Suffering, Fearlessness, and Karma
*transcript generated by AI
Good morning.
Delightful to have you all practicing today.
It’s good to see some of my favorite peeps.
I have a quick little note here this morning, and then mostly want to turn this over for discussion.
So I’ll try and be brief.
And this is kind of a technical note on practice.
It’s kind of a two-fold message here.
So the purpose of Buddhism is to end suffering.
That’s like our principle of salvation.
The main problem that Buddhism tries to solve is human suffering.
And most people think that, and I think I have a pretty blessed life, I don’t suffer very much at all.
And by and large, that’s true.
And so we have to understand that this is not just about the big things.
This is about the regular existential human process of general dissatisfaction.
So Buddhism is basically saying that as human beings, we are constantly discontent.
Whether our life is really blessed or whether our life is not, we, as organisms, find ways to be discontent.
We’re generally a malcontent group of organisms.
And that causes suffering.
Whether it’s in a big way or a little way, that causes suffering.
Part of the way that causes suffering is that we try and get the thing that we think will make us content.
But the thing never makes us content.
Because as soon as we get the thing that we wanted, then we want something else.
And whether that’s And then we end up doing things.
We end up being subtly coercive, or we end up being subtly manipulative, or we end up pursuing the wrong kind of job that, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever.
Okay, so all these things kind of lend to each other, that end up keeping this cycle going.
And Buddhism is all about ending this cycle.
Early in Buddhist thought, there became a bit of a divide.
If I want to end suffering for myself, it’s actually very easy.
All right.
No offense to the brothers and sisters on the path who are primarily concerned with ending suffering for themselves.
But that’s pretty simple.
It’s pretty straightforward.
Most of us can find ways to spiritually bypass our way to a generally content state of life.
We can meditate, and we can cut out distractions, and we can get rid of things we don’t like, and we can insulate our world until there’s really nothing that causes us any suffering.
All right, and that’s great.
That’s really actually a really noble pursuit, a very good thing to do.
Because in that, you’re typically not causing suffering either.
You’re like, you’re like leaving the system.
Okay.
And so a huge segment of Buddhist practice and Buddhist thought, even within the Zen tradition, is very selfish.
I think it’s really important to recognize that Buddhist practice, we are ending our suffering.
That is a very personal and selfish thing to do, right?
And if you don’t have a significant motivation to end your suffering for yourself, then you’re never going to stick with Buddhist training, because Buddhist training is austere and not particularly fun and somewhat boring, right?
But it’s really effective at ending suffering.
So the other school of thought was that as interconnected beings, there is not really any way that I can end suffering if anyone around me is suffering, right?
And that can be a more sophisticated rationale behind what it means to be a human and have a complex cognitive process.
All of the beings in our own mind, there are frozen parts that are suffering from traumas that we had when we were kids.
There are internal conflicts where we’re like, well, I want my cake, and I want to eat it too, you know, or whatever form that takes.
So there’s all sorts of interpersonal suffering that’s happening within the context of our own mind as our mind disagrees with itself about what we should and shouldn’t do and how we should or shouldn’t live our lives.
Okay.
So even if we just take it that way, it’s a much more sophisticated understanding of what it means to not suffer, and to have a mind system that’s actually unified and cohesive and really on the same page so that there is none of that crap going on internally.
And that requires much more work than a transcendent perspective where you just kind of ignore all that.
And then there’s an even more sophisticated perspective, which understands that as an ecosystem, as a Gaia, as an earth system, we are so interconnected that everything that we do, whether we quote, unquote, leave the system or not, is impacting the rest of the world.
Okay, so if I become fully pacifistic and remove myself from all conflict, well, in a way, I’m enabling conflict by no longer being an active agent and resolving that conflict.
Right.
And so the Zen path fits in this category of basically saying that as long as there is any suffering anywhere, I too will suffer because the whole world is one thing.
The whole cosmos is one thing.
We are all one humanity.
We are all one natural ecosystem.
We are all one consciousness.
And we need to be responsible for that.
And really, that responsibility is selfish, because if it’s all me, then I’m just resolving all of the suffering in me.
The trick though, is that if I can’t tolerate my own suffering, then the way that I resolve the suffering in the world out there is trying to just tell people not to suffer.
Don’t suffer around me.
That’s not okay.
Right.
And so part of our training is to increase our capacity to be uncomfortable.
Right.
That’s part of why Zen training sucks, is that it’s constantly asking you to push the limits of what you can tolerate.
And by investigating phenomenon, by investigating our experience very sharply, we end up being able to endure things that seem absolutely insane.
Like, why would you want to sit 10 hours a day for a week in absolute silence, eating weird vegetarian food?
Right.
I mean, on the one hand, it creates a really blissful, mystical experience, which I’m going to talk about in a second.
But on the other hand, it’s really just training and discipline, because when you can do that, and that’s fun, then having a difficult conversation is no big deal.
Right.
And so our training is about emboldening a sense of fearlessness to face life.
And that’s a key part of what Zen training is all about.
There’s a fearlessness in facing life, our fearless heart.
Okay.
So how does our meditation support this?
Initially, our meditation supports this by saying, sitting like this sucks.
Get used to it, bro.
Right.
And eventually, it doesn’t.
And it’s really comfortable.
Yeah, I can’t wait to get on the cushion.
Right.
And that happens.
And then you end up having these peaks and valleys in your meditative practice, where it’s like, ah, I used to be able to calm my mind, and now I can’t calm my mind.
Right.
And then you trick yourself out.
And then you have this whole psychological warfare going on, where all of a sudden, sitting is really uncomfortable again.
But you know, it’s not because you physically can’t sit, you know, it’s because of it’s a psycho-emotional process.
So then it’s like, can you tolerate your psycho-emotional process enough to allow it to die down and stop feeding it?
Because as soon as you stop feeding it, it dies down, and you go back to the blissful state that you always wanted to be.
Meditation is a non-doing.
If you just stop doing all the stuff that makes you miserable, then you’re not miserable.
Okay, so that’s part of the Samatha practice.
And this is kind of the main thrust of what I wanted to talk about today.
Meditation has two main families.
There’s the Samatha leading to Jhana practice, which is basically where we unify and calm our mind to the point where we enter deep, translate states and have mystical experiences.
Okay, this is a, for me, this is a central and initial practice.
That’s not always true.
There are many Buddhist lineages that drive the paschana, if you’ve ever heard the term drive the paschana.
That’s a state of investigative inquiry into the psychological and physical experience that produces insight.
Okay, and that’s a different category of meditation.
We belong in a lineage that basically says, they’re the same thing, and you have to do both.
Right, so we don’t have the luxury of focusing and becoming specialists on calm-abiding meditation and just going straight into blissed-out trans states.
And we don’t have the luxury of only being able to, or only being invited into intellectual inquiry and deconstruction and analysis to investigate how phenomenon arise and fall away.
Okay, our system is to say that from a state of mystical union and a perfectly calm, clear mind that has transcended all of this stuff, activate your analytical processes and examine the nature of reality.
So that’s really what we’re doing in our meditation training over time.
As you become more sophisticated in meditation practice, that’s the trajectory.
Can I live, can I embody a perfectly serene mind and then activate less serene processes and see how they dance together and watch the dynamic interplay of this glorious light?
Can I watch how pure white light fractals into the myriad colors of our existence and returns to pure white light?
Can I watch that?
Can I examine that?
Can I understand the very nature of the fabric of reality?
Okay, and then can I apply that to my life to end suffering?
Because that’s the whole point.
The point isn’t to be some mystic.
The point isn’t to be able to describe the laws of the cosmos.
The point is to do all that stuff so that you can deal with your life and live it.
And so there’s this whole arc of training that’s, I think, really critical to understand because otherwise, like, why are you here?
Because that’s what we’re doing here.
Now you can get lots of other things out of being in Zen practice and it can do all sorts of wonderful things for us that aren’t its primary purpose, but at the same time, you know, a lot of those other motives are resolved by following the main purpose and the main purpose will end up giving us so many more benefits that than the primary motives that brought us to practice, right?
So every once in a while I like to just go back and say, like, this is what’s available to you by engaging in serious Zen training because sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in, you know, one particular aspect of self-help or one particular situation we’re trying to resolve or one particular emotional pattern that’s really difficult.
We can get caught up in that stuff and forget about what we’re really doing here.
So a little reminder, a little refresher on the general purpose of our training and practice overall, the way that I understand it.
And with that, I’ll put Gavin, gives us about 15 minutes for discussion, which can be based on this topic or whatever is arising.
Thank you.
Floor’s open.
I have a probably pretty simplistic thing going through my head.
This last night, I went for a walk out in the woods on the property.
And in doing so, I scared up a number of turkeys out of their tree.
So I was like, okay, you know, that probably wasn’t so good, but life moves on.
And then now this morning while sitting, I heard a turkey just like calling in horrible distress while it was still dark.
So I, of course, I’m not there.
I don’t know the cause and effect of the whole thing.
But there’s the sense of that I caused the suffering by my presence of being somewhere I shouldn’t be in the dark, creating suffering in the world.
And when I was doing it for my own pleasure, or my own enjoyment and fulfillment, and that Nietzsche, is that the word not creating suffering?
No, that’s impermanence.
What’s the what’s what’s the word for Luca?
No, not that one.
Non harming.
Ahimsa.
Ahimsa.
Yeah.
Just really feeling the how everything we do create suffering.
And how, how incredibly skillful we have to be to be to not be unintentional in creating that suffering.
It’s something I’m struggling with.
Yeah, that’s a beautiful inquiry.
And it’s really important.
So suffering is a psychological additive to changing conditions.
Okay, our practice doesn’t say that we end pain doesn’t say that we end negative experiences doesn’t say that we end death doesn’t say that we end old age or sickness, it says that we resolve the suffering related to those things, which by extension means that we’re not actually ending any part of the life cycle.
We are simply taking out the existential dread that comes from being a cognitively aware being.
Right.
And so Ahimsa and not harming is a commitment to not intentionally cause harm.
Okay.
Well, that’s insane.
In a certain way.
It’s a great vow.
It’s a great commitment.
Please do that.
Ahimsa is probably the number one guiding principle that we should all follow.
However, right?
You’re harming stuff all the time.
Okay.
And in Buddhist cosmology, it’s really important to understand that your karma is a combination of your intent and your action.
Right.
So the intentional component, or the absence of intent in the component is really critical, and how we understand the way that the karma machine works.
Right.
And so, when you are going through a walk through the woods, and you have an interaction with an organism that scares them, like there was no harming in that.
That was not a harmful action.
Right.
Not an intention and not indeed, there was no harm caused.
It was just that particular animal was startled by your presence and ran away.
Okay.
Sometimes when I’m around you, I want to do that too.
Oh, just teasing, just teasing.
Right.
But this, this recognition that karma happens.
Okay.
The law of cause and effect is always happening.
What is the intention that we bring into it?
And what is the actual deed done?
Right.
So the actual deed that happened is when you went for a walk in the woods, whatever happened to that Turkey, you could claim as part of your karma of walking through the woods, but that’s a slippery slope because then you could say that the war in Gaza is your fault too.
Right.
And that’s just doesn’t make sense when we blow it out just a little bit further.
Right.
But it’s almost the same rationale that just our existence creates other things.
Right.
And so it’s really important to slow down and check out what was my intention.
My intention was to go for a walk in the woods.
There’s nothing harmful in that.
Right.
What was the action?
The action was I went for a walk in the woods.
That’s it.
Obviously it gets much more complicated when we’re dealing with like interpersonal conversations and stuff like that.
But most of the time, it really just is that kind of a check.
What did I mean to do and what actually happened?
And since I’m on a roll, what actually happened when we extend out to interpersonal exchange, there’s an impact.
Okay.
And intention and impact are not always the same thing.
And that’s where skillful means come in.
When we have an intention and we take an action and then we see the impact, then we have to revise our means so that over time, our intention comes across clearly, which we can tell by the impact we have.
Right.
And so if we are impacting somebody in a way that is clearly distressing, it doesn’t matter what our intention was.
Because our action created an impact and we got the feedback that our action was unskillful.
A lot of times when we look at this process, we say, well, I meant to be nice.
I intended to do something good.
Right.
It’s like, oh, okay.
Wish in one hand and creep in the other and see which one fills up first.
Right.
Your intention didn’t manifest.
There was something between your intention and your action that made it so that your intention didn’t actually show up.
Right.
So that’s where we get to check that contrast between intention and impact is where we get to refine our skillful means.
So based on that, you could say that my intention on going into the woods was not to startle any turkeys.
Okay.
And if you can figure out a way to go on and walk in the woods and guarantee that you won’t startle any turkeys, then do that.
But until you have a mechanism by which you can manifest that impact very specifically, then you just kind of got to relax a little bit.
Okay.
But if I want to scare them out of their tree, they wouldn’t be on the ground to get eaten by a coyote.
I mean, I can still get stuck there.
Right.
But I mean, what’s to say that something else didn’t scare them out of the tree.
And it was exactly what needed to happen for that coyote to be able to feed its babies.
All right.
All right.
Right.
Take it.
Take it.
Your karma loop just one square bigger in all directions.
And you realize that everything is happening exactly the way that it needs to happen.
And we in our limited intelligence have very little capacity to understand the whole web of life.
Right.
It’s very hard for us to understand our purpose.
But when we and so we need to not be self-centered, because it’s a very self-centered perspective that says, I scared them out of the tree.
So I’m the reason why that coyote ate that turkey.
What?
That doesn’t make any sense.
Right.
So put ourselves in the context of the web of life and realize that there’s something going on out there that makes things happen exactly how they need to happen.
Okay.
Well, that’s weird.
Why did the universe use you to feed a coyote?
No one knows.
And in my understanding, that perspective is very egoistic.
Like, whatever I do in this world, everything happens because of me.
Like everything happens because I do what I do.
Yeah.
Don’t know how that could serve anything, really.
Well, it serves in taking responsibility.
Right.
Because ultimately, we are the we are responsible for our lives.
And so a certain sense, we have to assume that everything that everything that happens in the cosmos is my fault.
The buck stops here.
Right.
So if we take that attitude, then we become radically responsible for our lives.
And that’s a very good thing to do.
But when we end up beating ourselves up because things outside of our control reflect, right, then then that’s insane.
So we have to hold both simultaneously.
I am a minuscule micro drop of the tiniest H2O in the vast ocean of the cosmos, and I’m utterly insignificant.
And the entire universe revolves around me.
Yeah, this perspective is tricky to hold, like, hold both and not get lost in one of those.
Exactly.
And there we have the middle way.
And that’s what it means.
Yeah.
Who knew that talking about turkeys was going to unlock the depths of the Dharma?
We’ve got time for one more inquiry or toss in the bucket around something before we do closing check in if anyone has anything.
I think I’d like to share some kind of gratefulness that I have.
I was on time at home, but then I realized, oh, I lost my belly back where my my money and stuff and credit cards and everything was in.
And so I got a moment of panic.
And really in that very moment, my phone rang.
I found you back.
Wow.
So I went back almost the whole way I was driving by my car and by my by my bike.
Had a lot of sports this morning, so to say.
And I was very, very grateful.
And really, everything was there.
Everything was good.
And it was interesting to watch and see the different layers of of everything that happened, like the very first morning moment when realizing it’s gone like, oh, my gosh, really?
That happened?
Shit.
Did it take someone?
Did it?
Did I just forget it on the place where I left?
Like what?
What?
And then the whole process of what needs to be done to read everything in a second.
I was able to watch my breath.
I was able to watch all my emotions, my body and everything at once when the phone rang and everything like it was very interesting to be aware of all the little things that were happening until the moment I had it back.
And yeah, so so interesting and so interesting also to allow the system to run its own thing in a way and not trying to like stop it from processing things.
Yeah, calming it in a way, but also like, yeah, there is stuff that’s going on.
That’s OK.
So whatever you need to do, do it.
And I think this is the this is a great, great fruit from the practice that I’m able to be aware of such a moment.
Yeah.
So here comes my official going out in the world gratefulness for this person and this this moment and.
Yeah.
I’m happy.
Awesome.
What a delightful morning you’ve had, or I guess early afternoon.
Yeah, sure.
And I mean, and then the delightful moment to take our and come here right in the right in time for to go.
See, if you want to come and if you want to come on right when you didn’t start doing your hand thing, I would have not given everyone else the luxury of rubbing their own face.
So, yeah, look at that.