Zen & Personal Development
*transcript generated by AI
Good morning, good morning, good morning.
So typically at this point, I do some sort of like, less than 10 minute talk about Zen.
A little, little thing, and then we’d leave about 20 minutes for like open floor discussion on, a lot of times it’s inspired by the talk, sometimes it’s like, no, not that, we’re going to talk about something else, which is all fine.
Okay.
And just so you know, these are recorded.
The audio goes up on the website and I use AI to make a transcript so that they can be referred to in the future for people who want to revisit what we talk about here.
So the video is not posted, but if you speak, that will be recorded and be put on this website, just so you’re aware.
So the thing that came up today, so I woke up, I went to Lexington, Kentucky over the weekend for my oldest daughter’s national cheer competition.
Okay.
And yeehaw, right?
That’s a world.
Okay.
And it was really, really quite delightful.
It was great to see her.
She performed really, really well in her squad and, you know, ended up taking fifth in nationals for their cheer competition, which is super cool and very excited by that.
And then we made our way home and got home around 1230 last night.
And I woke up this morning and, you know, after my basic check-in, you know, with like, okay, I’m alive again.
That’s delightful, right?
Good morning.
Good morning to me.
Good morning to the cosmos.
Good morning to the sublime.
I did what most of us do these days and grab my phone, check my notifications.
And I saw a very interesting inquiry from one of our Sangha members who comes and goes sometimes, Michael Grady.
Some of you may know Michael Grady.
And he asked a brilliant question that is critical to understand for our work, which is how does Zen relate to psychological healing, shadow work, personal development?
Like what’s going on here?
Because then, you know, in a lot of ways, traditionally Zen is said to like, not be so concerned with all that stuff.
Right.
But hollow bones partly emerged from our teachers, from our founders’ realization that spiritual awakening is not fundamentally adequate.
Right.
So in East Asian wisdom traditions, there’s this huge emphasis that you attain sublime with cosmic consciousness and you’re done.
Good job.
Right.
And so there’s a huge subset of practices that you live your life.
Once your lifely obligations are fulfilled, you go into your own spiritual practice, you attain union with the sublime, and you live out your days in peace.
Okay, that’s beautiful.
That’s a lovely way to do things.
Our particular lineage that came from India through China and Zen to the United States or Japan and then to the United States has a certain quality of that.
But we’ve got a big hit in the face of, you know, there’s a lot of people who attain union with the sublime and are still assholes.
Right.
And so what does it really mean to live this way?
Well, how can we be avatars?
Like, really, what does it mean to actually embody divine love on a daily basis?
And to do that, we have to recognize that the ego and its shadows do not necessarily disappear upon union with the sublime.
Okay.
Now, fire enhances everything that it touches.
Okay.
And that means that all of our good qualities get manifested in an awakening experience, and all of our unresolved stuff also gets enhanced.
We’re less likely to see it.
So within the context of hollow bones practice, what does this mean for us?
Well, it means that our primary orientation is still first to see through, to recognize that everything that is relative and happening in the manifest world and our thoughts and emotions is fundamentally illusory and unreal.
Okay.
What is real is the absolute.
Everything that is, is a manifestation of the absolute.
So we’re non-dual in this way.
However, if we’re going to do work, we have to do work from the perspective of the absolute.
If we cannot touch the divinity within, then we can’t possibly see ourselves clearly enough to know what adjustments we have to make in our behavior.
Okay.
And so we have a whole aspect of our practice, which is about showing up.
How do we show up?
I said earlier, living our life on purpose.
How do we show up?
We pay attention to the ripples we’re creating in the world around us.
That tells us how we’re showing up.
And if we’re looking out and we’ll be like, man, the world around me sucks.
Well, it’s reflecting you.
Okay.
So then we look, okay, well, how am I, am I manifesting our precepts?
Am I living in accordance with nonviolence, wisdom, compassion, and skillful means?
Am I really, am I, maybe I’m trying to behave that way, but internally, am I actually aligned with that?
Or do I have a part of my voice who’s whinging and complaining and angry and spiteful and hateful that I’m like kind of cutting off from myself to try and show up in a mature way?
Well, if that’s true, then we’re not aligned with the truth.
We’re not actually manifesting divine love, even if our behavior is loving.
So we have to get beneath that.
We have to get into the part of us that isn’t truly feeling it and, and love it and dissolve it in the pure light of our consciousness.
And so we have sacred stewardship, sacred stewardship demands that we look at how our presence impacts the world around us.
Taken deeply enough, we recognize that the presence of our various mind parts are all part of impacting the world within us and they’re not too.
So we have to pay attention to that too.
And we have philosophical re-indoctrination.
All of us live by doctrine, whether we choose it or not.
Philosophical re-indoctrination at its heart is the capacity to deconstruct any perspective we hold so that we can always see that it is relative.
There is no fixed perspective that is true, except for the fact that everything is an interconnected oneness and everything is just an aspect of that.
So anytime we have a belief structure that doesn’t align with that truth, then we go, huh, I’m separating myself from the web of life somehow.
I’m separating myself from light somehow.
What am I doing?
Why?
What does this belief really get me?
Is this truly skillful?
Is this a boundary that I need to hold?
Right?
Is this a belief that actually helps me tend to the web of life and be a part of it in a loving way?
Emotional maturity and integrity.
Can we actually be aligned with ourselves as we live out this deeper truth?
Can we really know what’s going on?
Right?
And if we are not capable of transforming all of our unskillful action into skillful action, are we at least capable of having the chutzpah, the strength to go like, you know what?
I caused harm.
I’m sorry.
And to meet it with integrity and accountability and purpose and to use it as an opportunity for growth and love.
Right?
We are not going to get it right all the time.
That’s not what maturity and integrity is.
Maturity and integrity is trying to get it right all the time, knowing when we didn’t and then showing up to fix it or to at least own it and reconcile it, not project it out into the world around us.
Right?
But to be ultimately lords of our domain.
Allegiance, I believe, is maybe even a better word.
And then constant embodiment.
Right?
So our bodies hold wisdom, massive amounts of wisdom.
Our bodies want to give us all of that wisdom.
We typically shut off our bodies.
Right?
We don’t quite attune to that.
And so various energetic blockages arise that persistent chronic pain, contraction, all sorts of different things.
Right?
Our traumas are held in our bodies and conscious embodiment is getting into the body because when it knows that it’s safe because we are connected to the divine, then it will release all of its shit.
And then we get to go through that beautiful process of being like, oh, my God, I’m still remembering what happened when I was four.
Why?
And then some pain releases, some chronic irritable bowel syndrome resolves itself.
Some this happens, some that happens.
And in the future, when we feel those disturbances in our bodies, they become much more immediate cues to places where we’re out of alignment, where there’s stewardship to be done, where there’s an idea that has become too rigid, where we’re not quite owning up to how we’ve showed up in the world and our emotional maturity and integrity.
And so because our lineage is all about how we show up, it’s also all about smoothing out all of the filters, all of the blockages, all of the bottlenecks that prevent us from manifesting light, from manifesting divine love in our life, every moment of every day.
And that’s what we’re called to do in this practice.
That’s what it means to practice being a Buddha so that we can be a bodhisattva.
A lot of people flip these and they think that you’re a bodhisattva.
A bodhisattva is an awakening warrior or one, an awakened light being that goes around and like shares light, spreads light, supports other, reduces suffering.
A lot of people try and be bodhisattvas before they become Buddhas.
Buddha just means awakened one.
So they’re running around trying to help people from their own neurotic perspective.
And it ends up not necessarily working out very good.
Even though everyone thinks that they’re doing beautiful work, we demand that we actually ascend to the capacity to be perfectly still, perfectly passionless, perfectly present, perfectly nonjudgmental.
And then from this perspective of awakeness, decide what is skillful?
What do I need to do?
How can I really engage in a powerful way?
So first, we train ourselves to be Buddha.
Then we function as bodhisattvas.
Along the way, we do the best we can.
And so anyway, that’s my little morning blurb.
Thank you all for listening to the ramblings of me.
And I look forward to the open floor discussion.
I left us about 17 minutes.
We want to end on time.
Not all at once, right?
It’s usually happened.
There’s about 30 seconds that everyone just kind of like feeling into the moment process.
And I still wonder, maybe I missed it because I know I was in thoughts too.
Have you answered now the question that you saw on your phone this morning?
I certainly thought I did.
Okay.
So we cannot manifest.
We cannot be avatars.
We cannot live as when there are psychological, emotional blockages, filtering that light and skewing it in a million different ways, dimming it.
So psychological shadow, emotional healing are all various ways that the relative structure of an individual personality dims, filters, and alters the light that is trying to flow through us.
So if we are going to become pure expressions, then we have to clear out our filters to the best of our ability.
Thank you for bringing this into one thing.
And now comes my question.
How much is it possible with our practice to go through this?
And how much is it important to also see a therapist?
Yeah, well, that’s kind of the question, right?
So as an idealist, we would say the ideal perspective of Zen is that when we truly awaken, then we can see clearly enough to know what needs to be changed.
And because we’ve truly awakened, we’re detached enough from our desire to be a certain way that none of the changes are hard to make.
Because we don’t have that much, we’re no longer clinging to a particular sense of self.
I just like, oh, wow, this habit I have is really destructive.
That’s really hurting the people I love.
It becomes a no brainer to do something different.
And sometimes what we found is that while that is the ideal, and while I have experienced that that certainly can work, and it does work for a huge number of our conditioned patterns, it’s also really, really helpful to engage in other forms of support for that.
Especially before our awakening is really deep enough to actually not care who you are.
Most of us still care very much about who we are.
And from a caring who we are perspective, we need a lot of help to get that part of us to realize that the organism will survive just fine if it’s not carrying out its neurotic pattern.
And so therapy becomes really useful.
That’s part of why I like the Western mystery traditions, because they force us to explore the full experience of light.
What does it mean to be a fully independent person?
What does it mean to be a fully engaged in a community?
What does it mean to be severe and harsh and deconstructive?
What does it mean to be a preserver?
What does it mean to, you know, like it bounces us all over the life experience so that there’s all the colors of the rainbow available to us as we tweak and refine our systems, right?
And makes us look at every area of our life.
Where in Zen, it’s more like you work with whatever is right in front of you.
And that’s part of what makes being a householder so much more fun than being a monastic, because we have so many things that are in front of us.
Rather than a monastic community, you get to really pare down the things that you have to deal with, you know.
And so, yeah, all that stuff.
One last thing.
You once told me it might be like a little bit here so that we can do a little bit more awakening.
And then when we have a little bit more awakening, a little bit more of other stuff and so on.
In this process, just the one thing, sometimes it’s time for other support outside of Zen.
So that, for example, the therapist has an idea.
Maybe that’s helpful.
What we do on the other hand, like Zen practice, because that can be, especially in the beginning, when you’re not stable enough in your Zen practice, then the therapist might throw off all your ideas you just gained in Zen practice.
And then, however… Yeah, well, it’s a tricky balance to mix modalities.
Because your therapy is taking your sense of self and making it functional.
Zen is asking you to completely disregard your sense of self and look at what functions are happening and then select a set of functions that don’t suck.
And so the language of the two and the purpose of the two is actually kind of at odds with each other.
So on the one hand, they work together really, really well.
But on the other hand, it can be really confusing and it can create a lot of conflict and tension.
And tension.
Two modes.
What is it?
The same goal with two different paths to get there, in essence.
Yeah, I mean, in thought.
Which just can be a little bit… It’s kind of like if you’re learning multiple martial arts at the same time or if you’re practicing with multiple weapons and you don’t have a basis in the one and then you pick up the other and then you’re trying to use it like you want to use the other one and then it just doesn’t work right.
Yeah, so we just got to be clear enough on what we’re doing.
I use that because Rick here is a historical European martial artist and he has swords and stuff and does cool things.
And Zenshin there in the robes who’s been speaking actually lives in Germany.
And his system is based in German swordsmanship.
Oh man, very cool.
At no point I feel…
I don’t feel any person has the ability to be… Well, obviously no one’s perfect and you’re never going to be but it’s always the journey to do so.
And whatever tools you can find to get you there.
Whether it’s therapy, whether it’s Zen, whether it’s finding your own version in the middle of that and learning to balance everything in life.
To still be able to function, go to work on a Monday and still function without self-destruction.
All tools to help us balance ourselves out.
That’s my take on personal, I guess.
I feel that everything in life balances in some fashion.
And then being cognitive enough and paying attention enough.
To see how you can help keep it in that balance easily without fighting it, you know.
And once again, using the tool, whatever tools at hand.
Be it riding motorcycles just to get out of your mind for a moment or meditating or sword fighting, which is very much a forced focus.
It’s never going to be the same for everybody.
Trying all of those options or observing them and seeing how they function for you is a continuing thing.
It’s never going to stop.
So I’m not going to say that you can’t do it.
So I’m obviously very new, so I don’t know much on terminology and names and people and precepts and whatnot.
But you were saying before, people are immediately, somewhat narcissistically, trying to be the people to go out and fix and help and do and make the world better and whatnot without fixing themselves first and knowing that they have a good viewpoint to do so.
And I think that’s, that once again, is into that balance.
And it’s something that you’re always going to have to try and check because just because you feel that you have centered yourself enough to feel confident that you have a proper mind, aligned with yourself in the world and know that everything is right and this is the right thing to do, you have to check that again later.
It’s never going to be, all right, I’ve done that.
Go to the next one.
That’s over.
Yeah, it’s an ongoing.
That’s what I love about Zen is that it’s just an inquiry.
The only way to answer the question, what is the purpose of life, is with another question.
So we’re just always in the inquiry process.
What is this?
Okay, what now?
What is this?
Okay, what now?
All the five-year-olds.
Yeah, I’d love to figure out how to make this kid-friendly, but I think it’d have to be a different format to get our kids out here.
So we’re at five till the top of the hour.
Anything coming up for Robin or Marie?
Yeah, there’s been a lot coming up for me.
Trying to keep it brief.
There’s learning more of my authentic voice and speaking that with confidence.
I have found is quite disarming or alarming for others.
And it’s been a very, very interesting process to watch.
And also being aware of that, like, that I’ll make mistakes and I’m okay with that.
And not becoming so arrogant in my confidence that I don’t recognize that I’m going to fuck up a lot.
And being okay with that, that’s pretty cool.
Yeah, and the thing that just popped up right then about making this kid-friendly, because I just spent a few days away with my teenage children.
My son did Qigong with me one morning.
And he renamed all the poses to Lord of the Rings names.
That’s awesome.
Yeah.
So, you know, that’s it.
Thank you.
If they send me the list, we’ll use them next.
I was just reminded in listening to this this morning, that there’s like levels or layers to this whole process, to the learning, to the teachings, to all of it.
And it seems like, at least for me, in the beginning, there was a lot that got like kind of ripped off.
And I mean, in a good way.
I mean, I didn’t get ripped off.
Things just became, oh, there were so many things that became clear.
And it was good.
And it was, it opened a lot of space.
And I got a lot of clarity on a lot of things.
And then it hit a level where there was all these things that I didn’t even realize I was doing.
And then it hit a level where there was all these things that, they got opened up, but there was a whole lot of resolution that needed to be done with those.
And so then there was more with that.
And it’s an evolution.
It’s not like you sit there and you get some kind of awareness or enlightenment that just solves all things.
I just feel like it’s an ongoing process.
And it’s simply, actually, at the very beginning, when you first started talking, it reminded me of when I, oh shoot, how have I forgotten the name of the book?
The Heart of Zen.
Sun Po’s book.
That first book that you were reading and I picked up and that’s where it went.
And the one thing that I, one of the things that stuck with me as when I finished it was, how is it that these people, some of these people in this book were enlightened or enlightened and did some really bad shit.
That was a conflict for me, huge conflict.
It’s like, well, what is enlightenment?
If you’re going to be stomping all over people’s lives and doing things, so.
So back to, it’s a process.
I feel like I’ve peeled off layers, thought I got somewhere and I did.
And then I found out, oh no, there were all these layers still.
And peeling off layers and it’s like, shit, how much more is in this damn cavern?
Well, Junko used to say, it’s assholes all the way down.
Assholes all the way down, okay.
I do feel like a lot of the things that I’m struggling with these days are really, really base, fundamental, old as I am things.
Well, the good news is when you clear those out, then you get to start clearing out the ancestral stuff.
Oh, thank you.
I’m just so looking forward to my grandparents.
You’re all welcome.
I’m looking forward to my grandparents.
I’m looking forward to my grandparents.
I’m looking forward to my grandparents.
I’m looking forward to my grandparents.
You’re welcome.
You know, I don’t want you to get disappointed that you’re almost to the end.
That’s my thoughts today.
Thank you for sharing them.
So we are two minutes past.
So if you have to go, please feel free.