*transcript generated by AI

Begin transcript

Good morning, everybody.

So glad to see you all today.

Delightfully gray and misty day.

It was really fresh, while somehow simultaneously being sticky.

It’s quite great fresh stickiness hurricane is off of the hurricane.

Yes, and our hearts to all those affected, and their property, not being able to reach their family.

Terrifying experience.

And we wish everyone well.

So today one of the things so Bailey’s up again for his for one of his intensives as he prepares for his black belt.

And yesterday, we went to yoga studio to teach meditation and to lead a practice period.

Yeah, it was really delightful.

And I found myself saying something, which happens to coincide with the training that is happening right now and reminded me of a quote from Jun Po that I thought I’d speak to today because the thing that’s really important, which is that Zen is arduous.

Zen is discipline arduous is like a really grindingly difficult thing, you know, like, like, that’s a tough path.

Right.

And not tough in like, I mean, historically yeah there was toughness in the sense of like boot campy kind of like young men being all like, you know, being gorillas.

Right.

And that’s not the kind of toughness that we’re talking about.

And so, in our daily life.

It’s actually really hard to like embody the attitude of Zen training.

If we don’t really know what that means.

Okay.

And so I’m seeing that a lot in five practice group right now and I’m seeing that a lot in just various aspects so I figured, well, this keeps coming up so it seems like something I should talk.

And so what is this Zen ardor, this is Zen toughness this Zen discipline.

There’s another quote in the Jun Po Roku where Jun Po says something along the lines of the Zen worth work ethic makes Puritans look lazy.

Right.

If you know anything about the Puritan culture, you know that they’re far from lazy right around here more locally relevant would be Amish, which would be the offshoots of that right and so what does this really mean.

What is this pointing to.

Well, this is pointing to an absolute commitment to taking care of our lives in a really specific way.

Right.

In a way that has no wiggle room whatsoever like it is this way, not that way.

And the attitude here is that we are forging ourselves.

And once we are forged we are refining ourselves.

She has a quote, something along the lines of 1000 hours to forge a sword 10,000 hours to refine it.

And a match is decided in a single moment.

Right.

And so like we do this all the time.

There is no break in Zen training, there is no training period for true students of the way.

It is simply an attitude of persistent cultivation of constantly looking at how are we living our lives in a way that attunes us to the way founder of the karate style that I teach.

Although, not officially as I refuse to join their larger bureaucratic political organizations because of that.

But officially what he says in the dojo.

I should put the hoax hoax in there if I’m going to say koto because those go together.

I’m not really Japanese I apologize for offending everyone who actually speaks Japanese and cringes at my Japanese.

So it talks to me.

Seek perfection of character seek the completion of one’s character.

Okay, and it talks means first thing.

So, seek perfection of character.

What does this mean.

This doesn’t mean that we have an idealized character we are striving to match.

It means that we are seeking to complete the process of building character.

Right.

And you can never complete a process.

Because as soon as you complete a process it’s no longer a process.

So part of the clue here is that we’re constantly evolving, and we have to be attuned to constant evolution so we have to look at our lives evaluate our situation, come up with our next clear intention our next direction our next step, and then go do that thing.

Okay.

And then he says, is an indomitable spirit, a spirit that can’t be destroyed a spirit that never fatigues a spirit that never gives up, and just now is to cultivate, okay so to cultivate an indomitable spirit.

We can’t possibly strive moment by moment to perfect ourselves, only by developing a spirit that doesn’t fatigue.

Okay, spirit that doesn’t fatigue.

And the Vimalakirti Sutra Vimalakirti teaches us that a bodhisattva who functions through affect through good feeling through heartfelt desire will always end up burning out.

We actually can’t be a bodhisattva, based on a personal motivation.

We can’t be right, so the bodhisattva who succeeds in the Vimalakirti’s teaching is the one who no longer possesses a desire to feel a certain way.

Similar to this because it’s basically saying that no matter what’s going on.

I will do this I will be this way my spirit cannot be crushed it cannot give up.

Right.

Okay.

Through this complete detachment from our transient emotional states, I do not depend upon beliefs sensations or emotions, through this deconstruction and detachment from belief sensation and emotion, we actually find a deeper reservoir for our spirit to rely on which is pure selfless awareness pervading the whole universe, which gives us to our third part of Funakoshi’s Dojo Koin.

Makoto no Michi wo Mamoru is to preserve the path of truth.

Makoto no Michi is actually the same character Tao.

Tao being the cosmic life force the persistent force and flow of energy arising from some unknown fifth dimensional space coursing through the cosmos and giving birth to everything that we know.

Makoto no Michi.

So to preserve this within ourselves is to constantly be attuned to the truth of this deeper way, the truth of the life force that flows through us and in us as an interconnection interdependency and interpenetration.

So we’re seeking perfection of character, we’re seeking the completion of one’s character, supported by an indomitable spirit in a way that preserves the path of truth.

And now we get into something that’s really at the heart of the Zen way, and Zen is totally, you can’t do Zen without embodying some of Japanese culture.

Okay, now you can do lots of Zen related meditation.

You can do lots of philosophical inquiry that’s totally Americanized, but big Z Zen is Japanese.

So part of that means that you have to understand the Japanese way of life, and if our Zen training is to be authentic, then this next line is critically important.

It talks, regular ones that are caught up.

Okay.

And for anyone who’s paying attention and can hear the Japanese well enough you’ll realize that I started every single one of those with the thoughts and caught up.

Ended up with Kota.

Now this relationship first thing says that all five of these statements we haven’t done the fifth one yet are equally important.

Okay, so the thoughts, regular ones that are caught up is just as important as the thoughts, whatever whatever whatever Kota, okay, and regular ones that are is to treat respect with the utmost seriousness.

The way of courtesy, the way of respect, the way of caring for things that’s really what respect is, is caring for things.

Caring for yourself, caring for your environment caring for your space caring for your culture caring for others, caring for the way you cook your food caring for the way you chop your vegetables.

Right.

And this principle is what pervades the Japanese culture so intensely that admire that brings up that admiration for the, the refinement in the Japanese way of life.

The simplicity of finally fitted joints entire houses constructed with not a single nail or drop of glue because the precision of the craftsmanship is so cared for.

And we bring this to the previous three, the perfection of our character completion of our character, preserving the path of truth and cultivating an indomitable spirit.

And the fifth one is a little bit more as a counter to the macho ism that can come from being really strictly disciplining yourself all the time.

But, which is the thoughts kicking on your email she made a photo and kicking on you will kick you know you is like the hot bloodedness of heroism, it’s kind of like becoming so arrogant that you know what’s up, that you get really offended when you see people who aren’t as good at you or aren’t as refined as you or don’t know what you know or aren’t as capable of enacting respect or aren’t as on the path as you are because you’re so cool.

So, get you know you always just like hot blooded that emerges from arrogance.

Right.

And it must be that is the idea of restraint, it’s actually the same character that points to the four awakened vows.

Right, so it’s a, it’s a vow to restrain from believing oneself to be so on the way that you are permitted to be rude to other people.

Okay, that’s especially prevalent and especially important in a martial arts context where we’re training people to be very dangerous, but it’s just as relevant to us who develop spiritual egos.

Well, some think that we’re holier than thou or that we have the right to tell other people how they should live their lives or we would say, well, I’m so Zen, but I don’t need blah blah blah so clearly your need for blah blah blah means you’re not enlightened Right, which is the kind of shit that you hear all the time, which is just painful arrogance and stupidity.

So anyway, there’s this whole attitude that comes into the Zen way of life, a really powerful and poignant way of being that basically says that we are going to very specifically discipline ourselves, so that each moment of our life is an expression of the doubt, an expression of this deeper truth of life unfolding.

I can say that that’s actually the most natural thing in the world and to discipline yourself and work so hard at doing it is completely contrary.

Okay, that’s true.

When you’re on a certain side of the equation.

But when you’re not.

There’s all sorts of biological activity that sucks you into the world of form that allows you to forget this deeper truth.

And if you really want to escape that some sorrow and realize that some solder is Nirvana if you actually want to have this realization, you have to build up exit velocity.

And that exit velocity is our discipline way of life.

And then when it becomes a habit, that’s fine.

Right.

And it actually becomes extremely natural and then you can release all of the form.

But until then, follow the training method, which means that you don’t get days off.

Yeah.

So anyway, there’s my there’s my tirade for the morning.

Thank you all very much for your attention.

Appreciate being here with you all.

10 ish published minutes for open forum.

So whatever’s right.

I will be curious what you what you do.

I have an example.

When you say you see that this is not what people, for example, do in the five practice mirror training, like any given example where you definitely see there is not this.

So that people are not trained.

I have an idea.

So what I mean by that is that the the very process of looking in a mirror self reflecting and then giving oneself a specific way of disciplining oneself to align with a deeper insight.

That’s a really challenging activity.

You know, and so, so, so many of us who practice Zen in our modern day and age, do it philosophically and abstractly.

And so actually making it concrete, so that it can be something that is trainable is a skill that’s extremely underdeveloped.

And so typically people will either err on being incredibly concrete and having no idea how that concrete action connects to deepening their relationship to the way and releasing their ego attachments and doing all the things so they become incredibly concrete, with no clear understanding of what their inside realm needs to do.

Right.

Or we become incredibly internalized and abstracted and want to pursue some sort of ideal, but become very handicapped and articulating what that ideal will look like in a concrete situation.

And so that’s why we do the training mirrors where you have outer to inner and inner and outer, because everyone has some sort of bias towards their internal abstract world or towards our external concrete world.

And so we have to get everyone thinking in both directions, and going through a process of how does this concrete action transforming on the inside, and how does this internal transformation appear on the outside, so that we actually have something trainable.

And that’s hard, we just aren’t taught to think like that.

What this is bringing to mind to me, because, you know, I always go back to the practical, is the basic training of taking care of what you said that was, how did you say that in Japanese, the fifth one.

The idea of not developing like a spiritual arrogance and refraining from the hot bloodedness.

Okay, that was it.

Maybe, I don’t know, I’m confused.

Respect, treating respect with the utmost importance, taking care of life.

That one.

The the action of just taking care, you know, taking care of oneself is where I struggle I try to take care of everything else, and recognizing the difference between taking care and control.

But seeing now that I have a space that I can care for again in this way that I choose, I’m finding it requires incredible discipline to know the difference between, you know, always cleaning up after oneself always keeping the space organized.

How wonderfully, what ease that creates in the mind and in action.

But then, is there a point where you can take it too far, where you become neurotic about it, you know, and that’s that that’s that line that I’ve been walking in my, in my daily practice of keeping things clear, without being like rigid about it.

And so, this is just that.

Yeah, and then taking that care into whatever you know everything.

It’s that in itself will keep me occupied the rest of my life, and that’s an exciting thing.

Anyway, my babbling for the day.

Thank you.

Delightful paradox to transcend the deed.

The line between intentional order and neuroticism.

It’s interesting to see like, after living in Japan, it’s interesting to see the difference between because like once you’re there, it’s easy to get this idea of like everybody over there is super rigid and super like, Oh, nope, this has to be this way and this has to clean this way.

No, like there are some people, yes.

And those people tend to like just like anywhere else, like devote themselves wholeheartedly to whatever it happens to be that they do, whether or not it’s like sushi chef, whatever, but they all adopt the same mindset and that’s that.

Like in Fumikoshi’s books, I think there might be two, what, two now, three, something like that, that that’s just it, like you have to do everything intentionally.

So like, are you, are you making dinner?

Cool.

Are you aware that you’re making dinner or are you just on autopilot?

Like, are you paying attention to how you’re cutting your vegetables or cutting whatever, cooking your soup?

Or are you just going about your day while you’re like slowly scrolling through the cell phone screen in your head that, you know, never shuts off.

And it’s, you see that here.

I, I kind of think of the same ratio that you do over there.

Like it’s just highlighted a little bit more in Japan, depending on what the profession is, but you do the same thing here.

And it’s, it’s harder than it looks to do.

Like you can think about it like, yep, I’m going to absolutely do everything today with intention.

I’m going to intentionally brush my teeth.

I’m going to intentionally put my left sock on.

I’m going to intentionally slice.

It’s not nearly as easy as it sounds.

Like it is, it is.

Arduous is a great word.

Like it is so crushingly difficult some days to be like, yep.

I’m going to be fully present in everything that I’m doing, regardless of how small the thing it is.

It’s not easy.

It’s not like your brain is not.

I don’t necessarily think your brain is designed to function like that 24, 7, 365.

Like you’re going to wander regardless of what you do.

And that’s why I like this practice is as interesting and as helpful as it is.

It’s just because the more that you feel like today, I’m all over the place.

This was, it didn’t matter what it was.

And it happens.

It happens at home.

Then you have some days where you’re just, there it is.

You’re good.

But it’s interesting, like the parallels between the martial arts side of things and the samurai side of things.

That whole mindset that was kind of like, it’s a very Japanese mindset, regardless of what you’re doing.

Origin flowers, calligraphy, poetry, Zen.

That’s why they all tend to get lumped together into the same, you know, all practiced by the same people.

Because it takes the same amount of focus to do all of those things properly.

And it’s really not as easy.

It might look easy, but it’s really not.

Look at it from the outside, like how hard is it to sit there for 30 minutes, not move, not be a million miles away.

Some days it’s harder than it looks.

So it’s fun.

It’s an interesting way.

Like that is a good way to help this is to try and stay as intentional as possible throughout the day.

Without like Robin had said, you know, hitting the neurotic side of things of like, oh, I’m going to intentionally fold this piece of paper.

No, just go like do things with intention that deserve intention.

Those are my rambling thoughts on the matter.

And you get to then intentionally discard precision.

And I think this is one of the critical things that we all have to learn is that doing something with intention doesn’t always mean doing it in a highly refined way.

You can say like, it’s time to wipe my butt and you can intentionally wipe your butt.

But you don’t need to necessarily wipe it three times in one way and three times another way while your toilet paper is folded like a crane.

Exactly seven and three quarter sheets.

Right.

So so it’s like we get to choose.

So as long as we are intentional, the form becomes irrelevant.

What ends up the arc, though, and this is what’s most critical, is that the arc is people try and see that the form is irrelevant before they’ve learned how to intentionally do things.

And so they rob themselves of an accountability process by which they determine that they are, in fact, intentional.

And so that’s why we need to have a period of our life that holds us to a rigid accountability for doing things just so.

Because when you know that you’re intentional, you know that you’re intentional.

And then when you choose to intentionally do something in a more relaxed way, you’re still intentional.

Right.

But if you haven’t gone through that training, then you can be like, oh, yeah, I meant to just slap that all over there because we retrospectively or retro.

Reflectively, I don’t know what the word is, but we look back and we have like a revisionist narrative and we claim a thing or an intention for ourselves that we didn’t actually have.

Oh, no, that was on purpose.

Oh, I meant to lose my stuff right there and start screaming because they really needed it.

Yes, that was perfectly on purpose.

So I think this is part of the arc that we have to understand and part of why we want to see how we can structure our lives to bring as much larger to them as possible so that intentionality becomes a habit.

Right.

And then we get to really kind of trust ourselves in a different way, a completely different way.

I think what’s also cool about this kind of like refinement practice is like it meets you wherever you need to be met at.

So it can be as complex or as simple.

So it’s even if you’re at the start of your training or you’re practicing for 30, 40 years, like it should pretty much feel like the same amount of difficulty all the way through.

It’s a very military martial arts thing like, hey, look, never gets easier.

You should get more used to it.

It doesn’t matter if you’re the white belt that’s just on your brand new or if you’re, you know, get your black belt or you get your seventh dawn, whatever it happens to be.

Like, it doesn’t get easier.

You just get used to it.

That’s all.

It’s a very military, very Marine Corps kind of thing.

It’s never going to suck last.

You’re just going to get used to it.

So it should be difficult.

Like if you ever hit a point where like, man, this is super easy.

Like you’re not doing it.

That bar needs moved again.

Yep.

And that’s why we have such a delightful group of spiritual friends to show us where the next movement in our bar is.

And so that we can hold each other accountable so we can keep that target moving so that all of us can continually embody the evolution, which is the truth of the way constantly evolving process.

There is no completion on the way.

And that’s what makes it so complete.

Wasn’t planning that, but that seems like, that seems like the capping verse.

That seems like a great statement to end on.

Well done.

I appreciate you teeing that up for me.

The post Zen as a Life of Persistent Evolution appeared first on Open Door Zen.

* transcript generated by AI

Good morning, good morning.

There’s this thing that happens sometimes.

Where we feel like shit and we don’t know why.

Does anyone ever have that feeling?

Yeah.

Yeah, and this came out the other day.

Zenshin was clarifying her five practice mirrors commitments for the current training program.

And we had an exchange where she was trying to model her inner commitment to genuine insight off of my commitment to genuine insight.

She said, I forget what she said, but basically mine is like, I trust, and it’s trust.

I commit to trusting life unfolding.

I commit to trusting genuine insight.

I commit to trusting Buddha nature.

And for me that’s a very active phenomenon.

That’s a clear action.

Committing to trust in this way is not an abstract phenomenon.

And so when Zenshin rewrote that commitment for herself, because of course she has to do it bigger and better than anyone else.

She can’t just copy it.

But when she rewrote that for herself, I found that I missed the action statement in there.

And so we had an exchange around this.

And it ended up being very enlightening for me because she asked me, well, how do you know you’re doing that?

You commit to trust Buddha nature, but how do you know you’re doing that for me?

Like, what does that actually mean as an action?

And well, it was delightful because I actually really got to reflect on that and make something that was true for me, real in my words.

And this is really important.

So one of the things that has to happen in our practice is we have to be able to articulate what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, how we do it.

The more precise and clear we get in that articulation, the clearer our intention.

And as we said at the very beginning, that’s what this practice is.

What’s the line in the Atta dipa?

Meditative awareness, clear intention, acting wisely, compassionately and skillfully are this practice.

Meditative awareness, clear intention.

Meditative awareness, an awareness of what your thing is.

Clear intention are this practice, which always makes it funny to me when some people act vaguely or refuse to articulate their intentions, because we literally say that we have two aspects of practice, meditative awareness and clear intention.

An awareness is that innate knowing that gets so overly emphasized, and clear intention is taking that innate knowing and putting it into words that are clear and precise and communicable.

Because our words are diseases, we better be careful what we pass along in those viruses.

So anyway, what ended up coming out of this conversation, there was a little bit of a tangent there, but what ended up coming out of this conversation with Zenshin around what it meant to me to commit to trusting Buddha nature, was that really it’s a feeling.

And there’s a sign that our systems give us when we’re not doing that.

And that sign is generally either anxiety or depression.

It depends on whether or not we have a, all of us have a proclivity, right?

We are born, very, very few human beings are born with a totally neutral nervous system.

We either have a proclivity towards being sedate, or we have a proclivity towards being overactive.

Those of us who have a proclivity towards being overactive, typically suffer from anxiety.

Those of us who have a nervous system predisposed to sedation, typically suffer from depression.

Many people, throughout the course of trying to correct these things, induce bipolar in themselves and go through pages of mania and deep depression.

This is all nervous system dysregulation and dysregulation of our emotional cognitive state.

I typically put anxiety more as a cognitive issue and depression more as an emotional issue.

Of course, these two are very interlinked, so it’s hard to say exactly the truth.

But when I find that I have to work with them, that model helps me.

Anyway, again, another tangent.

But it’s this feeling, okay?

So these feelings, generally categorized as over-excitement and anxiety, or under-excitement and depression, are cues that we’re not trusting.

If we feel either of those things, it means that our nervous system is dealing with some level of mistrust.

We haven’t really said, you know what?

I am life itself unfolding.

And if that is true, how can we be anxious?

If that is true, how can we be depressed?

When we really know that, when we commit to trusting that it is ultimately 100% true.

And at first, it’s a faith thing.

At first, it really is a faith thing.

A divine faith that we are life unfolding.

We are the fabric of the universe.

That’s what we are.

That’s what we are made out of.

That’s what we will return to.

We are in a temporary state of solidification because it’s fucking fun.

Right?

And so life creates form in order to have a dance.

An erotic coming together in celebration of materiality.

And it is exquisite.

And when we trust that, then no matter what’s going on in our life, including whether or not we are anxious or depressed, there is a sense of contentment and confidence and fearlessness.

Right?

There is just this sweetness about life experience that comes with trusting.

So committing to trust is really committing to recognize within oneself whether or not that’s true for you.

And if it’s not true for you, nothing else is important.

And all the ways we distract ourselves by trying to fix all the problems will never actually work.

We may get some temporary relief from our neurosis as we deal with this situation or that situation or use that modality or that technique, but it will always come back because the core of our being has not connected to the truth that we are life unfolding.

And so we stop.

As a practicing man, as a genuine insight practicing man, we stop because we recognize that we’ve stopped trusting the divine, the pure, selfless awareness pervading the entire universe that we realize and unite with through our Zen practice.

The moment we feel not okay, we have separated ourselves from that truth.

So the commitment to trust our Buddha nature is the commitment to saying nothing is more important than that connection, than the persistent realization and unity with the fundamental nature of the universe that we call Buddha.

And we are this, and we can’t not be this.

And any time it doesn’t feel like that, we just need to stop for a minute and say, oh wait, thank you system for reminding me.

Thank you for pointing out the truth that I forgot to trust you today.

And now I will.

And now I do.

And life is so sweet.

That’s all for me today.

Thank you very much for your attention.

We have about 15, 18 minutes left to finish our discussion.

Whatever is arising.

Where I struggle with this is that the trust, the trusting, the what is in the universe.

And it’s so intense and so beautiful.

And it causes a very strong emotional reaction and it’s solid tears and it’s not sadness.

It’s not happiness.

It’s just there, right?

And it’s overwhelming.

And then to put that level of trust into the world where we live with other humans is a challenge.

Because this appears crazy.

This appears off balance.

Off balance.

And for me, that’s perfectly in balance.

And then how we function in the world with that and not mistake this trust with trust in humanity.

Yeah, well, I mean, the beautiful component to it is that from this perspective, whatever anyone is doing is exactly what they need to be doing.

And we are gifted the power of imagination and higher intelligence to see that they are life unfolding too.

And we are given this beautiful capacity to fuse with states of being that harmonize the forces of the cosmos.

And sometimes the harmonizing force is bye-bye.

Sometimes the harmonizing force is whoa, you need a hug.

And that’s fine.

Because no matter what anyone does to us, definitely putting that in quotes, we are this.

They are this.

This is life unfolding.

Our opinion about whether it’s pleasant or unpleasant, necessary or unnecessary is entirely irrelevant.

That’s just layers we put on what is to try and make sense of the world.

And if we hold those tightly and think that somehow our relative human intellect has the capacity to determine the entire cosmos’ interplay, well, then we’re deeply confused.

And so this gives us the opportunity to take all that information in and to act on it with clarity.

Right?

No, this is not okay.

Oh, no, this is perfectly okay.

Oh, no, I don’t want any of that in my life.

And I, as a sovereign individual, can say no.

Boop.

Oh, I want lots of that in my life.

And I’m going to go fucking get it.

I’m going to get me some of that.

Right?

It’s all within our capacity.

This is life unfolding.

And those little intuitions that say cut that out and go seek that, right, that is the divine wisdom that imbues us life.

And for some reason, with our higher intellect, we start overriding that instinctive intelligence.

We stop listening to those subtle, quiet voices by taking on the conditioning of our parents and our cultures and our communities.

And that’s, in a way, what we decondition when we sit, so that we can get back into that soft, subtle voice that provides that absolute precision about what to do.

Sanjana saw that yesterday.

Yeah, just a flash that came up, like, why those thinking processes, like, interrupt our divine wisdom to show up.

I was just immediately thinking about our school systems.

And I guess in Germany, they’re not quite so different from those in America or wherever on this world, on this planet, that we learn a specific way of thinking in school.

Like, this is right, this is okay, and whatever.

We learn to adapt our system to an idea of someone else.

And so we’re getting confused.

We’re really getting confused by our whole educational systems.

That just was what came to me in this moment when I listened to your talk.

And it would be no wonder if we need then so much time to deconstruct this idea, what is right, what is not right, to get back to listening to our intention, to intuition, and to really feel into, hey, wait a moment, that’s okay.

So, for example, what I experienced just with my mom now is this, maybe I was not behaving in a way I really would like to behave, and I just could see, okay, this is how I unfold right now.

Okay, might be that there is another way to do it, and interesting how it was unfolding and what effect it has and whatever and whatever.

So, there is more detachment from some ideas and what it might mean or not.

So, yeah, that came up.

And I have another thing, but I’ll stop for a moment to let others talk.

I just want to say one thing in there, which is that one of the things that happens to children is they confuse knowledge with states of being.

And so knowledge is right and wrong.

You can get a math problem wrong, so there is a right and a wrong.

But what ends up happening because of the lack of emotional intelligence and the lack of framing around the feedback, especially very young, that we end up adopting a right and wrong mindset around issues that are not fact-based, knowledge-based.

We end up applying them to states of being.

And states of being can never be wrong.

States of being are only just states of being.

And we have the infinite capacity to choose whatever state of being we want to be in or whatever is appropriate for the moment.

And our system typically, left to its own devices, will do a pretty good job of being in a state of being, of reactively getting itself in a state of being that’s helpful to our survival.

And so as we learn and educate ourselves and expand our intellect and our power of imagination, then we become more active agents and fusing with states of being that are truly skillful and aligned with higher values.

And that comes with the development of intellect and imagination.

So when we can separate the two, this is a clear right-wrong situation because it’s a fact-based, knowledge-based thing.

Oh, this is a state of being.

That level of judgment cannot apply here.

It’s just, what is the impact of that state of being?

And then, is that the impact that I want or is that not an impact that I want?

The other question that came up while listening to your investigation on the topic of trust was, is there something, you would say, that is beneficial to cultivate that trust?

Because it might be that we are coming from a place where we are just filled with distrust over and over and over and we have never really experienced a feeling of trust.

And so what would it be, what could it be to really cultivate a feeling of trust so that we can rely on them in those moments?

A two-fold practice.

Okay.

On the one hand, you find somewhere in your life where there can be trust and you spend time in that space.

You know, whether that’s a very healthy relationship, whether that’s an area of expertise that you have, whether that is, whatever it is, a place where you know that there is trust.

Whether that is, whatever it is, a place where you know that you can trust yourself or you know you can trust another person because it’s been proven that that situation is trustworthy.

Your knowledge is trustworthy, your experience is trustworthy, this person has been trustworthy over and over and over again, and you’re going to refuse to continue harming the relationship by treating them as though they’re untrustworthy even though they have no track record of being untrustworthy.

And you surrender into trusting that person.

And you can do it in little bits and pauses, but that’s a big piece.

Just for this thing, two ideas also like nature, animals might be helpful for that?

It can be, you know.

I find equine therapy is great at rebuilding trust and doing all that, but then you have the whole process of convertibility.

So when you’re doing it with something that, if your problem is other humans and you’re not practicing with other humans, then how well that transfers ends up being questionable.

And then you have to do a whole process of transferring that trust from these things that are safe because they can’t hurt you because they aren’t humans into this thing which can hurt you.

So yes, you’re building trust, but it’s a type of trust that is kind of, at least in my experience, hard to bridge over to something.

In my opinion, there are other people who have great success with doing it that way.

I haven’t found great success.

The other practice, and the one that’s more central to Zen, is that you sit.

You sit and you feel the trust in yourself.

You feel the aliveness permeate you.

You feel yourself die to Buddha nature.

You feel yourself merge with life itself, and then it’s just true.

There’s not a lot of faith that’s required after you know it’s true, and our sitting technique is meant to reveal the truth of it.

And it takes time because even if you can have that experience, then you have deeper shadow states.

So when you have a deep abandonment issue or you have a deep fundamental distrust lodged way down in your psyche, getting that part of you to know it’s true requires additional work.

And that means embodying abandonment on the cushion and taking that psyche through the meditative process.

I use abandonment because that’s my example.

That’s the thing that eluded me for years, even after I’d already had several profound kensho experiences.

I was still susceptible to fear of abandonment and lose myself in situations where I felt like I could be abandoned.

And the truth is we can never be abandoned by the one thing that matters, which is Buddha.

And everything else is just naturally transient.

But to really get the inner child who felt that fear and pain and loss and loneliness, to have that experience for itself means having your higher self become deeply proficient and adept at experiencing Buddha on the cushion, and then incrementally bringing that childhood psyche into the process of becoming an adept meditator, so that you can teach yourself how to have the experience for yourself.

And this will always trump any trust exercise that you do in the relative world.

It will always be more effective.

So I’m seeing that we are now at four minutes to the top of the hour, and it’d be good to maybe do our closing check-in here.

The post Trusting Buddha Nature appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

Good morning.

Before I begin my Sunday tirade, quick check-in on a couple things that we’ve been doing in the service.

First off, does the Han come through the mic?

Yeah, was it okay today?

I did it inside today instead of outside.

It’s fine?

Great.

Second question, we’ve done a version of it two times now, how are we liking the Om tirade as a blessing for, yeah?

Okay, we got unanimous thumbs up.

Okay, cool.

So we’ll continue doing those things and I’ll just be part of what we do.

Delightful.

So the thing that comes to me today is I was, I became aware again of a change that I made to the altar that I’m not sure if you can even see as online participants, but so a hollow bones altar typically has fire, water, incense, a statue of Buddha, and a flower.

Okay, so the hollow bones altar has five elements on it.

Interestingly, corresponding with five elements.

That’s pretty cool.

We’ve got some tantric stuff going on here.

We’ve got some mystical stuff going on.

And this is not atypical, right?

If you pay attention to Davosatso, you’d see the same thing, right?

So this is a long standing tradition for our lineage to have our altar in this way.

Here, a couple of modifications I’ve made are that the orchid that you see is actually made of Legos.

And it was a gift from my children.

And so that’s awesome, because it means that I don’t actually have to try and keep an orchid alive.

And then I’m not constantly murdering plants to bring in fresh vegetation in here.

So that’s part of what’s going on here.

And then also, technically, you would never be walking through the space between the main altar and the center altar nearly as much as we do here.

But for practical reasons, I don’t have an extra Butsudan here between the Jiki and the Tanto seat, because I wouldn’t have anywhere to store the table when I was using the space for other purposes.

And so we walk through that and we get over the fact that this is the holy of holies and that no one should cross between it without stopping to bow all the time.

So it’s a good place for me, especially to work on my iconoclasm and my attachments.

But you’ll also notice that there’s no specific flower on the main altar.

And that’s because being in front of the window, I felt that there was no need to call in more of nature’s beauty than simply gazing past the Buddha into the broad universe that it represents.

And so that’s what we’ve got going on with altars here.

Now, there’s two other additions that are very non-traditional.

These are practical adaptations for our life here, but there’s two additions that are non-traditional.

One is that you’ll see a set of Tibetan prayer flags behind the main altar.

And that is there for several reasons.

One is we are tantric yogis.

And for those of you listening eventually to this Dharma talk one day who might not really know what that means and confuse tantra with neosexuality, tantric yogic practice in the Buddhist tradition is born of the realization that we are fundamentally energy in the liquid crystal form.

And that energy takes on different hues, tones, colors, right?

Light is the most often metaphor.

And we are all the colors of the rainbow.

And so Tibetan prayer flags represent the elements in their colors.

And they each have their own deity associated with them, which is a method of psychologically projecting those qualities outside of ourselves so we can have a relationship with them to manipulate them within ourselves.

Okay, so it’s a very shamanic form of practice.

And Junpo taught very clearly that we are tantric yogis.

And that if you actually pay attention to the emotional koan process, it is nothing but tantra in the sense of embodying the energy exactly as it is, elevating it through pure awareness to a higher liberated perspective.

And through that discerning the deeper information in that energy so that we become a hollow bone, a clear channel for spirit to flow through.

Okay, and so we honor that through the Tibetan prayer flags.

That’s the esoteric reason.

The exoteric reason is that we are engaged, we are Mahayana and human rights, what’s going on in the world, politics, the Tibetan crisis, these things, divisiveness in the world are part of our call to action.

And so if you ever wanted to have an altar like this, and you didn’t want to tell people that you were a tantric yogi, you could tell them that it means that you’re an engaged Buddhist, which is also true.

Okay, and there’s one other piece here, which again, I’m not sure if it comes through online, but I wrapped the Buddhas in bone mallas.

So no Buddha that lives on any of my altars is not wrapped in bones.

Okay.

And this is very important because the Buddha is not an object of worship, it is not a icon to replace our spiritual practice, right?

What we actually have in the Buddha is a representation of the element of spirit, or Chi, Da, Prana, right?

And any of these interrelated terms.

Now, what’s a critical realization in the Mahayana meditation is that it is an ever changing flux and flow.

Its very permanence derives from its impermanence and its ability to be adaptive.

Okay.

It is also precisely formed as emptiness and emptiness is form that brings our spiritual powers forward.

Now, spiritual powers can be, you know, knowledge of past lives, I’m not denying that that’s true.

But the greatest spiritual power is just recognizing that I am, and whatever you declare for yourself is what you will be.

Okay.

And in Zen, we do this very simply, we say, I’m already the Buddha.

And then our practice is just manifesting that truth.

And this is not dissimilar to any other esoteric tradition that you might choose to research, but in Zen, we have a very specific flavor of it.

And over time, this has constantly been confused, people constantly put Buddha on some sort of pedestal, just like they put Jesus on some sort of pedestal.

And thereby they claim that they are not Buddha by hoping to be Buddha.

Okay.

And this is the origin of many of the stories we hear about if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him.

Or the koan about this person taking a wooden Buddha statue, chopping it up and burning it because he was gold.

These koan all point to the same thing, which is that spiritual life is fundamentally empty.

Right?

Okay.

And so we wrap our Buddhas in bone mallows to remind us that even the consciousness of I am is impermanent.

It is contingent upon having a form, having a body.

And we go into a permanent state of energetic flow when this body dissolves and our consciousness is released.

But without a localizing force, I amness is far too vast for us to comprehend.

And frankly, I would imagine is rather boring.

That’s why I am created all the diversity because he was a man is boring.

And I said he because I’m a guy.

So I relate to it as a guy because it’s like my daddy.

Okay.

Now, I understand that that might not work for everybody.

So disclaimer, that was a very personal moment there.

Right?

Okay.

So I think this was really important to mention, because when we practice together, we practice together by spiritual consent.

And what that means is that no one should be here who doesn’t feel resonance with what we do.

We cannot be evangelical about the pursuit of meditative living, and the pursuit of direct relationship with the divine.

Because it doesn’t work that way.

Right?

We have to come to this place and be in this practice because it feels true to us before we even begin.

Something in us must know that it is where we belong.

And in order to truly know that, so you can feel that you can feel that very early, you can feel that the day you show up, whether or not this is something that resonates a lot or a little or not at all.

But as you deepen, and as you hear week after week after week, there comes a point where you have to actually have to apologize.

There was a there’s a moment where we have to match up our intellectual understanding of what we are as a social body as an organization as a philosophical doctrine, all of these things we have to become conscious of, to know if this is truly our home and the path we want to commit to.

Otherwise, we’re just blindly doing what other people say we should.

And if we’re blindly doing what other people say we should, then we aren’t living as gods.

We’re living as something else.

And that would be contrary to our practice.

So how can you be here on purpose if you don’t even understand what we’re doing here?

It’s the rhetorical question that prompted this kind of detailed dig into this particular aspect of our ritual.

So a little bit of a different Dharma talk today.

A little bit different, but hopefully useful and entertaining in some way.

And got about 15 minutes left for open forum.

So thank you all for your attention.

Look forward to the discussion that emerges.

I think that was beautiful.

And I would like to encourage you to take a great picture of your altars and share them on your website, maybe.

And say something to it or give the link to this talk.

And because with that, people who might join know what we’re doing here.

What we’re doing here.

I think you have a couple interesting photos, don’t you?

Facebook, I believe.

Yeah, Lindsay took various photos and stuff.

There’s more artsy fartsy stuff that we can put up there.

No, it’s beautiful.

Artsy fartsy is not derogatory in my world.

I would have a topic that I also like to give space for others.

The topic would be about boundaries and victimhood.

Sorry?

Did you say boundaries and victimhood?

Right.

I believe that’s salient to pretty much everyone here.

I just take a deep look to the others online if there is any urgent thing from them.

Okay.

So I just start.

During meditation, I did some kind of mando.

And what came to my mind was that a lot of our reactive patterns exist because of the belief that we are a victim of our circumstances.

And that in the moment, we can shift that into no.

I’m the one who takes the choice for whatever I do and whatever I think, whatever in my life.

And it’s different.

But this choice, for me, sounded like setting clear boundaries.

Because oftentimes, we know that anger is about boundaries not respected.

And so when we don’t like to react in anger and scream at somebody, then we often put this reaction internally into shame, or even worse, just disconnect from us and from others, too.

So for me, this all was about boundaries and victimhood.

And so I would like to hear some wise words from you, Seng, on my rambling of my thoughts and experiences.

Before I talk about that, whether it’s wise or not, is there anything that anyone would like to add for context to that?

So that when I’m rambling, I can try and include whatever is salient beyond what Sengshin already posed?

No?

We’re posing okay?

Three, two, one.

Okay.

So there’s a slight nuance I’d like to make in your framing, and that is there are times where we are victims of our circumstances, right?

Especially when we’re small, and we have very little power.

We aren’t cognitively developed enough to be distinct from our thoughts or our emotions yet.

And so when the world happens to us, we can only be victim to what’s happening.

Okay?

And the age by which we claim our independence has changed over time and stuff like that.

Traditionally, no one’s responsible for their karma until they’re five or six.

Okay?

And so everything that happens under that age is you being subject to your circumstances.

Okay?

And then it’s like at a certain point, we have to begin really taking responsibility for that, right?

And that’s where we are today.

That’s what drives most of us to spiritual practice.

Okay?

And so spiritual practices tend to have one of two modes.

They either try to absolve all of our responsibility by placing it to another, right?

And then those salvific traditions of certain forms, I’m specifically thinking of Christianity, but there’s also forms of Judaism and Islam that do the same thing, and in a way that we kind of do it too whenever we externalize consciousness to have a relationship with something else.

What we’re saying is that there’s something greater than me that has the power to do that, which I cannot.

And in our tradition, that’s a great starting point, but eventually we need to bring that power back within.

And so it’s just really important to recognize that this is part of the process.

And as we’re going through the spiritual journey of internalizing our own power, there are times where life happens and we have to react to it.

Life happens and we have to react to it.

And when things are really intense, and until our training is very, very mature, there’s always a level of intensity that overrides your capacity to be on the choice side of the karmic circle.

Okay?

Now, that’s fine.

It’s just that we have to recognize that the way it works is that that choiceless reaction has karma.

The response that we choose has karma, right?

This is just the law, right?

Karma is not some sort of personal thing.

And so when we’re in a victim mindset, what we’ve done is we’ve narrowed our awareness down to the point where we have forgotten that karma is a law and our actions set off new chains of events.

And we’re focused more on the effects that we’re receiving than the causes we’re putting into the world.

Okay?

And so that’s one way to put the victim mindset versus the growth mindset into a Buddhist context.

Which side of karma are you on?

Are you focusing on the effects you’re receiving, victim mindset, or are you focusing on the causes you’re creating, growth mindset?

Right?

Now, within the context of that, you’re talking about boundaries.

Boundaries are really interesting, because they’re ultimately entirely arbitrary.

Right?

And so one of the things that happens when we become fully empowered through our recognition of being fundamentally alive, and vibrationally just aliveness, is that we become rather fearless.

We have a point where we no longer necessarily need to have a lot of boundaries, because no one can do anything to us.

Okay.

And then we really start to choose our boundaries differently.

In the interim, we have to do our best.

But pretty much every boundary you set from a frame of self-preservation is reinforcing the idea of victimhood.

Okay?

So if you really want to set a boundary from an awakened perspective, it can’t be a boundary to protect yourself.

It has to be a boundary that protects universal harmony.

What is actually best for this person?

Right?

And that’s a really challenging thing to determine.

A lot of times, one of the boundaries we face is that people who are deeply unhealthy consume our lives because they can’t energize themselves.

So they have to receive their energy from outside of them.

Right?

That’s one form of boundary that we have to set, in which case, us refusing to continue to feed them forces them to either completely collapse, and maybe if they actually hit a true rock bottom that no one saves them from, then they’ll start saving themselves.

Right?

And that can feel really hard for us.

And from a self-preservation standpoint, we wouldn’t choose that.

Because to preserve ourself, we have to have a certain identity as their caregiver.

We have to have a certain identity of the one who helps, or we have to have a certain identity of the one who gives, or supports, or loves.

And that’s really an action of self-preservation, which is very different than looking at this person, looking at the total dynamic, and determining where does harmony truly lie?

And then that balance of the total cosmos that I’m aware of, what induces harmony?

Right?

Energetic balancing.

Another form of person that we often have to set boundaries with are those who are so self-absorbed and so personally empowered that they have no respect for harmonizing the world around them, because they can move through the world to get whatever they want.

And from this perspective, it’s a very easy perspective to adopt when we become the center when we become the center of the universe, both in true spirituality or in terms of narcissism, borderline personality disorder, insecurities, being masked as securities, all of those types of things.

But this type of person, we typically have to set very different boundaries with.

They’re not looking to take energy from us.

They’re looking to dominate us with their energy.

Right?

And so now we need a totally different type of thing.

A lot of times there’s more redirection involved.

There’s more challenging involved.

There’s a much harsher type of response typically required because there is a frequency that’s happening, which is so loud that the other frequencies can no longer be heard.

Right?

And so again, when we do it purely from self-preservation, we can be inclined to set very soft boundaries to avoid, to walk away, to refuse to confront, to do all sorts of different things so that we are not the victim of that strong energy.

But by consequence, we allow the world to be a victim of the strong energy.

And so again, what is the net harmonization quality?

And then when we show up in either case, when we show up looking at what is the harmonization required, what is the boundary that needs set from a perspective of energetic balance, not from self-preservation?

Well, then we end up being on the empowered side.

We end up being on the, I’m setting the causes of my world side of karma.

Right?

And that then creates a totally different dynamic from trying to manage or manipulate the effects of karma that we’re receiving.

There you go.

Thank you.

That was amazing.

The post Altar, Tantra, Victimhood, Boundaries appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

Good morning, lovely, lovely day for practice, which is kind of a wasteful thing to say because if we ever thought it was otherwise, then we shouldn’t be here.

The thing that came up to me today was actually inspired by a conversation I was having with Zen Shin.

I think it’s kind of important in terms of making our Zen practice practical, and it’s also really challenging.

It’s one of the things that I’m aware that most people here struggle with.

It’s probably like the number one thing that happens in our lives, and probably the number one thing that drives us to practice is a form, to some degree, of a disassociative phenomenon.

And what I mean by that is that all of us, to varying degrees, have split personalities.

And that’s actually a really delightful thing to just name.

Like, we all a little bit crazy.

And the practical ramifications for this disassociative phenomenon, which I’ll talk a little bit more in detail, is that we engage in a lot of self-sabotage.

And we call it self-sabotage because the part of us that wants to live our lives a certain way is the self we identify with, and to varying degrees, we align with that image or we don’t align with that image.

But whether we do align with that image or not, we claim that image as the me.

And so we call it self-sabotage when we don’t act in alignment with that idealized image of who we want to be in the world.

But it’s not really self-sabotage.

It’s just that you’re inhabiting a different personality than the one that you would like to inhabit.

And in extreme cases, these personalities have no knowledge of each other, and you flip back and forth, and the world experiences you as insane.

Most of us aren’t quite at that level of disassociation.

And in fact, we are able to put a veneer on that allows people to experience us as a person who has ups and downs, a person who’s sometimes really sweet and sometimes not so sweet, a person who can be a great contributor, sometimes a person who’s really selfish, whatever that might be for us.

But we smooth it out enough that we convince ourselves and others we’re not actually crazy.

So what I like about our path is an absolute commitment to radical acceptance and just naming things what they are.

And so part of how that can really help in terms of a Buddhist psychological framework and the introspective inquiry is that we can actually, when we’re really willing to look, when we’re really willing to accept the idea that everything that I’m doing in the world is because some part of me wants to do it, and when I’m doing that thing, it’s because I want to.

It’s just flat out because I want to.

Then we can actually start to create a clearer picture of the different personalities that live within us, because fundamentally there is no person.

And seeing through that is essential to the Buddha Dharma.

You are not a person.

You cannot, according to Buddha Dharma, you cannot be a coherent individual.

That is insane because there is no self.

There is no self essence.

There are simply moments of life arising.

Sometimes life arises as a selfish, conceited, manipulative sociopath.

Okay, great.

Radically accept that so that you can be with it accordingly.

And sometimes you manifest precisely as the Buddha.

You are wise and compassionate and skillful and measured, non-reactive, attuned to the oneness of the situation of personal and collective karma.

You are this, too.

Just because you want to be a certain way all the time doesn’t mean you actually are, and doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with when you’re not.

If you do want to happen, if you are committed to the path, and you do want to be a Buddha all the time, then there is a critical step in the journey.

And that critical step in the journey is naming, owning, and loving the other parts of you.

For me, most of you probably don’t know, but the manipulative self-centered sociopath who can be extraordinarily violent and sexually perverted and all of these types of things, that’s one of my personalities.

I like that guy.

His name is Balthier.

We’ve had a lot of dialogue.

He’s come to me in various astral forms as a Viking berserker.

I’ve witnessed his death as he engaged in war crimes and was murdered by a European knight.

Whether this is just psychological fancy and delusions, it doesn’t really matter.

We don’t put any metaphysical connotation on these psychological experiences.

We just say that this is a psychological experience, and then we go, what does it mean for how I live my life?

Up until the point that I was willing to accept that there was a part of me that thrived in manipulation and violence and sexual perversion, I could not have a dialogue with that part.

And so I would disassociate.

I would say, no, I’m a sweet guy.

I really want to be nice.

I want to be in a strong monogamous relationship.

I want to do these things.

I don’t want to enjoy pornography, let alone the dark, twisted pornography that I found myself watching.

That’s not me.

I don’t really like that.

I don’t know what’s going on.

I can’t control my behavior, blah, blah, blah.

All of these things that we say when we witness ourselves doing things that we wish we weren’t doing.

And so I sat in the cushion and I actually embodied in a safe container.

I allowed myself to fully adopt that personality.

I learned a name for it.

I learned how it felt in my body.

My whole nervous system changed.

My whole base changed.

Like the whole feeling of being in this body was radically different.

It was filled with rage and hatred and possession.

And when I was in that body, oh, it felt good.

It felt so good.

And in an instant, after decades of dealing with this, but in an instant, in an instant, it became clear.

How come when I would get on a bus, I could visualize myself going through and using my martial arts skills to slaughter everyone on that bus and actually find it to be a pleasant visual experience?

How?

If I’m dedicated to love and compassion, then how come I could have dreams like that?

How come I could have daydreams like that?

How come I could fantasize about that and get like aroused by the violence?

What the fuck?

Right.

But stopping and really allowing that person, that collection of patterns to manifest in my body, to be given a name, to be recognized as an authentic part of who I am, the Mars energy, the Gilra energy, the domineering persona, right?

Allowed it to take on its role because it was no longer suppressed or oppressed.

I was not afraid of it.

Right.

It’s scary.

My whole point being that if we really want to become whole and if we really want to touch into life essence as it is, and to be able to manifest Buddha as an ongoing process, then we need to recognize that when we are doing something that’s not that, it’s because there’s a part of us that really wants that.

It’s a part of us that really wants to be that way.

And the sooner we can become intimate with that energy, the sooner we can hold it and love it and include it, the sooner we can come into the right relationship, the sooner we can go, hey, you know what?

We’re not going to use that energy right now.

We’ll find you your outlets that are safe and healthy and our integrity with the rest of the parts.

Right.

But we’re not going to let you drive the bus while I try and lie to myself and convince myself that I don’t really want these things, that I don’t want to be like that, that that’s not who I am.

And so I’m reminded of Huy Nguyen who said, in any moment where we manifest as Buddha, we are Buddha.

Any moment we manifest malice and hatred, we are a demon.

You are.

That’s OK. And if you own it and you make it OK, then you have the opportunity to exert some agency.

But as long as we disown it, as long as we make it not OK, we are giving up our agency.

And so radical acceptance is at the central point of being able to individuate and to harmonize all the different energies that course through us as useful parts of life so that we can manifest as a skillful bodhisattva.

Bodhisattva, of course, being one who is awakened and thus serves other beings.

Remember that in this context, I would never talk about a bodhisattva as somebody who just aspires to alleviate suffering and others.

A bodhisattva is not an engaged Buddhist.

A bodhisattva is somebody who experiences liberation for themselves and then acts as liberation in the world, thereby showing other people what liberation looks like so that they can do it.

To me, bodhisattva is a step beyond Buddha.

You have to be Buddha before you can be bodhisattva.

There are some other nuances there as well.

Thank you very much for listening to today’s topic.

A little bit of time for Q&A and dialogue, and I’d like to pitch an idea to the sangha.

So in about five minutes, I’ll stop it to throw that out there.

The floor is open.

Hey, Umi.

I think I saw that character from your past a few weeks ago when I was in Iceland and Norway.

So, you know, I’d embrace it and keep moving forward.

There’s always hope that we can do the bodhisattva, but I appreciate your fluidity and dynamics and understanding that we all F up.

So good call.

Thanks.

I’m in.

Thank you.

Look forward to hearing more about you.

You bet.

Yeah, thank you for bringing up this topic today.

And yes, it can be definitely scary to check in with those parts, which are very, or at least for me, very destructive.

Yeah, having a safe container for that might be the best opportunity.

And thank you for sharing your vulnerability with that and allowing us to learn from you.

Thank you.

Safe container strongly recommended.

I really appreciate this talk.

As for the first time in my adult life, I have the space to fully explore what this being is and recognizing there’s a lot of dark twisted shit in here.

And I used to think that needed to be suppressed and hidden and not something that I liked.

I do fucking like it.

But, but learning how to not blow up my life with it.

While at the same time honoring it and expressing that energy.

That’s one hell of a project.

And I appreciate the having a safe space to be able to explore and discuss these things.

The one thing that I’ve realized and what I’ve been doing, and I have not in any way come to terms with this yet, is that I kind of got caught up from the very beginning and believing that all the negative emotions that I have, negative reactions, I’m not supposed to have them because they don’t align with the teachings.

And so I either come down on myself, old habit, or try to smother them, bad habit.

So, yeah.

It’s just giving myself permission to be pissed off.

Really.

I do believe that was Umi.

Oh yeah.

No, I think I would just say I believe that was Umi that did it.

Yes, it was.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Somewhere along the line I got.

This was all supposed to be open hearted and skillful means and so all of that didn’t fit in the structure that I built that I understood the practice to be.

I’ll leave it there.

That is such a common trap.

That is such a common trap.

And people who find out that we’re Buddhists will try to use it on us to manipulate our behavior.

Aren’t you a Zen guy?

Aren’t you supposed to be chill?

Fuck you.

Right.

Like I won’t punch you in the mouth.

Right.

And part of that is like, you can’t be open hearted, and then cut something out.

Those are mutually exclusive positions.

So to be open hearted is to love rage.

To be open hearted is to acknowledge, accept and appreciate all aspects of life.

And this is a difficult journey.

In a certain way, it’s much easier to follow dualistic traditions that say there is good and there is evil and all you have to do is pick good over and over and over again.

That’s not our.

It’s easier to have a sense of direction, and those frameworks, right, this is a much more fluid and difficult overall perspective.

I’m not going to start getting on that.

But yes, I’m glad that that’s breaking down, Marie.

Beautiful.

Man, what an interesting topic.

And whether or not you’re willing to admit to yourself that they’re there or to anyone else for that matter, let alone yourself.

Everyone has those facets.

Everyone has walked into a room and went.

They kill everybody in here.

And this is exactly how I do it.

You and then you and then you and then you and then you and then this and then I walk out.

But I look at it.

I came from looking at things from a very military spending years of my life.

Multiple combat zones, multiple combat tours, multiple instances of.

Man, you wouldn’t believe what a human being is capable of unless you like until you see it firsthand or until you’re a part of it firsthand and you’re the person that goes, well.

You don’t exist anymore.

Done.

And then you have to sit with that for a while and go, does that make me a terrible person?

Is that, you know, now my doom to whatever else?

Because I just decided that that living creature is no longer a thing.

Did I enjoy it?

No, not necessarily.

Is it part of a job?

Did I volunteer to join to go to do the thing?

Yes.

Is it?

I think it’s a matter of all of those like dark parts.

Nobody wants to talk about that.

Everybody has.

I think the difference between being a functional, I guess, member of a civilized society and anarchists is the fact that you can recognize those ago.

Okay.

Well, you know, that’s an impulse.

That’s an urge.

Probably shouldn’t do that.

And it’s the probably shouldn’t do that.

That like, that’s your key.

If you don’t have that probably shouldn’t do that.

You’re going to end up either in jail or, you know, what happened.

But it’s the same for nervous, whether or not it’s violence or whatever sexual thing that happens to be or whatever.

However you want to manifest it.

It’s can you recognize that it exists and then do you have some form of control over it?

And if you have some form of control over it, even if it’s frigging fingertips, okay, fine.

We’ll work with that.

It’s not having that ability to go, I should maybe pump the brakes on this a tad, that that becomes a problem.

And then, you know, the same thing.

There’s nothing wrong with saying like, hey, this is pretty good and twisted.

Am I into it?

Yeah.

Like, yeah.

Does it make, but then looking at it and go, does that make me a horrible human being?

Also, no.

So, I don’t know.

I’m leaving here and this afternoon is, you know, the moving wall is local here.

For a warmer one, I’ll spend my afternoon there.

Just kind of sitting and everything that that entails, how many thousands of names are on that wall.

All of the acts that were committed in both directions there that make them evil people.

No.

So, it’s an interesting, there was like an old Japanese proverb that I’m probably going to butcher because I usually do.

Was that everyone has three faces.

You know, one they show to the world, one they show to their close family, and one that they might show to themselves.

So, you spend a bit more time looking at that one that you might show to yourself.

Every facet that it has, the only thing that can come out of that is a positive and a positive being a better understanding of yourself.

Even if some of those things are a tad hard to admit.

And that’s, that moment is the moment where we start to truly be able to live on purpose.

Right.

Because as long as we don’t see that space, as long as we don’t own and recognize that, then it will live through us.

And we will wonder, where did that come from?

Right.

You know, and that’s what we don’t want.

That’s what we don’t want.

I routinely tell my kids, I don’t really care what you do, as long as you can tell me why you did it.

Okay.

And that you chose to.

So, if you did it on purpose and you had a reason, we might have to talk about it.

We might have to talk about your choices.

We might have to talk about your rationale here.

But it’s fine.

Right.

I believe that if we have those two qualities, I chose what I did for this reason, then the rest of it kind of doesn’t matter.

Until we look at impact and blah, blah, blah, blah, and then it starts to matter again.

But anyway, that gets complicated.

So, yeah.

Rich discussion.

Self-realization.

That’s what it is.

And actualization and authorship.

The post Radical Acceptance: Loving All Parts of Ourselves in the Journey to Liberation appeared first on Open Door Zen.

Good morning, good morning, good morning, what a delightful day to be alive.

That’s that’s something that’s just so fundamental to Zen that sometimes I just kind of like to take it for granted that everyone understands that the starting point of Zen is aliveness.

And I spend a lot of time talking about, okay, what does aliveness look like in our lives?

Because, you know, really, if it’s not practical, if it’s not pragmatic, then I ain’t got time for it.

And that’s kind of where I’m at in my life, I’m not particularly interested in things that are purely metaphysical or philosophical, if it doesn’t help me live my life, I don’t care.

But the basis of this, the basis of all the practical things that we talk about in here is aliveness, right?

That’s what Buddha is.

Buddha is the fundamental aliveness of the universe.

It is, in physical terms, the quanta, the intertangling vibration at the substratum of all of existence, when we sit deeply into meditation, and our whole system comes alive.

That’s Buddha, that’s touching Buddha, okay?

And so the whole process of being Buddha begins and ends with being alive, okay?

To touch divinity is to touch the very quality of our creative, self-sustaining awareness of life, right?

And that’s kind of hard to understand, in the sense that there’s lots of things that we don’t like about life.

There’s lots of things about being alive that kind of suck, right?

Physical pain, emotional pain, financial stress, relational stress, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it goes on and on and on.

There’s all these human elements that we want to say are somehow different than the divine, different than aliveness.

And Zen, compassion in Zen, is fundamentally recognizing that that’s all just being alive.

There’s nothing we need to get rid of, there’s nothing that we need to change.

Everything is exactly the way that it has to be, because of the very process of aliveness happening.

And aliveness happens in all sorts of really interesting ways, some of which, from a relative frame, as I just mentioned, are very unpleasant, okay?

And so a lot of times we talk about what does it mean to face those unpleasant things, and how do we do that, and what’s the difference between sympathy and compassion, and how do we show up in the world, and how do we tackle big issues like the ethical nature of warfare, and when is it okay to be violent, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

We get into the weeds of dealing with life, and we ask ourselves, what does aliveness demand of us in facing these situations?

And we might get to some of that today, too, because frankly, that’s where the rubber meets the road.

But the prerequisite is that you can recognize Buddha, this divine life, this light in a dynamic interplay, manifesting its truth, right?

And if you can’t currently experience that as part of your daily lived life, then there’s a couple things to do.

One is to recognize you’re not at that stage of your practice.

Fine, that’s fine.

Focus on the part where you get to touch the divine within you, and let that be the emphasis of your spiritual life, right?

And then you just do the best you can everywhere else, just doing the best you can, right?

That’s fine, do the best you can, but have the focus of your spiritual life be finding God within, finding the divine within, developing your personal relationship to the aliveness of the cosmos that’s constantly flowing through you and supporting you, right?

And then, once you are tapped in and your battery is charged to 100%, you’re just vibrating with aliveness, and you know that everything is okay because you are fundamentally supported by the cosmos, then worry about how you show up in the world for everybody else.

Let’s put things in their appropriate order, and there will be a transitionary period in there, where sometimes you feel really in tune with the divine and really alive, and like you’re showing up in the flow, and then you’ll turn around and you’ll be a total douchebag.

And then sometimes you’ll go outside at 2.30 in the morning and tell people unpleasant things, or play music at 2.30 in the morning.

Right, exactly.

I experienced that recently.

And that’s life, right?

We are the karma of the universe, and this is one of the things, too.

So we can prematurely determine that we are the karma of the universe, and we can step into that role without being fully tapped into the flux and flow of life and the fundamental okayness of all that is, and then we are just basically violently imposing our will on the rest of life, okay?

So if we are not tapped into the flux and flow of the harmony of life, we don’t get to have an opinion on other people from this tradition’s perspective, because we don’t know.

Our perspective is not big enough to judge others, right?

And then we tap in, and that’s when we start to be like, you know what?

In terms of the grand harmony of things, this correction needs to happen.

That correction needs to happen.

This adjustment needs made in myself.

This is no longer okay, this is okay, right?

And then we start to make adjustments based on the pain points that we perceive in the world.

We are karma, okay?

If you’re waiting for some other being to enact retribution in the world, then you’ve missed the point of Buddhism, which says that God functions as us.

We are the function of the divine.

We are the function of the divine.

The quality that allows us to have intention and perform that function is also the quality that separates us from the divine, this miraculous human consciousness.

It becomes confused, and it’s separation.

This is the fall.

This is the demi-urge, right?

And so we have to return first, restore ourselves from the fall, restore the connection of the human with the divine, and then they function together as wisdom and compassion.

Wisdom being the truth that everything is changing and everything is okay.

Compassion being that, well, everything is okay, it’s kind of a middle point there between the two.

Compassion is kind of like the harmonious interchange of life and its interdependency.

And wisdom is the discreet, impermanent nature of life.

These two together allow us to sit in equanimity, which says, it’s all okay.

And then from that place, we get to go, ah, this needs to change.

So trick question, is it really that place?

We’ve been paying attention, can we even say that it’s that place?

As a general statement, no.

No, right.

Because there’s just this place.

That’s right.

And then the next place is this place, this place.

We’re always in this place.

We are always touched into life, whether we see it or not, whether we feel it or not.

We’re always looking at us being that, as being other, and we are fundamentally separating ourselves from the foundation that supports us as we move through this human experience.

This is why it’s so critical to touch into this first.

What is this, this, this?

And only then trust yourself to deal with whatever we perceive as that.

Less than that.

Okay, there’s my 10-minute tirade on Zen.

And that leaves us about 15 minutes or so to have an open forum discussion, whether it’s inspired by what I just said or completely separate.

Thank you all.

I will resume my normal silent self.

So, all of this prepares you to be within yourself, obviously, then, before you worry about somebody else.

And if you don’t, and you know you found yourself, how?

Oh, you know.

Okay, it’s just, it’s an internal awareness.

Yeah, there’s a certain clarity that arises when we have found the divinity within ourselves, and that exposes to us the splinters in our own eye that become so apparent that we have to deal with those first, before we worry about the log in our neighbor’s eye.

To paraphrase the Bible.

And what happens as an internal experience of self-inquiry, that there’s a moment where all doubt, all insecurity, all confusion, all inner conflict disappears.

And in that space arises a knowledge of self-love, arises a knowledge of this is what is right.

This is what is necessary.

And all of our human arguments and justifications and fears are there in the background, but they are no longer predominant.

There’s no longer a chaotic symphony of conflicting opinions.

There is just this arising clarity based on, for me, love.

Some people, it’s peace.

Some people, it’s truth.

Some people, it’s whatever.

But to truly be loving in the most holistic way possible, this is what has to happen.

And the human can go, no, I don’t want to.

In fact, it often does.

But it cannot deny the voice that says, this is what is necessary.

This is the work you have to do on yourself.

This is the fear that you have to tackle.

These are the adjustments you have to make in your life.

This is how you must live, period.

And that knowing arises with such force that you can only know it as big as self, that interplay where God speaks directly to us.

Some call it the voice of our holy and guardian angel.

Some call it buddhi, awakened mind.

It’s all the same thing, with certain cosmological nuances.

And see, when you put it like that, it sounds so simple.

But it’s not.

It just isn’t.

But it’s not.

It just isn’t.

Yes, done.

Nope.

At least not for me.

For me, personally, it’s daily.

And I think that’s just where I’m at.

Maybe that’s where I’ll stay forever.

I don’t know.

It’s just a constant reminder to do better.

So that gives me, if I center myself in that place and go, okay, regardless of what it is, is it family, is it social interactions, is it parenting, is it what happened?

Is it four in the morning and my child has asked for water for the 28th time?

Do I get frustrated, yell, just don’t sleep?

Or do I go, something is wrong, something, you know, he’s got whatever it is.

Take a breath, pause.

Okay.

Buddy, what’s going on?

Here’s this, here’s that.

And it’s trying to suck a little less with each, you know, with each passing moment.

And it’s not, I personally, and like I said, I may never, I haven’t had that, you know, whatever you want to call it, you know, whether you call it enlightenment, epiphany, what have you, I haven’t had an instantaneous, now I get it.

But I have changed perspective into, maybe if you chip away little by little by little by little by little and you work at it just a little bit more each day, even if I never hit that point, I’m still better than I was back here.

Sure.

And so either way that you look at it, in that case, it’s positive.

So the fun is those two aren’t different.

Right.

Fair enough.

So it’s a constant process of letting old shit go.

Pretty much.

Not quite.

No?

Not quite.

It’s not just about letting go.

It’s about what to do with it.

So the past is here to inform our future.

And if we let it go, then we’re losing the information.

So we can’t let it go until it’s fully processed and integrated so that it can inform our future activity.

Otherwise, we just keep looping around the same mistakes, the same situations over and over and over and over again.

So what does this mean?

What do I have to do?

Who will I be?

And then you set your sights on who I will be and everything else, you fall away.

And then you can let it go.

Right.

So if you let it go prematurely and you don’t get the information out of it, then you are failing to adjust to the lessons that life is giving you.

Okay.

I’d love to intentionally open space for our online folks, because it’s easy for us to get on a tear here in the Zendo and not let room.

Yeah, I have been hearing the importance of discipline and intentionality.

And once that intentionality is known, then I’ve also experienced the need for the awareness and the wisdom to recognize when that intentionality needs to shift a little bit.

It’s a constant, constant shifting, as opposed to opening up.

It’s a constant shifting, as opposed to, this is it, straight ahead, nothing else.

And you just run into a wall.

Go ahead.

Yes, and, right?

So it’s like, once you pick your step, this is like a one step at a time thing, right?

So you pick your step and you’re like, I’m going to go that way.

And you make that step, right?

Like you make that step.

You don’t make that step thinking about going that way.

You walk back, right?

And then you make that step.

And then on your next step, before your next step, you might be like, 180.

So it’s like this whole life cycle happens with every instant of our life, where it’s like a seed sprouts, grows, bears fruit, withers, decays, plants a new seed.

And it’s like, at that moment, we get to decide, do we nurture that seed or do we pull that weed?

Right?

And so it is a constant inquiry of this life cycle.

But each step, like, if you’re going to take that step, because this is the clarity of the moment, boom, then any doubt, anything else must fall away.

Or else you don’t know.

You don’t truly know.

And sometimes we can’t.

And sometimes we just have to step into the unknown, which is the beauty of the not knowing mantra, right?

And we can never really know.

But even when we don’t know, once we decide what we’re going to do, we do it.

And then we reassess, right?

And it’s this process that if we can really get into it, so that we’re truly unified when we take our step, that we can actually experience life.

Because we aren’t diffuse.

Our light is concentrated within us.

And our light is moving toward the intention we set ourselves, which is, you know, best set by some hyper value, right?

Some overarching principle that can take many different forms.

But we don’t have to talk about that right now.

And then we do that thing.

And then we determine what course adjustments we need to make once we have the new information in the next cycle.

And it’s a delicate balance.

Only if we think in terms of a long piece of linear time.

If we think in instantaneous moments, then it’s not a delicate balance at all.

Because it’s just right now I’m deciding.

I’ve decided this is what I do.

Now that I’ve done this, what feedback have I received?

What do I need to do now?

I do this.

I do that with my whole being.

What feedback have I received?

What do I need to do now?

I do this with my whole being, right?

So we never have to think more than we need to think.

I think I was responding to what you were saying.

Did I get off?

Exactly.

But you lost me on linear time though.

Oh, sorry.

It’s the one time.

My experience, there’s no such thing as linear time.

It’s a spiral time.

So that’s maybe where I get confused.

Well, you say that there is no linear time.

But then your expression of setting a path and then having to stay with it or running into a wall and having this awareness of what to change, that’s an expression of linear time.

It’s a segment.

It’s just a segment of a longer spiral.

Yeah.

So playing with that understanding and how short you make your segments is critical to opening us up to that adjustment process.

And so that would be the inquiry for how do I make this balance true?

How do I set disciplined intention while maintaining infinite flexibility for all of the potential outcomes?

That has to do with the segment of time that you relate to.

Okay.

That makes sense.

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

Anything coming up for Marie or Zenshan?

It’s a good conversation.

I’m glad you’re having it.

I don’t have any questions or comments about it at this time.

Okay.

And I don’t know if I want to talk or not.

I got time for one more comment or question before we do closing.

Check in if anyone has anything.

All right.

Well, then I’m going to just end with this idea that ties into Robin’s comments.

And one of the most essential paradoxes that’s not a paradox.

The end is in the beginning.

The cause is in the effect.

When you can collapse things into each other, recognize that the end is in the beginning and the cause is in the effect, then this all makes perfect sense.

So, have fun with that.

Chew on that for a second.

Yikes.

All right.

And from here, we go ahead and we do our closing check-in.

The post What is Buddha? appeared first on Open Door Zen.