Gathering the Heart - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei
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Jogen:So welcome to this great ritual of gathering the heart, Sashin. Thank you for making the pilgrimage that you made to come here, the sacrifices, things you gave up to lift up, to prioritize something so vital and beneficial to you and your communities. In a Zen retreat, our aim is awakening to our true nature, aligning with our true nature, which as the sutra says, is present beyond self, intimate, joyful, and pure. And what is so good about awakening to our true nature? Why is the path of awakening insight into the nature of our own reality, essence of mind, why has that been celebrated for at least two thousand years and probably long, long before that?
Jogen:Awakening to our true nature, aligning to our true nature, we know the ending of suffering and we know how suffering is made. Nothing else in this world does that. That can only be done by this intimate, witnessing of our own condition, own conditions, our own nature sitting right at the source. Awakening to and aligning to our true nature, we are in touch with a deeper truth than our personality. Our personalities which sometimes get us into trouble, sometimes get us what we want.
Jogen:Those things change places. Our personalities which are obviously constructed based on cultural conditions, family conditions, fear, desire. We're in touch with that which lights us up at the very root. What is it that hears that bird? We touch that and then we're in touch.
Jogen:We know the animating truth of all personalities and beings. And so, the way it's so easy for the surface mind to divide and categorize and conjure up me versus them becomes a lot more difficult because we know a diamond kinship kinship with all beings. Because we know the root. We see as we awaken, as we align with awakening, we see what this word ego refers to. We see how it moves and dances and wiggles and hides and takes up.
Jogen:A lot of the time, too much space, sometimes not enough. We see it for what it is, we see through it. And it has less of a negative footprint. We do this practice, we engage the dharma, we awaken to our true nature for the sake of love, flexibility, playfulness, spaciousness. It won't pay your bills, but it'll give you the foundation of meaning that makes those bills worth paying.
Jogen:It won't fix all your relationships, but it will invite you into how to see them as complete, as whole. In retreat, we clear whatever clouds our so called true nature. And for each person, each person in their own timing, because of their own conditions and way of being, find that beautiful qualities, natural qualities just emerge. Things fall away in their own time. We become unobscured.
Jogen:We become less obscured. So we endeavor in this through all the various practices in a retreat, through lots of meditation, sitting, walking, and eating, through chanting, which is meditation with sound and voice, through bowing. We endeavor in awakening through yielding to the structure of the retreat. The very, limitations, the pillars of it that you've agreed to. They reflect the ways in which we're not free.
Jogen:They invite us to relax into our native freedom. So, we aim for awakening. We aim to have the deepest experience of this very mind heart that is possible for us. And a very deep experience is possible for you. We aim for that and yet, there are different dimensions to this work that happen just by doing the simple practices of meditation, chanting, bowing, eating, yielding to the structure of the retreat.
Jogen:You could say there's two levels of work that happen in a retreat or that you can engage, you are being invited to engage these. In a retreat, we are meeting ourselves continually by cutting off the escape exits from our own mind, our own reactivity, our own habitual stances towards life. Our habitual stances towards life really just show themselves in a naked way to us as we do retreat. We meet ourselves, we also are practicing yielding to ourselves. This is a profound training in self acceptance.
Jogen:In giving up the struggle with that which we cannot conquer, called this moment. And so out of this meeting ourselves continually, real character work happens in retreat. Real virtues are developed that are hard to develop. You develop steadfastness. The ability to do an important thing, in this case pay attention, let go.
Jogen:The ability to do an important thing when we feel like it and when we kind of don't. It's just a quality of being a mature human. Steadfastness is developed. Integrity is developed. We agreed to enter this container and practice conform to the contours of this ritual that build integrity to keep our word.
Jogen:We build our feeling capacity. Just getting much much more difficult in this world to build. Because here, if you feel sad, you can't dart out to your cupboard and get a cookie, or pick up your phone, or ask somebody to tell you everything's going to be okay. The invitation is to learn to just feel what we feel without being afraid of it. In other words, to train in this that is moving through me, whatever the feeling is, this has to belong to me.
Jogen:It belongs to the universe, certainly. So, we build our feeling capacity. Along with this, we're tenderized. Our hearts are softened by encountering our particular dance and stance of suffering. But also as the mind quiets, the heart just can't help but bloom.
Jogen:And this thing we call heart becomes more full, more expansive, more inclusive of ourselves, our life and other lives. So this character dimension of doing retreat just comes from you sincerely doing your best. Sincerely doing your best, which is all you can ever do. So there's that level of work that's going on. And then we have the core.
Jogen:Training which is mind training. And it's very helpful to think of it, I am training my mind. I'm not mastering it. I'm not dropping into utter profundity without any work. I am training.
Jogen:I am cultivating. I am shifting myself into a deeper mode through my own steady effort. And so this mind training includes the ability to focus. To keep our attention in a particular area or method. You'll hear plenty about that.
Jogen:We're training in wakefulness, The general quality of being sensitively alert. One of the great thiefs of meditation is the dull mind. The mind that checks out when things aren't exactly how we want them to be or they're not amusing enough. And we're training ourselves in a vivid quality of consciousness. We train in recognizing and undoing our habit of clinging.
Jogen:This sticky mind that always wants to make a nest here or stand its ground and say, I'm right there. Or wants the good to not change and the bad to go away. That mind that is always subtly and not so subtly fighting with the way things are, we are training in undoing that. Simply by consenting to experiencing this moment as it is over and over and over and over and over. And when we're doing Zazen, we're training in intimacy with stillness.
Jogen:There are aspects of reality that can only be experienced, at least in my opinion, when we let our physical and energetical bodies really settle. And so this is an embodied training. We are training in being this body with a quality of bravery. To not be afraid of our own four limbs. Belly, heart, throat, head, chest.
Jogen:So you do your best to bring sincerity moment by moment, period by period. That intersects with your fluctuation and inspiration and energy level and you still do your best and then all of this work happens. And you make the most out of this rare and really impermanent situation. Some people will do a 100 more retreats, a thousand. Some people will do no more.
Jogen:And everything in between. Now I want to make some basic suggestions as we ease into, settle into session. The first thing is, this is for people who are not decades into the practice, something that takes time to settle. You can't force that. So patience as you really begin to land, to arrive.
Jogen:And in the beginning, middle and end of a retreat, bringing a quality of relaxation into your practice is always a good idea. Relaxation doesn't mean kick back and be passive. It means soften. Soften. Soften.
Jogen:If there's tension you can untense, do so. Not as a project to get perfectly relaxed, but as a way of being. Can start each period establishing a quality of relaxation in all the different ways that you know how to do that. Many of you have years of practice and you have a core method of mind training, a technique that you avail yourself of. And at this point, I do not wish to suggest that you do something otherwise unless you're not clear what that is.
Jogen:After having led retreats now for fifteen something years. I can tell you that the people who say, I don't really know what my practice is, I just kind of pay attention, never go deep. People who say, I just am aware of whatever comes up, don't have profound insights in my experience. It's the people who are willing to have fidelity to a method of practice that have the more liberating insights. So to start with, my basic suggestion is first of all, after you do basic relaxation, really take some time and feel the sensations of your butt and legs on the cushion chair or seat.
Jogen:So you ground your lower body. That in itself is actually can be a complete practice. We drop our energy and attention out of our brain. We drop it out of our emotional heart. We let the earth, the earth's dharma, the dharma of groundedness help us settle.
Jogen:So that's a foundation of this practice. And then once you've established that, as imperfect as that is, you just attune and feel the flow of the breath. The aspiration with each inhalation and each exhalation is to be there for every nano moment of it. That's the aspiration, that's the depth of engagement that we aim for. There is a universe, a world of experience in each cycle of breath.
Jogen:And so, you are making the effort to hold your attention in the feeling of that flow. Particle by particle, sensation by sensation. If you follow it at your nose for now, fine. If you follow it at your belly for now, fine. If it's the whole body, fine.
Jogen:If you slow down the exhalation and lengthen it, fine. If you count it, fine. Whatever way works for you. The core thing is an intimate, intent, feeling the flow of breath. If you sincerely engage this practice, it will not fail you.
Jogen:You don't need anything fancy. And then, in the daily group interviews, we can talk about method. We can talk as we get a sense of where each other is at. We can, I might suggest a different method or fine tuning things? A few more encouragements.
Jogen:Thinking that maybe you can take them to heart and it will help you make the most of this experience or in a way get out of your own way. First, you don't have to be good at this. In fact, of you it's perfectly appropriate for you to be kind of bad at meditation. Whatever that means. Why would we be expert concentrators given our lifestyle?
Jogen:You don't have to be good at this. You don't have to be an expert. And you definitely don't have to be perfect. What does that even mean, perfect? By whose judgment?
Jogen:So maybe sometimes you can catch yourself falling into trying to be good at it, which is different than sincerity, or trying to be perfect, and you can relax and just make this moment's effort, Which is all there really is, this moment's effort. Next, you don't have to figure your life out, or figure someone else's life out. Actually contemplating our life is not the thing we're doing here. If you were to spend your time here thinking and contemplating your life, you would have missed the point. The point is that when we are intimate with the breath, when we come to know a settled clear mind, we do get perspective on our life.
Jogen:But the point is not to contemplate and think about our life, our future, or to figure anything out. You don't have to figure meditation out. Or the teachings that you hear. Don't have to figure them out. Also, we don't have to have the right feelings or emotions.
Jogen:There is not, a good or ideal state to come into the Zendo with except for your willingness to engage. That's really the only ideal is your willingness. A perfect state is not a good state for meditation. A terrible state is just a judgment of you, it's not a reality. Everything is completely workable.
Jogen:So you don't have to have the right feelings about what you're doing or the right emotions, there's really no such thing. Please muster sincerity. We don't have to compete with others, we don't have to pity them, we don't have to judge them, We don't have to apply our psychic powers to transparently know all their thoughts and intentions. We can actually always shift our mind and think, Oh, I'm on the team awakening with everyone here. How can I hold my heart in such a way that I support team awakening?
Jogen:Rather than competing, pitying, judging, or imagining that we know how other people think. We don't have to be anyone or any way other than we are moment by moment to do the practice. You always have the right and workable conditions. Believe that. Believe that, apply that, and you'll make the most of this brief time we have together.
Jogen:So that was a lot of words. There will be more coming. If you ever feel confused about how to engage the retreat sincerely, just come fully into this moment's body and senses, root in nowness. And that's the heart of the matter. So may we and all the thousands of other beings simultaneously doing retreat on this world wholeheartedly, lovingly and continually practice.
Jogen:May we whittle down our contribution to collective suffering and come to know the freedom that is our birthright. It is as simple as doing this very thing.
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