Attention and Attachment

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for vous is accurate
okay
today i would like to talk about attention and attachment
yeah
really fundamentals of zen practice and basically
buddhism to it's a matter of number one is good news and the second as dan
the in some ways of buddhism is so
ah thorough and far reaching
that sometimes the simplicity of the message gets lost in all the details so i was always keep coming back to no matter how
mysteriously the teaching is or how confusing or how elaborate or how difficult to grasp
that it always comes back to the second noble truth which is that the reason that we're
having difficulties in or that were unhappy is because we hold on to everything we hold on to stuff we don't want to let go can always comes back to that no matter how sophisticated we are and how long we practice it always comes back to this really simple truth
so ah
that's where the attachment comes in and attention is just common to all buddhist practices you know as really paying attention
ah and then we don't talk about attention per se so much whereas in the personal practice or theravada tactless it's a lot moyes talked about more elaborately and in more detail
ha and so i want to talk about
heart and attention and zen practice but also looking through the lens of the possono practice to have because i think that when we look at another what somebody else's emphasis is it helps us to see our own emphasis
yeah
i've been going to have a person or group in benicia for maybe fifteen or more years twice a year giving talks and i won't give it usually give a talk on a theme which i really enjoy and they enjoy it because it's mixing and i'm discussing in their of upasana and we
see the similarity and we see the differences but the similarities and it can grew and seas are always more fundamental and strong and the differences and it's just enjoyable to share that with a group that doesn't have our particular style and find out is base like
it's like meeting relatives that you that's our distant relatives that you haven't seen for awhile and yet you have the same common ancestors and when you get together you you started realizing your commonality and then also how you're different and both both are helpful to understanding what we're doing
this group the indonesia group i'm megan collins was the first one to go out there she is she lived up the nisha for quite awhile cousins went out there for a couple of talks mary most seen as as well for an a number of talk so
we've had some interaction with that group which is a basically they don't have a central teacher and then didn't manage to to exist for these two thousand and twenty five years just cooperatively meeting in the downstairs of a church in benicia
so i want to read you you know kick and i have been helping sodium
but added a book it is memoirs hand
he has lectures and the lectures has been selected by a number of btc students who looked at them gave us their opinion about which ones were the best and we selected about thirty five of those going back like g thirty five forty years and
and then i've put that together with his memoir so i looked over his previous talks and i went back to talk and nineteen eighty five ah where he talked about the four foundations of mindfulness he doesn't talk about mine from this per se very much so this is a little unusual talk for him
but as good as i just read you about a long paragraph from that talk
recently people have become sense to people recently people had become
have become and these presents and sit and students have become very interested in mindfulness practice and sometimes there's a feeling that the day that mindfulness practice is something different than zazen practice people say well there's zazen practice and then there's mindfulness practice as
if they were two different things so i want to talk today a little bit about mindfulness practice of zazen
in the mindfulness cetera the m saturday baton or sutra buddha mentions for ways to practice mindfulness through the body the actions that might the mindfulness of the body and actions of the might of the body mindfulness of feelings mindfulness of consciousness
a consciousness of the dharmas which means consciousness or awareness of what is buddhism or what is the dharma or what are the various practices that lead to enlightenment or bring out our enlightened nature
so these are four ways that we practice mindfulness and of his own practice we do them all constantly and in zazen we do them all everything is included just in sitting is good and important to have knowledge or understand the four foundations sometimes feel that when
we say just zazen that we don't include intellectual understanding but mindfulness of the dharmas means intellectual understanding in includes intellectual understanding as mindfulness you can practice does in just doesn't add up to a certain point but if you don't have some intel
actual understanding if you don't know what the dharmas are than it's easily get confused mentally confused or lost
so i agree with everything he said there this is given you know this is like thirty five years ago so if he were to say the same thing today you would probably worded differently but guess what he said then and it makes sense to me
ah
to me that the
what's really the interesting about attention from a purpose in a point of view is what they call bear attention and their attention is
just paying attention the western front of us but
with no commentary going on no evaluation no judgment and no commentary just simply hum
paying attention just letting letting the attention take over rather than our self reference or how it fits into something else or in the past or this or that so without a thought process going on how do we actually allow ourselves just to pay attention to something
very simply
i think actually in our society for sure or at least in my perception of it for sure that the hardest thing is for us just to be simple our minds are so complex and out fantastically and we have this capability of is
thoughts and emotions just being so variable and subtle and nuanced and then the stimulus stimulating you know we get the stimulation from all that just to be simple and just to allow our attention to be there without having to do anything with it
his heart you know it is almost like the simplest thing as the hardest thing
and that's always interested me why why that is where i'm not even i'm even not even concerned why it is it just i noticed the that in my with observing that's what i observe
ha so their attention has
is actually like
i don't know italians sabir attention is like
in a way it's like beginner's mind you know
ha
you know beginner's mind send mind beginner's mind this is a phrase we all really know well it's almost become i'm not really a cliche but it's like part of our girls to cook culture or yeah zen mind beginner's mind but bear attention is like beginner's mind
that that
you know we don't have any expectation or assumptions were just open to whatever is happening again it's really simple it's not complicated but is complicated because we're so complicated
but if we can allow ourselves just to be open
without any qualification just paying attention that's my understanding of beginner's mind is an open mind which is available for whatever's appearing at happening
in and the duggan's introduction to ah
zazen actually hum for kansas mg at there's is key phrase in that to short ah fascicle his
let go of the workings of the conscious mind engaging of all thoughts and views that's their attention meco of the workings of the conscious mind be gauging of all thoughts and views
hum
and that's also what we mean when we talk about she contacts that are just sitting it's just sitting is not meditating so that will be enlightened or a meditating so that
ah
will improve ourselves which we would all like who wouldn't like to approve themself but suzuki roshi and in a number of a tux points out that that desire for self improvement is also a barrier to just paying attention to what's actually happening
and and seeing things as they actually are rather than trying to get things to be how we would like to be
so she toss it is just sitting hum
and i don't really think that so different from their attention in the vipassana world
it's just that that we actually actually made a practice out of it we don't and then we don't talk about a pretty much which is do it because when you start talking about
their attention then there's a whole if you really go into an intricate gli ha there's a ham
whole chain of things that happened with our attention or a perception our thoughts process one thing leads to another
i just want to mention
he

the eq huh i want to mention something which are a kind of bay
ah
don't know what the word is
eq was a contrary and monk ha back and i believe he was a fifteenth century
and he he kind of flaunted all of the orthodoxy of zen practice and in many ways
he didn't exactly follow the buddhist precepts either that he was a brilliant to practitioner
and there's a little story about him or with attention so i read it to you
one day a man of the people said the zen master eq master will you please write for me some maxims of the highest wisdom
we should say that a surgeon you know can you give us the maxims of the highest wisdom
an eq immediately took his brush and wrote the word attention
is that all asked the man will you not add something more than it was just not enough
eq then wrote twice running attention attention
well remarked the man rather irritably i really don't see much adapter subtlety and what you've just written
so then eq wrote the same word three times running attention attention attention
a half angered the man demanded what does that word attention mean anyway
there was tell us something about it had any you answered attention means attention
so he didn't want to
he didn't want to elaborate with a
comparisons perceptions references and all the rest he just wanted to get this person to just allow themselves to be
and as
when i used to doing that well as used to interpreting and referencing and perceiving and we need to as humans that's absolutely what we need to do but we do it so much that we lose sight of the simplicity of just paying attention which also involves listening to what people
are saying you know started so much of the time when somebody's talking we have you really have a feeling or we like what they're saying we don't like what they're saying a critical of what you're saying or boy that's really good what you're saying it rather than just listening to what they're saying or if there if it's both are seeing is boring with
tune out so we all have we have our our ways of avoiding paying attention when
see when
we don't just want to stay there as is

their time
i needed i think i'm in it

to i'm trying to think how to
well not run out a time and say what i want to stay i allow time for questioning

ah it's his first of all want to read something from sojourn were more short paragraph about the attention
ah he says so each one of us so each one of those little dips and rises is a separate mental state in zazen and you can watch the process very closely if you're very attentive you can see how thoughts arise in your mind and how mental states come and go more modify and so
so forth and in zazen sometimes are thinking mind takes over and so we lose our awareness
and often times i would say and in our daily life or thinking mind is going on all the time usually are thinking mind is going all the time we're always creating something in zazen we stopped to creative process of thinking mind are we narrow it down and
incidentally sometimes now in the positive groups they prefer the word narrow attention to bear attention there's also brought attention which is you know is what's more like mindfulness but
whether we we're talking about now is narrow attention
but in our daily life i think the hardest thing is to watch our states of mind or to be aware of states of our states of mind and i would say i would add to that non-judgmental lee have not
using it as a mirror me but just paying attention to that
because are changing so fast and we get into a situation where we have to move very quickly but to be able to notice or have awareness of are changing states of mind means to step back a little bit not watch but have awareness

so i like to talk about
issue that
it's more than an issue it's a fundamental reality of our life
the surgeon is had that has scheduled to sessions on thursday nights about a birth and death
and ones coming up the second one is coming up this coming thursday
so i just wanted to hum
show you a kind of a contrast between the zen way of understanding birth and death and a more maybe thorough vodden hora know if even say call it the positive been a fair wagner way of understanding
birth and death from the sutures so let's just say as sutra way of talking about booth birth and death and a zen will weigh in a call on of talking about birth and death
from the point of view of attention you know where where is our words our attention focus how does our mind work when our emotions work as we try to and try to cope with her
birth and death
so how the there's a
and sutra and i want sutras it's only several pages long but these sutures are dense and and a lot of detail so i'm not going to read you the sutra but it's called the anna enough up in dhaka sutra and ads in the middle length things
is relatively short and is relatively simple
he had hung up on are not upon giga is a lay monk not not a monk he's just a lay person and on his property buddha and his retinue have come and are camped out there while they give talks in the nearby town
i'm not a pen dhaka is dying and he's in pain in his greatest comfort
and so he goes in mentioned he he has an audience with buddha and says this is this is what's happening to me and just states that that doesn't take more time to to have a conversation and then he goes to share a putra and says the same thing
and try putra says okay well i'll come over to your house and we can discuss it
so shy putra with a nanda in attendance comes over to another pandoc gawkers can candy-coated house and has a discussion with him about birth and death and what he does is he goes through oh at last
least eleven different types of clinging that we all do
have enough i've written it down
he had more or less
and it's either each one of them is very simple he says okay this is you have to not attached to this and you have to not attached to this and you have to not attached to this so he reads it just reads off a litany of the hardest things that are are for us to let go of our senses are are
objects of our senses are sense consciousness lego discounters vagina states let go of the world her consciousness not depending on the world
and all the the various elements they take like a page and a half to lay out what what another ten deca needs to let go of
and of course because it's in sutra and everything works out huh it works in an african as oh thank you so much you know i i really i really feel so much better and add and so
i understand what you're saying and i a putra in a nanda leave and then another deca guys
and they give it the sutra happy ending because he goes to shit to heaven and comes back as a young prince and and thanks buddha and jerry putra and ananda for all their help and then disappears
so that's as sutra way of dealing with birth and death it doesn't really get get into the nature of it but it's like all you have to do is just let go and it'll be all right just just let go that's the message very straightforward very simple
the a then version of this is a call on their turf
see what this is

i think i just have to remember it ah so
hi you again

so i'm going to simplify it because from memory and i don't want to mess up the details too much so i've simplified
but they're to co practitioners
ultimately students of z d song
and
their names are very similar to each other but also call want their their dharma brothers but ah
hum oh actually i i haven't here
so the to dhamma brothers
and i
a shin shin son shoe is the senior of the to and is like
he's more mature and it has longer experience than dub forget the experience he'd just as more mature in his practice and a she saw him to his his dharma brother who is not quite up to speed
so shin sun shin son she says after one has clearly known the unborn nature of life what is it still makes one to stay in life
in other words even though who we have some really good understanding of birth and death ah and
who we we see that there's no birth no death we see that it's all one thing we're not what however we want to conceive of it we have we have a good understanding of it even though get so
still
ah he after one as clearly known the unborn nature of life what is it still makes one to stay in life now there was even though we understand the unborn quality of our life and i explained that in a minute
what why does why emotionally to we still hold onto our life

so that's the question is posing to him and when he says unborn ah my understanding of what he means by unborn is that
since there's no own being here
ah you are and i am just a combination of things that are constantly changing there's no and there's no central owner we think there is we we we imagine one in which is our ego but really there's no central owner
yeah so because there's no own being you could say in a sense that we never even were born there's no there's no own being there to be born so there's no own being to die either so if there's no nothing to be born there's nothing to die so that's what they're basically conceptually
i'm talking about have terms of unborn
if you are not
learn more about the unborn and you can check in with banca a ba and katie i think
a japanese monk of i forget what century who is in probably that nineteen i'm not sure maybe eighteenth century seventeenth century
and his whole thing was the unborn there's a whole book and unborn with bunkie and he's quite good and he just as as it's a one note samba that's all he talks about is the unborn buddha nature
so that's the question that the older monk is how imposing to the younger monk who can even know you you have all this down still what what do you do about being emotionally attached to your life
and the monks as
ah
the younger monks as the bamboo shoot necessarily becomes a bamboo but is it possible to make a bamboo rope had of a bamboo shoot
what he means is
that he's like a bamboo shoot he's not quite strong enough to be made into a rope yet he has potential he can get there later but right now he won't work to try to make him into a rope he just has to do some more growing
ha
and then get older monks as well later you will come to realization by yourself there was you don't quite get it but later by yourself you'll get it
ah so then the younger monks as well
that's my view which how how do you see it and then the older monk says and my view is just as i said a shin shin said the older monk said
an herbs standing in the in the temple the monk says this is the stewards quarters and this is the cooks quarters
and that's the end of the conversation
so this is i could at you know a typical or enigmatic zen con
where he's not really answering the question sounds like but he's actually demo in the question is demonstration is he's just paying attention to where he is right at that moment
that's the doorway that's the window
he is sir
hum
it's a little crazy because you're not responding directly to the question about how do you handle
birth and death you know how to you how do you have
except that genuinely accept that not just intellectually
and he says the doorways right there the windows right there and it was
if you just see what's right in front of us if we just see what's right in front of us and really see it there's not a problem
it's because we want everything to be a little different even if it's subtle we want things to be different than they are
which doesn't mean that you have to accept injustice or all the things that are going wrong in the world and just go along with everything
but in your own being are my own being too
except where i'm at right now is important and not i wish i were some different place
so that's what is these demo ing that quality
here's the window there's the door is right in front of us
and the younger students just bows to him
so hey
in a sense this is just bear attention although it's much more there's much more
substance to this than none
then we we just talk from the purpose a point of view about the dynamics of bear attention
and the zen cons are all about
how over and over and over again the collins are really about especially the book of serenity or about breaking through our conceptual framework not relying on our conceptual framework
an easy more of our attentive and intuitive framework
and at case after case is going in this direction
ah and they're all different actually there are as a it's brilliant and that they're all a little bit different and they emphasize different aspects
but and always gets down to
that
one person in the case usually is trying to solve the problem by figuring it out or by using common sense ah
and
can not allowing themselves to be simple enough or vulnerable enough to just
allow their own attention in their intuition to just work and follow that whatever that goes
so that so the zen
yeah so oftentimes the the zenit the answer to the case seems a little disconnected or strange or weird but the reason is because they're trying to express something which if you as long as soon as you make a conceptual like i'm doing as soon as you make a conceptual ha
it's not it's not what they're pointing at

the a few more minutes yeah there's another
case and zen case that that's maybe the most well-known call on for soto zen is ordinary mind is the way
is when i like a lot and have because susan martin that was her
now that wasn't seasons it was
carol's care it was carol's she so ah khan the she she was working with
and that
have a copy of it because i'm bad at remembering it an accurate way to most of you probably heard this before but it's short
josh you earnestly as nonsense and what is the way nonsense said the ordinary mind is the way
joseph shed should i direct myself toward it or not and nonsense that if you try to turn toward it you go against him
i think about like batteries you know what if you turn a positive terminal on a battery to another positive terminal another battery they keep pushing each other away
joshi said if i do not try to turn toward it how can i know that that is the way nonsense said the way does not belong to knowing or not knowing knowing his delusion not knowing is a blank consciousness
when you have really reached the true way beyond all doubt you will find it is vast and boundless as the great empty permanent that's an interesting translation
this is a coin yamada are you might call and seeing how can it be talked about on a level of right or wrong
at these words joshi was suddenly enlightened
again the most of you have heard this at least once
and dad
the the thing that we usually talk about in this case is the new the non duality of knowing and not knowing that knowing his delusion not knowing as a blank mind or sometimes they say indifference or something to say ignorance
but the duality of knowing and not knowing is what we often focus on
and also
oh good going towards it in if you go towards it goes away from you so that also those dearest dualistic situations
and so we try to get to the non dualistic aspect in this case when i asked surgeon
in a shows on the universe sheen on what is ordinary mind he said holy
which i thought it was really irritating actually but really it's a
what is getting at is that the duality between ordinary and holy as questionable you know and use this is ordinary and that's holy well yeah for humans we need to do that kind of just and discrimination but there's nothing fundamental wholly or ordinary about anything they're just as they are
we give it those meanings
there's a verse that goes with this case and that goes which i've always really liked
the vs by move this is a on com
case so the verses by move on
the spring flowers the moon and autumn to cool breezes of summer the winter snow if idol concerns me not cloud the mind this is a person's happiest season
i love the simplicity of as case which is basically if you know that they're talking we have idle concerns if we just let go have that
the elaborations that we do mentally whenever we're doing is fine we were just there
ah and in the sense you could say that's non dual
but i've always i always felt that this is a kind of hum
more
i don't know good word for it
it's more about
hope in mind then with an open mind how we can pay attention and just enjoy what we're doing
ah rather than all he knows actually we kind of like to rank as we need it but as raining in i was gonna go out for a walk to a but i can't do it and i wish it wasn't raining

so excuse my rambling quality hammer i'm aware of that
ah so if you have any thoughts questions or challenges ah
here are different ways of seeing that i've mentioned a please come forth
peter overturn i invite you to admit yourself and ask question
richard hi ron the experiment
reply really enjoy hearing you speak hindi
i wanted to ask a question that's come up for me in connection with the two sides of thanks you were talking about ah pay attention urges see clearly without distractions so to speak and as bad as a kind of quality or value or practice did we understand and
the question i have is
moving forward from there into what we often referred to is an appropriate response
what is the connection between these things
and leaving aside the question of finale of with it not city clearly is in fact the career stats but anyway yeah
that's right the know that's another aspect
of i think if if we are able to take some time and be attentive how we respond next is going to be more in tune with the what's actually happening so how does how does how does how to recognize next
ah
one thing follows another okay
ah
and so i said
an example might be say you're having a political argument and boy you really disagree with that somebody is saying
and you have your point of view they have their point of view
if you just pause
and let it be open without i couldn't gotta get my point of view across
then when you respond to that person the differences between you i think that you can be more in touch with what they're saying and what you're saying in a more in touch way
and am also by the way you're what you're mentioning that activity is really a part of mindfulness practice yeah i don't they don't call it an appropriate response but they have another kind of phrase for it but as a really important part of mindfulness practice is a how you respond
two situations mindfully but i'm saying or suggesting that paying attention and just an open minded attention to begin with and hopefully it's sustaining allows us to be to be more in touch with what people are saying
and to listen to what they're saying
real life partners thank you okay
judy flashman i invite you to and meet yourself and ask a question
you ride and actually flowing from the that interchange to see how i had this image while you were speaking when you said the words letting go ah
letting go like this actually the body
to gather in so something like will the and breath always blows with the outback
birth that that letting go
what i'm experiencing in my arms is repeating
so wondering especially because you here are like half including so much around the body massage to other one
gilded
ah are you see that including everything and letting go cheaply how it relates to our website that
that's such a big question i don't know how to answer it can you can you slice off a little chunk of that

i'm letting go and
yeah out how to how do they go and include everything
well you can you know even include everything that we're aware i can we can include everything we're aware of so that's what you mean by everything hum
seen that we're aware of and the more open our awareness is than while we can include

heiko i invite you to and me yourself and ask a question
thank you ron what a wonderfully calming and simple talk i really appreciated i also you may notice on my screen your description of that birth and death inspired me to change my pronouns to we and us
but that's not my question when you talked about idol cards i it occurred to me and my experience sitting in his eyes and for example worrying about how this piece of wood is gonna be cut or that client is going to be dealt with ah
they're not in my immediate response field at that time and i wondered you know they're like the window and the door are in your case
is that what you mean by idle thoughts or could you address out a little bit more
hum
yeah if you're just sitting if you're just doing zazen and those are idle thoughts
if you're working on
your project that has not a light of thought it's a party or project but hum
it depends what your intention is i mean yeah you could just sit on a couch you know if we just sat down on the couch and i want to i'm going to sit down on the couch and i'm going to think about that project and how to do that project they'll be fine no problem that's not an idle thought your it's very deliberate but if you're here objective
there's just to sit still and the aware without any agenda other than to be aware then starting to think about your you know you're going to cut the with this way or that way
three days from now over and while the creek is an idol thought
thank you so would you say that when we're in the face of others anything but attending the them is idol
how would you address the moment of another

you mean when you're relating to somebody i'm not quite sure what you're in in winner in your response field and you're talking
waiter idle thoughts in those times while i see what you're saying
ah
i say if you're separating if you separate out from listening or talking if you're separating out sort of watching and thinking how strategizing in some way even if it's very subtle that's a that's what other call an idle thought
tom
it's really is it
when we kind of withdraw from what we're doing
and go off into our mental space is an idol thought ha
there's nothing wrong with my mental space is fine we we have to have it were amazing what we can do with our minds but if we're not if it's not necessary than just give it a rest that's castle as you thank you so much thank you very much okay looks like we're at a time this is fun
such we have to stop so thank you very