Zen, Christmas, and Radical Responsibility

*transcript generated by AI

Good morning, good morning.

So great to have you practicing with us today.

Qiqi Xin, all right, glad to have you.

And Taishan back again, so great.

And of course, as I mentioned, Robin and Marie, the die-hard Stalwarts, without whom this wouldn’t continue.

So your presence is always deeply, deeply appreciated.

From time to time, I like to open just with a, anyone got any prompts for a Dharma talk today?

So that’s where I’m at right now.

I’m sure I could say all sorts of things, but I’d rather do it prompted by what’s alive for one of you.

So anyone got anything that they’d like to hear a riff on before we go into our kind of more satsang style Dharma discussion?

Yeah, I was wondering, I mean, we usually all celebrate Christmas in some kind of ways at these times.

So I’m a little bit wondering how Zen and Christmas, how Buddhism and Christmas fits in any kind together.

Where would you say there are similarities or it’s completely different?

What is this all about, if we look at Christmas from a Zen or Buddhist perspective?

Depends on what you mean by Christmas.

So can you tell me what you mean by Christmas when you ask this question?

I think I must be pointing towards the Christian idea of someone was born who is like the one.

And we are celebrating this.

We’re celebrating coming together, sharing presents.

Well, you just shifted notes there pretty dramatically.

So are we celebrating the birth of Christ?

Or are we coming together?

Or it’s the question of the form of that celebration takes.

And by the way, this is already the Dharma discussion right here, because the power of our inquiry is directly related to our power to awaken.

So what I’m modeling here by asking deep, penetrating questions to get to the root of the issue is also what we must model for ourselves as we face our path.

So what are you talking about?

Are you talking about a religious idea that’s probably more radically misunderstood by people who follow exoteric Christianity?

Are you talking about an esoteric understanding of the birth of Christ?

Or are you talking about the way we celebrate one of those things?

Thank you for those clarifying questions.

You’re welcome.

My understanding how we mostly celebrate Christmas has nothing to do anymore with what we learn from Christianity, what it is.

So is that what you’re asking about?

Are you asking about the way Christians celebrate Christmas or the way that Christmas has become commercialized?

And how then would relate to the commercialization of Christmas My question is, what I understand as the meaning of these days, how does that relate to?

So the Christian idea.

Well, I don’t understand how you mean to celebrate these things.

Why the hell I brought up this question?

OK.

So if I don’t do the Zen penetrating inquiry thing and I take a question on face value, which is, how as a Zen Buddhist do we relate to the cultural phenomenon that we’re surrounded by called Christmas?

That’s not what I’m asking for.

Great.

Because.

Good.

OK.

So I don’t understand how you mean to celebrate Christmas.

Good.

OK.

So do you want to try again?

So my question is, can you give in your own words what’s written in the Bible, so to say, and compare this to what’s written in Buddhist texts?

Like where is, for example, this we’re celebrating someone who came to this Earth with this moment of being born.

And for me, there would be some similarity into this moment when Buddha had his awakening moment.

And then the question is, what about the Sangha, so to say?

Like is the family in that case the Sangha or the people who came?

And why are you?

The question is getting immediately too big to answer.

OK.

So do you want me to do a comparative commentary on what the Bible says about the birth of Christ and what we practice in Zen?

Sure.

Or do you want me to compare the story of the Buddha’s awakening to the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ?

The first one.

The second one is also interesting, but for today, the first one.

OK.

So does anyone else, is that interesting to everybody else?

How does a Zen priest read the Bible in terms of what all of this means?

No one’s saying no.

I’m seeing Greg move his mouth, but I’m not hearing your voice.

Are you muted?

Yeah?

OK. All right.

Good enough.

So for some of you who may know, I’m also a Western esotericist and an esoteric.

So I have no problem with the esoteric version of Christianity.

And basically what that means is that Christ, there’s God, which we can say is our true self.

There’s Christ, which we can say is our higher self.

And then there’s our basic self, which is the one that is attached and confused by our sensory experience.

So the birth of Christ actually represents the individuation of the Godhead into a singular being.

And the story of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is very similar to what we practice in Zen practice.

Because by becoming aware of the idea that there is a higher self, we meditate.

And as we meditate, we align with that.

But in order to really have that happen, we have to take the material form that that higher self has been bound in, radically deconstructed, allowed to die, die on our cushion, and then be reborn again in a purely spiritualized form.

And this alchemical process is the same in Western esotericism as it is in Zen Buddhism.

And through that, we understand that we, as a divine figment of imagination of God, are God and not separate from God.

We’re just temporarily inhabiting this dramatic play of materiality that we call physical life.

And as we return to that, we become fearless.

Why do we become fearless?

We become fearless because we recognize ourselves as a creator deity in ourselves, because we have the power of God within us.

We recognize that our life cannot die.

We cannot die.

We are ever eternal, just like Christ.

And this is the promise of Zen, freedom and joy from samsara.

So what is samsara?

Samsara is cyclic rebirth in the ignorance that our materiality and our sensory experience is real.

Nirvana is the cessation of that illusion and the various forms of suffering that arise from being enmeshed in that illusion.

And this is the same as being like Christ, fully God, fully man.

And for the time that we can dance in form, then we have the obligation to go through a birth, death, and resurrection within this lived experience so that we can exercise our capacity to tune in to that creator power while we are here and live lives of purpose as an expression of our true will, as an expression of love.

And that sounds awfully similar to both what you hear in Buddhism and in Christianity.

Have you asked me?

Of course, I’m the one who said it.

So of course, that’s the similarity that I draw.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Thanks for that really interesting prompt.

I don’t think I ever would have thought to give the Dharma talk quite like that.

This is why I like to do that.

And so at that point, I just turn it over.

We’ve got about 20 minutes left for more satsang-style discussion.

It can be questions that arise from what we just opened with, or it can be something completely unrelated that is important and alive for you and your practice.

Yeah, Tyson, you’re here in Colorado.

In line with the holiday theme and the parallels with Zen and Christianity, yesterday was World Meditation Day proposed by the United Nations and participated in a sitting.

And one of the statements I made was, if we’re looking at it from a worldview, bringing it off the cushion.

Meditation isn’t really an event or a process.

It certainly can be, but it’s more than that.

It becomes a way of life and a presence.

And so the three words that I’m going to throw out at my granddaughter, who’s starting to awaken and self-reflect in college, and we start to go deep when we get one-on-one, she’s flying back from out of the country, and we’ll be together on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and then a couple of weeks later on a ski trip.

And I’m going to tell her, ponder these three words, and when we’re in the mountains, we’ll reflect upon them.

And that’s presence, relationship, and connection.

And so my question is, in what order do you think they arrive and are independent, or are they fluid and constantly changing?

For instance, if someone has a presence, you can feel it or notice it.

When there is a connection between us, you can recognize it and feel it.

And does a relationship begin before or after the connection and the presence is noticed?

So it’s kind of a circular discussion, and one that I find interesting and valued.

And maybe it’s totally fluid, and we change positions, but to me, that’s what the holiday season is about, because we spend a lot of time with those that we’re close to and sharing gifts, and we get into a state of presence that we feel really part of a community, hopefully.

So I’ll shut up on that.

Yeah, I’m glad you added that last word, hopefully.

Not everyone’s experience is that subject.

But to take your question and rephrase it into a question that I want to answer, and then answer that question, I’m going two points back to the fact that the only presence we know is our own.

The only mind we know is our own.

The only relationship we have is the relationship that we have to ourself.

The only connection that we have is the connection that we have to ourselves.

Whatever we’re perceiving and experiencing as other is an extension of ourself.

And so for me, practice begins and ends with the recognition that whatever I’m doing, I am exploring my own relationship to myself.

And when I look at you, Kaizan, I can say that you inhabit a different physical body.

But really, all I can know is my understanding of you.

All I can know is what I know that you are.

And when I feel a presence in your presence, I’m feeling that presence within me.

I don’t actually know your presence.

I know my presence in your presence.

I know the way that you feel to me within myself.

And so the relationship that I’m having to you has to do with the relationship that I have to the way that I feel when I’m around you.

And so as we take this deep, deep inquiry into our own minds seriously, again, we discover our remarkable power to receive the gifts of life.

And we can receive them in lots of different ways.

And we can choose not to receive them in equally numbers of ways.

We can look at them, and we can be like, yeah, that’s a gift that I don’t want right now.

Thank you very much.

And just leave that over there on the rack.

And this gives us a great deal of tolerance and patience and compassion, because we don’t have to take every gift that somebody gives us serenity about, including ourselves.

We give ourselves all sorts of gifts that it would be better that we did not accept from ourselves.

And so I am sure that the conversation that you have with your granddaughter will be rich and delightful and beautiful and really explore the interpersonal space in meaningful and impactful ways.

But here in this Zen container, I’m going to remind us that all we know is ourselves.

And that’s what’s most important, because when we know ourselves truly to the point where we forget that there are others, that’s when we really get to show up in the way that everyone hopes to show up, in my belief, which I guess, in your thing, would anchor it in presence, my own presence.

What presence do I bring?

What presence do I feel?

What presence do I know?

Yeah, that brings to mind another discipline I spend time with, the three principles, and learning that we all live in separate realities.

And a wrap on all of that is a greater reality, or the reality, which isn’t parceled.

It’s pure selfless awareness, with the emphasis on selfless.

So I think we learn that in Zen koans of zooming in and zooming out, getting the intimate and direct, but the big picture, and allowing space for all.

So yeah, to me, and reflecting what you just said, the presence is the big bubble.

And the connection and relationship is maybe the smaller bubbles within that, because we’re bouncing against all these separate realities, and respecting that they are separate realities.

But when we get quiet enough, those bubbles kind of just meld into the big bubble.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, Omi.

Howdy.

It’s so good to be here with everybody.

I’ve had something on my mind, and I would love to hear your rendition of this in recontextualized into a Zen container like this.

It’s the idea that nobody is coming to help.

I feel like there’s a lot of people, and I’m not one of them, but there’s a lot who really want a big god daddy to come step in and help save humanity from themselves, or the aliens, or whoever it might be.

And I don’t think any help is coming.

I don’t think it’s supposed to, and I think that’s a good thing.

But I would love your take on this.

Yeah, yeah.

Based on the way I answered the previous two questions, you might say that we are the help.

We are the help.

We are each endowed with the capacity to take a radical accountability for the choices we make in the way that we live our lives.

And the abdication of that power into something else is the fall of man, the greatest sin, the belief that something other than our own choices is out there, so that we don’t have to take responsibility for those choices.

And it’s particularly fun when the world around us burns and we have this realization, because we get to feel like, oh, I started the forest fire that’s about to kill me.

Snap.

And in that moment, you get to remember how you started the forest fire.

And then you can be like, well, actually, you know what?

I can just go over there, and I can start working on putting it out, can’t I?

No, you sure can.

Or you can huddle in your grovel.

You can climb a tree and wait to get burned.

Good news is, existence is cyclic.

You will be reborn.

You will either learn not to start that fire again, or you’re going to start the fire again.

And the universe lasts for billions of years, so you can keep going on that cycle for as long as you like.

But to me, this practice reveals, ultimately, our radical responsibility to take absolute agency over our karma.

And this is quite contrary.

Most people understand Zen as a path of surrender.

And that’s true.

In a way, that’s true.

And not knowing, that’s true, too.

But there are things that we do know.

And there are places where we do not surrender.

The surrender is an instruction to drop into a state that is unknowable, so that we can watch how creation happens.

And as we watch how creation happens, we understand the law of karma, which is that every thought, word, or deed is a cause that will have an effect, period.

And when we understand how one becomes many, and how many interacts with each other, and how our thoughts, words, and deeds bear fruit, then our practice drops us into the cycle at a point that allows us to take a radical responsibility for our karma.

And in that moment, we become God.

And then we can help ourselves.

And as an extension, we can help others.

But when we try and play God before we become God, things get awfully messy.

It’s occurring to me that responsibility, freedom, two sides of the same thing, right?

But on this responsibility side, am I?

Would it be crazy to just choose to be responsible for everything, even beyond limits of my perceived self?

I feel like that’s not practical.

But it’s true, maybe, in some sense, right?

We could say, we’re not separate.

Therefore, what this person does is, I’ll take responsibility for that.

And then I feel like maybe I shouldn’t be.

Like, that’s dumb.

Yeah, so that’s one of the things that shows up a lot that I consider a radical confusion and distortion of the dharma, right?

So as individualized relative beings, we do not have God consciousness.

We are not omniscient.

We do not see the whole web.

This is why not knowing is so important, right?

What we do see is our own individuated reality.

And this is what we must take radical responsibility for.

And when we really get this, we understand that everyone else is equally responsible for their own reality.

And if I interfere and meddle in their reality to coerce or force or change their trajectory that was set on them by their karmic destiny, I’m being violent.

This is the nature of violence.

All of our reactive emotions that exert control over the exterior world are violent, right?

And this is why we surrender.

We surrender everything that we cannot control.

And the only thing that we can control are our own personal thoughts, words, and deeds.

And any change that we exert through the world is by laying different causes to these karmic factors and allowing them to ripple out into the space of cosmic consciousness, right?

We feed cosmic consciousness through our karmic action.

Cosmic consciousness then feeds others based on those fruits, okay?

That’s the only way that it works.

So I can never take responsibility for your practice.

I can never take responsibility for how you meditate.

I can never take responsibility for how you show up.

But I can take responsibility for the thoughts, words, and deeds that I feed back to you by existing in that liminal space, that Christ consciousness that receives the information from the cosmic and then makes a conscious choice about what to do with my karma.

And this is the way.

This is the way that Zen asks us to show up.

This is the liminal space that we are asked to inhabit, right on that fringe of what’s coming into the cosmic field and what we put back into it as individuated beings.

And that’s where our responsibility lies.

And that responsibility is already adequately large to keep anyone occupied.

Let’s not get distracted by responsibilities that are so far beyond that in scope that they’re unimaginable.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Radical responsibility, look at that.

How to move beyond blame, fearlessly live your highest purpose, and become an unstoppable force for good.

I’ll have to read that, the long PhD.

We might have something in common.

Cool.

Thanks for sharing that, Tyson, we’ll look it up.

So at this point, I notice our time, and I’d like to leave time for a closing check-in.

And just for context, everyone here already knows this, but I’m gonna say it again.

We check in, and the reason we check in is because we are not past-oriented beings, we are future-oriented beings.

And one of the greatest problems that humans have is we get confused and think that the past is more important than the future.

So we step into a check-in, because what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna check in with what’s important for us to take into what’s next for us.

We’re not gonna reflect on the experience here quite so much, unless it is to say something about the experience that we will take into our future.

So let’s check into what’s next.