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. Welcome to Jizo Sashin, and we're well underway. Our focus on this particular Jizo Sashin has been this Bodhisattva of Great Vows, this aspect of Jizo Bodhisattva.

Jomon: 00:47

This may or may not be what you came here for. Most people come here to try to find a sense of peace, to experience peace, to try to calm our frazzled minds. And if we can't find peace out there, perhaps we can endeavor to peace in our own heart minds. Perhaps we can offer that to this world. We come to Sashin for peace and then sometimes our mind rebels.

Jomon: 01:39

We might have a tangled mess of incessant thoughts, unbridled grief or rage. Or we meet our bone tiredness or we find that our years have caught up with us somehow or we review our top 10 greatest worries, maybe top 20 or we can't stop rehearsing and rehashing conversations. One aside, there's a great tool to use for that if you're rehearsing and rehashing conversations. Imagine they're finger puppets of you and whoever it is. That helps sometimes.

Jomon: 02:45

Where is this piece about which we have heard so much? So for this talk I'd like to share a poem by Dainin Katagiri Roshi, the founder and abbot of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, and it's about Vow. I'd like to really open up this poem and explore it in light of some of the insights from Chosen Roshi's book and her teachings on Vow. In 1988, two years before he died, Daineen Katagiri Roshi wrote this poem and it's called Peaceful Life. Being told that it's impossible, one believes in despair.

Jomon: 03:38

Is that so? Being told that it is possible, one believes in excitement. That's right. But whichever is chosen, it does not fit one's heart neatly. Being asked, What is unfitting?

Jomon: 03:59

I don't know what it is. But my heart knows somehow. I feel an irresistible desire to know what a mystery human is. As to this mystery, clarifying, knowing how to live, knowing how to walk with people, demonstrating and teaching, this is the Buddha. From my human eyes, I feel it's really impossible to become a Buddha.

Jomon: 04:44

But this 'I', regarding what the Buddha does vows to practice, to aspire, to be resolute, and tells me, Yes, I will. Just practice right here, now, and achieve continuity, endlessly, forever. This is living in Vow. Herein is one's peaceful life found. Aspire, Be resolute.

Jomon: 05:33

Just practice right here now. This is living in Vow. Herein is one's peaceful life found. Aspire. Some aspiration brought you here, and it requires some resoluteness to meet it, doesn't it?

Jomon: 06:00

Just practice right here now. It sounds so simple, and it is. Not so easy though. We seem to depart this here and now. Our mind perhaps evolutionarily inclined to anxiety.

Jomon: 06:27

Our mind habituated to distraction goes off into the myriad problems, regrets, worries, to do lists, fears or fantasies, possible or impossible, excitement or despair. We place our attention, our energy, our life on investment in the outcome. Succeed or fail, possible or impossible, rather than placing our attention, our energy, our life investment in the moment by moment unfolding of this life? Possible or impossible? Excitement or despair?

Jomon: 07:26

What is it about either of these things that doesn't quite fit the heart? Getting what you want, being right, thinking that you know, or not getting what you want, wanting things to be different than they are. In either case we're focused on the outcome to the detriment of what's actually happening in this very breath. Of course there are times and it's inherent in the teachings, there are times when it's important to act, to endeavor to change things, to support other beings, to embody compassion. Yes.

Jomon: 08:20

Yes, and. The Bodhisattva vow to realize awakening for the sake of all beings necessitates that we stop what we are doing sometimes and see what we are actually doing. That is more than half the battle right there, to just see what we're actually doing. And here it's all stripped away and blank slate, built in challenge. We get to see what we are doing with every challenge.

Jomon: 09:12

We get to see how we respond, what our habits are. They are just revealed brilliantly, aren't they? And we hold that together, all of us. We hold that. We hold each other in this way together.

Jomon: 09:28

We've all met these challenges together. And says Sheen. Continue to meet them. Maybe you notice a longing, a deep longing for peace or for connection or for something genuine. Maybe this longing is for something deeply true.

Jomon: 10:12

Given the state of the world, given the experiences you may have had in your life, Perhaps it is a question that's alive for you. In what can I truly take refuge? What can I really trust? What is true? Who am I really?

Jomon: 10:48

What is this? What is this? Categary's poem says, Being asked what is unfitting, I don't know what it is, but my heart knows somehow. I feel an irresistible desire to know what a mystery human is. This irresistible desire to know, this is different from the mind's desire to know, the mind's demand to know, the mind's desire to be the one who knows.

Jomon: 11:35

Rather, this irresistible desire to know that Katagiri Roshi is talking about is a powerful curiosity, sometimes called great doubt, a burning question, a deep bow to not knowing, a surrender to the mystery. This vast not knowing can fuel our practice. Not knowing is like stepping out into big sky country. Abandoning our cherished and limited perspective, it's a surrender into no perspective or all perspectives. We become so much larger.

Jomon: 12:50

We are then available to shape shift and flow into the cracks of need as they arise. We fill the shape of roles in service to this moment rather than take them on as an identity. So what is your life about? What has your life been about? Or what would you like your life to be about?

Jomon: 13:33

Those are all important questions. We're not here this week to discern and articulate our vows. That's a different retreat. Come back for that one. It is in any case a rare privilege to be able to stop for five days and allow for spaciousness and clarity, inquiry and reflection on our life's trajectory.

Jomon: 14:24

And to really explore how spiritual practice might support your highest aspirations. That is what we are here for. So thank you for giving this to yourself and to the world and for all of you who continue to offer it to everyone who flows through this place. May its effect be a complete mystery. And the truth is we can't know, so we might as well surrender to that.

Jomon: 15:12

We can't know. For a beautiful example of this we can turn to Dogen Zenji, our first Japanese ancestor, the founder of the So to Zen school in Japan. He lived and taught in the December. His teachings were locked up in his monastery for a few hundred years after his death. Very few people had even seen them.

Jomon: 15:44

The first translations into English were in the 1970s and 1980s. Can you imagine? I mean, impact is vast this place and time. Could he have known? Could he have any idea of the effect of his practice?

Jomon: 16:16

That people on this completely distant continent, in this completely other language, in this completely different culture would be reading and practicing his teachings over electronic little boxes and stuff? Could he have known? Was he hoping that his teachings would spread all over the entire world as they have? What if someone told him it was impossible? What if someone told him it was possible?

Jomon: 16:59

Something tells me that neither one of those would have mattered that much to him, not in the end. That is in some way the difference between a vow and a goal. A Goal is a measurable, accomplishable, can you check the box when you're done. Chozen Roshi calls these Sub Vows, or the action taken on the outside, but underneath is the actual vow that is moving you. A vow on the other hand, that is elemental.

Jomon: 17:46

Vows channel energy. They are a conduit for life energy. Chozen Roshi has stated it as, They are the reason you get out of bed in the morning. One simple way of referring to them. And you may or may not know what that is for you.

Jomon: 18:18

One of our teachers' teachers, Shoto Horataroshi, says that the life force is the most basic vow. Life wants to live, as Hogan Roshi says. There is a beautiful example of this in Nagasaki, the Sano Shinto Shrine. Nagasaki was bombed eighty years ago and in the destruction these enormous camphor trees that were beloved by the community, utterly blackened, singed completely devoid of leaves, thought to be dead. It was thought that nothing would grow for years, but at some point these trees started coming back to life, leaves appearing, and they lived.

Jomon: 19:21

And you can go see them, and they're magnificent. They're absolutely magnificent. Life wants to live. Chosen Roshi likens a vow to a compass or a gyroscope, something that helps us maintain our orientation even in stormy seas, even on dark nights. And those are inevitable, aren't they?

Jomon: 20:01

They're just inevitable. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about how the North Star is a guide like this, but nobody expects to actually arrive at the North Star itself. It's good enough to just orient north. That's helpful already. Our vows can be like that, an impossible vow can be like that.

Jomon: 20:35

Even if you adjust your life by a couple of degrees, Just like if you turned a great big ship one or two degrees, over time it ends up in a completely different place. That's a vow. We allow ourselves to be reoriented by our highest aspirations. They come from here. They come from this life.

Jomon: 21:11

What is your wisdom? Where is your heart directing you? What is your life about? What do you want your life to be about? And are those two answers different right now?

Jomon: 21:40

Another important question is, what is fueling your activity? When we arrive here for Sashin, we might be off gassing some of our dirty fuel, some of our motivations like rage or anxiety, and that's perfectly normal as part of the arc of a or should we say the trough of a sasheen. It comes up because it can, We can recognize it and acknowledge it and discern whether this is how we want to be, how we want to live. We don't have to try to fix everything. Just notice.

Jomon: 22:36

That is half the battle right there. And then we can ask and see, can we be fueled by love? Can we be fueled with compassion and generosity? We can practice that even when we don't feel like it. But if we practice in these small ways, it gets us ready for those other opportunities when we could show up in the way that we aspire to show up.

Jomon: 23:25

Here's an exemplar of someone who was clear about their vows and fueled by love, former President Jimmy Carter. A few quotes from him: I have learned that our greatest blessings come when we are able to improve the lives of others, and this is especially true when those others are desperately poor or are in need. And about that success and failure, that excitement or despair, he says, Failure is a reality. We all fail at times and it's painful when we do. But it's better to fail while striving for something wonderful, challenging, adventurous and uncertain than to say, I don't want to try because I may not succeed completely.

Jomon: 24:33

Finally he says, My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can, with whatever I have to try to make a difference. A Bodhisattva vow. Katagiri Roshi said also, this is living in vow. It means to sit, it means to try to help others, to live and work with others each day of our lives. When we are living in Vow, in our emotion, in our human sentiment, there are good times and hard times.

Jomon: 25:29

Like all people in Samsara, we are still in the six realms when we are living in our emotion, when we are living in our human sentiment. And yet we can find a peaceful basis, a foundation for our life, which is never moved by human sentiment. That is Vow. That is the reality of our life. So what is your life about?

Jomon: 26:07

The good news is you don't have to know that right now. The real question is, what does it feel like to be sitting here? What is it like to breathe this very breath? What is it like to sit here together? To sense the silence underneath these sounds.

Jomon: 26:47

What is the source of all of this? Can we take refuge in this moment, in this breath? If not this breath, then this Sangha body. Can we lean into each other in here? Whether we're sitting with ease and stability or sitting through difficulty and frustration?

Jomon: 27:21

We can all honor our own and each other's aspirations and continue to support each other by being resolute in our efforts. So I'd like to just read that poem again to close. Peaceful life. Being told that it's impossible, one believes in despair is that so. Being told that it is possible, one believes in excitement, that's right.

Jomon: 28:08

But whichever is chosen, it does not fit one's heart neatly. Being asked, What is unfitting? I don't know what it is, but my heart knows somehow. I feel an irresistible desire to know what a mystery human is. As to this mystery, clarifying, knowing how to live, knowing how to walk with people, demonstrating and teaching this is the Buddha.

Jomon: 28:54

From my human eyes, I feel it's really impossible to become a Buddha. But this 'I', regarding what the Buddha does, vows to practice, to aspire, to be resolute, and tells me, Yes, I will. Just practice right here now and achieve continuity, endlessly, forever. This is living in Vow. Herein is one's peaceful life found.

Jomon: 29:37

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