April 28th, 2007, Serial No. 01433

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they why he plucked from berkeley san center it's my pleasure to introduce this mining speaker can sometimes karen has been practicing i started packing bbc three years ago i me and she has
twenty years
and she has also practiced in a variety of other traditions to me i'll have the pleasure of hearing care that cares practice and convinced and while she must shoes so last spring and i'm really looking forward to hearing from her again
thank you and good morning
it

this this morning i'm gonna talk about a sixth century poem called the shin shin know it's written by the third chinese ancestor sing song
and some of you are familiar with this because
for the past month i've been co teaching a class on this with andrea thatch and it's a theme that sojourn has talked about recently the theme of faith
and during our upcoming practice period which is gonna begin a couple of weeks
faith is going to be our theme
so i'd like to talk for a moment just about the title of the poem
shin being or trust in mind faith in mind
shen means belief or faith
and it's not face in the traditional sense that we've come to get used to it in terms of having faith in something where belief in something
but it's a faith that comes from our first hand experience from our wisdom of enlightenment
and it's a belief and an affirmation that all that we experience
is essentially buddha mind
our true nature
shin literally means harsh or heart mind
not the deluded mind
of the ignorant but the buddha mind
and the word ming means literally inscription but it can also mean admonition
so for those of you who has read the poem with us in the class and know that the poem
begins with some guidelines on
seeing buddha mind through deluded mind
the literal translation of the poem really is vs on the faith mine
and of course it's much too long to read in the short talk so what i'm gonna do as i'm going to read just a few verses and
i'm gonna jump around a bit of them so i'm going to take a few verses from the beginning and the middle and the end
this to give you a taste of of different subjects that the poem addresses
so

so here's some verses from the poem
if you wish to see the truth then hold nope opinions before
scuse me for or against anything
to set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mine
indeed it is due to are choosing to accept or reject that we did not see the true nature of things
one dharma is not different from another the diluted mind clings to whatever he desires to seek mind with the discriminating mind as the greatest of all mistakes
for the unified mind in accord with the way also felt a straining ceases
doubts and irresolution spanish and life and true faith is possible
the principle is not hurried nor slow one thought for ten thousand years
faith and mind are not to non-duality his faith in mine
the way is beyond language there was no past no present and no future

so faith in this poem as i said is different from believing in something
safe
in this poem like faith in zen literature in general
is believing that the source of are awakening our released from suffering is through our own minds
and i was drawn to this poem from just hearing the title faith in mind i knew when i heard it that i wanted to understand it
and this is because i've always been someone who doubts
and one definition i looked up the word down the dictionary there are many definitions but one of them is to have a divided mine
and doubt can be anxiety it can be fear or mistrust
it could be a doubt of one's self or a doubt in our ability to realize buddha mine
or just a mistrust of how life is unfolding
so the words of this poem encourage us to put our opinions aside and our preferences aside and to experience life for the openness
of our true minds
and although i have been practicing for over thirty years
i knew that i wanted to
walk this path at a very young age
and i had a very difficult time with faith
and what really drew me to this practice was my own fear of my own mind
so when i was growing up my family environment was very volatile
my father drank a bottle of gin every single night
and later when i was in high school it started in the morning so it came out to be two bottles of gin
and i had my mother raged continuously about all this
and
she was very angry and very lonely
so i never knew what was really going to happen from one moment to the next one minute there was a warm interaction dodi laughter and the next moment they be screaming and yelling
and there was a very frightening environment to grow up in so i had a big fear of the present moment
and i had an even bigger fear of the next moment
so when i was about fourteen i decided i wanted to be enlightened so what that meant to me at that age was that i wanted to control my mind i didn't really know what enlightenment meant
but i knew that i wanted to be unafraid
i wanted to have a different mind and the one that i had
and i thought that some many years of mental gymnastics on a cushion in a quiet place might help me do that

i thought that
this practice buddhist practice would transform my mind
so i believe this for many years
and i would sit zazen for long periods of time
and therapy periods of tranquility
and they were worth the pain and struggle
but ultimately
ice by we experienced
difficult states of mind over and over again
and i thought that through lots of practice and getting all clearing out them ness
that underneath would lie buddha nature
so the poem begins by saying we can't see the truth
because we hold opinions for or against and then that is the minds disease
so the problem is not our mind itself but the fact that we want to pick and choose
i want tranquility but i don't want anxiety
so what strikes me most strongly about our practice is about understanding our minds as being rude a mine
so there are two parts to faith one of them is
believing in our minds
as enlightenment and the other part realizing this and they're not really separable but it's a lifelong practice
there's a zen saying that some of you have probably heard called great faith great down great determination
so when we practice zazen were practicing faith
when we noticed that were patched to something that we crave or were disliking something that arise have some mind
as we sit and we let go of that
we're giving up self centeredness
when we're not attached to me then
that is
to me that his faith
when we're no longer trying to fortified this concept of myself
that's trust

so buddha mind is not something that we strive for
or something that we can acquire after many years of sitting
for many years of meditation
ah
what i mean is
that our minds right now this minute no matter what state of mind you may be in no matter how you may feel right now
that is buddha mine
buddha mind includes doubt and fear
i've gotten into trouble trade a craving tranquillity
and on i've had
experiences of peace that i've tried to claim to grasp back and it's been impossible
because i find the next moment arrives and i don't like it
i have an opinion about the next moment
so in sauce and we practice meeting each moment equally
whether it's joy or sorrow or boredom
that's what's meant from the phrase and poem one dharma is not different from another
when the next moment comes and were not for or against it
our mind is unified
when i mind is unified were not cleaning
we're not against are opposing anything
all self centered strain and ceases
a chinese master sheng yen wrote a commentary on this poem faith and mind and he said
people imagined that getting and white and means they will see buddha nature within themselves
i insist there is nothing to see whatever you see as an illusion
buddha nature is empty nature
the diamond sutra serves there is no dharma form and there is nothing that is not the form of dharma
so there's no buddha nature to seek and there's nothing that isn't buddha nature
so every morning and evening here in the zendo we chant the heart sutra which says that we can't separate form from emptiness or emptiness from form we can't separate separate suffering from enlightenment
so there's no mind in this room which is separate from enlightenment
so the way i learned to cope when i was younger was through intellectual rising
when i was a teenager i decided that the way to freedom was acquiring a lot of knowledge
in
so all day long i'm surrounded by information and books
and
i studied a lot of literature in college so i would pride myself on analyzing characters and symbols and plots and that kind of thing but and i took a lot of religion classes but it never answered the question that i was carrying around with me in fact i wasn't even sure what my question
was
except that i had one and it was like having a chronic illness
i really thought that i would be able to figure out
something
i loved the line in the poem that says to seek mind with mind eating the discriminating mine is the greatest of all mistakes we can't really figure it out
sometimes i find myself trying to understand things to analyze them
it doesn't
it doesn't take suffering away
i think everyone's familiar with the
case in the
on com
case number nineteen
nonsense ordinary mind some of you have heard this
joe shoe asks asked nonsense
what is the way
and nonsense answered your ordinary mind that is the way
chose you said shall i try to seek after it had not send replied the more you pursue the more does it slip away
josue asked once more how can you know it is unless i try for it
and nonsense responded the way is not a matter of knowing or not knowing
knowing this delusion and not knowing this confusion so when he was really reached the true way beyond doubt you will find that is it is as vast and boundless as outer space
how can it be talked about on the level of right and wrong
and upon hearing this joe shoe was awakened
so mama made a comment nonsense dissolved and melted away before joshua questions and could not offer an explanation even though juice joshua comes to a realization he must delve into it for another thirty years before
you could fully understand it

i wanted to say something about my favorite wine in the whole poem which is
this principle is neither hurried nor slow one thought for ten thousand years
now i can explain why i love the swine so much
particularly one thought for ten thousand years
and when i tried to understand what it meant first boy was very moved by it
it inspired me to practice
but i spent a lot of time trying to analyze it and the home this line is in a verse which talks about time and space and how it's a false construction
so
we create time and space but that doesn't really helped me that's not why was moved by the poem understanding matt
so i spoke to sojourn and i've asked this question before
how can one practice of one doesn't understand
and he told me that and that was not for the first time that you don't need to understand it the practice it
so i asked him well what do you think this means one thought ten thousand years one thought that ten thousand years and he said it meant unending faith ceaseless faith
and i knew he was right when he said that
because
what what i imagined when i heard that wine
i could feel the heartbeat of our of all the buddhas and the ancestors and all the people in our sanga
and in all the other saunders
all continuing endlessly

sheng yen says at the tip of a fine strain of hair all the buddhas of the three times the ten directions are turning a normal the hill
i'd like to end and then asked for some questions or comments on that i just wanted to make a comment about doubt
doubt can take the form of anxiety and suffering but it is also our question
an incident practice we talk so much about cohen's
because their questions just like joe show asked nonsense
and we can contemplate the same question for years sometimes we don't even know what the question is that we're really asking
so for me doubt is a call on
it's a gate it's an opening
one can practice faith mind wholeheartedly
by contemplating down
by opening to doubt
but putting once complete attention on it
and i think the faith mine why is better
does anyone have her
question or comment
yes could you repeat wouldn't say the very end

i think we can practice faith through down by fully
putting our undivided attention
on doubt
however we experienced that
we view so many things as obstacles
but they're not really obstacles
yes

no
well actually that's a great question
i experienced that every day
i supervise a staff
the
and
i have people who i have the correct
so
for example i mentioned this in the class but on thursday but
i had i had to confront somebody who was not performing properly and like you you're saying it makes you angry at times well i was feeling angry about someone who on
was not helping other people was not doing his job
was not being honest about not doing his job now
what i could have done
i want
in my mind i imagined expressing anger towards him and being justified about it and feeling right about it and that's where the attachment to opinions comes in
i think it's really helpful to let go of one's own attachment to the opinion and just try to
help this person
without
all the emotion behind it
i was very fortunate in the moment that i had to
speak to this staff person
that i let go of my
feeling that i was right
i still had to say the same things i have to say
but
it's our attachment to our opinions that really caused the problem
it's kind of unfortunate in a way when i read this that and i just picked certain parts of the poem so you probably don't have a sense of what this whole poem is rarely life but the way it begins his by saying that our way is not difficult we have
happen just need to let go of preferences
we're very attached to what we like and don't like

jake
on
can you are ever do like off attrition that we find you have preferences attachments have you worked on reviewing the self talk
well i'm blessed with the opportunity to see this arise moment by moment
you know
i work in a public library i manage a branch i spend eight hours a day in public and i cannot escape from that and so every little problem that occurs is my problem in that moment and it's pretty consistent all day long
so
i can easily see
i watched my attachments and aversions just come up repeatedly and i actually am grateful for this job because
it's
i see somebody come up to me who i've dealt with every single day for example who might
who causes trouble and i watch my own opinions come up and it's not helpful for me to pray judge what's gonna happen
i see a preference arise i see myself
perhaps not want to talk to this person but when i see that happening when i watch my own reaction and just drop it in that moment
things go pretty well
and you can't look at it as i'm going to do this for the rest of my life or even today
that's too big it's really moment by moment
what am i gonna do this moment
you relate to this one person
right now it's not helpful
to set a goal that's too high it's not even it's a fantasy really anyway
the only thing we really have as this moment to work with
so
that's what
i think working with preferences is like that and that's all we can do
lucky specially turn around
one connected to talk more about not fighting and got care well that's not fair he begged harry
that's a great question because
it's very confusing the difference between those two things
not carrying has a lot of self in it so i i don't care
it's pushing something away usually
so here there were walking a very fine line between grasping at things and pushing things away you do it all the time as we go through life liking and disliking not carrying i think is a kind of dislike
it's a non engagement with this practice is really about is engaging with each moment not backing away
meeting each person

and that's
it's hard to do that
the doesn't make sense to you
so
i have a question about
knitted action
are you talking about political action can you give me an example
family relationships
i have a lot of stronger now
really
habits and
i'm not sure

mr i i want to get blasted and i'm not exactly
well
i think you it's helpful to look at what you can actually effectively do
so come from her
outcome
i mean i don't know the details of your situation it's hard to tell other people how to parent hum
i have difficulty with my sister and her panting
and
i take care of my two nephews fairly often
i know she would never even want to hear my opinion
huh
and
what i'm trying to do is just
when i'm with the children
act in accordance with
my vows
i think that's about as much as i can do

paul from his palm simply expressing a preference for having no
so have you can handle that might arise kitchen with raise let go of don't reference
well
it's really about
not being attached preferences
you know as i said the word meaning and hsin hsin being one of the meanings his admonition even warning that's one translation it sounds a little bit heavy handed when you first read the poem and
i can see why it sounds that way but it's really not possible to not have preferences it just isn't the way we are
our minds think
that's what minds do and they attached to things
you know when they we can't help it we live in the world that we live in that the minds that we have
we say that clinging and aversion is delusion
but that's what that's what we all have to work with
so there's no judgement intended it's really
a guideline
seeing
with our big minds
understanding food a mine
we're always going to be living with both things they're not really separable
yeah
wow
pago pago
creamy
the
i'm just thinking
i guess
lot of people have seen formulate by
me why
my wife
in buddhist practice we say that
we practice seeing things just as they are not good not bad not positive not negative
we don't
we don't want to create
fantasies about how things could be or should be
now when when one ceases to overlay reality with our own thoughts about of negativity that's something we try to like go
so that's not exactly positive thinking but hum
we really let go of
positive and negative thinking this thinking altogether
that might not make sense because it's impossible to do
here
romney

as i was describing earlier
i often try to return to my breath
when a difficult situation arises
like at work
but actually i don't usually have time even to think about that but i think that's a good way
to work with a difficult situation
so
ah
for me though
when i tried to do is select all of my opinions

him

often

i see what you're saying
i think that's really a good way to work with it
because when we when we return to our breath in a very volatile situation
we are
letting go of our attachment to the outcome and to our own emotions
and there is this space which other people pick up upon
they feel it
when i had to critique that staff member this week i was prepared i felt like i was very right and i was prepared to say something
emphatically like you can't do this anymore
and i felt that would that i was right but then i also realized that was not going to create the effect that i wanted to have because this is really about cooperation it's not really about who's right who's wrong
and fortunately
i was able to let go of that right beforehand and not present it in that fashion and then there was a response from him that was positive
it's almost time to start as through one more question nancy
well i was trying to get their requesting it
address just what you're talking about just now and
i started to go on a over the anyhow
you created a something that allowed him to be your new a positive response at and ah that's a you know hey how did you do that
well
it was just fortunate that i realized what i was doing
at the last minute i could see how my own attachment to my opinion
so when someone asks you know what's wrong with having preferences or opinions it doesn't mean that you don't see what needs to be done something needs to be done
it mean you actually created a change at yeah
do better
well i think he was more receptive to listening to me and we were able to mutually come to an agreement to the verdict still out
true
yeah that's true
in fact that it was a good area
i didn't make him angry or resistant and we a conversation went well but i had i had to say myself first i had to see my own attachment to my their style of there that could see it could well and not know nowhere
you're worried more
but yes and i think the important thing for me is to be open each moment to what's going to unfold

the so