Changing Gears

(excerpt & transcript generated by AI)

Come in here and flaunt that beach access.

It’s hot in this, there’s just no water.

Yeah, right?

Our 30 inch deep pool doesn’t quite cover it.

So anyway, does anyone have anything they’d like to hear about this morning as it pertains to the dharma?

I’m sure I could spin a yarn, but is there a dharmically oriented question that is alive for anyone in the group that they’d like to use as the prompt this morning?

I saw Tyson, Mitra, and Ryan all want to speak at the same time.

Well I’ll go first then because they’re still muted.

Awaken one’s vows, the third to the last paragraph.

Then with each moment’s arising flash of our normal feelings and thoughts, we will simultaneously recognize within us a field of pure awareness, wisdom, compassion, and skillful means.

That to me is the choice point that Jun Po advocated.

So if they simultaneously recognize this, do we really need to make a choice or is that the point of practice so that arising simultaneously?

Okay, that’s an interesting question.

We can take votes at the end after we hear all the propositions.

So Mitra, did you have one?

I’m just wondering what’s next.

Well those two end up being the same topic, so that works out.

So I think I have a point on that.

Okay.

Let’s just finish going around since we’re on the online.

So Marie, did you have anything?

No, I did not.

No, I’m good.

Okay.

All right, Ryan.

I think it is still a choice, personally, because you still have the option.

Do you take the compassionate path?

Or do you… There’s always the possibility of giving into whatever that base or instinct or emotion is.

Anger, frustration, what have you.

So I think it is, at least for me, if I stop to think about it for a second, I think it is a conscious choice to, you know, 3 o’clock in the morning when children are screaming to go to sleep, to be compassionate and not, like, go to sleep.

So if there is a definitive answer there, I guess, which probably there’s not, but I guess in my mind, for me, that would be, yeah, it is a choice in every moment to follow that path of compassion, understanding.

Some moments, we do better than others.

Some moments, it’s spot on.

Some moments, we fail miserably.

But in those moments that we fail miserably, if you can recognize that miserable failure in that moment, you then, again, make the choice, do better the next one.

Do better the next one after that.

And then eventually, maybe, it becomes not a choice.

And it just becomes who you are.

Yeah, that’s my thought.

I couldn’t be completely wrong.

I think that’s the practical way that it usually works out.

That’s kind of like the training arc, so to speak.

Hey, you Umi, I got another curveball for you.

Okay.

In the Heart Sutra, past, present, and future are all awakened ones.

All compassionate ones rely upon this transcendent wisdom of meditative awareness, and therefore, experience the most supreme awakening, enlightenment.

Going back to DBZ, and in Stan’s Taisho, and I think you supported some of that, we become awake, but do we ever become enlightened?

Is that a forever goal?

And so, therefore, we practice, we never arrive.

But we arrive when we’re practicing.

Are we enlightened then, or are we just still arriving?

We all have a certain degree of light.

The question is, how bright is the bulb?

Oh, it’s a rheostat.

It’s a what?

A rheostat.

A rheostat.

I don’t know what a rheostat is.

A rheostat.

You can dial it up and down.

Oh.

That seems reasonable.

There’s a knob there, so like… Enlightenment, not so much at the moment.

Back again.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You have to be a certain age to know the rheostat.

Yeah.

Enlightenment’s on a dimmer switch.

That’s basically what it is, yeah.

Yeah, enlightenment’s on a dimmer switch.

And that’s all… We can get into the nuances of the term of enlightenment and whether or not we actually want to use it to be parallel to Zen awakening and stuff like that.

There are really distinct correlations and issues with the term awakening as represented in the Zen tradition and enlightenment as it was translated in the Western religious context at the time.

So that particular phenomenon is really fascinating and illuminating.

See what I did there?

I’m drunk.

I think one of the things that’s really interesting is…

I don’t have it with me right now, but I believe the actual literal translation of the Awakened One’s Vow is significantly different at this point.

The latter portion of our Awakened One’s Vow is a very liberal and poetic translation of what Torrey wrote.

And so I’d be interested to take the same paragraph and see if this is where we start messing with it a little bit or if it’s a little bit later.

When was it written originally?

It was originally written in classical Japanese.

Oh.

Circa… Circa 1750.

Okay.

Well, no.

Yeah.

Ish.

Okay.

So there’s a definite possibility for interpretation and translation there.

Oh, yeah.

Several hundred years of it.

Yeah.

So I think one thing that’s really interesting for me in my experience is that there’s a nuance in the way that we read this to make it accurate with the experience of the Dharma.

So each moment’s a rising flash of our normal feelings and thoughts.

Okay?

So the pure witness arises in conjunction with sensory experience.

Right?

You can’t witness and be self-reflexive about something without there being experience.

And part of our awakening process is to actually go into a state of consciousness of pure luminosity absent of any subjective experience except for when you’re really honest, you’re having a subjective experience of pure luminosity.

Right?

So then there’s even a witness to the fact that you’re fully aware while you’re not having other sensory experiences.

Okay?

But that’s deep meditation stuff.

Let’s set that aside for a moment.

So in a moment, there is the capacity to perceive and there’s that which is perceived.

So in a flash, there are normal feelings and thoughts and there’s a field of pure awareness.

That’s what makes a moment.

It’s both of these things.

Okay?

Now, where our identity lies is variable on that spectrum.

Okay?

So even though these two are not separate, our identification can be with a particular aspect of our sensory experience.

Like when we’re infants, it’s very much with our body.

As we get older, it’s very much with our thoughts.

If we manage to maintain or to establish the goal of general public school education by the end of our senior year of high school, we aren’t solely established with our thoughts and we’re able to hold competing thoughts simultaneously and it doesn’t disrupt our identity.

Ergo, we identify with our emotional body.

Okay?

And so there’s kind of this layer process that we can imagine happening in this totally flat space.

Right?

And so, beneath our emotions is the way we attribute meaning-making to our sensory experience and create identity.

And beneath that is the capacity to be with the experience without the need to create identity.

Okay?

So we’re simultaneously recognizing the base of experience, pure awareness, and everything that emerges from it, our normal feelings and thoughts.

Okay?

Now, and this is where my nuance of this comes in.

I’m not sure that I believe necessarily that pure awareness and its innate function possesses wisdom, compassion, and skillful means.

Okay?

I think wisdom is the capacity to be simultaneously aware of the container and its contents.

That’s what wisdom is.

Prajna.

Okay?

Now what happens in that is there is a natural and spontaneous arising of compassion because when we see unity consciousness, we see how everything works, we see how everything that is is the same essence of consciousness, well then we become very compassionate towards whatever is arising.

Be that our own shadow states, be that you know, a particularly troublesome event, be that another individual, you know, it doesn’t really matter.

We end up being compassionate towards all that is in the aspect of unity consciousness because we realize that everything is of one essence, which is ourselves.

And that that essence is an essence only by nature of its constant evolutionary change.

Okay?

Which means that we can never reasonably hold on to an opinion about someone or something because that is to reject change.

That’s to reject the truth that that thing is not a static thing.

Now, this is where skillful means come in.

To play in the matrix, we have to abide by the matrix’s rules.

And part of those rules are that it’s really helpful to have thoughts, beliefs, emotions, opinions, sense of self, where these things are really critical.

So skillful means is like, okay, knowing that all of this is just an interplay of light, knowing that there is pure awareness and experience that creates this moment, and that everything is really of the same essence of vibration and consciousness that is an ever changing flux.

How do I navigate that?

What do I really want to bring into?

What is the law that governs this?

Well, the law is karma.

Anything that you think, say, or do has to complete itself.

It has to bear its fruit.

Every thought has to come to completion.

Every word has to come to completion.

Every bodily action has to come to completion.

Whether you are the most enlightened sage in the cosmos or whether you are Captain Rumdum of ISIS, like, I don’t care.

You have karma.

The karmic laws apply to everyone regardless of your level of enlightenment.

And so, when we know that and we see as above, so below, when we see that the karmic mechanism is this, right, is our body, speech, and mind.

We cannot escape that as long as we are embodied we will produce karma.

So then we become infinitely responsible right?

Radical acceptance willful surrender, or absolute commitment to radical acceptance is an expression of this skillful means because it really says that like, I am responsible for my karma.

If I am eating bitter fruit right now that is the cause of past thoughts, words, and deeds.

If I want to eat sweet fruit in the future then I better do something different right now.

And so that inspires skillful means.

So prajna, the capacity to see that all the layers of consciousness are emerging in a moment and to be with all of them which means not identifying with any of them including the witness because the witness is just another identity we can take albeit a more skillful one usually than whatever emotion is happening.

So, okay, boom, prajna, wisdom.

Ah, in wisdom, compassion.

In compassion I see the entanglement of all that is as one unfolding essence where each vibratory shift in anything in the entire cosmos is going to affect the quanta of the entire cosmos.

Period.

Because that’s true.

Okay, well, what vibrations am I going to put into the web because those are going to come back to me?

Mmm, skillful means.

Okay, and so in this verse there, that’s kind of where I see it describing the process and instead of being a comma of a field of pure awareness we might want to think of that as like a semi-poem or something.

Can I interrupt for half a second?

I was actually done so you’re not interrupting.

So that still goes back to the question of because you asked a very well, you asked a question and that question was what vibration do I want to put into that web?

That implies you’re making a choice.

Correct.

And so back to the original question there is it a choice or is it not?

Our skillful means are a choice.

So that’s the place That is a choice.

The choice comes into the skillful means we take.

Our practice, so everything that we do here is about facilitating the experience of wisdom.

Well it’s actually about facilitating the experience of pure awareness so that we can have the attainment of non-attainment which is wisdom which grants the experience of compassion so that we can be properly informed about our skillful means.

So Zen training is about being able to simultaneously experience our thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

Man, that’s a big backwards because if you put it that way then like well technically to choice yes but really if you look at it from a logical like no it’s not a choice that’s the option.

You have a compassionate response.

Right.

Why would you have anything else?

It’s a choice that’s a non-choice.

Right.

Which is an answer to the question like yeah you have the choice really but do you?

Yeah.

Well in our bodies do their thing.

Right.

So the wheel of karma is profoundly imbued with inertia and so we can sit there in a field of pure awareness wisely watching the interplay of all of the thoughts, feelings, and emotions happening in the context of our witnessing state.

So no matter how messed up the situation is how much we don’t want it to be this way we can have heartbreaking compassion and then we can watch ourselves be total jerks.

Fair enough.

So skillful means that’s that’s really where it comes in.

That’s where and it’s not just a choice point.

We understand through karma and so transforming a habit getting in there and changing the gears in the mechanism of the universe like sometimes those gears are fairly new they’re fairly superficial you know they’re easy to get to and you’re like oh oh oh you don’t want to set that one off next you want to get to that one right that’s the real and so that one that takes a while to change but then when you change that gear out then you see the whole machine behave differently and our depth meditation and our transpersonal practice allows us to get to everything else you know but we can do it and I don’t know too many people who can work on those deep gears without a pure awareness practice to engage in the investigation the degree of investigation required to really understand the mechanisms of the karma that’s driving the unskillful behavior and then we still get to choose I know that’s not that bad get that one next time around I mean none of us are perfect there will always be another gear in there somewhere that needs attention of some kind over here over here I could go on for a hot minute considering the current state of the country the events that transpired and the reaction to them I almost thought about talking about that today you know and it I mean I might as well let’s pause for a second and invite our online crew to jump in if anyone has anything about our talk because we’re kind of at closing check-in time so if there’s any thoughts to the conversation or to the prompt and Dharma discussion that we’ve been having let’s take care of those first I see Tyson yeah let’s just go around because we’re at the time to go around Tyson Mitra Marie and sorry Robin that’s fascinating there’s a wheel of karma I’ve known you that by that name for a long time we’re in the Zen context it just came out like two or three times that’s fascinating apologies none no apologies necessary huh wow with that apparently that gear is a little deeper than I thought it was okay yes I saw Mitra at DBZ and now I recognize Robin so yeah can you just change out for a new engine and not screw around with the gears and just say okay now I’m enlightened I don’t need to do all that I’ve arrived uh no okay thank you you’re welcome I was shaking my head no as Tyson was asking that there uh only because of the my own practice and realizing how many it’s like untangling this web um I’ll just call it a ball of yarn that the dog took off with trying to get it back together um sort it out I just recognize just in the simplest of things um my grandchildren were here uh Friday and Saturday um and it’s where a thing happens my response to that whether I’m reacting or responding um and it’s it’s layers and layers and layers of work that got me to the place of being able to respond in the way that I do to them and a lot of it um knowing when to pick something up and when to put it down whether it’s worth having any words to or just allowing it so just that and then when you first brought up the topic of you know what topic when you started talking I didn’t realize that that was what I was talking about last night and those are extremes on the one hand but in a lot of in a really oversimplified way they’re the same thing in my mind so that’s my thoughts I’m in thank you thank you for sharing that with us um as long as I get a warrant um yeah I just yeah thinking on the gears theme just recognizing how you have a deeply embedded gear that’s out of control and how much that then colors everything else and so in my experience the more you change out the deep bad bad gears um you can spend more time fixing the little easy ones um I think it’s an amazing uh symphony how it all flows together um you put it so beautifully and yeah I’m so excited that I’m at a point in my life where I completely understand what you’re talking about um what we got it’s just an interesting man you know you look at the current state of the country you know I won’t touch on anyone’s political anything nor on my own because I’m as apolitical as I can possibly be but if you look at the current state of the world what we are facing is just a big problem and I think what you’re saying is that it’s a big problem and I pretty diametrically opposed to all of his policy and everything else but I found myself arguing with people going if only it was a couple inches in the other direction how are you stuck in that mindset of like you could be that and it was an interesting little mindset a few years ago I may have made the same moves I may have prior to some gears being switched out in there being able to look at something like that and go no I sincerely hope that dude’s okay that’s a hard thing to have to go through regardless of who you are and how opposed I am to what you are and it’s an interesting little brief to argue with other people that don’t have those views and it’s a little saddening to see the amount of people that are on the extremes on both sides and don’t even think about it sometimes people I’m looking at ages like 13 to 70 and they’re like that’s a problem and we come back to this to what we do both in our personal practice and our collective practice and go it really is true if the entire world had this mindset it wouldn’t be here it would be an infinitely better place and so I guess I’ll leave it on my sincere hope is that all of us continue to grow both personally and to continue to try and spread some of that light and that compassion in as far of a radius around us as we can because that’s how it starts and hopefully we can at least be a point of light in a ever darkening environment it seems sometimes so that’s all I’ve got so I thank you all for being here for being who you are for doing what you do and I thoroughly enjoy seeing each and every one of you Amen Umi check it in well said thank you let’s go weave our tangled webs have a beautiful day everyone I look forward to seeing you next week