Today is the seventh of March 2023. And in teisho, this evening, we're going to explore effort. Diligence. In just eight days from now, we'll be starting a three week term intensive. We have these once or twice a year, usually in the, in the autumn and in the spring. And since we've been exiled from our zendo for quite some time, it felt like a good time to have one of these two intensives. And it will actually straddle -- all going well -- we'll be back in the building, not long after the term intensive starts.
Some people may, may not know what a term intensive is. It's a non-residential training period, in which in some way or other, we intensify our Dharma practice. And it's for this set period of time. So this one will be a three week one. And so there's that's the term part of a term intensive -- and intensive speaks for itself. It's a way of focusing on our Dharma practice, in all its facets really, and in the midst of our everyday lives. And this is really why term intensive is so valuable. And people decide to do different things for this period to intensify their Dharma practice -- to focus on it. Most often, obviously, one is, is more sitting, perhaps, more regular sitting. And bringing in other practices such as chanting or prostrations, which can really enrich our sitting practice.
Sometimes people will do things around maintaining greater presence and awareness. We're not sitting on different kinds of mindfulness practices. And sometimes people will focus on a painful habit or an addictive behavior. And, and Shine, shine the light on it so as to be free of it to some degree. So determined payments of usually involves adding things or taking them away. And as with sesshin, there's a power to it, in that we're doing it with others. We're not all in the same physical space, but we're in contact regularly. And like, teen sport or dancing, perhaps this the synchronous behavior is good for us good for our mental health, and keeps us accountable. So that whatever commitment we've made, we are coming back each week to see everybody and, and letting everybody know how commitments have been going. And that comes with this kind of peer support where we've got the added impetus of not wanting to let everybody down by not fulfilling our pledges.
The weekly chickens happen on on zoom at eight are usually less than an hour. And we found that having them on a different night and doing them by zoom means that people can do something without having to be out for another evening especially if they're coming on Another night two to one of the formal settings at the Zendo.
So everybody who takes part takes part in a term intensive is doing something a little different or differently or they're doing more of something or less of something. And again, we as I said, we get back get to report in each week people often struggle to decide what to do or how much to stretch and it is one of these things that you really have to learn through experience, what is is the, the right amount of effort that will be helpful without falling into straining or or on the other side without making not enough effort to have a sense of, of being stretched. So, it really this question of right effort comes up we can find right effort taught in, in different ways and in Buddhism, and, perhaps is evidence of its importance as a as a as a strand of our training, in that it appears in a number of the of the lists that are so frequently found in Buddhism. It's part of the Eightfold Noble Path the most basic and essential of all the teaching shared by all the schools right if at all sometimes it's translated as zeal or exertion summer vayama And this word is wet summers perhaps closer to complete or whole. So, a complete effort.
Effort varia is was also one of the six parameters that perfection of energy or diligence also, I've seen it expressed in English is enthusiasm. loss also appears in the seven factors of enlightenment sucked up Bodie younger and this this would subject is for lens or or factors need all and we need all of the seven to to be able to walk the path and often is in these in these lists that appear in our teaching there are all the all the things mentioned that a particular list are related to the rest of the of the of the different things in the list and they point to a circling around a particular truth or teaching significant that among the seven looms of enlightenment along with effort our ease and joy
so these different factors will have to be realized and in a developed together on you're not sequences so much they are circles or mandalas.
haven't got time to look at each of these in great detail. But just to touch on a little bit from the as regards the Eightfold Noble Path. right view, right aspiration right speech, right action, right livelihood, right diligence or effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. So, all of these arise together you could say, and commonly broken down into three parts, right view and right aspiration as the RB, the wisdom part, speech, action and livelihood, the ethical behavior part and then our effort or diligence is grouped with mindfulness and concentration, as, as part of the mental discipline, aspect of the eightfold path. So, how how we make an effort in our, in our mental training in our practice, this is where it fits in.
You could say that our wisdom emerges from our mental discipline and is supported by our ethical behavior, which which reinforce our right view, she has the the wisdom aspect. So they're all very much interrelated. The traditional formulation for this Right Diligence or right effort is is known as the surprisingly the four right efforts for proper efforts. And again, we can come at them from different angles. This one is the first of these angles is coming from Lama Govinda, who great, great German Buddhist scholar and practitioner. They broken down he breaks them down into the sutras break them down into four phases, the effort to destroy the evil which has arisen in our mind, the effort to prevent the evil which has not yet arisen, the effort to produce the good which has not yet arisen, the effort to cultivate the good which has arisen. So it's seen as a discipline of developing and cultivating good qualities and preventing the development of here evil qualities. And the good qualities are, again, these these seven factors of enlightenment, which if it is also included, mindfulness, discerning the truth, energy, that's diligence will figure rapture, serenity, concentration and equanimity.
There are understandings of these these for profit exertions, which are not entirely mental though and this one's from Master Sheng yen, taking it from funny, you could say bodhisattva point of view. And he formulates these, these proper exertions or era efforts is to help others to avoid non virtuous acts, that have yet to be that have not yet been performed, to persuade others to cease performing non virtuous acts, to encourage others to engage in wholesome acts not yet performed, and to stop others from nurturing and acts and expanding those positive endeavors they have already performing sorry to encourage these. Of course, to to do this to to encourage others one has to be also doing it oneself. But it does does point to kind of social responsibility to to make an effort for these things to be developed within our societies, not just in ourselves.
Perhaps the most helpful formulation that came across in preparing for this talk comes from And Chip not Han
he phrases it this way, preventing unwholesome sees in our store consciousness that have not yet a real efficient arisen from arising, helping the unwholesome seeds that have already arisen to return to our consciousness, store consciousness, finding ways to water the wholesome seeds in our store consciousness, that have not yet arisen, and to ask our friends to do the same, and nourishing the wholesome seeds that have already arisen, so that they they will stay present in our mind consciousness and grow stronger. So he, he, he presents them really with the with the image in the background of a gardener tending a garden. Watering what needs to be watered, not watering What the is unhelpful or unwholesome.
And inviting others to do so as well. It's important aspect from the Mahayana point of view. And he explains unwholesome means not conducive to liberation of the path or the path. In our store consciousness, there are many seeds that are not beneficial for our transformation. And if those seeds are watered, they will grow stronger. When greed hatred, ignorance and wrong views arise. If we embrace them with right mindfulness, sooner or later this they will lose their strength and return to our store consciousness.
If we apply this to our to our own practice, and and in our thinking about what we might take up as a practice for the term intensive, he's pointing to us paying close attention to the spirit of what we might want to do in this regard.
We could say that that hard practice may have a wrong motivation that may be forced in some way. And a practice that's that's too slack may have laziness behind it. So to look at our own motivation here
the eightfold path where we find this this right or complete, if it is a an expression of the middle way.
His water mark Epstein in season thoughts without a thinker about this middle way.
And cause the Eightfold Path is is is presented as the fourth Noble Truth and in the Buddha's teaching of the Four Noble Truths. Here's what he says. The fourth Noble Truth The Buddha articulated in his first teaching at sanef was that of the way leading to the cessation of dukkha known as the middle path, it was said to avoid the two extremes of self indulgence and self modification or in more contemporary return terms of idealization and denial. So raising something up or or putting it down having tried both sets of practices, that is asceticism and in self. indulgence. The Buddha realized that each subtly reinforced the very notions of I or mine that created the state of suffering in the first place. The search for happiness, those sense present, through sense pleasures, he called Low, common and profitable in the way of ordinary people. In the Search for happiness through denial or asceticism, he called painful, unworthy and unprofitable, relaxing the ego boundaries and dissolving the sense of self and pleasurable or even ecstatic experiences did not relieve suffering, nor did giving free rein to the emotions. Attacking the body and subject, just subjugating yourself. coercing the ego into some kind of surrender also did not relieve suffering, nor trying to deny the emotions the correct approach toward the butter. lay in the ground between the two extremes. It required the alignment of eight specific factors of mind and behavior. View aspiration, X speech, action, livelihood effort, mindfulness and concentration. So here are the eight eight aspects of the Eightfold Path. When these factors were properly established toward the border, they constituted the path to cessation. The eight factors were collectively known as the eightfold path, the behavioural categories of right speech, right action and livelihood are the ethical foundation. The meditative categories of right concentration and right mindfulness are the foundation of mental discipline traditionally associated with the formal practice of meditation and the wisdom categories of right as Understanding and Right Thought, represent the conceptual foundation, that has also been termed right view. It is this latter character category that is often given short shrift by those eager to embark on the meditative path, who when and the native path consistent with the Buddhist method of approaching an authentic view self, by first bringing the manifestations of false self into awareness, the most effective way of developing the right view that the body encouraged is to examine the various common myths, manifestations of false view. And often we have to do this in terms of determining how to make an effort that we may go down different roads, which which turned out to be unhelpful and unwholesome that we only find out often, which these are by going down those paths and then in finding ourselves with DNS.
We're given we are given guidance by these eight eight aspects of the path. He says a bit a little bit later. We do not know what to make of our emotions, and we let our various attempts at dealing with them define our understanding of the Buddha's teaching. To truly follow the eightfold path, we must reverse this process. Instead of letting our misconceptions about our feelings influence our understanding, we must let our understanding change the way we experience our emotions. And everybody probably has some experience of how so much of our practice can be tied up and how do we work with the strong emotions that come up?
How do we make effort in working with them? And Epstein as as as the psychologist has, has something to say about this which he has very well expressed in nothing very helpful for us. He says emotional experience remains a problematic area for most people. We are all made uncomfortable by the intensity of our feelings. And we've developed various ways of defending against this intensity. Buddhist emptiness is the key that unlocks the problem of the emotions. Emptiness is not hollow, it does not mean of acuity of feeling. Emptiness is the understanding that the concrete experiences to which we are accustomed, do not exist in the way we imagine, and experience that the late Tibetan lama Carlo Rinpoche called an intangible one, most comparable to that of a mute person tasting sugar, something that an experience of calm can be expressed. In other words, in particular, it means that the emotions that we take to be so real and are so worried about do not exist in the way we imagined them. They do exist, but we can know them in a way that is different from either expressing or repressing them. The Buddha meditations on the Buddha's meditations on emptiness, are not meant as a withdrawal from the falsely conceived emotions, but as a means of recognizing the misconceptions that surround them, thereby clinging thereby changing the way that we experience them altogether. The middle way of the Buddha has particular relevance in our emotional life. One of the great lessons of the fourth Noble Truth and of the Buddha's teachings in general, is that it is possible to learn a new way to be with one's feelings. The Buddha taught a method of holding thoughts, feelings, and sensations in the balance of meditative equipoise. So that they can be seen in a clear light, stripping away the identifications and reactions that usually adhere to the emotions like moths to a stone. The Buddha's method allows the understanding of emptiness to emerge. This is an understanding that has vast implications for the field of psychotherapy, because it promises great relief from even ordinary suffering. As the third Zen ancestor writing in the early seventh century, ideal articulated at ad articulated with great great clarity, that he offers these verses, when the mind exists undisturbed in the way nothing in the world can offend. And when a thing can no longer offend, it ceases to exist in the old way, if you wish to move in one way, do not dislike even the world of sensors and ideas indeed, to accept them fully is identical with true enlightenment. People might recognize these lines as coming from the chant we regularly do affirming faith in mind that in our version he that to actually two different sections that he's knitted together when this one minor is understood the nothing in the world offense and when no thing can give offence, then all obstructions cease to be
second ones just a little bit later, if you would walk the highest way do not reject the sense domain for as it is whole and complete the sense world as enlightenment
when the mind exists undisturbed in the way nothing in the world can offend what enormous freedom there is in this
we don't have to reject the sense world but to embrace it in all in its wholeness.
John Sue middle, the Western Thai Forest Tradition man A leader, master put it this way, he said, I learned to simply watch desire, desire for sensations desire to become something, to get somewhere or to get rid of things. I learned simply to watch this, this is how we discover a practice. And this watching in itself is, is transformative. And we can probably take one or two of these desires that he mentioned, that give us particular trouble, desire for sensations, desire for wonderful experiences, desired to become something to become master, to become a spiritual person, to get somewhere, this is one we often struggle with, or to get rid of things, to get rid of uncomfortable thoughts or difficult conditions. Often practice what brings us to practice will be different kinds of desires or visions, what what chicken at hand might identify as unwholesome seeds. This is one of the frustrations of practice, that the very things that we that we that trouble us what we have to face and and see into sooner or later we have to discover our selfish motivations and release them. As a Korean teacher who makes this warning, he says you should be cautious of saying I'm going to devote devote myself to practice for that as the mind of greed. If you say my practice is going well, that isn't the mind of ignorant arrogance. And if you say my practice isn't going well that is the mind of anger. Therefore not doing these three is the practice of the path. practice diligently and as long as you do not do your practice you will be fine this is the paradox that our diligence largely consists in what we we don't do what we refrain from doing
but he here are very sincerest aspirations for the practice can turn out to be tainted with the poisons and this brings us to another teaching which seems to be in contradiction with with effort with right effort with diligence and yet is in a sense closely deeply related to her and it's it's aimlessness.
It's also part of a grouping it's one of the three doors of liberation along with emptiness and sign lessness and really it is in a certain way a form of a right effort a prana heater
in turn to ignite how to read a little bit about this apparently heater
he says the third door of liberation is aimlessness apparently heater. There is nothing to do Have nothing to realize no program no agenda. This is the Buddha's teaching about eschatology. eschatology is a way of indicating the doctrines of last or final things as in depth, the judgment future states and so forth. So, in a sense Buddhist eschatology is what he describes here, that there is actually nothing to do or realize, no program, no agenda, no salvation. It's all right here. He goes on, does the rows have to do something? No. The purpose of the rows is to be arose. Your personal purpose is to be yourself. You don't have to run anywhere to become someone else. You are wonderful just as you are. This teaching of the Buddha allows us to enjoy ourselves to enjoy the blue sky and everything is refreshing and healing in the present moment. There is no need to put anything in front of us and run after it. We already have everything we are looking for. Everything we want to become, we are already a Buddha. So why not just take the hand of another border and practice walking meditation. This is the teaching of the Avatamsaka sutra. Be yourself. Life is precious as it is. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search or struggle. Just be just being in the moment in this place is the deepest practice of meditation. Most people cannot believe that just walking as though you will have nowhere to go isn't enough. They think that striving and competing, normal and necessary. Try practicing aimlessness for just five minutes, and you will see how happy you are during those five minutes.
The problem is, of course, that we don't know this in our being we don't know it in our bones we could say maybe it's better to say that our bones no but our brain doesn't. And so like, like Samuel Johnson we make an effort. He said, What we hope to do with ease we must first do with diligence. But then we could say that there is this deep connection between diligence and ease. Between diligence and, and and mastery. Knowing knowing through and through who and where we are. He continues The Heart Sutra says that there is nothing to attain. Or in our vision, it's attainment to see emptiness. We we meditate not to attain enlightenment. Because enlightenment is already in us. We don't have to search anywhere. We don't need a purpose or a goal. We don't practice in order to obtain some high position in aimlessness, we see that we do not let anything that we already are what we want to become, and our striving just comes to a halt. We are at peace in the present moment. Just seeing the sunlight streaming through the window, or hear hearing the sound of the rain. We don't have to run after anything we can enjoy every moment. People talk about entering nirvana, but we already there, aimless pneus in nirvana one, or as we chanted just now and in masthead, koans chant this earth where we stand as the pure Lotus Land and this very body, the body of Buddha. If we think we have 24 hours to achieve a certain purpose, today will become a means to attain an end. The moment of chopping wood and carrying water is the moment of happiness. We do not need to wait for those chores to be done to be happy. To have happiness in this moment is the spirit of aimlessness. Otherwise, we will run in circles for the rest of our life. We have everything we need to make the present moment the happiest of our life. Even if we have a cold or a headache, we don't have to wait until we get up cold. And can we get over our cold to be happy having a cold as part of life? This word happy as is, again as one of these overused words, perhaps one that might work better here possibly is content to be content with whatever is arising to be at peace with it.
Someone asked me, aren't you worried about the state of the world, I allowed myself to breathe. And then I said, what is most important is not to allow your anxiety about what happens in the world to fill your heart. If your heart is filled with anxiety, you will get sick, and you will not be able to help. There are wars big and small in many places. And that can cause us to lose our peace. Anxiety is the illness of our age. We worry about ourselves, our family, our friends, our work, and the state of the world. If we allow worry to fill our hearts, sooner or later, we will get sick. Yes, there's tremendous suffering all over the world. But knowing this need not paralyze us. If we practice mindful breathing, mindful walking, mindful sitting, and working in mindfulness, we try our best to help and we have peace in our heart. Worrying does not accomplish anything. Even if you worry 20 times more, that will not change the situation's of the world. In fact, your anxiety will only make things worse. Even though things are not as we would like, we can still be content, knowing we are trying our best and will continue to do so. If we don't know how to breathe, smile and live every moment of our life deeply. We will never be able to be help anyone I am happy in the present moment I do not ask for anything else. I do not expect any additional happiness or conditions that will bring about more happiness. The most important practice is aimlessness not running after things not grasping.
So to to conclude as we maybe consider what to do for our term intensive you could say then that the determined tensor is it has a purpose that is to be ourselves and nothing more to notice what is going on all around us to be present and aware. To be feeling this fresh breeze on our skin or really seeing the faces of the people we live with we recognizing that we really are what belong for
the breath breeze us move six Mu that's it. I think we'll stop here and recite the four vows
all beings without number I vow to liberate endless mine passions I bow to bar McGee reggae beyond measure.
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