Trusting Buddha Nature

* 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.