken, but this is a good poem. I've been thinking about this. It just kept coming to my mind, lines from it.
Speaker 1:My inner Manjushri was feeding me lines to this poem. So it's called her name is Jenta, which means conqueror. Conqueror. I was forever getting lost until one day the Buddha told me, to walk this path you will need seven friends. So these are the seven factors of enlightenment that he gave her.
Speaker 1:To walk this path you will need seven friends: mindfulness, curiosity, courage, joy, calm, stillness, and perspective. For many years these friends and I have traveled together sometimes wandering in circles, sometimes taking the long way around. There were days when I thought I couldn't go on. There were days when I thought I was finally beaten. It's scary to give all of yourself to just one thing.
Speaker 1:What if you don't make it? Oh my heart you don't have to go it alone. Oh my heart you don't have to go it alone. She's saying that to herself. Train yourself to train just a little more gently.
Speaker 1:Train yourself to train just a little more gently. Throughout this tradition that we have inherited, this Zen Buddhist tradition, we have stories of intimacy or awakening, of seeing into, true nature. And rarely these stories go they pushed they pushed they pushed they pushed and then they were enlightened. I haven't read that many that say that. Most of the time it's like they were walking in the forest and saw the peach trees blooming.
Speaker 1:That's actually a story of somebody who was practicing for thirty years and then had an insight, an awakening experience when walking in the forest and saw the peach trees and his mind was open. Or there's another story of Bodhisattva's awakening when entering the hot tub Or walking in a charnel ground, the story of the seven sisters, they're walking in a charnel ground and one of the sisters says, there's a person's body, where did the person go? And that question triggered a awakening. Or there's another story of somebody who was practicing very diligently with their teacher and was like, just tell me, just tell me what to do. And he was like, if I tell you, you won't you won't be happy.
Speaker 1:Like you won't actually be satisfied. And so he enacted the sashin fantasy of leaving, and then going and doing sashin by himself somewhere. Which often is how that fantasy kind of plays itself out. Like, I'm gonna leave and then I'm gonna go home and then I'm gonna do sashin. And I'll get enlightened that way.
Speaker 1:But he enacted that and decided he was like, I can't I can't stay here. I'm gonna go tend a grave site. And he was sweeping, and so he was there for many years, and he was sweeping, and his broom picked up a rock and it flung the rock against the bamboo and then he had an awakening experience. And then he in his enlightenment poem, he was so grateful to his teacher for not telling him. There are other stories of someone stubbed their toe and had an awakening, or something happened in a conversation with a teacher between two students like in the koan that Bancho shared yesterday, the Ordinary Mind koan.
Speaker 1:And sometimes people have turns of mind or openings in the midst of dark thoughts or feelings of failure, which is, you know, this is just so such a good reminder because, like, the inner critic or some parts of us think, like, oh, I have to do practice exactly correct and then I'll get whatever fruit. But it's like so much more mysterious than that, so much more nonlinear than that. So we practice as best we can, which is always good. And then mysterious, the world's response in mysterious ways. So this is Pattacharya's awakening poem.
Speaker 1:And Pattacharya came to practice her her way was a way of loss. Many of the ancestors came to practice after losing people in their lives, losing loved ones. And she was so, so taken with grief that the Buddha approached her and she was kind of mad with grief, she was like lost herself in her grief, and the Buddha said, Patachara, regain your presence of mind. And that was a moment, a taste, and she kind of came back to herself. She found the present moment again.
Speaker 1:And that and from there, she ordained. But she practiced very, very diligently and still wasn't satisfied. She knew there was more to see. And so her her awakening poem sheds light on some of what what she was feeling. She says, when they plow the fields and sow seeds in the earth, when they care for their wives and children, young Brahmins find riches.
Speaker 1:But I've done everything right and followed the rule of my teacher. I'm not lazy or proud. Why haven't I found peace? Right? Like, oh, it doesn't always work that way.
Speaker 1:We can do everything right. We can follow the precepts. Why haven't I found peace? And then she says, Bathing my feet, I watched the bathwater spill down the slope. I concentrated my mind the way you would train a good horse.
Speaker 1:When I took a lamp and went to my cell, checked the bed, and sat down, I took a needle and pushed the wick down. When the lamp went out my mind was freed. So just an ordinate, I mean she wrote in some detail, but just an ordinary experience of going to sleep. And she washed her feet and turned off the light. She did it in the way that you had to do it then, like, to to put the wick down.
Speaker 1:And then her mind released. So part of why I'm sharing all these different stories is we just never know. We just never know when the universe is gonna rise up and meet us. We we're we're not in control of that part. So we we sit here, we do our practice, we practice continuously through all the various activities of sashin, and as one teacher says, practice makes us fetchable.
Speaker 1:So now don't go around stubbing your toe and turning off the lights. That's the trick. Because it's always when we least expect it. So lastly, I just wanna return to this theme of the ancestors. As we're deepening in Sashin, all sorts of things may bubble up, and that's just part of the deepening process.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we get interesting visual or body sensations. Sometimes we start to see habits of mind, body, or heart more clearly. Sometimes something from the past rises up in awareness to be healed or or seen more clearly. And sometimes we just start to feel stuck or we start to meet our defenses, our fears. That's also part of this process of sashin.
Speaker 1:And that's where this practice of the ancestors can be really, really helpful. Like, whatever is coming up, especially if you're feeling feeling stuck or feeling like you're meeting an edge, whether it's an edge, you know, sometimes the edge is boundlessness, and we're like, oh, I don't know. If I want to really experience Silent Mind, maybe a little bit. And and sometimes the edge is something else. We're we're really encountering something in in how our, you know, how our karmic knots are tied, and and that can be difficult to see.
Speaker 1:Some some fear, some anger, some defensiveness, something unsettling. So the invitation to open to the support of the ancestors, to pray, to ask for help, they're available for that. The ancestors, you could, you know, you could really think of it this way, like, they've been there before, whatever the there is or whatever the here is, they've been here before. They've sat through pain, they've sat at the edge, at the edge of fear, at the edge of confusion, and they're available. They took the bodhisattva vow, which includes all beings, and we are all beings.
Speaker 1:We're one of the all beings. So you can call on Jiso attva who embodies the qualities of courage, fearlessness, optimism in the face of the unknown. Or you can pray to Mou Myo, who I haven't talked about, but you might discover what delusive wisdom or the embodied wisdom that comes from deep within the earth has to offer. Or any of the ancestors that you've been connecting with during this sashin, whether they're, like, specific people, or more of a sense of the lineage, those who have gone before, or personal ancestors, or nature. Asking for help is such an important part of this practice.
Speaker 1:I think we said this in the beginning, and it's worth reiterating. We don't do this practice alone. We we never do this practice alone. But sometimes we really feel alone. And so to ask for help in the midst of that feeling alone can be quite powerful.
Speaker 1:Just even as a practice of asking for help, opening yourself up, recognizing that this is out of our control. Asking for help is a bridge to the mystery. We are not alone in this. We do this practice together. And if, like, the idea of ancestors still feels foreign, you've got about 40 right here in this room in the flesh and blood.
Speaker 1:You can open to our support. We do this practice together. This this is the ancestor's Samadhi.