Judith R. at the 12 Steps and Buddhism Retreat – 2011

okay so I wanted to work with what thy will be done could possibly mean in Buddhism so this is the continuation of what Jesse started on the seven-step prayer in our previous retreats we found that the issue of what is God for non-theists was a big issue so we decided that you have two sections on it I think we're maybe working it out because people weren't as reactive this time as they were two years ago I thought the room was going to like everyone had a lot of feeling about it so we're working it out so we do have differences with theistic gods or Judeo-Christian or whatever you have. Buddhism does not have a centralized God in the sense of we don't have a centralised self. So those two kind of go together. So that's quite different. I think usually when you say God, they mean some kind of intelligent pre-anger, some being. Now, I have an exception to this. I think that the mystic traditions in all the religions kind of end up in the same place. Like in Jewish Kabbalah, the top of the Kabbala is emptiness. And in Muslim, they also. And in Christianity, I think if you were to really dialogue with a very mature, mystical Christian, I think we might meet on that plane. But we don't meet on the going to church at the local neighborhood church because our dogma is quite different. We don't have an anthropomorphized God, which is a God that looks like a person or an animal. I'm laughing because my son, if you ask my youngest son, I don't know when he was little, if you asked him what religion he was, he would say he believed in the Greek gods and the Greek animals. But we don't have that. You know, isn't it in Christianity that man was made in the image of God? That we don'T have. we don't have an idea that there's a human person that looks like us up in the sky oh I wrote old man with a beard but that's a very immature Christian I don't think most Christians well maybe they do, I don' know they do but we don' do that in Buddhism and the other one that's hard I think is we don''t have a personalized God that is following us around in the spotlight saying, my will for you is to go to Joe Schmoe's house tonight for dinner. Whereas I think some of my cult step-friends have that kind of a relationship with God where if they quiet down, they'll get a message kind of of what they should be doing. now that is not to say so all of this is not to say that there isn't some kind of divine power or mysterious being in Buddhism in my opinion that isn't true so that mystery of being it's not a thing but it's a function which I'll talk about that That, I can still say, is my understanding of God, even though it's not a shape or it's not an even idea, really. So that helps me in my translation when I'm, that helps to be able to say these prayers, for example. now the way Buddhists get a kind of personalized something is through cause and effect we do, it's very personal when you get down to cause and effect, right because what I do is received back so if I do a lot of planting of anger for example, my world will reflect that back we're not in charge of the timing of that cause and effect so we don't know when the effect is going to come back but it does help personalize that it does matter what I do whereas if you have a more nihilistic existentialism it doesn't matter what you do So do you get why I'm saying that makes it personal? Where did I go after that? Okay. So we have some principles that are the seals. I love that word. It's like a seal, like a stamp. And it stamps on everything. Buddha's stamp the truth stamp is on everything so the first one I'm changing to four seals of the Buddha at different times in the history of Buddhism there have been three seals and four seals and after much debate internal debate I am switching now to four seals Dukkha is our dissatisfaction. It is the suffering that is created when we work with an idea that we have a centralized self, which is false, the delusion that there is a separate self here. This self is, I like what Chinatown says, this self is made up of non-self elements So I, because of interdependence, because it's cause and effect, because of no inside no outside, I am completely interrelated with everything. Therefore there is no boundary stuff. And if everything is changing which is the second principle of impermanence, you can't have a solid thing. A solid thing doesn't change. That's its nature. It's contained. But if we're constantly changing because of influences and resonances with outside then we can't say there's a centralized self. But, if we work from this idea that there's is a self here that needs to be protected, which is what you said today. We create dukkha, suffering and constant dissatisfaction. I think constant dissattisfaction is really easy to see. I see it, I mean, I could just go through the day and say, what are you dissatisfied with now. What are you dissatisfied with now? And I can always answer. You know, I'm tired. There's not enough people here. You Know, just constantly. I'm hungry. Just there's always, if I do it that way, for me that's the half-empty way, the cup is half-empty, it's always there I talked about no centralized self and the force is nirvana which means that through changing our misconception of the self we can liberate our life or as I said half empty through seeing the world half full or filled with buddhahood or filled with the mystery of being, then we can create a different relationship to our life. Now for the last, well, for me longer, because I studied for quite a while on Venki, which is a Dogen classical in the Shobo Genzo, and it's also something that Kata Giri Roshi talks all the time about. Zenki, which is translated the translation that I like the most is total dynamic functioning if there's anything I could say that is similar to God in Buddhism is this idea of total dynamic functioning, that at every moment the whole universe is dynamically functioning and we're included in it we're not separate from the total dynamic functioning. And enlightenment is knowing more and more that you're not separated. Particularly for me, that I don't pull my consciousness out and say, well, my body, I know my body isn't there, isn't functioning. But right here there's a little thing that is outside of total dynamic functioning, and this little thing it's very judgmental and very dissatisfied all the time and maybe addicted compulsive so for me part of my zen life and my 12 step life is pulling my consciousness into total dynamic functioning softening my consciousness my mental frontal lobe. That's the one who thinks she's in control, that's the one who makes plans and is unhappy when they don't happen. You know very much my addictive personality is in that part of myself and I try to loosen that up and pull it into total dynamic functioning. Well let me just talk a little bit. Zen is total, whole, w-h-o-l-e. And ki is a very interesting word. It means functioning or activity or working. A Kadagiri Roshi's title was total dynamic working. Functioning is from Shohaku Roshi and activity is from Tanahashi. And Tanahasi even says undivided activity. That's his translation of Zenki. So undivided means we're not separating the world into me and other, inside and outside, God and me. We're not separating this is sacred and this is ordinary. We are not separating life and death. What are some of the others? All the duality they are totally dynamically functioning as one harmonious whole w-h-o-l-e also i suppose you could say h-o l-e it in terms of emptiness but i'm what i love and what i uh take refuge in what i trust is some feeling i can feel it when i meditate so i think this is why we meditate to have a conscious contact with total dynamic functioning and sometimes when i'm you know really anxious and i feel totally unspiritual and I'm just a compulsive wreck, I can just think of total dynamic functioning and loosen myself up. Like, you know what Judith? What's really happening is everything is totally dynamically functioning. You're not separate from that person you're bitching about. You're completely in the machine. So, ki comes from the word kikun, which is machine, with a lot of different parts. And in order for a machine to work, all the parts have to work together. And that's true with life, I think. There's all different parts, including the sky and the earth right now and our digestive systems uh turning that lunch into energy and there's me and there is you and you know just so much is happening here if we could see it maybe some um invisible beings are here maybe katagiri roshi's vibrations are here who knows what's actually happening right now. But it's much, much larger than my small self. So sometimes we call that total dynamic functioning the big mind or mind consciousness. And our small self is the self that doesn't feel that we're part of the total functioning. That we're separated. It just produces our anxiety. That's sometimes called the small mind. The small mind makes decisions always through the idea that they're separate, what's good for me and what's not good for you. What's good to me. But actually there's no need. You're part of total dynamic functioning. So that switch in perspective is very important for spiritual life. That we're constantly noticing when we go into small mind, narrow mind and we can open it up to realize that I'm just a part in a bigger machine and it's all pumping away, functioning together. so thy will be done for me means a couple of things one is that I'm sourcing my activity from big minds not so much from small minds although of course we have to do things you know, for small minds like I have to figure out how to make enough money to pay the mortgage you know and I have to take care of my relative life The relative life, so there's two, I'll call, this is also undivided activity. There's our universal self and there's our relative self. And this is a little bit, Bruce, this is a little bit where i feel like the answer to your question you're coming from the universal point of view the absolute point of you but we have to take care of the relative point of view equally that's total dynamic functioning the universal and the relative or what katagiri Roshi called total personality. We are totally big mind and we have a unique destiny. I often call it our snowflake. You know, I can't believe they say every snowflake is different. And every human being is different, even someone who looks very much like you. When I lived in New York, everyone thought I was Gilda Radner. You can't see it now because I used to have long hair. We looked quite a bit alike. But even your doppelganger, is that the right word? Even the person who looks very, very much like you, totally different because of The uniqueness of our karma, our causes and conditions, produce a unique being. And we have to take care of that unique being, nobody else's, not even my husband. And he takes care of me beautifully. I mean, I have unbelievable, he's a wonderful husband, but he can't take care of me, right? He doesn't know what's going on way, way, way inside. He really doesn't. It's my responsibility to take care of my karma. And we have to bring these two parts of ourselves completely working together. So, let me just see if I can pinpoint. so in some senses the devotional aspects of buddhism like chanting and guided meditation they don't exactly fit with the absolute practice but they take care of our humanness our individual woe is me you know, that we all have even great I mean, just look at the Dalai Lama of course he's a totally wonderful expression of big mind and love but when you think about it he has had so much loss in his life there must be so much tension around the politics with China. So he's not above it either, but you have to bring them together. So for me, this is one of the reasons I love 12 Steps and Buddhism together, is because I get such depth from Buddhism about what big mind is, and conscious contact I really get through meditation practice. But the taking care of our unique history, nothing like step four through nine. I mean, those were genius. Do you know what I mean? Like making amends? Wow. You can really take care of your uniqueness. And I believe that a deep mature spiritual life those totally dynamically function together yes can you say a little bit more about the conscious contact piece that you just mentioned conscious contact with total dynamic functioning is what i'm calling it now when you sit that little consciousness up here you can keep letting it go letting it go letting it go letting it go letting it go am I are you getting the point you know you just totally do that every time you sit down and you let it go you let it go and then if you do longer retreats like we're doing sometimes it softens up and it's not that big a deal to just be and you don't have what Hattagiri Roshi calls poking your head in there you're just one with the room the sounds maybe even emptiness maybe you're not cognating at all because you've done it so many times letting it go, letting it grow Now, this is very helpful when you're in the middle of anxiety in your real life. If you can remember like, oh, just let it go, Judith, let it go. There's nothing you can do about it right now. Let it go. Let it go." Do you see how the laboratory aspect, you've been working on it in Zaza, you can do it in your real life. Aligning ourselves, someone said this, I think it was Grant, that God's will for us as a Buddhist is the three pure precepts, that you don't do harm, you do good, and you work in the service of all beings. That's God's will. I mean, that's the big mind's will. That is how you start pumping away. You know? And through the teaching, through the teaching we have developed precepts, the eightfold path and all the teachings. So it our interpretation of how do you bring the teaching into your behavior? How do, what's the most wholesome thing to do right now? What's the most wholesome thing to do right know? Sometimes I don't know. I don' t know. But I make a choice intuitively like it says in the big book. Intuitively you will start to know what to do when you didn't know what to do before. I intuitively make a decision, and that's what I do. That's God's will right in front of my nose. What's right in friend of your nose? And you make a choice about it. Trying to water the seeds of wholesomeness. This is from Thich Nhat Hanh who's really into what you water in terms of karma is what you get back. So thy will be done is watering the wholesome seeds that are appearing in this moment so i i'm in a little bit of a pitch is that the right word probably not i'm being a little bit of attention with another human being right now now what do i water in there you know in between seeing this person what am i watering Anger, resentment. You know, bleh. Or in my watering, there's a lot of different viewpoints. I don't have to be angry. I just have to clear. I just got to express my need. I surrender my control. Do you get what I mean? In between, you can water different things. And I think you could say that God's will for us is to water the seeds of wholesomeness and peace in our life with a deep belief in cause and effect. Now I think a misunderstanding in Buddhism is that liberation is getting off the chain of cause and effect. i don't know this is kind of um academic but i'm saying it anyhow and i think that's a early buddhist idea that you completely get free and you don't have to deal with the world of samsara or the world across in effect but in nahayana buddhism in the later Buddhism, and particularly with Dogen, who's the founder of our school, he does give chapters about the deep belief in cause and effect. And even enlightenment is part of total dynamic functioning. It had a cause. In this lifetime or another lifetime, you were doing something that produced enlightenment. so I really think that this idea of surrendering and believing in cause and effect has a profound effect on what we actually do so in some ways, thy will be done in Buddhism is, do you really know that what you do causes what comes back to you and how does that change what you do and I think it does change okay so I'll open up the floor people can say what they're feeling or thinking or ask a question So in regards to say thinking about addiction as a reincarnation and an opportunity, how would you pose that? Oh it's the best. And you know what, being a food addict is the total best. I've been sober now for 34 years. No drugs and no alcohol. It's not that hard for me now to be sober. I say that knowing that any moment you could be un-sober. But my lifestyle has been developed. It hasn't been in my world for so long. I do sometimes think about it, especially if my kids are totally nutto. And I think, wouldn't it be nice to have a little wine? Sometimes I say it. But with the food addiction, that you have to be mindful every single meal. And I take that deepening my spirituality like crazy. I can't get away with anything I have to be in touch with what I'm feeling I have turn it over so for me what turning it over means is I surrender my control that's one of my big things breathing in I surrender my control breathing out I surrender my control I trust total dynamic working I am just I I, this part is just one little part of a huge machine, and I can do the right thing. So karma, Tamashodaran says karma is the more you run the pattern, the stronger the pattern gets. The less you runthe pattern, the weaker the pattern gets so that really applies to addiction the more you say no the more you abstain the more your states over the actual easier it gets to do that the more you goof around you just stay in this really messy place of you don't have strength to say know because you're constantly poking a hole in your determination did that was that online so i really think oh that's also what i think between being in a zen community and bringing in a 12-step community i'm in both communities and i've been in both communities for 35 years i've done them completely simultaneously I haven't slacked off I mean there's been ebbs and flows in each of them you know like sometimes they didn't go to very many meetings and sometimes I was mad at the sangha so I didn't go you know there's an ebb and flow in my life but mostly I've worked them together but there's There's a great deal of beauty and energy and sincerity in the community that has addiction. More than in the Zen community, because the community that has addictions, it really is a life-and-death thing. You just can't bullshit around. You've got to have your spiritual condition in shape or something bad is going to happen to you, right? And in the Zen community, I don't find people in that. They don't treat their spiritual life like that. And there's a type of arrogance in the ZEN community. Now, I wouldn't even notice it, except I'm in both communities. So it's like, I'm like, what are you talking about? Sometimes I just get very frustrated with the Zen community because I've been in a 12-step community that has this kind of grounded urgency. On the other hand, I often get frustrated at 12-stepped meetings because sometimes they're not deep enough. Like, oh God. You know, and it's the same old, same old set over and over and there's no root. Not all the time though. I mean, I'm not... Many 12-steppers have fabulous programs and deeper often than what I considered my Zen peers, but sometimes not. So that's why I think how lovely it is for us that we're doing both. And the other thing I think is different is sometimes in the Zen world, the character building is not stressed. Steps four through nine are not stressed, so you can't have a real revolution in your life if you're not really looking at your past and changing your karmic behavior now it's changing in America because I think people through trauma sangha karma are seeing that the precepts have to be uplifted more than they do so I think there's hope for them if we keep saying the precepts are very very important and it's not just the absolute that we're flying away into absolute land where everything is unified and nothing you know you don't have to get muddy but actually in zen they say you have to be covered in mud okay the precepts are well three pure precept I said which are don't do harm do good and they used to be called save all beings but in this environment I can say should be used as a servant to be of service to others and then the grace precept are I hope I can get some other people don't kill don't steal don't misuse sexuality don't be intoxicated don't talk falsely don't put yourself above and other people below indulging in anger, and the last one is not abusing the great truth of the triple treasure, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. So we're going to do something different, which is tomorrow morning we're going to spend a lot of time on the precepts. And then we're going to inventory based on precept work. You know, I couldn't agree with you more that it's nice to see to see the precepts being more elevated and made available for people's consciousness. But one of the things I do hope is that the preceps do not become rules to live by. I think that's a misunderstanding, but they are. When I was a priest, one of the things that was given to me that I loved and cherished is that it's not just that you don't speak ill of another. It's that your motivation is not to speak ill about another. It's not that you just don't do something bad that you have arrived at the place where God doesn't even occur, right? So if there's a different sort of a way of holding precepts I think then is typical of something like the Ten Commandments. Or fundamentalism. Fundamentalism or, and worse I think is sometimes the expectation that if I were to follow the precept precepts word by word that in fact there's some kind of a reward for it afterwards yeah on that self-centered at a score You're talking about the cravings and what you're feeding, what's your feeding field. The last couple of months I've heard the same amount is that it's the story of a wolf. You have a bishop's book, and you have a loving, kind of loving friend. And they're adding something. There's a child in the child lab for who wins, and the father says, whichever one you feed. Whichever one you FEED. Yes, right. That story. you know I've often said I worked on shame for at least well I was going to say 10 years but I could say 20 years I think shame is negative narcissism it's a way of collapsing in to the self but negatively so and it's the way of not recognizing that the universal part of yourself it's very very narrow uh way of viewing yourself so um for me the way i worked on it was whenever i went into shame i tried to interrupt my thought pattern with a spiritual principle at that point and often i would do loving-kindness or tongue blend or something like that and trying to see the big picture of what was going on, and trying to understand how I was made through my causes and conditions. I mean there is a reason why I was so insane. I had a lot of causes and conditions that produced that but as Grant said that those are all stories that can be changed and how we change those stories is by interrupting them and planting different seeds in our life and in my life I had I don't want to exaggerate but I felt like I was me some kind of a hell or self-torment until I was about 40 so that means I had around 17 or 13 15 years in program and I still was very self tormented even though I was sober and at that time I was thin in accident and all my things were all my 12-step programs I felt arrogantly good about but I still had so much self hatred and was very very wounded and And then when I turned 40, it was like on a dime. My karma opened up and I have not felt that same type of charmant. So, that's 20 years now. so and i think that was because of the 13 previous years where i was working my program very strongly i was very committed to program in the early years very very committed i did everything people told me to do because i was in so much pain and I feel like it did move my karma, plus doing the shins up the wazoo seven days to shins I did a lot in that period and I think it moved my energy And we'll be back here at about 3.15 for a talk from Eric. I believe there's some oranges out on the table.