Finding Intimacy With The World

In this talk I explore the ways we can feel more fully alive day to day by turning our attention toward the ordinary and opening to the surprises that await us in everyday mundane things and experiences.

Transcript

The reading we did tonight from Barry Magid about Ordinary Mind is,

I think,

One of the more profound readings about what we're looking for.

We are looking for something special.

We all come because we're seeking something,

And what Barry Roshi reminds us of is that what we are seeking is just this,

Just this ordinary mind and body,

And how can that be?

So I'd like to start with the formula that the Buddha gave for how we should do this practice to reach enlightenment.

As you know,

The Four Noble Truths are what he taught,

And these are iconic teachings.

These are core teachings,

Much like the Heart Sutra,

The foundation of Buddhist thinking,

And the Four Noble Truths are simple.

They are that life is suffering,

Or in another translation,

Life is unsatisfactory,

That the cause of suffering is craving and aversion,

That the cure for suffering is freedom from craving,

And that the path to ending suffering is the Eightfold Path,

And then he lists the eight factors,

Right view,

Right intention,

Right speech,

Right action,

Right livelihood,

Right effort,

Right mindfulness,

Right concentration.

So Four Noble Truths,

Eightfold Path,

Simple.

And in fact,

It's a medical model.

So the Buddha is often referred to,

Was at that time,

As the great healer,

And the Four Noble Truths are sometimes spoken about as diagnosis,

That life is suffering,

The cause of the illness,

Which is craving and aversion,

The cure for the illness,

Which is ending craving and aversion,

And then the treatment plan,

The Eightfold Path.

And in fact,

It appealed to me a lot.

I mean,

I'm a physician,

And I thought,

Yeah,

This is great,

I understand this.

This is what I was trained on,

I can do this.

And in many ways,

It is a helpful rubric to come back to.

And certainly in the time of the Buddha,

Where everything was orally transmitted,

Handed down from person to person,

These lists were very important,

Easy to remember.

But of course,

What we come to is the understanding that this diagnosis and treatment plan is only one way of understanding what we're doing here,

And a very different frame from what Barry Madgen talks about.

He says,

As we sit fully experiencing this moment,

Experiencing our bodies,

Our thoughts,

Our feelings,

And this sensory world,

We sit in wonder,

Even as we sit in the mundane.

What he invites us to,

And what Zen invites us to,

Is a different way of understanding what we're doing,

Than this medical model of the Four Noble Truths,

That it is a way of experiencing ourselves,

And seeing our true nature,

That isn't about lists,

It isn't about strategies,

It's about an experience of ourselves and the world.

And it brings me to a koan that I think helps us see this other perspective that we're talking about.

It's a koan from the Book of Equanimity,

And it's case number 20.

And for those of you who don't know,

Koans are these sort of fragments of text that we work with,

We sit with,

We play with,

And that help us wake up.

So in this koan,

It's a familiar one,

It's an exchange between a master and a young student.

The master is Fayan,

And the young student is Dijiang,

No,

Vice versa,

Dijiang is the master,

Fayan is the student.

And the master asks the student,

Where are you going?

And the student says,

I'm wandering around on pilgrimage.

And the master asks,

What is the purpose of the pilgrimage?

And the student says,

I don't know.

Now we would think that at this point,

The master would scold the student,

What do you mean you're wandering around and you don't know?

But instead,

Dijiang,

The master,

Answers,

Ah,

Not knowing is most intimate.

A very different response.

What does that mean?

What does it mean to say not knowing is most intimate?

Many of you have heard talk of this thing we call beginner's mind.

And it's really a place of freeing ourselves from concepts,

From preconceptions,

And simply experience,

Experiencing whatever arises in this moment.

Suzuki Roshi famously said about beginner's mind,

In the beginner's mind,

There are many possibilities.

In the expert's mind,

There are few.

And so this refers to a kind of openness to experience,

To what is this in this moment that's arising?

As you sit here,

And you listen to my voice,

And you sit,

What is arising?

In you,

Around you,

What are you present for?

And that is the intimacy that Master Dijiang was talking about.

Not knowing,

Not coming at this world,

Not coming at our practice with all kinds of preconceptions,

But just being open,

That's intimacy.

There's a lovely poem by a Chinese poet in the 17th century that says,

Do not try to understand human affairs,

Merely observe flowers.

And we are constantly told to simply look and look again and listen and feel.

Be ordinary.

I was once given the assignment by one of my teachers to spend time with the sidewalk,

With the concrete sidewalk outside my home.

And so,

Thinking this was a little ridiculous,

I went out and I spent some time just looking at the sidewalk.

I was amazed at what can be discovered in concrete.

The swirls of little pebbles,

The shape,

The shapes,

The reflection of light off of tiny fragments of stone,

Which only says everything.

Everything can be a source of wonder,

Even as it is mundane.

Now,

We didn't come to this practice just to go outside and observe concrete.

That's not what we're here for.

Even to just observe flowers,

Although that is a wonderful practice.

We came because we suffer.

We came because not everything is great and we're looking for something.

We're looking for an intimacy with our life that might actually relieve suffering.

Even as bodhisattvas,

When we take those vows at the end of the evening,

We will vow to free all beings.

We will vow to end all delusions.

And suffering,

Much of our suffering comes from our delusive beliefs.

But of course,

We vow to relieve suffering,

But we don't really sign up to be intimate with it.

And that's what practice keeps turning us back to,

Turning toward.

Not just my back pain or your headache this evening,

But the suffering of sadness,

The suffering of fear,

The suffering of loneliness.

And what this practice asks us to do is keep turning toward it,

Rather than our instinct,

Which is,

Of course,

To turn away.

I don't want to look at that,

I don't want to feel that.

Norman Fisher,

The wonderful Zen teacher and writer,

Has a book that some of you know about called Training in Compassion.

And it's about the Lojong slogans.

They are 49 slogans about how to practice,

About how to wake up.

And they come from the Tibetan tradition,

But Norman Fisher writes about them from a Zen perspective.

And he reminds us that we can train ourselves to have compassion,

To save all beings,

Simply by breathing in and breathing the suffering of the world in,

Including our own,

And transforming it and breathing out lightness and peace.

And I want to read a bit of what he says about this.

He says,

The practice of sending and receiving has two main purposes.

First,

To train your heart to do what it usually does not want to do,

To go toward,

Rather than away from,

What's painful and difficult in your own life.

And second,

To realize that your own suffering and the suffering of others are not different.

And so this is the way that practice allows us to relieve suffering by facing toward it and to develop compassion for ourselves and others,

Understanding that nobody is alone in physical pain,

Nobody is alone in fear,

In sadness.

This is a part of having a heart and a mind.

And so what we do is we learn to be with all of it.

No fixing,

No strategies,

That yes,

There is the eightfold path.

But when we're sitting here,

The eightfold path just means being present for everything that arises,

Including the suffering.

And then,

Of course,

This allows us to cultivate compassion naturally for everybody because we understand that we are not alone.

What we come to in Zen is that yes,

There are these strategies,

These guiding principles,

These Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path,

And they are of use in keeping us pointed in the right direction,

But that the heart of practice is simply stillness,

Presence,

And mindful attention to everything that's coming up.

And I chose our second reading tonight because that selection about observing the one who is dim and dull ends with teaching that I come back to over and over again.

Don't seek transcendent enlightenment.

Just observe and observe.

Suddenly you'll laugh out loud.

Beyond this,

There's nothing that can be said.

Just observe and observe,

And suddenly,

Looking at your concrete sidewalk,

You'll be filled with wonder and you'll laugh out loud.

Reviews

Yes, the Beautiful Mundane
Thank you for this talk. You have a very insightful perspective and feel like a safe guide. I appreciate teachers who encourage no effort for enlightenment. I have talked with some teachers who seem to want to push me to a particular place as if I need to get somewhere spiritually. I appreciate that you don't do this. When you talk about observing the sidewalk I could see a toddler's hands pointing at the ants and picking the tiny dandelions that grow in the cracks, And this is what the path feels like to me. Thanks for the book suggestion and the koan, I love koans! Love and blessings to you Robert

Thank you 🙏