Facing the End with Presence - Hogen, Roshi

0:00Hello, and welcome. This is the Zen community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddha Dharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week. We've been talking about transforming problems into wisdom, but we've had a very, very busy time, so I kind of can't review my notes on that. But I want to talk about something else this evening. Joseph and I were, as you can see, is online. Joseph and I were at a visiting someone this afternoon who is terminally ill, and they're on the way down and out. So what can we offer? What do we do when

1:00we look at our own lives? We look at the dystopia of our particular culture when we look at friends and relatives who are not doing well. What do we say? How does practice become alive? How does it make something meaningful? And because if practice is not meaningful, if the spiritual path is not useful in these really difficult situations, what good is it? So I think it's very important that we examine this kind of situation. And we all have been there. We all have had friends or families or parents or loved ones who we knew there was no hope for them. They are going to die. Or we've seen, you know, a company comes to the end or a job comes to the end or a relationship comes to the end, and we know it's passing. So how do we practice? Well, practice with what do we say to somebody?

2:02How do we meet this so human situation? Everything comes to an end. It's not surprising. Part of the agreement we all make with the universe is if we're going to be born, we're going to die, right? And there's no escaping that basic agreement. So what can we say and what can we do and how can we practice with that truth about our life? At some point, we'll be the one in the ICU. At some point, we'll be the one in the retirements in the elder care facility. So we'll be the one who is. What do we do? What's important? Now, the first thing that we've talked about when we were doing the Transforming into Wisdom, when this is very important, pieces, while we have the opportunity, we calm ourselves down, we stabilize the mind, and we look directly. Because if the

3:05mind is just agitated, if all we think is what's real is our thoughts, then we never can find the stability, we never can find the clarity, we can never find the equanimity to actually see any of the deeper truths. So, regardless of what we're facing, come into the present moment, calm the mind down. Now, that calming the mind down piece, sometimes I've given a whole talks on, you can't believe your thoughts. Believe some of your thoughts, maybe, but you can't believe them all, for sure. Part of it, you can think anything. You can think you're a white turtle, you know, it's just a thought. You can think you're a complete failure, it's just a thought. So, it's really important to examine the nature of thought. If you look at thought, self-liberating disappears, comes out of nowhere, goes nowhere. We can think anything. When we actually realize that,

4:07we can think anything, and we think, why do I believe any of my thoughts, much less all of them? And why do I believe the dystopian self-deprecating, dysfunctional thoughts? Why do I believe the thoughts of hopelessness and despair? So, part of the practice is calm down, be in the present moment, and really have an appropriate relationship to thought. Thoughts are tool. There's something that could be used. We could pick it up, we could analyze things whether we could take apart the toaster and put it back together again if we have a certain state of mind. But it's not a tool to be used for everything. So, part of practice is we come in, we sit down, we breathe, we're in the present moment, and learn how our relationship to thought. Now, in the present moment, right here,

5:12right now, if you're not thinking about what might happen tomorrow, or thinking about some ice storm, or thinking about some political thing, or thinking about some dystopian future, not thinking about the economic collapse of the universe. Right here, right now, seeing this room, things pretty much okay. You know? A few aches and pains, I was going to be with some back problems, their knee problems, but you know, the scale of things. So, one thing we can all observe, we can all observe is if we calm down, pay attention, there's a place where it makes okay. That's right here. Now, an interesting practice I was reflecting on is, and you might try it right now, maybe it'll work best with the visual field. If you close your eyes and you look at the visual

6:13field, the visual field is not blank, it's not black. If you look at the visual field, look at it very closely, you'll see it's made up of texture, it's made up of dots, it's made up of spots, it's made of red and white and black, it's made of little pixels, micro pixels. Now, if you're looking at your visual field with your eyes closed, zero in and see if it's possible to focus on one tiny spot. Is it possible? Maybe not be. Is it possible in that visual field to only focus on one tiny spot? Check it out. And whether it is or is not, move your attention to another part of the visual field

7:18and focus on one tiny spot if it's possible. And then, is there a difference between these two spots? Any spot in the visual field? When we are looking at something with a microscopic mind or zeroing in, there's some very interesting things that are revealed. Now, you can experiment with that in the day or night if you want to experiment with that, but the same thing is true with time. So, we're sitting right here. What's the smallest fragment of time we can be aware of? Right now, you have to still mind. Don't believe your thoughts, even if they may be bubbling. What's the smallest fragment of time? Now, if you have a

8:19heartbeat, it goes thump, thump. Sign wave. Sign wave is a whole increment of time. What's the smallest amount of time? Take a minute and check it out. What's the smallest amount of time you can experience, feel, know? You say, ah, ah, is it beginning, middle, and end? What's the smallest fragment? Ah, we can actually attend to. Thank you for listening to the Zen Community of Oregon podcast. And thank you for your practice. New episodes air every week. Please consider making a donation at zendust.org. Your support supports us.