Zen as a Life of Persistent Evolution
*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.