Motivation and Aspiration on the Path to Awakening - Bansho Green, Zen Teacher
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.
Bansho:Good afternoon and thank you for your faith, your curiosity, and your persistence. These are essential ingredients to the Zen path or any path of deep wisdom, deep connection. And you exhibit faith by going forward in the practice even though it's unclear where it's headed. You exhibit, Walk straight on a narrow mountain road of 99 curves. Where is it going?
Bansho:Can't see around the bend. Great curiosity. What is this? What is this breath? What is this experience of the inner critic?
Bansho:What is this experience that you call anger or grief or confusion? What is underneath the words great curiosity? What is the experience that we call alive, my life, living? Here's a story about one of the Zen ancestors in the lineage of Zen women. We say, as we chant them, we say, Great Teacher Zheng Chir, Great Teacher Shi Ji, Great Teacher Ling Shing Po, Great Teacher Ling Zhao.
Bansho:This is a story featuring Ling Zhao from eighth century China. Ling Zhao is the daughter of layman Pang and laywoman Pang, and she's featured in many stories of the interaction between these three ardent practitioners of dharma, quite literally a Zen family. This is from The Hidden Lamp, which is stories from 25 centuries of awakened women. It's a wonderful book that has koans that feature women, women's awakening stories, and then commentary from contemporary women, including Chozen, has a commentary on part of the Vimalakirti Sutra, so I recommend that you check it out. In this story, it's Ling Zhao, her mother and her father.
Bansho:This is called Ling Zhao's Shining Grasses. Layman Pang was sitting in his thatched cottage one day studying the sutras. Difficult, difficult, difficult. He suddenly exclaimed, like trying to store 10 bushels of sesame seed on top of a tree. Easy, easy, easy, his wife, Laywoman Pang answered.
Bansho:It's like touching your feet to the floor when you get out of bed. Neither difficult nor easy, said their daughter, Ling Zhao. It's like the teachings of the ancestors shining on the 100 grass tips. Studying the sutra, Layman Pang says, Difficult. Difficult.
Bansho:Difficult. Like trying to store 10 bushels of sesame seed on top of a tree. Easy, easy, easy! Laywoman Pang answered, It's like touching your feet to the floor, getting out of bed. Neither difficult nor easy, ancestor Ling Zhao says.
Bansho:It's like the teachings of the ancestors shining on the 100 grass tips. Perhaps in your days here it's become easier to notice the grass tips, or the baby swallow feather tufts, or the bobbing dandelion, the ancestors' teachings right there. Today I want to talk about motivation and vow. It's natural to enter this phase of sashin and we begin to think about, Where is this headed? What's next?
Bansho:The pull of the after sasheen thought streams begins to intrude and can become strong. One of the fruits of our practice is to be able to more skillfully deal with them, see them, recognize them, they're just thoughts, don't really have to entertain them. And how to work with them, return to the practice of embodied presence without criticism so that we are having whatever thoughts that we're having is not a problem, it's just what's here. Right now it's like this. So we return to the practice of embodied presence and perhaps whatever thoughts don't have the same amount of charge where we're able to work with them and be curious.
Bansho:We can just say, Not now. Going forward brings up a lot of thoughts and questions, can, How am I going to carry this forward? Do I need a teacher? How do I get one? How am I going to do this by myself?
Bansho:We feel inspired by the experiences of space, ease, able to see the storms that take place in the sky. Before it was just the thunder and lightning in our mind, and now we can, with our practice, more and more space to see what surrounds those thoughts, And more and more tune into the sky that holds whatever comes space where there's no lack and no excess, says our Faith Mind poem. Motivation for practice is important, and there's a difference between aspiration and agenda. Talking about not having an agenda, Agenda is based on narrow self interest, temporary comfort, reactivity, here's how it ought to be, wanting to disown parts of ourselves, self improvement. Aspiration is the heart's longing.
Bansho:It's based on clear seeing, interconnection, stability of mind. And this aspiration is before words. It can be felt before words. We can touch into it. There's something that draws us here that can't be put into words, that brings us back.
Bansho:The more our practice comes from aspiration, the less we suffer along the way, because we're able to say, I'm learning. I'm learning. Of course, we come to practice with an agenda. Absolutely. I don't want to feel this way.
Bansho:My mind just makes me crazy. I'm anxious. So of course we have an agenda, but as we practice we more and more can discover what our aspiration is, learn what our aspiration is, and then bring that forward. So we can turn towards the heart's longing, the heart's aspiration, the heart's vow. Being clear or clarifying over time the heart's aspiration or vow, it keeps us going especially when we get confused or feel stuck or just plain forget.
Bansho:It also means that our practice is not pushed around by temporary changes in the small self's preferences. It's going well, it's not going well, I understand this, I don't understand this, totally confused and lost. Or I'm disappointed in that person. Our practice then it all gets to be included as we walk on the path because we've set aside our agenda, the narrow agenda of the small self to the broad, wide agenda, spacious aspiration. Aspiration has that Latin root, spiritus, which means breath.
Bansho:So here's a teaching on some foundational aspects that some of the Tibetan schools keep in mind to motivate practice, and they're called the four thoughts that turn the mind to dharma. And they're helpful to reflect upon as a way to remind ourselves about, to motivate ourselves, to continue to motivate ourselves, to be persistent, especially when it gets hard. So these four thoughts that turn the mind to dharma are the preciousness of human birth, impermanence, karma, and the inherent dissatisfaction of the cycle of suffering of Samsara. The inherent dissatisfaction of the realm of Samsara cycling through the six realms is all over the place in the faith mind poem. Those who hold to narrow views are fearful and irresolute.
Bansho:Their frantic haste just slows them down. If you are attached to anything, you surely will go far astray, clinging mind, living in bondage to your thoughts, believing your thoughts, and you will be confused, unclear. This is unsatisfying. It sucks. So that's one where actually agenda is baked in.
Bansho:It's like this sucks and I am more and more familiar with the way that suffering happens, the experience of it, because as we get practice stability we can hold it in a wider container and investigate it. It becomes part of our practice. So the next is Preciousness of Human Birth. So this is to acknowledge that it's rare to be born a human being. We are unbelievably fortunate, even as as it can be sometimes.
Bansho:It's very rare to be born a human. Out of all the trillions upon trillions of beings, animals, plants, bacteria, We were born a human being, and we get to be a human right now. It's a total mystery, but here we are. There's a nice story, an analogy that the Buddha gives in one of the early teachings, it's called a yoke with a hole about a turtle. And the Buddha is talking to his monks about how rare it is to be a human.
Bansho:And he says to his followers, Mendicants, suppose the whole earth is entirely covered with water, and a person threw a yoke, a collar into this ocean. The east wind wafts at west, the west wind wafts at east, the north wind wafts at south, and the south wind wafts at north. And there was a one eyed turtle who popped up once every hundred years. What do you think, mendicants? Would that one eyed turtle popping up once every hundred years still poke its neck through the hole in that yoke?
Bansho:It's unlikely, sir. We follow you. It's unlikely. That is how unlikely it is to be born a human being. And that's how unlikely it is for a realized one to arise in the world, a perfected one, a fully awakened Buddha.
Bansho:And that's how unlikely it is for the teachings and trainings proclaimed by a realized one to shine in the world. And now, followers, you have been reborn as a human being. A realized one has arisen in the world, the Buddha, a perfected one, a fully awakened Buddha, and the teaching and training proclaimed by a realized one shines in the world. That's why you should practice meditation. It is rare to be born a human.
Bansho:Even the fact that we have this life, this Zen teacher, Soketsu Norman Fisher says, that we take our life, we take life, we take existence for granted, we take it as a given, and then we complain that it isn't working out as we wanted it to, but why should we be here in the first place? Why should we exist at all? And we get to. That turtle finally found its way to that yoke in the great ocean. So tied to this is the good fortune we have to have heard the teachings of the dharma such that we get to practice.
Bansho:On top of that, right now all of us have causes and conditions that allow us to sit this sashin. It's special. This isn't to say, You ought to be grateful. This is to say, Rejoice, rejoice. This is wonderful.
Bansho:It's just a reminder. It's like, wow, this is really amazing. Not only that we are born, but that we've been somehow causes and conditions have conspired that we made it to this place, and have these amazing teachers who founded this place, and all the amazing lives that have flowed through it so that this place exists so that we can do sashin. Rejoice, it's very rare and wonderful. It's just a reminder, this is something we have this thought, it turns our mind to dharma, Oh yes, yes, that's right, yes, I forgot.
Bansho:It's just a matter of remembering, Oh, I forgot. So next, again, in terms of clarifying our motivation for practice is impermanence. Another word for this is flow, things are flowing. It helps to turn our mind towards dharma practice. Impermanence is all around us, everywhere, everyone, everything is in constant flow, and we know this.
Bansho:And yet there's part of us that doesn't want to, where the mind, the way that the mind works really assumes that things are permanent. We're sort of surprised that someone that we care about changed, or we look in the mirror and our body is different. Where did that young body go? Is how society changes, everything, everything is changing. But it's the thoughts that turn to mind go deep when we allow them to, and really take it to heart.
Bansho:The way things are that we like could change in an instant. And it's not about feeling anxious about it, it's being clear seeing. I remember sitting here in the Zendo in a sasheen, 09/18/2014. Chozen was leading a sasheen on koans, and we were doing kin hen around these rows, just like this, just like here. So Ken Hin was over, the timekeeper hit the clappers, bowed, and then someone announced, We just got word that Roshi Khyogen Carlson of Dhar Mannion Zen Center suddenly died.
Bansho:He had a heart attack standing on the sidewalk. Just like that he was gone. I burst into tears. Yogan was a kind, matter of fact kind of teacher, sensible, a Midwesterner. And his Sangha was embarking on a huge move and development of what is their beautiful property in Northeast Portland, rehabilitating basically a polluted brown field and turning it into a place of practice.
Bansho:And here he was, just like that, dead. For months, years afterwards, I was plagued by the knowledge, pierced with the knowing that my teachers could die suddenly at any time. Or they could keep living longer and longer. And here it is, over ten years later. But it is a motivation to let go of the small things and try to soak up whatever I can.
Bansho:One of the people on the merit list right now of people who have died is my high school friend Pete Newell. In high school we would take our minimum wage earnings and go wait in line for concert tickets, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Van Halen, lots and lots of heavy metal. It was so great. Guns N' Roses first tour, opening for Aerosmith, it was great. What a great show.
Bansho:Yeah. So that kind of friend, we cruised our hometown which claims to have the longest main street in the nation. So that was a fun way to spend your misspent youth. I worked for Pete's parents after high school at a mom and pop coffee shop as customer service and then worked my way through night school and then moved away. We grew apart, there was no Facebook then, and then there was Facebook, you catch up, but it's years later.
Bansho:But this is a friend who you reconnected with that was part of life at a really pivotal time. Pete took care of his parents as they aged, the parents that actually kind of helped me grow up. I went from being a high school kid to basically they treated me like an adult. And so I kind of learned how to just like, they were like, you know people look at you and they're like, you're an adult. So be one.
Bansho:Show up to work on time. So they were all so precious. So Pete took care of his parents as they aged, first his mother until her death, and then his father who died in March. Ten days after his dad died, Pete was diagnosed with stage four cancer. He died less than one hundred days later, leaving behind a wife and two girls, my age.
Bansho:He was my age. And he's gone. We think that we have time. And we probably do. But we really don't know.
Bansho:We really don't know. And all this dying is totally normal. Totally normal. It will happen to all of us. It happens to everything.
Bansho:Totally natural. It's a part of life. We don't reflect on impermanence to make us anxious. As a child, I distinctly remember where I was when it hit me that my dad was gonna die. I was like, I don't know, six, seven years old, and I ran to him sobbing and was just inconsolable.
Bansho:We don't recollect the truth of impermanence out of grimness, it is to sharpen our clear seeing about the way things are. When considering this might be my last Sansan with Chozen, it sharpens things. Don't take things for granted, we don't know. It just sharpens things. Oh, right.
Bansho:Finally, karma. Karma's cause and effect is real and it's a contemplation that gives us access to the unity, absolute and relative one unity. We can see the workings of this cause and effect in our practice, how the mind's conditioning affects the way that we see the present moment. We can do this contemplation in our practice, we reflect on the effort that brought us this food and consider how it comes to us. And by that we consider the cooks, the shopping, the grocery store, the truck drivers, the fixers of the trucks, the auto workers who built the truck, the engineers that designed the truck, the builders of the factory.
Bansho:Let's go back to the food, the farm workers, the bees, the worms, the microscopic creatures of the soil, all are in that meal, all are in that bowl. All are in that bowl. The teaching is that body, speech, mind all matter. That's fundamentally what we do matters, and we aren't in control of the outcome because of the web of complexity. So Neil Theiss is a physician, scientist, and philosopher, and he writes this about this web of cause and effect.
Bansho:It says, Think of your body today. Think of your body as it was yesterday and last month and last year. Think about when you were much younger, perhaps a younger adult, teenager. Think of your body as a kid, a toddler, a newborn. At the cellular level, each cell traces back to a cell in an earlier version of you.
Bansho:Further backward from newborn to fetus to embryo, there's no separation. Each cell comes from a cell before it. Embryo to fertilized egg, and before that, again, no boundary. That egg and sperm that were the start of you were parts of your mother's and father's bodies. And if we focus on your maternal origin, your mother, we discover that the egg in turn was part of all those earlier versions of your mother's body, and ultimately, in the very same way, part of her mother's body, and her mother before her, and her mother's body before her, and all the way back to three hundred thousand or so years ago, when her mother wasn't even Homo sapiens, but Homo erectus, and then back to Homo habilis, and further back along the branches of the evolutionary tree to earlier mammals, to earlier amphibians, all the way back to when there were simple multicellular organisms, and then back to single cell organisms and back to a probable, common, single cell ancestor.
Bansho:The teeming hoards of living things on Earth, not only in space but in time, are actually all one massive, single organism, just as certainly as each one of us in our own minds seems to be a distinct human being throughout our limited lifetime. Thus, we have yet another complementarity. Each one of us is equally an independent human and also just one utterly minute, utterly brief unit of a single vast body that is life on earth. One of the teachings in Buddhism is, All beings have been your mother. All beings have been your mother.
Bansho:Again, the four thoughts that turn the mind to dharma, the inherent dissatisfaction of the realm of Samsara, cycling through the six realms, the preciousness of human birth, permanence, flow, karma, cause and effect. Seeing with mind clarifying, heart opening, what is your life about? And this is why we look at aspiration and vow. The aspiration is a reminder of what is important to us already. It's about seeing what's already present and that pulls us, that draws us forward, that draws us to come home, that pulls us on the path to awakening.
Bansho:And by having a way to remind ourselves of this, then the feel like it, don't feel like it, have the case of the I don't want us, it doesn't matter. We can ride those because we're oriented. So as we come to practice, we see the ups and downs, experience dissatisfaction, and then glimpses of clarity, calmness, grace. Our motivation from when we were suffering can start to ebb. I've seen many, many ardent practitioners great, great fire to practice, and then they get a girlfriend and never see them again.
Bansho:So easy to forget. We need the support of our vows. Or we leave the sashimi container and we fall into our habitual conditioning and there's a way in which that's natural. It's not about creating perfection but it's like orienting ourselves, giving ourselves that support. Staying in touch with our vows can help keep us steady, remember what is most important to us, which can be drowned out by so many distractions.
Bansho:So one of the distinctions is between a goal and a vow, and these are words, so they bear with me. So there's a way like a goal is, I want to achieve this thing, and that's very beautiful. There's a goal to found a monastery, here it is. There's a goal to found Heart of Wisdom Temple, there it is. In a way that's the means of the vow that we're talking about here.
Bansho:The vows that we're talking about are more heart's aspirations vows and how those then live, how they manifest themselves, and we can have sub vows underneath them. But the difference between having a goal for our practice, our goal for our spiritual life, our goal for our life, and a vow is instead of it's not so much what do I want to be, but how do I want to be? Not what do I want to be in my life, how do I want to be in my life? Because the vow can be manifested in the present moment, it's not in the future. It can always be manifested in the present moment.
Bansho:So this is the difference between Buddhist vows, spiritual vows, any spiritual tradition, spiritual vows and making improvements, which are beautiful to do. But it's not, What do I want to be? Sometimes we have to consider that. That's a mature thing to do. But if that can be shaped or guided by how do I want to be in the world, all the better.
Bansho:So we do a ceremony here at Great Vow every month called the Kishita Garba ceremony, which is about Jizo Bodhisattva. I'm sure you've all seen the Jizos around. And Jizo's vow is the great vow of great vow, And in that ceremony we make vows to embody the qualities of Jiso Bodhisattva. Benevolence, determination, optimism, fearlessness, vow. So these are vows of how do I want to be?
Bansho:So the vow for benevolence is, I vow to welcome everyone who comes towards me with a warm and undefended heart. I vow to welcome everyone who comes towards me with a warm and undefended heart. Everyone who comes towards me is an opportunity to manifest that vow and learn where does it flow and where are there hindrances? What more do I need to learn in order to be in that way that I want to be in the world? The vow of determination says, May I walk the path to enlightenment, dissolving all obstructions and never turning back.
Bansho:May I walk the path to enlightenment, dissolving all obstructions and never turning back. So again, this is a vow of the present. When an obstruction arises, how can I work to dissolve that? And as we walk the path, that's already never turning back as long as we continue. These are present moment vows.
Bansho:How do I want to be with whatever comes towards me, meet whoever comes towards me, with a warm and undefended heart? Since whatever comes towards me is my life, this vow is about how I meet my life. So as we consider our motivation, our practices, it's not so much like, What do I want to be? I want to be a Buddha, but how do I want to be moment to moment? I want to have a clear heart, clear mind, open heart, open mind, clear heart, Articulating our vows, or if you want to call it your heart's aspiration, that can be a practice that supports us all the time.
Bansho:So this is a practice that I would like to share that I do myself and that I learned from Dan Brown who was a Tibetan teacher who used to come here on retreats. So at the beginning of every sitting period I say my vows, then I ask for help from the lineage. So it makes a big difference to do that, to sit down and say, especially it's early in the morning, oh, you sit down. If I don't do this then I don't know how long it is, ten, fifteen minutes before it's like, Oh yeah, I'm here, I'm meditating. But it's like, what is this for?
Bansho:It reminds me that it's not about me perfecting myself and being a good meditator, because that's really easy for this mind, the way this one works, to be, now I'm going to really do the practice in this way. So this is something that helps, is an antidote to that way that this mind inclines itself. So here are the vows that I say. I vow to awaken for the sake of others. I vow to help guide others to awakening even before me.
Bansho:I vow to see what the ancestors saw with this body, heart, and mind in this life. I vow to serve the Sangha in whatever way is needed, and I vow to uphold my marriage vows to Jomon. And then I ask for help. I bring to mind Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, ancestors, sometimes even picturing them right here and asking, praying for their help. May they influence my heart and mind.
Bansho:The Tibetans have a word that is translated as the gift waves of influence. Asking the ancestors, whoever your ancestors are, and according to Neotheist they're everyone and everything. But asking the ancestors, May their awakened heart and mind, may my heart and mind resonate with their awakened heart and mind. So you might consider your own vows as we go forward. Chosen has a wonderful book on this with lots of exercises and meditations called Vow Powered Life, and how to discern vows and write your own.
Bansho:And yet, they don't have to be original. We think like we have to be original. There are vows in here that are from my teachers that I picked up, that I truly like, Oh yes, this is authentic, this is true, this lives here. I think the vow about vowing to help guide others to awakening even before me comes from my Izumi. But that in and of itself is an expression of the Bodhisattva's Vow.
Bansho:What is the Bodhisattva's Vow? The Bodhisattva is an awakening being that, as the story goes, says, I'm going to stick around, even though I'm waking up, I'm going to stick around and help everyone else, help them to awakening too. So here's another story from Ling Zhao about helping. Ling Zhao is helping. One day, Layman Pang and his daughter Ling Zhao were out selling bamboo baskets.
Bansho:Coming down off a bridge, the layman stumbled and fell. When Ling Zhao saw that her father had fallen, she ran to his side and threw herself to the ground. What are you doing? Cried the layman. I saw you fall, so I'm helping, replied Ling Zhao.
Bansho:Luckily, no one was looking, remarked Ling Zhao. When Ling Zhao saw that he had fallen, she ran to her father's side and threw herself to the ground. What are you doing? Cried the layman. I saw you fall, so I'm helping.
Bansho:Said Ling Zhao. Luckily no one was looking, said her father. So what are we to make of this story? So there's things that point to the qualities of our practice of the Bodhisattva. Intimate, intimate, intimate feeling deeply.
Bansho:She gets down in the dust with him. Unselfconscious, unselfconscious response. Lehman Pang says, Good thing others didn't see this, which is the thought of self consciousness. What would people think? What will people think of me?
Bansho:Ling Zhao is totally unselfconscious, she just responds. This points to the quality of equality of all is seen with equal mind. Not separate, not better or worse, not above Him helping, but down with Him together. So, in this way, intimate, unselfconscious, equality, unity, the vow is whoever is in front of us, it's totally present and now. And we don't do it alone, this Bodhisattva activity.
Bansho:Here in this Saxhin, all of us have been engaged in Bodhisattva activity, helping each other to practice, each serving with hands and bodies to offer kindness in the form of bells, brooms, food. Already on the Bodhisattva path, already unselfconscious, intimate activity, Continuing to practice bit by bit this Bodhisattva way, this Buddha way is revealed as we walk it. And with a mind luminous and spacious, and a heart of unshakable kindness, we join our place in the family, which is all creation. I'd just like to share in closing one last story from the hidden lamp. This is a recent story from Korea in the twentieth century.
Bansho:The Australian nun, Chi Kwang Suhnim, had the opportunity to meet a 102 year old Korean nun, Kye Jeon Suhnim, who had meditated for years and years. When the Australian Qi Kwang came into her presence, the old nun, 102 years old, was sitting upright with a rosary of black beads and a rosary of white beads twirling together in her left hand, silently repeating her mantra and gazing into space in front of her. The old nun grabbed Chi Kwang's hand and pulled her close. When Chi Kwang yelled in the hard of hearing nun's ear, I'm a foreigner. The old nun held up the mingled black and white beads and said, Let's practice together.
Bansho:When the Australian Qi Kwang asked the old nun about her past, she replied, What past? Then the old nun smiled and said, Let's become enlightened together. So yes, let's take up the old Korean nun's invitation. Let's become enlightened together.