From Already Broken a Dharma talk given Jan 24th, 2021 at the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship.   "Without an intimacy with impermanence, our whole lives are spent in what we can do or will do tomorrow or we spend time worrying about the past, not living in the here and now. The problem is that we think we have time. We don't. Living without an intimacy with impermanence, our lives lack a deep transformative gratitude and in its place, there is a subtle but stifling entitlement. Somehow we think that we are entitled to tomorrow. We are not. Without intimacy with impermanence, we take tomorrow for granted. How foolish we can be."   Christopher Kakuyo 

Way of Oneness: A Sangha Podcast

Already Broken: A Dharma Talk on Impermanence.

Excerpt   When I first started to explore and examine this precept, my first inclination was to feel guilt for taking paper clips from work or printing things for personal uses on my work computer.  Funny, that I found ways around it Like buying a ream of paper to replace the 40 pages I used. I started to make sure I paid for all of my Trax rides. I did start to examine some of my motivations for doing what I was doing, but for me, most of these simple practices were very superficial and more a residual of my old relationships with the Judeo- Christian commandments.  Again, we do not practice the precepts to appease a deity, or because it makes us a good Buddhist, but to help us gain insight into the mindset of an awakened being, a state of mind that is grounded in contentment. A practice-based on any kind of checklist is just a checklist and ultimately non-transformative.  There is a much deeper meaning in the second precept than simply not taking something that belongs to someone else. That is a legalistic approach.  Buddhism teaches that there are 10 fetters - mental chains that keep us bound - one of them is the dependence on moral rules and religious observances as an end in themselves – Being circumspect and never “stealing” even paperclips may be laudable but is it transformative in itself. Maybe.   From my life experience, the end of the second precept is not simply about not stealing, about observance a rule but about how we perceive the world and our place in it.  It is about cultivating a state of mind of contentment, of enoughness. Gyomay Kubose Sensei teaches us that an agitated mind cannot see things as they are, only a calm mind can. A continual sense of lack, a subtle greed, creates great and subtle waves of agitation. And over time this creates a subtle and pernicious sense of entitlement. At the heart of the second precept is an antidote to this continual refrain and rationalization of taking something not freely given, “I deserve this” or I deserve more than I am being given.  These are all manifestations of the poison of greed."

Enoughness: Reflections on the Second Precept of Buddhism.

Even though the precepts were not directed to the community directly, they are all about community. The precepts are about action and intention.  I appreciate this from Wendell Berry, “ To act in short is to live. Living is a total act. Thinking is a partial act. And one does not live alone. Living is a communal act… He goes on to quote Emerson, “I grasp the hand of those next to me, and take my place in the circle, to suffer and work.” I love the lack of sentimentality in these words. For us, the suffering is the first noble truth- dukkha – the acknowledgment that in the midst of life there is suffering and for us, the work is the practice.  The precepts can be seen as the practice.  This is what we do as a Sangha, we take each other's hand in our suffering and do the work. And what precept is more at the heart of community than affirming life?  The first precept is from which all the other precepts flow.   

Affirming Life: The First Precept

The Five - The Ethical Foundation of Meditation

Excerpt from the dharma talk.   The heaviest burdens we can carry are the burdens of the past- either for something that was done to us or done by us, and we spend so much time there.   I have talked about this before, that we are constantly time-traveling from the past to the future and rarely present in the flow of now.  We fix ourselves firmly in the past or because our dissatisfaction with the present or our unwillingness to change in the present, we travel constantly to the future, where everything is controllable, and the outcomes can be as expected. As Gyomay Kubose Sensei teaches,    "Many people get attached to the past or to the future and neglect the important present. We must live the best "now" with full responsibility."    I think we understand this though many of us do nothing about it. I think that is why Gyomay Sensei ends his teaching with the idea of living with full responsibility.   

What Are You Carrying?

 From the dharma talk,   "Whatever it is inside of ourselves that we are running from – that is what we attend to because we know we can come as we are. As Jung said, I would rather be whole than good. This is meeting each other in the open field – the pure – land – out beyond good and bad. This is attending to yourself.  This acceptance is the opposite of spiritual bypassing.   When we attend to ourselves and others, we take the journey into all the places we have hidden our suffering, our woundedness from view and bring it as an offering to the Buddhas and ourselves – This is not so much as needing someone to go with you but knowing that someone is there, without judgment, waiting for you to return with open arms.   This acceptance is shown in the moving towards – moving towards wholeness, healing, and awakening.  As Gyomay Kubose sensei has taught Acceptance IS transcendence.    

Attend to all and each

This is something I have been thinking about in our current environment. With so much polarity in our greater community, we stop listening to one another and when we do we start seeing one another as enemies. The Buddha taught 2600 years ago that hatreds never cease through hatred ... through love alone they cease. This is an eternal law. The challenge we face is that our own righteous anger can be a barrier to listening and close us off from love. Sometimes I think we fall into this trap when we see our anger as " righteous", a species of anger the embraces duality and sees only victims and perpetrators, and anyone of a different tribe as alien and a threat. Unfortunately for us all, regardless of what side of the polarity we abide, we are both complicit of such thinking. It makes me wonder how much of my righteous anger is more about my suffering and could the depth of my righteous anger be the level of my own suffering and more about me no matter how much I pretend it is about others? And if that is true should I not attend to that suffering within me that is overflowing?   I want to always remember that protective anger, it is not violent but assertive, not blinded by “righteousness”, not fickle, but determined. Protective anger is awake, intentional, wise and focused on liberating ALL beings from suffering delusion and stupidity   Namu Amida Butsu

Protective Anger

Authentic Life

Deep Listening a Call to Presence

excerpt "The first thing we need to remember is that the five precepts are fields of practice and not a checklist of our failures- that sometimes the commandments were for me. Our relationship with them can be contemplative in nature and whose manifestation comes from within in a natural outflowing instead of from guilt or shame of some external ideal. The ethical ideal is not something outside of ourselves but something that comes from with us and flows outward. They are the practice that brings us into harmony with all things.  As John Daido Loori, the abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery writes, To practice the precepts is to be in harmony with your life and the universe."  

Before Mindfulness: The Five Precepts

From the dharma talk   "Many appreciate and value the teachings of the Buddha,  post endless memes with quotes he said and never said, there are some who have got out of bad marriages, bad jobs because of something they read or heard on a Buddhist podcast – and all this is the fruit of the teaching. At the same time, going for refuge is more than just an intellectual appreciation of the Buddhas Brains. Going for refuge is not simply an activity of thinking, of ideas or concepts but the walking of the path of the Buddha. It is an activity of the heart. It is important to note that in Chinese the same character is used to convey “heart” and “mind,” and that the two are seen by the Chinese as one inseparable “heartmind.” Taking refuge in the dharma can be seen as taking the teachings from the conceptual to the everyday – we take refuge in the dharma in our hearts."

Taking Refuge in the Dharma

excerpt...   "Awareness practice is not just breathing in and breathing out, it's not just noticing the breathing of your lover or the dharma talk of a meadow of wildflowers, it is also going down in the muck and mud of ALL of who we are, not just the curated parts of who we share on Facebook.   Awareness practice supports our aspiration to forgive and be forgiven, it is at the heart of accepting who we are as we are, and others as they are, and this aspiration is at the heart of come as you, is at the heart of namu amida butsu."  

Repentance, Confession and Forgiveness: A Buddhist Take.

  excerpt from the Dharma talk delivered May 26th in Salt Lake City.   "..that brings to my mind the Mojave desert at night - the Mojave Desert Preserve is also a dark skies Preserve meaning that any artificial list is restricted and it is one of the few places that you can see the Milky Way the way our ancestors did for millennium - Lots of tourist come get of the tour bus and look up at the night sky for about 5 minutes and say “that’s nothing I can see that at home”  disappointed they get back into the tour buses - The reason they didn’t see anything is that they didn’t let their eyes adjust to the darkness - they actually didn’t see anything - those that were willing to stop,  sit and wait in the darkness and let their eyes adjust - are shown the same view of stars that the first humans stood in awe of and made into the gods of their myths.   Are we not the same in our spiritual journeys - if all spiritual journeys start in darkness is not the first step not a step at all but to finally and courageously sit silently in the darkness and let our spiritual eyes adjust to the darkness -   Isn’t that what meditation is, it is sitting in the darkness of ourselves being still and allowing the darkness to show us the light of our inner luminosity?   For me it's similar to the lyrics from Leonard Cohen - but instead of all the cracks in the world letting the light in - I see all the cracks in the world letting the light out   May we all sit silently in the dark so we can finally see the light of our own Buddha Nature, show us the way to freedom. "  

Sitting in the Dark

excerpt of a talk given on May 12, 2019, in Salt Lake City.   I really love this from Gyomay Kubose Sensei. He was talking to a bright you man who said his mother did nothing for him growing up, that she only caused him trouble. I appreciate this insight from my teacher.   In ordinary moral life and modern utilitarian point of view if someone was kind to us then we express our thankfulness. This is to say, if we received some benefit, then we expressed thanks and appreciation. This kind of human relationship is nothing, but business give and take.    In the world of truth, religion, and love, it is altogether different. In fact, it is the opposite. The starting point is not mother or any external things but ourselves. If we are saved [awakened] now, our whole past will be saved [awakened]. Our Salvation [awakening] goes backward into the past. If we find meaning in our lives now, then the whole world becomes meaningful just as when we are cheerful the whole world is cheerful.   To the abovementioned young man, the problem is not what his mother did that that she is the one who gave him life. His mother and he are not separate in the world with truth, they are one. This practice of Naikan reflection is a way to awaken in the flow of now. This practice is a powerful practice especially when combined with the two other questions - what did I give in return and what troubles I did I cause.  It is a powerful way to deconstruct our stories. ”

Mother's Day Dharma Talk

Dharma talk given May 5th in Salt Lake City   Excerpt "Here is something that many are not aware of and I have heard this before but just found this quote  Samyutta Nikaya,   “We will develop and cultivate the liberation of mind by lovingkindness, make it our vehicle, make it our basis, stabilize it, exercise ourselves in it, and fully perfect it.” The Buddha    So what is the Buddha saying is the path to cultivation a liberated mind? Loving-kindness. Loving Kindness is the way, the ground from which we practice, it keeps us stable in our practice, it is for ourselves also – and our practice is to perfect it. It is hard to practice loving-kindness toward others if we do not start with ourselves and our own need of loving kindness not just from others but from ourselves.   

Loving Kindness

Dharma talks from the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship

hubhopper

Way of Oneness: A Sangha Podcast

hubhopper