Jomon: 00:00

Hello and welcome. This is the Zen Community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddhadharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.

Hogen: 00:28

Evening, everyone. For those of you who are new, let me just give you a little quick overview of what we do here. There's things that happen here Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Sunday. And usually, the the typical pattern is you we come in, kind of say hello. We do a short chant upstairs.

Hogen: 00:52

The chant is about some aspect of of the Buddhism. Tonight's chant was about everything flows. Everything is just constantly flowing. Stars at dawn, bubbles in the stream, flash of lightning, everything is flowing. Our mind flows, our body flows.

Hogen: 01:10

A little chant, and then there's either meditation for a couple of rounds. And then sometimes there's meditation instruction for people downstairs. And then there's usually a dharma talk of some sort. On on Tuesday, Kodo, he sees in the back, is the leader, and on Wednesday, Jogin, who's in the back, is the leader. Thursday, Shonen, who was here, is a leader.

Hogen: 01:34

And so each each night has a little different flavor to it depending upon what people are leading leading it. This is a tradition that is not dogma based. It's not based on you gotta believe this in order to be part of the community. It's a a whole community that's based on observation on let's really pay attention and see for ourselves, have our own direct experience. And faith in this tradition comes out of direct experience.

Hogen: 02:03

You experience something and then you have a foundation of, oh, yeah, I I know that for myself. It's true, rather than the particular words. Each time we do a talk, it could be different levels of talks because everything is everybody's not the same. There's different minds here, different kind of people see and process things very differently. So try to talk to to different people during the course of converse conversation in the evening.

Hogen: 02:31

This night, on Sunday night, when I'm usually here, we've been going through a book by Thich Nhat Hanh called The Art of Living, and it's readily available. It's measurable digitally, auditorily, or even the hard copy. There's some copies in the library. And we've just been going through sequentially that. Although the last week, I I was so moved by the the long list of people who are on our list of merit our merit list, people who are suffering, people who have had tragedies, people who are whose lives were difficulty.

Hogen: 03:06

We talked about the how that if we really are opening our life, opening ourselves to the nature of the world, there's a place where the heart breaks. You know? One of the human experiences, one of the experiences of being human is to feel rock bottom deeply. And there is a place where we have to be able to go. We're helpless, and yet we feel the the distress of the world.

Hogen: 03:33

So we talked about that last week. But this week, we're gonna talk about something different before we get back to the art of living. And this week, I wanted to talk about freedom. Up in, Klatzkenai, Great Vowsen Monastery, where I live, every July 4, there is a little parade in our small town, and it's full of tractors and logging trucks. And, know, we have a Maruma band, and there's all kinds of people, and there's a little we have a bingo booth that we that we put up for the Kiwanis Club.

Hogen: 04:07

And so it's a fun, you know, it's a fun, really small town community event. And in that small town community event, there are all these t shirts that say, you know, freedom is not free and, you know, you need guns in order to defend yourself. And there's a lot of guns floating around in that area. So I was thought let's talk about freedom tonight because in Buddhism, we say that there are four things we can observe. And we'll and the first one is we can all observe that people have challenges, difficulties.

Hogen: 04:40

Yeah. Life is not easy for people, for us. Right? It's just an observation. We call it the first noble truth sometimes, but it really just an observation.

Hogen: 04:50

The first great observation is that, you know, people have a hard time. And the second of the noble observations is we often cause ourself a hard time because we think the world should be different than it is. Things should go according to me. My partner should act the way I think they should act. My employer, my job, my everything should act the way I think it should act.

Hogen: 05:14

And I'm I'm right. And then we end up causing ourselves a lot of suffering from that. Just observe it. You know? You don't have to believe it.

Hogen: 05:25

Just observe it. How do we cause ourselves more and others more suffering? And the third of the observations is it's possible to be free. It's possible to encounter liberation. Nirvana is the the word.

Hogen: 05:40

So and then the fourth is that there's a way of the path that you can practice, a path of integrity, a path of of introspection, investigation, path of wisdom. But I wanna talk about the third tonight, about freedom. Because we had just have a whole weekend, and our particular version of that is the American, you know, fourth of July version. But every every country, every place has a an aspiration for freedom, and there's often celebrations of freedom of one sort or another in every culture. So the typical American reasons for freedom I mean, why be free?

Hogen: 06:18

Why why should we aspire to freedom? And the typical American, North American or the modern modern zeitgeist is I can be free so I can buy whatever I want. I have the freedom to buy anything. I have the freedom to own anything. You can't tell me what I can't own.

Hogen: 06:38

You know, I have the freedom It's my freedom to own all the weapons I wanna own. That's my freedom. I have the freedom to buy things, to own things. I have the freedom to go places. I have the freedom to make choices.

Hogen: 06:54

You know? And so the the apex of freedom is we go into the grocery store and there's 50 different varieties of olive oil. And we have the freedom to choose any of the 50 varieties of olive oil, you know, or any of the other 10,000 things that are in a grocery store. And as a culture, I think we hope that these kind of freedoms will lead to a unease, lead to freedom from suffering, will lead to to some peace, will lead to satisfaction, will lead to a reduction of the stress and tension of life. And despite our every every, despite the the observation that they don't, we keep hoping We keep hoping.

Hogen: 07:40

I'll buy a little more. You know, I can now order anything, almost anything I want if I have the resources. And before I know it, I can get, you know, a thousand licorice sticks delivered to my front door tomorrow and I'll be happy. And so in that endless search for happiness and freedom and satisfaction, people just keep pushing buttons and clicking and, you know, the the the trucks are are in full gear delivering stuff. And we do that in the hopes that this thing is gonna satisfy something.

Hogen: 08:14

And then we, of course, all of the media says, we'll satisfy something. You just need, you know, a better, faster Internet connection. And if you get a better, faster internet connection or if you use ChatGPT instead of Paradox, of DeepSeap, then your problems will be solved. But if we're looking carefully with observation, if that were the case, this should be the happiest, most free, satisfied country in the history of the globe, if that really were the case. And yet, it's not.

Hogen: 09:01

There was an article in Time Magazine. You know, Time is still being published in some some places, on we have reached the apex of therapy, and yet our our our our the country's mental health has continued to go down. The number of people who say they're happy and satisfied with their lives is reduced. We have more medications and more therapy and more psychiatry and more I mean, we have we're at the we've saturated ourselves for the last hundred years. And yet, if you look at the the basic satisfaction and peace people have, it's not growing commensurately.

Hogen: 09:44

So in this tradition, we have to we say, let's look at something. Let's let's observe something that's a little bit, more fundamental. If we're going to go against the stream of the the the media, against the stream of buy buy buy, bigger bigger bigger, more more more, and we're going to say, let's find something that is more fundamental. If we don't, then we begin, as Thoreau said, living lives of quiet desperation. We're unhappy, we feel kind of broken inside, and we are keep what is it?

Hogen: 10:26

What is it? What can I do? What can I do? And if we don't have continually grow inside, then we begin mistaking routine for security. We begin mistaking, you know, opinions for the truth.

Hogen: 10:44

We begin in mistaking that everybody who is marching in step, we begin mistaking that for security and safety. We begin mistaking that agreement agreement is truth, agreement is security, agreement is alignment, agreement is and it's not. The Dalai Lama calls awakening. Here's his definition of it. The liberation that we call awakening, the liberation that we call enlightenment.

Hogen: 11:16

He says, enlightenment is the awakening of the mind's true nature through purifying thought, removing obscuration, and overcoming dissonant emotions. It's a state of irreversibility achieved by cultivating wisdom and compassion. He likens the process to a farmer preparing soil for seed. So in the Vajrayana and from this particular perspective that Lama is talking about, spiritual practice is about cultivation. It's about slow growth.

Hogen: 11:52

It's about preparing the soil and planting the seeds and watering and nurturing and weeding. It's about watching the grains grow and they're harvesting and then processing. And then if you if you do all of that, then you end up with, you know, rice or oil or whatever your product is. And so from that perspective, spiritual practice is a a slow ongoing investigation, a slow ongoing refinement. Our mind has got all these old habits of negativity, of judgment, of criticism, and we little by little learn to see through them.

Hogen: 12:29

Little by little, we learn to let them go. Little by little, we learn to become more and more compassionate. Little by little, we begin to see the the interconnection of all life and see that we are never alone. Now in the Zen Buddhist tradition, is our particular tradition, it's a for those of you it's there there are three or four fundamental Buddhist traditions. There's the Theravadan tradition, which is kind of the foundational Buddhist.

Hogen: 12:57

All Buddhism is about has that as a foundation. There's Mahayana Buddhism, is about compassion and loving kindness. And the Zen tradition is part of that that Mahayana tradition, compassion, loving kindness. And there's the Vajrayana tradition, which is a different version of the the slow path I just talked about. Zen and Zogchen are two that really talk about that the basic place of freedom is to realize for ourself their own direct I, the non dual.

Hogen: 13:31

To realize what is always always present. Regardless of what the mind thinks, it's always present to actually have a direct visceral experience of that. Now, that particular view is called the sudden sudden school that we have here. The the analogy is you're having a nightmare and you're you're thrashing around and you're being chased by by bandits and suddenly you wake up. Oh, it's a dream.

Hogen: 14:05

And that waking up is the the analogy for a sudden direct experience of the inherent liberation that is our nature. The other analogy is that it's you're outside, you don't have a raincoat, it's misty, and you're walking, and little by little you get saturated. Little by little your clothing gets wetter and wetter. Little by little you absorb the moisture from the air. And so little by little we become awakened versus the sun.

Hogen: 14:36

Both are true of course. There's no shortcut to spiritual maturity. Now, in liberation, in freedom, in finding satisfaction, there are different levels. So if we're out in a hot day and suddenly when somebody offers us a cool drink or some ice cream or there's a there's a sense of pleasure, great. Hallelujah.

Hogen: 15:10

If someone if we are got a lot of debt and suddenly gives us some money and suddenly we're free from debt, oh, how great. It's wonderful. You know? If we are in living on a shoestring budget and suddenly we have some extra money, I can go out to eat and go to a place that really is satisfying to us. Oh, it's really great great pleasure.

Hogen: 15:33

That kind of of freedom, that kind of pleasure is great, wonderful, but it's also short lived. You know, no matter how great the meal is, it's over before you know it. No matter how much debt we get rid of, we can manage to accrue more debt, you know. Or the big miss the big thing I see around is people mistake excitement and thrills for happiness. So if if excitement and thrills were the foundation for happiness, then Disneyland and like places should make the whole country tremendously happy.

Hogen: 16:13

You go to Disneyland, you get your your bolt of fantastic thrill and excitement and happiness, and your life is transformed and you live at ease and in connection with all things from then on. But excitement is not the kind of happiness we talk about because excitement is I go up and I feel really thrilled and I feel yes, yes, yes. But then it changes and we go back down. Thrills are are great, you know. If you like riding roller coasters, please.

Hogen: 16:51

But that excitement of the roller coaster, that excitement of a new relationship, that excitement of a new car, that excitement of something new, enjoy it. But know it is going to be temporary. Relationship will morph. The relationship will change. The car will age.

Hogen: 17:07

Things will fall apart. You know, the next day always comes. So when we talk about liberation in this particular tradition, we say, okay, how can we find a liberation? How can we find a freedom that is deeper, more lasting, more fundamental than the the thrill of the chase and the thrill of the of the thing, the thrill of the roller coaster? How do we find something that is reliable and stable, something that is transformative that really has no opposite.

Hogen: 17:49

One of the Dalai Lama's definitions, he says, it's a state of irreversibility achieved by cultivating wisdom and compassion. So how do we achieve that kind of liberation? And that's where practice comes in. One of the ways that we do that, of course, we come or in the meditation that we do is a a tool. It's not the end.

Hogen: 18:17

It's a tool. It's a tool for helping us to work with our minds. Our minds have the ability to cause enormous suffering to ourself and others. And it causes enormous suffering by our fixed views, by our thinking everything should go the way I think it should go, by our righteousness, by being trapped by our emotional bondage, by a thousand ways which we all know. So how can we look at the nature of our own mind and our own heart and find a liberation, a freedom that is somehow deeper than the excitement of I got a new car or I got a new partner.

Hogen: 19:12

Which is great. I'm all for having big partnerships. Absolutely. But there is something deeper. And that something deeper is something we have to to know and discover and taste for ourself.

Hogen: 19:25

And it's the number one tool that we have for this process is awareness. We can use our mind of awareness to look directly at our fixed views, fixed, notions, our old stock ideas of separation, and we can see the the unreality of them. And the manifestation of actually seeing through our particular fixed views are what we call the four immeasurables. Four things that cannot be measured. Loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.

Hogen: 20:08

That if we actually see through our fixed fixed ideas, fixed notions, fixed blues, if we see through our own suffering, then these are the qualities that begin to be present in our human life. Compassion, sympathetic, joy, loving kindness, and equanimity, some order. Now, those are not all or nothing things. You know, there's levels of equanimity. There's levels of compassion, so to speak.

Hogen: 20:32

But when someone begins to see beyond the the surface of things and begins to see the non dual, those are some of the elements that come forth in terms of their personality. And because if we have a direct experience of the nondual, what nondual means is I am not separate from the world. I am not separate from you. Things are all interconnected. Things are all intertwined.

Hogen: 21:04

As as Thich Nhat Hanh says, everything is made of non self elements. Everything is made of something else. When we actually have an experience of the the intertwining, the oneness, the connection of all things, realize my freedom, my caretaking for this body is also freedom and caretaking for this body. And the suffering and heartache of this body is the suffering and heartache of this body. And the loving kindness, the equanimity, the compassion, the sympathetic joy that I feel here has got to have this expression here.

Hogen: 21:43

It's not just an internal thing. It's a life thing. And the function of that, of course, is how does it help others? You know, our life feeds the entire world. Here's a couple quotes.

Hogen: 22:02

You have power over your mind, not outside of events. Realize this and you will find strength. You have power over your mind, your attention, and you don't have power over outside events. Realize this and you will find strength. Marcus Aurelius.

Hogen: 22:18

I think about January. True freedom is always spiritual. It has something to do with your innermost being, which cannot be chained, handcuffed, or put into a jail. Rajneesh. The only real prison is fear.

Hogen: 22:36

The only real freedom is freedom from fear. Hongsong Sukyu, who is the president of Cambodia? Burma. Burma. Thank you.

Hogen: 22:47

Burma. You will know the truth. The truth will set you free. Jesus Christ. The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the thinker.

Hogen: 23:01

Eckhart Tolle. Now, that to me is just one of the most interesting and profound of the insights that we can have. As I have done over and over, and I can just do it myself, we'll do it again tonight. You can feel your hands with your hands. Right?

Hogen: 23:18

Do we have any problem feeling your hands with your hand? You feel your hands with your hands in your hands. Right? Pretty obvious. Your hands are feeling your hands.

Hogen: 23:27

Right? You're not needed. Your hands feel your hands. You're not needed. The world knows the world.

Hogen: 23:38

You're not needed. Life is lived. You're not needed. The you being the the I am. Interesting.

Hogen: 23:51

Interesting direct experience because if we have that experience, suddenly, the world is free. And one more quote here. Just as the great oceans have but one taste, the taste of salt, so too there is but one taste fundamental to all true teachings of the way, and that's the taste of freedom. Shakyamuni Buddha. So in this, tradition, we say, okay, this is this is something that is not does not belong to the tradition.

Hogen: 24:23

It's not that we own these truths. I mean, you you know, they're truths. But we have particular ways that we say, okay, in order to see this directly, you need to practice. In order to see this directly, you need to have some faith that you can make that realization. In order to see this directly, you need to to listen to the calling of your heart.

Hogen: 24:44

And so, in this particular tradition, and every tradition has its own version, has a container that allows an investigation, that encourages that investigation. Now, some containers are very rigid and say you have to believe certain things. This particular container says, look directly and see for yourself. Ask all the deep deep mysterious questions. Ask about the the unfathomable and no.

Hogen: 25:12

See something directly so it's not about, I gotta believe this in order to be be free. For some people, hearing that calling is a vocation. You know, it's what the word vocation comes through, the voice. Hearing the voice within, the voice within that says, you know, I need to resolve these matters of life and death. I need to resolve these matters of suffering.

Hogen: 25:37

I need to I need to know for myself. That calling is one that sometimes we follow. To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. Nelson Mandela. Darkness cannot drive out darkness.

Hogen: 26:01

Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that. Martin Luther King. We say in this tradition, anger just begets more anger.

Hogen: 26:12

Fear begets more fear. So if we have a lot of anger and fear at social things and we become indignant and and outraged, we create more anger and fear on the other side. And anger and fear feeds anger and fear feeds anger and fear. There's got to be a more skillful way to stand up for truth. There's got to be a more skillful way to to to speak what's important to be spoken that does not create boundaries and not build greater and greater walls.

Hogen: 26:53

The most important kind of freedom is the freedom to be what you really are. Jim Morrison of the doors doors. Thank you. I just thought that was because everything else in this illusion. So why why bother this investigation?

Hogen: 27:16

Why go down this path? And, you know, there are a few things. I mean, first off, the relief of suffering. There are three basic reasons that people start on the path in my experience. One is that we are suffering a lot and we see lots of people suffering and we say, there's gotta be a way out.

Hogen: 27:32

There's gotta be something I can see. There's got to be some understanding. There's got to be something bigger than this. And so we start on the path. Or we sometimes people have a pivotal experience.

Hogen: 27:42

They have a pivotal experience outside or they have a pivotal experience with drugs or they have some kind of pivotal experience that kind of rips things open and they have a direct insight into the inclusive nature of reality and something that they know, oh yeah, that's true. And then of course it closes back again and we start on the search to say, need to find and open that up again. I need to to re recognize it. And the third is that we we find exemplars. We read something.

Hogen: 28:10

We we we see somebody like Thich Nhat Hanh. We encounter an exemplar. We say, oh, that person can do it. I can do it. Oh, that person is a manifestation of what I'm interested in.

Hogen: 28:22

I want to also walk in that way. But we also do it just because sometimes we're really curious. Sometimes we say, well, what else is there to do? Why why not? Why not investigate the profound nature of mind?

Hogen: 28:38

You know? Why not step out of the Walmart cycle of buying things? Why not? Now if we get involved with with medicine, which, you know, I mean, I've I've certainly been to the ER and involved with medicine. But if we start thinking medicine will do it for me.

Hogen: 28:59

I take the right combination of medicines that's going to change my state of mind, that's going to awaken me, that's going to make my life easier. It doesn't work. And so so it is makes sense to say, okay, I will respond to the things of the world in the way I need to respond to them. I will take the medicines that I need to take, but fundamentally, I wanna look and see for myself. Is there something deeper?

Hogen: 29:29

Is there something deeper that I can carry with me at all places and all times? There is a koan. A monk goes to a great master named Joshua and says, you know, what's the highest truth of Buddhism? And the master says something like the oak tree in the garden, the fir trees in the forest. He says, what's is that really it?

Hogen: 29:57

He says, what's the highest truth of of Buddhism, the highest truth of life? Oak tree in the garden. He says, is that really it? Tell me, what is the essence? And he says, it's alive.

Hogen: 30:08

It's alive. It's alive. And that it's alive is our life. In a way we can say that to really see the essence of what is it that's alive right here, that's alive. To touch the deathless and the birthless right here with our own mind and have confidence because we have tasted it directly is quite compelling.

Hogen: 30:37

We do that. So my encouragement is practice. Be curious. Don't just take what somebody tells you as the answer. Say, well, if you have skeptical doubt about things, there's two kinds of doubts.

Hogen: 30:56

There's doubts that make you run away from things. I don't believe it. It's not true. I'm I'm gonna shut my doors. I'm gonna run away from it.

Hogen: 31:04

And there's doubt that brings you deeply into things that makes you really curious. Is that really true? Is that really the way it works? Is that really honest? Does that really have integrity?

Hogen: 31:14

Is that really my heart to experience? And those kind of questions, those kind of inquiries bring you more and more deeply, more and more intimately into life. So practice. Practice with a wide open curious mind that also learns how to be in the present moment, not believing thought. Practice with a wide open curious mind and a great big open heart that realizes everybody's life is sacred, and this life is sacred.

Hogen: 31:45

So may you all have used whatever motivates you to really see directly for yourself in your own heart and find liberation and be a benefit to others.

Jomon: 32:06

Thank you for listening to the Zen Community of Oregon podcast, and thank you for your practice. New episodes air every week. Please consider making a donation at zendust.org. Your support supports us.