*transcript generated by AI

Good morning.

Good morning.

Glad to be here with you all on this delightful, whatever it is.

We’ve got some perfect Ohio fall weather here.

It’s about 32 degrees Fahrenheit with lovely frost on the ground and golden leaves, drifting in a pretty steady rain onto the bright green grass against the backdrop of perfectly blue Azure sky.

It’s pretty remarkable.

I remember a time in my life where even on days li ke this, it seemed like the worst day in the universe.

I’m glad that that’s not today.

But it can be, right?

Because we create our own reality.

The lens that we view the world through is so much more powerful than whatever stimulation is being received by our sense organs.

So this idea that there is a sense organ, a sense object, and a sense consciousness is critical to the insight that our practice aims to cultivate.

This isn’t really the main point of my talk today, but it seems like a good place to start.

And so this model of consciousness, I think, is critical to understand.

Sense organ is capable of perceiving some subset of information from the world around us.

Sense object is that perceived information.

It’s not actually saying that there’s an object out there because we don’t really know.

No human actually knows what a tree really is.

But we’re perceiving something from the tree.

Our eyes perceive the light that bounces off of the tree in all of its different ways.

The bark, and the leaves, and the twigs, and the berries, and the whatever.

But that’s not the tree.

So the sense object that our eyes perceive as the sense organ is just the subset of light that can bounce off the tree into our eyes and be perceived by whatever our eyes are capable of receiving.

And so a dog, as far as we understand, primarily sees in hues of yellow and green.

So the way that the light hits their eyes is going to be completely different than the way that the light hits our eyes.

So what our sense organ is capable of receiving dramatically impacts the sense object that we perceive already.

So there’s already this going on.

And then there’s a sense consciousness.

So our sense organ perceives a set of light waves, if we stay with the eye consciousness.

So our eyes are capable of receiving a subset of light frequencies bouncing off of the tree, to continue the example.

And then there’s a sense consciousness that has ancestral memory, that has learned memory, that has all of the conscious impressions that have ever been.

This is our sense consciousness.

And it is our consciousness that gives this particular pattern of information received by the organ meaning.

And so in our consciousness studies and in our insight, we come to understand that there is an eye, an ear, a nose, a tongue, a body and a mind.

There are six sense organs.

And that means that each of those organs has a corresponding set of information it can receive, which is its sense objects.

And further, it has a corresponding set of consciousnesses.

So in our model, each organ has its own consciousness.

And we can think of that like filing cabinets, where like our ears can go to filing cabinets and be like, what does this sound mean?

And our consciousnesses have to have answers.

So if we see a pattern, we will make sense of it.

We will make sense of it.

We will take our best guess at whatever that thing is.

So our consciousnesses hate to serve up, I have no idea what that is.

They feel like they failed in their job when they just go, no idea.

And so what can happen is an unknown sound will get tagged with whatever approximates that sound based on that consciousnesses best guess.

An unknown site will get tagged with the best guess.

And as we mature, we become better at understanding when we’re guessing and when we’re not.

But a lot of times we’re guessing and we don’t think we are.

And this is very important to understand.

So this gives us 18 sense consciousnesses.

And the Heart Sutra tells us that they’re all bullshit.

So from an awakened mind, from the awakened perspective, from the perfection of wisdom, these consciousnesses don’t exist.

These sense organs don’t exist.

These sense objects don’t exist.

In a wisdom perspective, there actually is just pure potentiality.

And so wisdom is this capacity to be aware of a state of consciousness before any of this activates.

So that’s what wisdom really is.

And the Heart Sutra is trying to point us past all of these distinctions, past all these relative modes of knowing, and to something that’s fundamentally unknowable.

But it’s purely experiential as a blissful state of pure consciousness, which is wisdom.

And in that wisdom, we gain all this insight.

To round out our consciousness model in Zen and what we’re gaining insight in, there’s also the Manas and there’s the Alaya-Vijnana.

And so basically what happens is all of this 15 organ-object-consciousness things that are happening as realms of experience get stitched together.

Let me be more precise.

Because if I’m going to do this, I might as well do it in a precise manner.

That all drops into what’s called the Storehouse Consciousness.

And the Storehouse Consciousness pulls on all of our collective memory, whatever we know about anything.

And sometimes that’s ancestral, sometimes that’s personal, it doesn’t really matter.

That’s all in the Storehouse.

And whatever’s in the Storehouse really perfumes those individual consciousnesses.

That’s what gives them their flavor.

So for example, if our storehouse is full of depressed perfume, then all of our consciousnesses are going to see things in kind of a grayer, pessimistic way.

Because they’re all being perfumed with depression.

If our storehouse is fundamentally anxious, and it’s pulling on a whole bunch of anxious memories, then it’s going to perceive all of these things through a lens of anxiety.

If our storehouse is perfuming with happy juju, then we can step in a pile of dog dookie and be like, Wow!

What are the odds that in this giant yard I stepped in a pile of dog dookie?

And so that’s the function of the storehouse, is to provide the perfume and the overall context by which each of our consciousnesses are interpreting the meaning that they had with their particular interaction with a sense of object.

So there’s this subtle seventh layer of consciousness that kind of exists in the space between all of this interaction.

And that’s where we develop an ego structure.

And this ego structure is basically stitching together all of this independent information into a whole, into a whole cloth experience that’s served up as an object to an I structure that says, I am experiencing this.

And that this is this whole vast web that was put together.

So the seventh layer of consciousness produces a really miraculous thing, where all of these independent layers of sense experience are getting stitched together into one big picture.

And this is happening thousands and thousands of times a second.

Our eyes believe images to be a continuous picture at about 60 frames per second.

Our mind is producing its reality at something like 4,600 times per second.

So the resolution and the amount of information that’s being stitched together is truly phenomenal.

It’s totally staggering.

And so then we get this really delightful series of discrete moments that we experience as an I, that we say, this is my experience.

And the relationship we take to that goes into the storehouse consciousness to perfume the future.

So our Zazen practice is inviting us to take a seat in Prasanna Paramita, into the womb of wisdom, to drop all of this relative activity so that you can examine it.

Shanta Vipassana, I talked about this, I think, last week, maybe the week before.

But it’s the synthesis of stilling the mind to a point of pure awareness, and then investigating this process that provides the insight of our Zazen practice that allows us to eradicate suffering from our lives, because we recognize that there is no such thing as suffering.

There fundamentally is no such thing as suffering when we see that all that is happening is this cosmic web of cause and effect according to the perfuming that we give a certain moment.

And that’s where Jhumpa would say that we finally get the joke, that we are creating our own reality.

And if we’re creating a reality that sucks, well then just stop it.

If you don’t like your script, fire your script writer and hire another one, because all of it is available to you.

And you don’t actually have to take the stitching together process that we call ego so seriously, because you understand what it is.

He calls it the divine figment of imagination, which I think is appropriate.

It’s a really useful divine figment of imagination though, so I think it’s important to give it its due.

And so I’m talking about all of this stuff, because if we don’t understand this, then the Zen training becomes ineffective, because we don’t really know what the insight we’re trying to get is.

How does this produce an end of suffering?

It produces an end of suffering because we become familiar with the mechanics of consciousness, and we become capable of manipulating those mechanisms.

And that’s how we reconstruct our ego identity, and that’s how we reconstruct the world that we live in, and that’s how we end up being able to live as Buddha, as awakened ones, and consequently develop skillful beings, and then become bodhisattvas, reincarnated to do good in the world.

So in hollow bones, in this system of Zen, our training is multifaceted.

And one of the things I want to bring into our Open Door Zen Container is a regular naming of a practice focus for the week.

I think it’s very important that we don’t isolate practice to the two hours on Sunday.

This is a specific container that does a lot of beautiful things for us.

So in hollow bones, we have the Mando Zen Koan practices, we have the five training elements, we have our ritual form.

These are the basic components of our life, of our Zen practice and training.

And so what I’d like everyone to consider for this week is the five training elements, specifically, in the sense that they exist, and you can use them to moderate your life.

So I think everyone here has a Sutra book and a Mando manual.

They are written very differently in the two texts.

So what we have handed down from Ajahn Po is not consistent, although it is coherent.

And we have to read them together and put them together in order to truly understand what each mirror is.

And I wrote rather extensively around the five practice mirrors on the Open Door Zen Facebook page, so you can check that out as well.

But I’d like to invite everyone to spend a week just re-familiarizing yourself with these training elements.

Because when we have a very mature Zen practice, these mirrors, these elements are active all the time, and they’re active in an inner component and in an outer component.

And this is the last thing I’m going to say before I open it up.

The inner component is a way for us to work from a mind over matter perspective.

It’s saying that when I transform something within the way I view the world, the world out there changes in a discernible way.

So we work towards wisdom, compassion, and skillful means from the inside out.

But then we can also work from wisdom, compassion, and skillful means from the outside in.

So if we look at our mission statement and our purification, we see these two ways.

Our mission statement is very much an inside-out way of being.

And our purification is an outside-in way of being.

All the unskillful actions that we produce, we are going to recondition through meditation and action.

So we’re going to honestly name where we’re unskillful, and then we’re going to commit to doing something more skillful next time, and we’re going to stay on that until we actually do the skillful thing.

And that will change the interior of our world.

That will change how we see.

That will change the way that the storehouse is perfumed, which will change the way that our consciousnesses are making sense of their experience, which will change the way that we behave, which will change the way that our consciousnesses are experiencing things, which will change the way they perfume the storehouse consciousness.

So we have to see how it comes in.

So this seeding and perfuming, cause and effect, is simultaneously and mutually interactive.

That’s what it means to be in a non-dual tradition.

We don’t take one perspective over the other.

Matter over matter and matter over mind are mutually informing each other.

This is a little bit different than a lot of traditions that say causation only happens one way.

We believe that causation flows in both directions.

So anyway, this is a longer thing than I originally intended.

So hopefully it was useful.

I do like to invite Asanka to look at the five training elements in the Manda Manual, the Sutra book, and on the Open Doors Facebook page if you have Facebook.

If you don’t, let me know and I’ll send them to you.

And then we’ll talk next week about what we get out of that.

So next week is going to be much more discussive.

It’s going to start with, what did you all discover by examining the five training elements?

I’m telling you ahead of time.

Also hold me accountable if I start to talk about something else.

I’ll say, Dan, stop, we’ve got to talk about five training elements.

So thank you all very much for your attention and for your willingness to engage in this Zen training.

I’m grateful to be on the path with you.

And I believe I left us about 13 minutes for discussion.

I just realized I committed a faux pas and I pointed my pointing sticks at the Buddha.

Don’t want to do that.

Well, if no one else is talking.

I think that’s the key point there is it goes both directions.

So it’s not just an inside-out thing.

It could very much be an outside-in thing.

And I personally think that outside-in can be a bit more effective in changing that storehouse container.

You can get so wrapped up in your own head and you’re like, oh, well, everything is, this is hard and that’s hard.

And like, oh, I’m just going to slug through it.

And then you get that kind of depressive mentality that’s hard to get out of.

And sometimes you need external stimulus in order to get out of that.

And so if you take that like, oh, hey, I had this interaction with X person that sucked.

All right, let’s do better next time.

And then maybe you do a little better next time.

And then it sucks a little less.

Then maybe you do a little bit better the next time.

And it sucks a little less.

And that’s the evidence of realizing that you’re on a positive path in whatever little minuscule area that might be.

That then becomes the positive impetus to change the way that you view everything else from an internal standpoint.

You’re like, oh, hey, this thing happened and it’s getting better.

And that means it can get better.

And so if that can get better, then this can get better.

And then this can get better.

And then this can get better.

And that’s how everything starts.

Because if you just go, okay, well, yeah, like I’m super down or I’m super anxious or I’m super fearful or I’m super depressed or I’m super whatever, like, oh, no, no, now I’m not.

If it was that easy, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

And so I think that’s the key is that recognizing all of those little actions that we take in a positive direction, regardless of how small that action is.

Thousands of small actions or hundreds of small actions or dozens or tens are still made up of one small action after another.

And as long as you’re in a positive direction, you can make a positive change.

That’s a thing.

Recognizing that is what then goes the other direction internally and makes you go, yep, nope, it’s getting better.

We’re good.

So it’s good.

That’s a great way to look at it, personally, I think.

Early on in Zen Jin’s training, we had a day where I think the result of the conversation, I won’t share the contents of the conversation, but the result of the conversation was I had her write a post-it note that said, pick a fucking tree.

And she just put it right there in front of her desk, and that was her call to action.

Just start.

Just start doing something.

Just start.

Right?

Because once we’re walking, we can change direction.

But as long as we’re standing still, we’re always in the same place.

And that can be revolutionary.

True.

Sometimes that first step’s the hardest one to take.

Almost always.

Yeah.

Inertia’s a bitch.

The first step is the hardest one to take, whatever direction it happens to be.

It changes.

Not what our organism prefers.

Actually, ironically enough, I think that the step in the positive direction is significantly harder than the step in the negative direction.

Totally.

One is uphill and the other is definitely downhill.

Downhill, unfortunately, tends to be easier.

That’s why we have self-assured self-discipline, which we’re going to talk about later today.

I would like to add to that is the experience of plateaus or, like, brick walls, and we feel like we’re not progressing.

And there are often moments when we think about quitting, whatever we’re going to do, because we’re thinking it’s not working.

And having also the experience of, no, wait a moment, just keep going.

Because life isn’t linear.

Life isn’t exponential in that way.

So it is, but on minor scales, it might be sometimes a turnaround and sometimes just somewhere else.

But overall, yes, it goes in one direction.

Yeah, so for that, I pretty much love just the concentration meditation practice, where there are times when it’s easy to stay at the breath.

And then there are times when you’re lucky when you’re still at the breath while you breathe out.

Because you were with your breath by the inhalation.

And creating that space of acceptance and of knowing that the intention to come back over and over to do what you want to do, to act in alignment with your highest values and with what you know so far.

Because you always will actualize what you know.

Just keep going.

That’s such a great point.

Who’s the little fish?

Finding Nemo.

Just keep swimming.

Yeah, Tori.

Swimming, swimming.

You’re a parent when everything turns into a Disney movie.

Did I see Robin want to unmute?

Not particularly, but I can ramble about something.

No, I’m just feeling appreciative for this talk.

So, yeah, sometimes there’s just that external change perspective.

Because I’m all into the little minutia of wildlife around here.

Last week it was turkeys.

And this week it was bees.

My bees did not make it.

The wasps, you know.

And it broke my heart.

Absolutely broke my heart.

And this morning I was shocked by how deeply that kept coming back.

Because I learned so much from these beautiful little creatures.

And this talk helped me remember that that’s a gift.

And to have that experience and have a greater depth of understanding of my fellow life.

That comes with beauty and sadness and death.

And it’s all one.

Can’t escape that.

So we might as well embrace it.

Enjoy stepping in the dookie.

Thank you.

Marie from Columbus, Ohio.

It’s a beautiful day here.

I just want to say thank you to each one of you.

For me.

And then, oh, my goodness.

Ryan.

For your perspective on it.

Perfect.

Robin, absolutely.

Thank you all.

I’m in.

Check in.

So, presentation.

Okay.

The post Reality, Consciousness, and Zen Training appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*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.

The post Suffering, Fearlessness, and Karma appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

Good morning, I’m delighted to practice with everyone today on a fall day that’s sunny and rainy at the same time.

One thing that struck me today was, you know, I do something a little bit unique and different with brocades, and the last brocade is Surrender, and we do it three times, and that in itself is not necessarily standard, although some people do it three times, some people do it more, some people do it less, right?

But we add these phrases, or I add these phrases, Absolute Commitment, Radical Acceptance, Woeful Surrender, okay?

These are mantras, in a way, instructions that I received from Dung Po, and for me there are three components to Surrender, there are three parts of Surrender, and we see it in the process of a no-shout as well, but really what it boils down to is, what does it take to live this life in the world, as householders, as people who have bills to pay, and families to have relationships with, and houses to take care of, and X, Y, Z, and all the things, right?

Well, we get in our own way all the time, we find all sorts of excuses on how we can separate our spiritual life from our daily life, and we convince ourselves that it’s gotta be hard, and it has to be an extra thing, and there’s stuff that we gotta do, and if we’re not doing these things, then we’re not practicing, and we’re not being spiritual, and we get ourselves all worked up in this cycle of recrimination and dualism, instead of understanding that life is practice, and what we train in the Zendo is really just training for life, putting things back just so, that’s a practice we do in the Zendo that when we take it to our home, makes our whole home a Zendo, right?

Chanting, chanting with our whole body, well that’s the skillful use of language to create a reality that we can abide in, right?

So then every word that we say is a magical spell, doesn’t have to be some foreign mumbo-jumbo to be a magical spell, your everyday English is a magic spell, right?

And so we have these teachings, or where I heard them from, and the first is absolute commitment.

And what does that, so what does that mean?

How does absolute commitment come into a no-shout, how does absolute commitment come into living a Zen life as a householder?

Most people think that it means like, a really rigid sense of discipline, and that like, I’m going to set a practice schedule, and I’m going to do these things on these days, and I’m not going to waver from it, and if I waver from it, then I’m a dirtbag who can’t practice and I should just give up forever, and we get into these really messed up cycles.

That’s not what absolute commitment is.

Absolute commitment is just saying that I’m absolutely committed to leading this life.

I’m absolutely committed to practicing Zen, okay?

And if we take the jargon out, Zen’s a jargon word, practicing Zen, what does practicing Zen mean?

Practicing aliveness.

I’m absolutely committed to living my fucking life.

That’s what I’m doing, and I’m not going to let anything get in the way of living my life.

There is no childhood trauma.

There is no current financial stress.

There is no ongoing political issue.

There is no ongoing social drama that will stop me from living my life.

I’m committed to being alive, goddammit, right?

Absolute commitment to being alive.

That’s not so hard, is it?

You’re already trying not to die every day.

It’s basically the same thing, but instead of focusing on not dying, you focus on being alive, and that makes a world of difference.

Okay, so we’ve got the absolute commitment part.

I absolutely commit to living my life, and I’m living my life to the fullest, living my life with gusto and passion and, all right, life.

Life is delicious, and life sucks ass, right?

It does.

There are parts of life that just suck, and this is where we get radical acceptance, okay?

It’s easy for us to accept all sorts of wonderful things in our lives.

We love accepting bright, sunny days.

We love accepting sweet, connecting conversations and delicious meals.

We love accepting when our bank account has more money in it than we need to spend.

These are the easy things to accept, but what is radical acceptance?

Radical acceptance is accepting the fact that sometimes life is not so rosy, but it’s still aliveness.

There’s a quality to aliveness that includes everything.

It does.

It includes difficult conversations.

It includes hard choices.

It includes all that we are, all that we ever have been, and all that we ever will be, right?

So absolute commitment to being alive demands a radical acceptance of what aliveness is, and aliveness is all the stuff.

It’s all the things.

It’s dreary, cold, rainy days when your body aches and the last thing you want to do is go to work.

It’s feeling that moment of, and churning it into, oh, right?

And I say this in a ridiculous way because if we can’t get the fact that it’s just us making choices about how we relate to our world, then we’re stuck forever.

There are no external circumstances that dictate how you live your life.

It is just you having a relationship to your life, and this is what radical acceptance does for us.

We receive all of the gifts of life.

We take them all in.

All of the gifts of life, right?

Some gifts are bad gifts.

People have given us bad gifts in our lives.

As a recipient of those gifts, we get to choose by radically accepting everything, oh, I thank you, right?

We get to say, hmm, what shall I do with this gift?

We get to re-gift it.

We get to put it in the trash.

We get to recycle it.

We get to recognize it as a valuable contribution to our life and put it on a shelf and praise it and gladly embrace it.

So many options, but it’s really just a choice about how you will relate to your life, and you can’t relate to your life if you’re rejecting it.

And as a little trick, as a script flip, we’ve got to remember that you can’t reject anything you haven’t received.

So if you’ve already got it, life already gave it to you, so your denial and rejection of it is just kind of hilarious because it’s already in your field of experience.

You already have it.

So stop doing that and just start being like, oh, this is my life, what am I going to do with it?

And then we have willful surrender, willful surrender.

This is probably the trickiest one, okay?

Willful surrender is an invitation to recognize that no is yes.

Our aesthetic practice, our denial, our form, our absolute commitment and radical acceptance basically demand that we say no to all of our superficial egocentric perspectives, okay?

We have to choose to give up the rigidity of a specific self so that we can live through life with wisdom and compassion and skillful means.

I’m going to take a minute to talk about those three terms in a second.

But this willful surrender, this notion, this understanding that it is my own, my own egg that gets in the way of the first two things, right?

It is my own contraction.

It is my own resistance to life.

That creates the problems, okay?

Now that doesn’t mean that when we stop resisting life, there aren’t problems we have to deal with.

It just means that we aren’t creating problems where there is no suffering, right?

So it’s like when you try and force something into a space that’s not big enough for it, the container has to get destroyed.

So when we are contracted in a rigid ego identity, we are creating a small container.

And life is a vast phenomenon that is trying to fill us up, okay?

And so the stronger we clench, we’re basically just creating a pipe bomb.

And eventually the pressure will explode us, okay?

And our willful surrender is the key by which we can expand that container.

And now life flows through us, and we are life flowing.

And now we’re practicing Zen, we’re practicing aliveness, because there is nothing that we’re resisting.

There’s nothing we’re refusing to accept.

And once we accept things, we can have relationships to it, okay?

And this is where I just want to briefly mention the three terms that we hear so much, wisdom, compassion, and skopel means, because they’re woefully misunderstood.

Wisdom is a transcendent perspective, okay?

What that means is that you’re not identified with whatever you’re experiencing.

Wisdom sees things in terms of cause and effect and change, and it’s a very impersonal look at, well, this is the cosmic web of life.

I don’t need to be a person to have any opinion about what’s going on.

That’s irrelevant.

The cosmic web of life is.

Wisdom is the capacity to see that.

That’s it.

That’s it.

It’s all wisdom is.

It’s a transcendent perspective of non-identified awareness of the cause and effect that is ruling existence.

Okay.

Compassion.

Compassion is a spiritual longing for all beings to experience harmony with the divine and to live lives of well-being.

That’s what compassion is.

Compassion is not being nice.

If I hear another Zen practitioner tell me that to be compassionate means that you have to like work in a fucking soup kitchen, I’m going to go insane.

That’s not what compassion is.

Compassion is a spiritual longing for every being, sentient or insentient, in the cosmos to realize its own divine nature and to live a life of well-being.

That’s what compassion is.

And that is why skillful means sometimes is, no, you’re not allowed to do that.

I will not accept that.

Okay.

Because if compassion means the other thing, then there’s no room in skillful means to do things that are not nice.

But sometimes what skillful is exactly something that wouldn’t be considered nice.

And so skillful means is looking at a situation with transcendent perspective and with a sincere desire for every being to attain their own divinity and their own well-being.

And then within that equation being like, okay, how do I wiggle this web?

Whatever I am bringing into existence has an opportunity to tweak things a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit.

We get to make choices.

We get to put karmic effects in motion through the causes we generate by our thoughts, words, and deeds.

We get to take responsibility for that.

And if we have a transcendent perspective on this cosmic web of cause and effect, and we have a sincere desire for all beings to experience their divinity and the wellness of oneness with their essential nature and the flux and flow of all that is, then our skillful means takes on infinite variety because every being needs supported in some other way.

Right?

And we don’t care anymore.

It’s not about me.

There’s no me involved.

Just cause and effect.

Right?

And we go back to absolute commitment.

Right?

Because to say there’s no me involved is just cause and effect is a really committed way of being, which requires a lot of radical acceptance about what the machine is doing, which requires a lot of willful surrender about what we wish the machine was doing or what we think the machine should be doing or how we would like the machine to be sometime in the future.

Got to give all that up.

Otherwise we’re not really seeing what’s here and we’re not really truly for the well-being of all or for the well-being of me and the well-being of me almost always necessitates some less well-being for something else.

But when everything is ourselves, when we really live in a place of oneness, then what’s good for everybody becomes eminently clear.

The win-win scenario is always playing out when we stop thinking that we have to get something out of life.

Anyway, I’ve talked for a long time, but that’s what came up today.

So thank you very much for your attention and your listening.

We appreciate you all.

There was about 13-ish minutes for discussion to speak to whatever’s arising.

Floor is open.

My first question would be, you talked about the explosion and the expansion.

What do you think, if we can change that?

So was your explanation really that when we change our attitude to the life that we’re not anymore need to explode because we just can’t expand?

Or is there always a kind of destruction needed?

So what’s the difference here?

So anything that is brittle will be destroyed.

So when water freezes, it becomes ice.

Ice can be broken up.

So when we create our sense of identities, our freezing water, we’re frozen.

And as long as we are not frozen, then we flow.

And that flow is just an ongoing expression of life.

And in this case, it doesn’t necessarily need to be a dramatic, destructive moment.

But there’s a constant transformation.

So nothing is ever around long enough to have solidified enough to have to become destroyed because it’s constantly evolving.

Great picture.

It’s like ice and water.

And I mean, it’s just perfect that you brought up this topic today.

Because I’m so happy to join the Dharma Talk, but I wasn’t here for the training period.

And it was interesting because I usually don’t like to not be here for the training period, for practice period.

But then my decision was, no, something like what you just said, no, I’m practicing all the time.

And when I decide, I prioritize to be a little longer with my friends here in Germany.

And this is what I choose to do for my commitment.

I still felt this, oh, shit, I want to sit with you guys.

But then I go, no, you know, yeah.

And then the happy flow came, like, oh, wow, I can make it.

I can make it come here.

I’m not saying it gets less over time, this attachment to what it should be or whatever.

That’s just beautiful.

And I give the other 10 minutes to the other participants.

Glad you were able to join us.

How do we remind ourselves?

I’m sorry.

That’s all right.

We’ll just make sure we come back.

I’m sorry I didn’t see you.

Go ahead, Cindy.

I was just wondering how we remind ourselves to stay in this space.

Remind ourselves to stay in what space?

Alive.

So it’s the pain.

When we become sensitive to it, when we’ve had periods of aliveness and we start to shut down, we start to contract, we start to freeze, things don’t feel good.

And the faster we notice that, the faster we’re getting the message, hey, you’re not flowing with life anymore.

You’re resisting, you’re fighting, you’re refusing to look, you’re not paying attention.

You’re no longer living on purpose.

You’re denying, you’re suppressing.

You’re not being authentic.

You’re not living in integrity.

That hurts.

It sucks.

We notice an increase in anxiety, an increase in depression, an increase in lethargy, an increase in procrastination, an increase in distracted behaviors, right?

An increase in addictions to our phones or substances or whatever.

Like, it feels bad.

We’re eating more.

We’re not exercising.

And so the sooner we get the message, ugh, I don’t feel very good.

That’s the divine’s way of slapping you upside the head and saying, like, do you want to start, like, enjoying the pool that you’re floating in?

Yeah.

So for me, that’s the big key is when things feel bad, it’s because I’ve contracted.

And then we go, okay, well, what is that?

Where am I contracting?

Why am I contracting?

What do I need to do about this scenario?

I don’t know what to do.

Thank you.

Recognizing that my own ignorance in radical acceptance of what my understanding of what radical acceptance means or what I thought it meant, not recognizing for way too long that I would have a choice of what to do with the gift.

It didn’t mean having to hold on to it and take it in and keep it there, whether I wanted to or not.

So learning that I can rip, that one goes.

That’s been huge.

Then less of a need to explode.

Yeah.

Yeah, setting down, letting go of rigidity.

It’s been huge.

Thank you for the reminder.

I would like to add something here, because I saw you, Robin, how you moved your hand like throwing something away that was gifted to you.

I don’t know if that’s applicable here, but I learned something from constellation processes, that when we have, for example, there is this, we carry something that’s not ours, then there is a method to say, wait a moment, maybe that’s yours, and you turn to this character and give it to this character.

You would never throw this gift before their feet.

You would never tip those, but you would give it always with respect and care.

And just seeing this gesture of, ah, give it away, feels for me that, yes, there is this choice of I can decide if I take it or give it away, but there is also, for me at least, there is a feeling of it’s not like, in a way, integrated, that I really know why I’m giving it, where I give it.

So, I would say, even though we don’t like it, there is also practice in the way we not take it on or give it to some other place.

And that’s still our part.

And so, I don’t know, maybe it’s very specific, but I just felt that and felt it important to share this.

Maybe, Ubi, you have something to add to that.

Oh, I do.

So, what you’re saying is totally beautiful, right?

Because our actions are our karma.

We’re the cause of the next effect, right?

So, when we live in a container, when we live in this container, we recognize that we are incredibly powerful beings who are creating our world with each moment of our thought, word, or deed, okay?

And so, we must take incredible accountability for what we think, say, and do, okay?

But the trick, or not the trick, but the deep, deep, deep teaching, one of the reasons why I’m so iconoclastic and irreverent is to help break down the idea that things should be a certain way.

That you need to always give this gift back to the person with love and respect.

Creates a confining structure that denies, sometimes you just go, ah, fuck you!

That energy is alive, and it is fine.

It is fine sometimes to receive a gift from somebody that’s a steaming pile of shit and just chuck it on the fucking wall.

Now, that will have karma.

Of course it will.

It might mean that you have to scrape that off the wall.

That’s why I don’t like doing the spaghetti test where you chuck it against the wall to see if it sticks.

I don’t like that because I’ve got to clean it up and it’s annoying.

But, if we put ourselves in a belief structure where that’s not an option, then we’re denying part of life.

So yes, we must take radical accountability for what we think, say, and do because that is the world we are creating.

Sometimes what we think, say, or do needs to be that.

We need to create the karma of a violent reaction.

That person needs to see us so thoroughly reject their gifts so that they can get the wake-up call.

So that we can leave the steaming pile of poo on the floor for them to step in.

How do you like that, bitch?

It’s all okay.

And it’s not okay in the sense of vindictive vengefulness.

It’s that life includes all of these energies.

And to deny or to repress by some sort of preconceived notion of what it means to be sweet and gentle and respectful.

That’s the freaking patriarchy shoving us into a box so that other people can maintain power over us.

No.

No.

Your teaching is absolutely beautiful.

But this point, I think, is very, very essential for us to take in as Zen practitioners embracing all of life.

Good times.

Good times.

All right.

Yeah.

Juicy.

Juicy.

So let’s go ahead and have our closing check-in.

The post Absolute Commitment, Radical Acceptance, Willful Surrender. appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

Yeah, it’s a delightful path for practice, right?

Zen is a beautiful structure because it comes down to such fundamental principles that it accommodates any relative reality, any individual perspective, any individuality is accommodated because your individual nature is created out of these universal principles.

And Zen is basically a practice of discovering the universal principles behind the way everything works.

And then once you get those, then you can make whatever numerous adjustments you want to make.

Or you can say, oh, nope, I don’t want to make any adjustments.

I’m good just the way I am, thank you very much.

And if you have a relationship with a Zen teacher, they would probably challenge that perspective.

But that’s a different Dharma talk.

I can’t entirely leave it there.

Part of the reason for that is because life is evolution.

And when we think we got it and we’re static, then we’re denying the life impulse to evolve.

So this is why our practice, part of the reason why we do the exact same thing every single time is so that you can become minutely better at it forever.

If you change your practice regularly, you can notice how much you improve very quickly, but you never can actually attain perfection because you’re not making the small micro-evolutions over time.

And so what happens in the arc of Zen training is that you come in and it’s new.

And everything’s kind of hard and confusing.

You don’t really know how to do kin-hen.

You don’t really know how to sit well.

You don’t really know how to meditate.

You don’t really get all the instruments and you don’t really know the service.

So you get this deluge that if it doesn’t scare the shit out of you and make you never come back, you eventually get excited about learning.

And then you get to a point where you know it and you can come in and you can do it mindlessly.

And then if you have a good sangha around you, they’re going to start nitpicking the shit out of you so that you start to grow and evolve again and you discover this love of micro-evolution and these infinitely recursive cycles of just seeing, if my foot was just a little bit more this way when I stood up, then my bow could be that much more elegant.

And that becomes like the most deliciously delightful discovery.

And then when we take that into our lives, then we adopt a whole lifestyle of continuous evolution.

And now we’re in accord with the idea that life is evolving.

Life is unfolding.

There is no static fixed position that you can hold.

The idea of making a decision five years ago and still doing the exact same thing today without questioning it becomes completely absurd because you’re different, the world’s different, your situation is different, the people you’re talking to are different.

And that really creates a very different quality of life and well-being than what we get when we try and lock things down and keep it the same.

I just jumped into a totally separate Dharma talk right there.

Yeah, because it’s all one, baby.

All right.

And with all that said, thank you all very much for your practice and training today.

I’m deeply grateful for the time together.

The post Training to Accord with Life Unfolding appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

Good morning.

Thank you all for practicing today.

Here in Colombiana, we have a brisk morning that is turning into a beautiful, warm, sunny fall day.

So it’s rather delightful weather here.

Which actually makes me really want to open the door, but we’ll just leave it be for today.

So, um, I wanted to start today, or I wanted to pick up a line from the Tao Te Ching, which I’m translating.

Those of you who know what I’m translating is entitling it, Weaving the Way, or Weaving the Virtuous Way, or something like that, you know, work in progress.

But this particular verse opens with a stanza that I find very much encapsulates one of the key insights and realizations and challenges of Zen practice.

So I’ll read the verse in total, but we’re really only going to talk about the first couple lines.

Superior integrity, this is the verse, okay?

Superior integrity is not virtuous.

This is how it has integrity.

Inferior integrity does not lose virtue.

This is how it lacks integrity.

Integrity is inaction and surrender.

Virtue is doing and acquiring.

Compassion acts with surrender.

Righteousness acts with forcefulness.

Propriety acts, and when no one responds, drags them along against their will.

Therefore, neglect the Tao, and virtue follows.

Neglect virtue, and compassion follows.

Neglect righteousness, and propriety follows.

Propriety, a veneer of sincerity, leading to instability.

Foreknowledge, a flower of the Tao, leading to foolishness.

Therefore, release that, and hold to this.

So the verse itself lends to extensive commentary, and if you’re really interested in that, then that will be on the website and substack tomorrow.

But today, the opening lines, right?

Superior integrity is not virtuous.

That is how it has integrity.

Inferior integrity does not lose virtue.

This is how it lacks integrity.

I think it’s a wonderful, wonderful way to describe our practice.

So what does this mean, okay?

When we’re talking about superior integrity not being virtuous, and thereby having integrity, what we’re saying is that integrity and virtue are kind of like two sides of a coin.

And virtue, in the worldview of the Tao Te Ching, is kind of a preconceived notion of how things should be, of what right is, of a particular moral stance.

So to be virtuous is a really clearly defined quality.

It’s predetermined what virtue will be, okay?

And this is how it’s an acting and a doing.

I am the creator of virtue in the world, and I will go out, and I will act, and I will do the virtuous things, right?

It’s a very clearly defined position that then gets held by an individual as they go about their lives.

And it’s actually a really good thing, right?

It’s good to be virtuous.

No one will argue with that.

The Tao Te Ching isn’t arguing against that, okay?

But they’re saying that integrity is not virtuous, and that’s how it has integrity.

What does that mean?

Integrity is a complete alignment with who you are in the moment, where your inner and your outer are completely integrated as you flow with life, okay?

And so sometimes we have like these base impulses that are not very virtuous, and it’s very good to hold to those virtues and to suppress those base impulses and act out of virtue, right?

But this is an inferior form of integrity.

We would still call that integrity.

It’s an integrity with our virtues, right?

But it’s an inferior form of integrity because there is a war within.

We are suppressing or cutting off a part of ourselves in order to act out this virtue, right?

And so it’s an inferior form of integrity from the integrity that’s being spoken out here, which is that when our naturalness is virtuous and we are completely aligned within ourselves, our heart, our mind, our action, our speech are all in alignment, well now we have true integrity and there can be inner peace, right?

And so what we’re tasked with doing in this practice is finding those places where virtue is not natural for us.

When we feel the discord of insecurity or anger or self-protection or whatever, wanting us to behave in one way, even though we know that it’s really not the best thing to do, right?

And our job is to do the work on the interior, to do the work in our hearts and in our minds so that we can actually be in integrity within the context of a virtuous life.

So that virtue becomes entirely natural and spontaneous because all of the other parts of us that want to do non-virtuous things have been dealt with, have been integrated, have been served, have been loved, have been reformed, have been restructured.

And what I love about this verse in particular is that it goes on to give a very clear guideline on how we can assess where we are in that process, you know?

So propriety, everyone knows somebody who’s very proper, right?

They don’t even know why they’re telling you to do what they’re doing, but they do it that way and therefore you have to do it that way.

And if you don’t, then you’re, you know, insert whatever consequences they want to put in, but they’re just forcing a way of life onto themselves and onto others, right?

So this is propriety in our worldview, right?

And then there’s righteousness, which is like one step above that, which is like, no, this is the right way to do it and I know why we should do it this way.

And if we don’t do it this way, there are consequences.

And so I’m going to make you do it that way too because I know that it’s the right thing to do.

It’s morally justifiable and those consequences are bad enough where I need you to do it too, right?

And now that you understand, you’re going to want to do it too, right?

So righteousness is a step up from propriety because there’s more context, there’s more sense of understanding, there’s more purpose, there’s more structure, there’s a sense of persuading people into the right way and not just forcing the right way, but it’s still very righteous, right?

And then the next step up from that is compassion, right?

And compassion acts with surrender, right?

And so that’s a little bit more like, hey, I know that doing it this way is really hard and for you this feels like a really challenging task.

So how can we resource you to be able to feel more comfortable doing it this way?

What do you need?

How can we help you?

So compassion still holds a correctness to it and isn’t laissez-faire in the sense that anything goes, but it’s more oriented on what do you really need in order for this to feel good to you, for you to be able to do this thing, right?

So it’s like a next step.

And then we have virtue and virtue is an acting and doing that’s very close to integrity and it’s kind of like saying, I know this is really hard, I know you don’t really want to, I know you think this should be otherwise, and that’s all true.

We have work to do to make life a little bit easier, a little bit better so that you have more resources, but damn it, you’re going to do it anyway because it’s the right thing to do and we both know it’s the right thing to do and this is just how it’s got to be if we want to be integrity with ourselves, if we want to live according to our values.

So however you feel about it, that’s all great, but you know it doesn’t really matter how I feel about it because we got to do the right thing, right?

And that’s actually a very virtuous attitude, right?

Is to show up in the world according to our principles regardless of how we feel about it, but in there is a lack of integrity because there is a part of us that doesn’t really agree, that doesn’t really want that and so we’re denying and suppressing that truth within ourselves and therefore it’s not really an integrity.

It’s an integrity with our values, but it’s not really a true bottom-up integrity.

And then integrity would go, well, hang on a second, voice of mind that says you really don’t want to do this, is that true?

What do you really care about?

What’s going on here?

What do you need?

Now that we’ve gotten all that cleared out, isn’t it obvious what you have to do?

Don’t you actually in fact want to do the thing that you say your values are?

Whatever this other thing is that’s competing with that, do you really want to listen to it?

And then you make a choice to sit in a form of integrity where you’re focused on the part of you that knows a deeper truth, right?

And then that holds all the parts of you that want to rant and rave and scream against how life is and how unfair it is and want to do other things that are lustful or greedy or etc etc etc, right?

And then we actually have a form of integrity because from the bottom up we know that what we’re doing is exactly the right thing to do, exactly the right way to be in harmony with our lives, right?

And there’s no conflict, there’s just the peace and the knowledge and the clarity of this is how life unfolds, this is how life must unfold, and to do otherwise would be unimaginable.

No, you’re fine.

And then when we have true harmony with the Tao or when we’re really in flow with the way, then we don’t even need to think about integrity because it just is, right?

The trick with that though is that when we jump to that too early and we assume that our natural state is the state of the way, then we can live out all sorts of shadows and projections and our naturalness can actually be very unskillful and unwise and uncompassionate, but it’s very natural, right?

It’s also natural for sea otters to do horrible things to seals, but we don’t necessarily want to embody that behavior for ourselves.

And I will allow you to google sea otters and seals for yourself if you would like to know what I’m talking about because it’s not necessarily totally appropriate for a Dharma talk.

But that’s the idea for today.

It’s relevant to our Zen practice because Zen can face challenges with ethics and morality, simultaneously discarding them while also saying they’re essential.

And I believe this concept, superior integrity, is not virtuous.

That is how it is.

Integrity exactly aligns with the insight that we are all trying to achieve through our practice.

Thank you very much.

I am done rambling for today, and that leaves us about 15 minutes or so for some discussion.

Whether it’s related or unrelated to the topic I kick us off with, topic I kick us off with, as long as I’m done.

I’ll hop in right off the bat.

No, I didn’t give you any kind of, I’m just kind of the walk-in for the day.

I didn’t give you a warning on anything, but what is that topic really?

And you can kind of I can relate to that greatly at this moment in my life.

A lot of struggles and stresses in life and organizations and whatnot.

And trying to find the balance between helping for something that needs, you know, something that you view as being, it needs to be, it has to be for the good of all involved.

And not becoming that righteous fist that is forcing it to happen to where everybody fights you on it.

And then you start questioning yourself on it as well.

So that’s really applicable in my life at this moment.

That’s really good.

I really enjoy it.

I think it’s dissecting the problem at hand to better understand the better way to accomplish the goal.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And there’s a, there’s a beautiful moment in here where we get to suspend all of our would, could, should, if, how, unless, may, right?

All of our, all of our wants and desires are part of what is.

So we’re not trying to deny them, but if we go through a process of separating what the situation is, who are the parties involved, what are the structures that are in place?

What is?

And we really get that clear.

And then as a separate step, looking at that from that detached perspective, then we say, okay, well, this is what I want.

This is what I think could, should, would happen.

This is what I think would happen unless or if, right?

And we take that and then we have these two different pictures and then we start to overlay them with each other, right?

Then we can start to recognize that, well, yes, this would be better.

And, you know, with these personalities involved, these minds would need to be changed.

These structures would have to adapt these.

Now, now we get a really clear to do lists and then we can just step out of the emotional turmoil that leads to the reactivity and skillfulness and say, well, in order to do this, we have to have these compromises.

We have to have these consolidations.

We have to have this level of cooperation and we cannot control other people.

So once we put forward our argument and we, and we do it in a way that we feel really good about, and we feel like we’ve given it our best shot.

If other people don’t want to participate in that worldview, well, then you have a choice.

Do you stay in a worldview you think is not correct, or do you go elsewhere and make a, and start your own thing?

Just, you know, let’s say this isn’t for me.

I mean, what do you do?

You know, but then you have a clear, then you have a really clear way of moving through that with integrity because you know that you’re really clear.

You know that you gave the most skillful effort you could to inviting other people into this new worldview.

That seems like it would be infinite, but they bet it.

And as a group, it didn’t work.

So then, no.

Stay, go.

You know, and this process is, I think, well, it’s how I’ve managed very difficult, similar situations in my own life, and I found it to be very useful.

So that’s why I’m recommending it.

So that first step there is really difficult.

That step to separate all the emotional power of want, will, could, should, would, if, unless, who are they, why are they, you know, like all of that stuff and just setting that aside to get with what is factually before you get into what you want emotionally.

Right.

Again, not to say that they’re separate, not to say one takes precedence over the other, but dealing with them as two separate parts of the problem really facilitates that clarity.

To bring about integrity and not righteousness, which is the initial question.

What just comes to my mind is, I mean, we have two eyes.

If we would have like surgery in one eye, maybe, and we’re not able to look, there would be some kind, it’s just an idea of another picture here, to have like, so our eyes are combining one situation, but really they see different things.

And so it is as if you really focus on one eye and on the other to really have that like in separate, so to say, but really it is one, but because there is an overlay and there is a lot of things going on inside your brain for the view, and yet you might not understand the overlay.

And so it’s so important to have like two separate views that you know that are the same, but you need to distinguish between those to really see clearly.

Otherwise, it’s not possible.

That is a great metaphor or analogy.

I never know the difference between metaphors and analogies, but it’s one of them and it’s great.

Yeah, I think that was a good perception.

Tyson or Marie, anything arising for you this morning?

Yeah, I thought of, is there such a thing as common virtue?

Because we all have our own history and values, we may want to assume when we’re self-righteous that there is a common virtue, that our programming is the way it should be.

And it kind of spills over to what you said about the way, and I would label it the easy way, without self-examination that, oh, I’ve got this.

I can just be complacent and say, oh, que sera, sera, and I don’t have to do any heavy lifting on my own.

I just float down the river because I’ve got this.

So I think the easy way of the Tao and the common virtue are kind of joined together at the hip and they’re a bit self-righteous.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s one of those things we need to pull out of our, when we’re getting our depth perception, is who else in this situation shares the same values that I do?

Like you said, it’s very easy to assume that our values are universal, and they’re just not.

Unfortunately, if everyone had my values, the world would be such a better place, which I actually think is true.

Okay.

Because Marie isn’t jumping in.

I just want to thank you that you brought some clarity on those words, because like, what?

This was a verse.

So without you having like explaining parts of it and making it like a step-by-step thing, I would have been totally lost.

And that would be one of those verses where I would sit over like hours and not knowing where to start.

And like, yeah, so thank you.

That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing.

I’m glad to hear that it’s working out.

Yeah, I’m really excited about this one.

There’s a lot in the commentary that’s going to be pretty juicy.

Yeah.

And we just kind of touched on it here today.

But yeah, it’s a delightful path for practice, right?

Zen is a beautiful structure, because it comes down to such fundamental principles that it accommodates any relative reality, any individual perspective, any individuality is accommodated because your individual nature is created out of these universal principles.

And Zen is basically a practice of discovering the universal principles behind the way everything works.

And then once you get those, then you can make whatever numerous adjustments you want to make.

Or you can say, nope, I don’t want to make any adjustments.

I’m good just the way I am.

Thank you very much.

And if you have a relationship with a Zen teacher, they would probably challenge that perspective.

But that’s a different Dharma talk.

I can’t entirely leave it there.

Part of the reason for that is because life is evolution.

And when we think we got it, and we’re static, then we’re denying the life impulse to evolve.

So this is why our practice, despite doing this, part of the reason why we do the exact same thing every single time is so that you can become minutely better at it forever.

If you change your practice regularly, you can notice how much you improve very quickly.

But you never can actually attain perfection because you’re not making the small micro evolutions over time.

And so what happens in the arc of Zen training is that you’re like, you come in and it’s new.

And everything’s kind of like hard and confusing.

You don’t really know how to do kin hand, and you don’t really know how to sit well, you don’t really know how to meditate, you don’t really get all the instruments, and you don’t really know the service.

And so you get this deluge that if it doesn’t scare the shit out of you and make you never come back, you eventually get excited about learning.

And then you get to a point where you know it, and you can come in and you can do it mindlessly.

Right?

And then if you have a good song around you, they’re going to start nitpicking the shit out of you.

So that you start to grow and evolve again, and you discover this love of micro evolution.

And these these infinitely recursive cycles of just seeing, you know, if my foot was just a little bit more this way, when I stood up, then my bow could be that much more elegant.

Right?

And that becomes like the most deliciously delightful discovery.

And then when we take that into our lives, then we adopt a whole lifestyle of continuous evolution.

And now we’re in accord with the idea that life is evolving life is unfolding, there is no static fixed position that you can hold the idea of making a decision five years ago and still doing the exact same thing today without questioning it becomes completely absurd.

Because you’re different, the world’s different, your situation is different, the people you’re talking to are different.

Right?

And that really creates a very different quality of life and well being than what we get when we try and lock things down and keep it the same.

Just jumped into a totally separate Dharma talk right there.

Yeah, it’s because it’s all one baby.

All right.

And with all that said, thank you all very much for your practice and training today and deeply grateful for the time together.

Let’s go

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