Sei Jo's Reunion

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today this memorial day weekend this weekend of remembering and we collecting
i would like to focus on the other side of the colon i've been giving given which is on the reunion of say job and her song
the name of the colonists saito and her soul are separated
so they're probably people here who weren't here the last time so i'll briefly tell you this story narrated that it's a call on based on a chinese hotel and sado say is her given name joe is a diminutive meaning little girl
is a very adored and very lovely yeah a little girl she's especially adored by her father because her older sister died
she has a cousin and they play very compatibly together they looked like they belong together and put together and at one point the dad sort of teasingly says you ought to be married some day and they took that to mean that they would be the there's children do they take their parents weren't seriously
and yet a wealthy neighbor imposed on arms sage's father on to ask them to allow his santa merry say and so at the point at which say and oh to her her cousin
had fallen in love and were a young
a young man and woman on she was betrothed to someone else and archie was they were both both heartbroken and o two left town without telling anybody he took his boat down the antsy and didn't tell say jar
sees a figure running all along the shore and it goes over to inspect and it turns out to be say and they embrace and they realize they can't go back and so they elope they leave down and establish themselves get married have two children and have life
eventually save feels a longing for her father and feels incomplete and says that to oh to an ultra said yes i feel the same way we should go back and ask forgiveness so they do that they they boat back up the river and
as is the custom he goes oh she goes to say his father first leaving her at the river with the two children and explains to him and apologize apologizes that they have eloped to have children they've been gone for five or six years
and the father is puzzled he said that can't be
because say is still here she is in her bed she hasn't moved or spoken in all of his time she's as if she were drunk
oh and an ultra says that can't be she's down at the river and and the father takes him in to prove it in their the is the problem say
and
oh true then says i will go get the other say
and the others say as the other say is approaching the house they say who is in bed smiles and stands out
and as they come together they merge into one
and say says about it
that she had not known that she was separate that she had not known that she was incomplete
so
you know collins are pointers right it they're not
legal precedents is their cases but they're not legal precedents and an argument there pointers toward what is whole as what is the absolute
the word soul as a little problematic and in we don't think of in in our dharma we don't think about are having a soul like a kind of a unitary personality we think of ourselves as being myriad beings may be there is know
aspects and manifestations
but i i think it was more directed at something like essence and maybe even buddha nature that we're talking about rather than soul and that the story is talking about saving
separated is an interesting word because actually it's that she's unaware she's not awakened to her buddha-nature right
and when she runs away it's but she's running away from home which is it's like she's abandoning her roots
per essential buddha-nature and following her wishes her her heart her heart's desire on the one hand but in the end doing them by itself turns out not to be satisfied not to be not to provide ultimate and a piece for her
i would say
in sort of argument with a metaphor that's presented in this story that she's not separated because in her longing for home it is an expression i think of a away seeking mind
and and that way seeking mind when she expresses her longing awakens it in her husband
ah
i am i imagine that that that longing grows out of her empathy for her father because as a mother she now understands what it would be like to lose a child what it would be like what it was like for her father to lose her
and coming home is coming home to a whole self harm
it is a story about a a can show experience and there is at the end a smile that is very much like the maha cup soccer smile who smiles when the buddha holds up the flour and there's a realization of non
separateness

there's a reconciliation that happens i think i'm on all levels on the absolute and relative and the reconciliation has a healing effect for her but also for everyone around her
the way i've been attempting to hold this is to ah
is too
look
when standing in diversity to look for oneness
and when standing in oneness to look for diversity
another metaphor that i've been thinking about as one that i heard how he to i'll say who is who is some suzuki roshi his son and i i i think there's a story of suzuki telling us that they it that susan super told this story
at some point too so i'm imagining it's a metaphor that spotter that broader than just the two of them
who he said he was describing visiting a man who was dying and comforting him with this analogy this metaphor which is that he is like the droplet of water that comes off of a waterfall together with all the other droplets of water that are falling and will ultimately join the
river still part of the river still but in their diversity in their separateness they're still part of this flow of river
but so those are my sort of attempts to enter into the meaning of it but still there is them the matter of heroin body that's how to feel this in ones marrow and blood
and for that i'm going to go back to the ones commentary
which i'll read and then i'll try to unpack a little bit when you realized what the real is you will see that we pass from one host to another like travelers stopping for a night's lodging
but if you do not realize that yeah i earnestly advise you not to rush about wildly
when earth water fire and air suddenly separates you will be like a crab struggling in boiling water with its seven or eight arms and legs when that happens don't say i didn't want
so when you realize what the real is

this is that we are all in the stream of cause and effect there is nothing else it's all flow it's all transformation there's nothing else besides them
when you realize it with a real as you will see that we pass from one husk to another like travelers
stopping at a nights lol lodging and that's the flow of our lives as the arc of our lives from one state of mind to another from one place to another traveling through time
if you do not realize it iron i earnestly advise you to a
not to rush about wildly
quietly and earnestly practice zazen than everything will become clear
the ancients thought that we were composed of earth water fire and air so when those things separate anticipate that is us decomposing so at the moment when this tangible physical self dissolves
if i haven't realized the flow then i will be like a crab struggling in a pot of boiling water which is a very graphic image which i know from my childhood i've seen this happen
oh
when that happens don't say i didn't warn you
i have long advise you to practice zazen to come to experience reality and to achieve enlightenment
so
this is where the two elements in myself start to struggle between faith and out
how does one no one's true self
how does one learn to recognize and trust the manifestations of big mind
in i i mean viscerally a medium in the marrow and blood
this
ah one of the things that i rely on i have relied on
in the of of the triple treasures is sanga when i have doubt in on with about other things i i i can find solace in the company of all of you
we have gone through some periods of kind of rough times i would say over the last number of months in the sanga around
and in the middle of that
i had a question on that i took to someone
which was what can i rely on
when things are falling apart for they feel like their home phone
oh and the answer i got was quite wonderful the answer was
buddhists last words before he died
be a lamp unto yourself
and i took that in and i thought but wait i i don't know where that is how can i find that i thought you couldn't pick
can't see or on big mind right
and so the suggestion was see it in the minds of people around you
and i thought i can do that in fact i i have been doing that and
i can see big mind in the people around me i can feel it in my body when something is true for wiser are spot on to the moment
oh
so that's one place where i could find my way into this poem
we're also directed towards awesome and the question i have had about doesn't
ah for a long time and it took it to several people is how do you know when you're not wasting your time and us and having heard that it's possible to spend years wasting your time sitting zazen
and one answer i got was when you don't want anything
and that has been actually a really useful at instruction in terms of zazen because when i noticed that i i want to be colder ottawa be hotter i want the timekeeper the wake up and ring the bell
i want i want something that i i can see that that's not thousand like that's a very direct experience for me
another answer i got was fun
when you can see change in the arc of your life
well that that out that's actually not that easy to do because it's like trying to see changes in yourself as like trying to watch a tree grow you know if you if you don't take a big enough span of time you don't see much fun
but when i looked at the arc i i could see places where things were incrementally and slowly changing and my last way seeking mine tall glass week
i talked about him a moment of
rather extreme stage fright frieder self consciousness and which i was giving a talk this is a nineteen eighty two and a part of me separated off and was on the ceiling looking down at myself and doing commentary about how i was doing in the talk and saying things like you're pro
oddly not making any sense and you're probably not even speaking english and i mean i was anyway
that's that's where i started all those years ago
recently
not too long ago i started noticing moments when i would think of something and then say it without regard
to the warrior the warrior who worries about my reputation and how it's gonna look on how people are gonna react and so forth i mean it's not that i actually don't think about how people are going to react in a way that i'm why we gonna be mindful but i'm with the self-referential part and
which felt uncharacteristic and so that there is another part that looks back and says oh that's different which is not the same kind of warrior it was more of a witness quality to it in psychology we would call it an observing ego and then
positive sense of ego on
and one way that i have been thinking about it is what happens when
i get myself out of my own way wasn't something is kind of dropped from the situation
so then i was asked
when you get yourself out of the way
what comes flowing
and that was a quite an interesting pointer for which i do not have an answer maybe you do for yourselves one might be intuition
on
an instinctive knowing what to do
ah but i i am most happy to think about it as mystery
another manifestation of mystery
and then there is a way when that happens that one doesn't take credit for because it isn't me it doesn't feel personal it doesn't feel like it belongs to me that fills in asturias
come

so gang joe was someone so the person who asks the question about this on his go sell master go so he lived on
ah thousand years ago and on
the his of his predecessor as gang joe who he knew and it was gang joe's words that set go so on his path and his words were
when he was at gun shows asked what his realization like what what does to it what is experiencing realization and game joe said it is just like a woman who drinks water and nods to herself knowing for herself whether the water is warm or cold
and here the operative word is nose for herself
ah gozo reads this and asks knowing whether the water is warm or cold is easy
but what makes her not to herself

so
i have been told i've heard that awakening mind is not some special other thing on
it has to do with our deepest understanding and some glimmer that brings us to practice and
that it's not difficult to touch it
it is present in everything
and one thing i can test to is particularly in you

ah
life has a wonderful
thing about realization movement and stillness two and one say at home say abroad the absolute and relative the moon and the mountains which is the real one the answer is as before all that we behold is full of blessings
no there is still the matter anticipating the linda has question
there is still a matter of the crab in the boiling water
we are not free from are myriad selves we
we have to say something we get into trouble when we make mistakes we fall apart we disappoint others we feel pain we feel despair for the world
we can return to zazen and tried to be like one of those you know heavy bottom buddha dolls when it gets knocked down and it comes up again
but we are nevertheless a work in progress a flow
in my day i've done some
the for for flow and when you come to a big rapid the thing you do is scouted you get out you park your car they prefer cheaper
the party raft and he walked out at the bottom and you look where you want to have to you know end up and then you trace back up to see what the root is that's plenty
and then you're getting your raft and the river takes over and that's when plan b plan c van de happens and
what i know from that is
you don't hang on the planet
as soon as plan b starts happening you get you go with it on
so there is a away in a in a you can't fight the river the river is stronger than you on ah
but you can swim with it you can navigate your way laterally as you go down
but the river is gonna be going and you're going to be going in the direction the reverence and at all so i guess we say to the crab
ah they got emerged with your situation you gotta you know deal with a heat
oh
if there's diversity in oneness and oneness and diversity form is emptiness and emptiness form then
our relationship with the cosmos is not different from our relationship with each other
i found out the healing that happens on on one level can be a mirror of the healing on on another
so
st joe's i would call it does his dissociation of the morning for his first child which turns into this clinging to this daughter and not minding her wishes
it causes him to over freight that relationship is healed when she is healed
her healing is not only her healing it's also his healing
and also her husband and also her children who now have a grandfather
oh
i i've seen this happen in my own life
my mother had a unbeknownst to me and a physically abused childhood and the way she dealt with that was to put it in a box she is she she told me this after the trigger had caused her to re re remember her childhood
good she said i put all of that in a box i wrapped the ribbon around it i put it in the back of the closet of my mind never to be opened again
and but the problem is when when we do that kind of separating from ourselves it doesn't go away
and actually what happens is it leaks in a very indirect in uncontrolled way so the way it leaked in mind that in the household like rough is that she would not tolerate anyone being angry and she would reinterpret that into something else you're not angry you are the disappointed or whatever
so it created a little bit of a house of mirrors in terms of wife and i was really going on
she told me when she was in her seventies and i was in my
thirties this story of of having been abused having having had it called up for her by some trigger doesn't matter when it was
and reintegrating integrating it into her life and understanding of who she was
that allowed her to get beyond the fact that she she only she had more than a stepmother was stepmother who abused her she had actually had a mother before that who had died when she was to who loved her very much and so she had this feeling in our own self but for me it was
it changed my relationship with her because i went from being mad at her for
ah
not allowing me to have my righteous anger
oh to being grateful to her for not having passed on the blow for doing what she could she was she did what she could she didn't she was not obviously she did not pass that on and by in that moment i realized her
changing changed me
ah
so i guess what i'm trying to say is i think we're all in this together
so

ten
rich
this for this whole
i laughed off the with
i don't have much luck with working with our this effect was
thing in my life
that i notice be touched by it
is
talking about myself
why have i want to change it
ha
it's kind of my of and
i like in china
the people like that
then there's so much aversion there's so much of versions for myself that it's almost like upset myself up for failure
like that
this it's like yeah wage
the
every time i hear software for the surface of five percent
that could have much luck with that my life of the thing that happens is that
very
ha
before honest whatever you know just having attention ah
this go

then

something like that oh can i finally have are struggling
finally the specs of healthy
somehow you know rather more than over i started strangling worked for the game the fraud
you know so
you know there's something in that how to extract and love myself as i have
everything from i myself have a place of the version say okay well i don't like the for having face
an evil
living my wife bypass the open and also be competitive support that i get here at the saga because will have to scramble around find myself
i pretty much can get away with anything
what i'm here and showing up on hello to everybody here you know i got to interact with everybody and fine where my rough edges are and how in our pumps against the hurts hurt me
you know somehow
i want to shift that
you know it's not getting a life so much ah
have you and most people want to call you back to their house
i don't like the way to change i want you to be back the way you work for and
i think it
i think we can be aggressive toward ourselves and the parts that we don't like which is a way of separating the dividing ourselves into separate times doesn't well
peter
you
this career
school

give it up
go with it
i never saw a crab get out of the boiling water

as the
wherever the ceiling
did i'm sorry for with your to see them oh
oh

it's next iteration is food right and gets to the part of us
i mean is there's something else beside the flow i guess that's

he asked linda i'll ask your question
the
the
i have two questions for very dry
separate
what i aren't don't know which might ask
but alone
happy
so you ended your talk with raleigh to get
and this question is less fondly
candlelight
somebody saw off on
those that with whom graph together it
separate from us some painful way
ah
how much particular way to participate
he's played it each although it may give rise to civil associations it was
how responsible are we
and yeah
this was actually i live in north have asked
i feel
separation of something appears that the differently
and i just wondered tended to healing
clay
ah i think we are responsible
actually and then the question is
ah that's not a hard question the hard question is what does that mean we should do
and that's a question that can only be answered moment by moment i mean one one thing that i know is that i carry in my heart
people that i don't see all the time think that
connect with them on there
on
and
i don't think it's a question that we can answer each person by ourselves i think it's it's a collective answer that includes the separated part has to include the separated person
because any action that we do has to come with information from that person or
understanding what connecting ha
how the connection needs to be accomplished from their point of view as well fine
so
oh
i think the best
thing we can all do for each other is to understand that we
are not who we were last week for it last month or six months ago we are new in each moment and to not hang on to old views of each other
then try to re-establish the connection with who we are now and who we have cool you're coming to the we have come to me now
now that
oh gary
i was just thinking that kinda
the despise the winner cooper say he instead
you know
why our respond to other
suggested
yes
right yes it happens on all levels since mary catherine
yeah
yeah
the comment was a isn't that like say meeting say the reconciliation of the reunion of say with herself
hum
thank you so much for very much for you can is i'm also drawn to the hospital left behind because the house was with physical south london was interacting in the world even as she earned as her spirits and running away and and from
and i agree with everything that you send him the me in space for each other and leave room for us to be in in the well and the own same time and all you will have having you open space
the thing i'm religious about all the things i'm curious about
what could the thought of him down to yogurt how could he have call her back
because all he did it in this particular story was to hold space for merely whole space until something more productive
when i hold space for somebody who doesn't feel well with your or something when when your mother was was holding space for for you in which she older you know when all myriad ways that we all do that
what what could we do for each other the college on the fourth in this way he didn't candidates to one of the of questions and sometimes i'm not sure that it's anything sometimes i think it's just holding space i'm i'm getting revenge of easily replaceable i don't think holding spaces as small thing to do
actually i think that's huge and maybe the most important i mean i think
ah
people come to their way seeking mind in their own time
and ah
and maybe say had to do all the things she did in order to get to that place to find out that that was not complete fulfillment for her
yeah yeah he's kind of nature of for me of of a finger pointing the room in the first time i see it is something the next time i see that means something else and the next time experience it's something because of a work by
well actually did come
we're virginity voting system for one side
the when we see things in a five putting you and we think everything accurately
fact that they've got the original the only city for with them and the whole point five people people in britain today
i'm gonna figure with result she said the whole picture
rarely do we beat ourselves
the death of this on is about how he it yourself for used to do
you understand do
hello i returned from the and will be feels at it
the
a reflection of them
the relevant to this core
how do you
i realize the whole picture

so we feel separate because we don't realize or wonders
i realize that wonders we appreciate our separate lists and understand what it really is
and somebody will philosophically slavica poodle
this is when your phone
oh i love you get then you realize all that stuff is a new industries videos
as everyday this history
he spotted
and even now it's history
so
we we start with a win
that's not a big deal the realization is on him
ten
the see the say that ran away as the spirit and the say that stay behind else
the real lie isn't that
this is oneness as opposed to the seems like people stay that was last and got married and had kids was the spirit was the desire to improve it could be the other way around could be that but stayed in van
what is the spirit and what have to was left through south and isn't how we view that got to do with our own
that view or history and to do i go there
why to
as you were talking about
the barn and the blog
i started here at saw
god was the downswing
that was yourself in your man
for you know
but in other sensor that the hills and valleys and the river is flowing with that sound that that mine essential news
the diagnosis so i'm like my question is
in that moment where there's this action live interaction of the father goes to that
this day
and the husband goes to get this day and the children in the boat also that there's a bearing witness and at the same time each one has to walk that walk and nice and as you were talking about the river you know the tanzanian done so on
how how do you how do you walk how do you flow in that not know with how's that fair and witness
happen for you when plan a is no longer the plan
hmm
what choice do i have i mean
the i guess
ah maybe i don't understand your question but it feels like there's only a plan b and then if that doesn't work there's only put and say that the you just go the the did
something about not resisting
i think
not resisting what is
so that this moment of recognizing the resistance in ordered right right
okay can we there were there