What Do You Call the World?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: For more information on Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, please visit our website at www.ancientdragon.org. our teachings are offered to the community through the generosity of our supporters. To make a donation online, please visit our website. I think without further ado, our local Dragon Dharma teacher, temporarily in residence, Aishin will offer the dharma talk today. So I'm going to hand everything over to Nishin. Thank you. Let's get mic'd up here. Can people still hear? I hope so. Okay. Okay. So, good morning, everyone. Great to see many familiar faces and great to see some new faces. I will do my best to remember everybody's names. You may have to help me. I wanted to talk today about a particular koan. This koan is case 12 from the book of Serenity, and it's called Duong Plants the Field. And I think I'll start off by reading it. I'll read it once and I'll. Different points, but the. The koan is. Is pretty simple. It involves two monks, as koans often do, having a dialogue. And in this case, this is. The master of the mountain is Dizang, and Shushan is a visiting monk. And Dizang asks, Shushan, where do you come from? Shushan said, from the south. And Dizang says, how is Buddhism in the south these days? Shushan said, there's extensive discussion. We can relate to that. There's extensive discussion. Daesang said, how can that compare to me here planting the fields and making rice to eat? Shushan said, what can you do about the world? Dijong said, what do you call the world? So how is Buddhism in the south? There's extensive discussion. We have no end to the extensive discussion these days about Buddhism and about many other things. And although there are lots of ways to work with this koan, today I really want to discuss the very last line. What do you call the world? And I was inspired to think about this from something Hougetsu said last week when talking about announcements. You were saying that it's hard to figure out what's going on in the world if you're not on social media. And that is quite true. But I was thinking also that the reverse is also quite true. It's very hard, hard to figure out what's going on in the world if you're on social media. And. And I think that probably we all kind of know why that is. You know, we're used to taking our ordinary perceptions of the world at face value. You know, we think that the world is this way because I have seen evidence of it. You know this way is right. How could anyone think otherwise? And even though there are a lot of people who maybe think something quite, quite differently from how we think the world is, we can feel like maybe those people, you know, they don't know or they're, you know, they're suspect somehow. But we know that especially on social media, there are powerful algorithms that are tracking what we click on or what we even stop on and look at. And these algorithms use our activity as they're tracking it to feed us more of the same or similar information. So if you have looked at a pair of shoes in an ad, you're going to get a lot more pairs of shoes right away. And the same is true for any kind of news, things that we would call news items. So you get more and more news that confirms something that you already interacted with. So we then believe that the world is a certain way and we take actions based on these beliefs, which are then amplified and reflected back to us and create kind of a positive feedback loop. So in a, in a negative feedback loop, we're getting, we're getting information, we're taking in information, and we're, we're holding on to that information, but we're also taking in information that disconfirms that information and it manages to create some homeostasis. In a positive feedback loop, we are getting information that just confirms and amplifies and verifies information that we've already taken in. And positive feedback loops can kind of accelerate change, often leading to rapid or exponential growth or rapid contraction or total system collapse. That was the definition that I looked up. And we can see how this might contribute to our current state of polarization in the U.S. now that's the Internet. And we can try to, you know, have, have whatever kind of moderating thoughts we, we can have about the Internet. But the yoga chara school of Buddhist psychology also kind of posits that a similar process is happening in each of us all of the time, thanks to our own mental structures. In particular, one of the structures that contributes to our storing information and categorizing information is called the alaya vishnana, the storehouse consciousness. And this is a part of our consciousness. Alaya means all ground. And vijnana is awareness or consciousness. And so this is a aspect of our, of our mind that is taking in all of our, all the information that we take in our perceptions, our experiences, our actions, and storing it. The yoga chara, if you're interested in, if you become interested in yogachara after hearing this talk There's a wonderful book that's been out for about 15 years called Living Yoga Chara that kind of tries to. It's actually very, very complex. And this book tries to break it down and simplify it. I'm going to simplify it even more and probably maybe at the risk of oversimplifying it by saying that there are six consciousnesses. You know, our seeing conscious, our consciousness, our hearing consciousness, our smelling consciousness, and so on, including our mind consciousness, plus be, what they call the manas, which is an aspect of our consciousness that creates a sense of I or a sense of attachment to our experience. And the Alaya Vijnana, which holds impressions of all our past experiences. And these eight structures are at work in our minds all the time. And they are both. We're storing information that is both within our conscious awareness and information that's outside of our conscious awareness. And even things that are within our conscious awareness, we have a tendency to forget. You know, we might forget, you know, maybe you knew how to ice skate when you were in elementary school, but you're not so sure that you could now. The information is still stored somewhere in your Alaya Vijnana, and it is available. And these eight levels or dimensions of consciousness interact and function to create both our moment to moment awareness and, and our ongoing sense of being. This sense that when I wake up in the morning, I'm still more or less the same person that I was when I went to sleep last night. So how it works is our impressions or experiences are stored as seeds in the Alaya Vijnana. These seeds impact our subsequent perceptions either directly or indirectly. And I'll get into that in a minute. Our thoughts and our opinions and desires and attachments grow from these seeds to create our personalities and intentions. And our karma also can result from these seeds because it's, it's our actions. So, so you can see how if we've got a function that is holding onto and remembering and, and categorizing and organizing our experience, you know, you could see that our experience and especially its impact on our present perceptions is therefore very difficult, but not impossible to remove or change. And that's where maybe having. We're partly a positive feedback loop and positive, partly a negative feedback loop. We're also getting information that disconfirms something that we maybe once believed. So if you were afraid to, you know, cross the street without your mommy when you were young, you probably have gotten information that has just confirmed that, you know that's gonna be a deadly event for you. But so also to go on a little bit more, our sense consciousness is taking in the world as it's given to us that it's. We're as. As Buddha used to say, you know, we see the. The scene and just what is seen and hearing the heard is just what is heard. But it's actually armanas, this sense of I which transforms these perceptions into personalized material. It's something that has to do with us. And our Aliya Vijnana categorizes perceptions as based on what we already believe about the world, whether confirming or disconfirming. Now, this has been going on since we were born, but it's also been going on according to Yoga Chara school, it's also been going on before we were born through the pro, through a process that's called perfuming. So seeds are stored and these seeds maybe influence and are influenced by other seeds, other experiences or perceptions. We may not possess any specific memory about an experience, but we have some sort of feeling or association, whether, you know, positive, negative or neutral, that influences how we categorize our perceptions. So our present, therefore, is largely determined by our past experience. And our future can be very difficult to change even if we want to, because our Alaya Vijnana is influencing even what we think is happening right now. We are looking. This is how we come to look at the world through a particular lens, just like similar to maybe an AI algorithm. So what we call the world is unique for each one of us. There's no one on earth who's had the same experiences and perceptions as you. It's so. It's. It's unique and the world actually arises and perishes with you because it's. It's maybe also partly thanks to the manas is personalized. So let's return to the koan. I'm going to read it again. Dizhang asked, Shushan, where do you come from? Shushan said, from the south. Dijang said, how is Buddhism in the south these days? Shushan said, there's extensive discussion. De Zhang said, how can that compare to me here planting the fields and making rice to eat? Zhushan said, what can you do about the world? Dizong said, what do you call the world now? I'm not sure that I'm reading it with a little attitude and it's unintentional. Actually, when Shushan says, what can you do about the world? I'm not sure he means that with an attitude. I think he's maybe asking a genuine question, what can you do about the world here, you know, planting the fields and making rice to eat. And Dizang says, what do you call the world? So there's an important background piece here which is that Dizang, the master in this koan, Dizang is the Chinese name for a bodhisattva that we know in Japanese as Jizo or Siddha Garba, who is, you know, a very revered bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism. His name means earth storehouse or earth womb. And so, you know, how interesting that Disang is tilling the soil and planting the field and working with the earth, because he is actually Jizo. Now traditionally, Jizo is the guardian of and the guide to the underworld, especially the six realms of Buddhist cosmology, but especially the underworld of the hell realms and the hungry ghosts. We made offerings to the hungry ghosts on Sujiki in the Sajiki ceremony and the animal realm. And you know, Jizo's vow is to be present for all suffering beings in the six realms. So although, although we live in the human realm, which is, is not really considered part of the underworld, we can actually also conceive of, of the, of these hell realms as mind states that we can fall into over the course of the day and that engender suffering for ourselves and others. So I thought I would pass around a little Jizo Bodhisattva, my personal action figure. All the activity that Jizo needs to really do, he's doing right now. He's holding a wishful. My Jizo is holding a wish fulfilling gem. Jizo also often carries a staff, but mine is a little simpler. And he's often depicted just as a bald headed, patch robed monk. Jizo is kind of like a patron saint of people who are dying or deceased, as well as children. So people who are in very vulnerable states, passing into or out of the world. I send Jizo that way so you can enjoy my own personal Jizo while you, while I talk. So in this koan, Jizo is plowing the field, tilling the soil, planting the seeds. And I think we can think of this, you know, tilling the soil and turning over the earth as kind of a metaphor for our activity in Zazen, which is, you know, studying the south, putting the, you know, getting the grist from the mill. And so as we, you know, for us, as we sit and we pay attention to our moment to moment experience, you know, seeing what is seen in the scene and hearing what is heard in the heard, we begin to develop an ability to quiet down our Mind just naturally kind of quiets down. Maybe our mind becomes a little less reactive through this process of just sitting with whatever's coming up. And we might also start to develop a sense of curiosity toward our experiences and our perceptions. And that can be very helpful to us because it can start to help us to move away from some of the fixed views that we might have. You know, in the Metasita, we chant, you know, not holding to fixed views. And zazen is part of what helps us move away from these fixed views. We also begin to, you know, through practice, come to resemble the Tathagata, which is another name for Buddha. Tathagata means the thus come one. And it's, you know, we can sit and ask our. As we, as part of Buddha's sitting, was involved, asking himself. And we do this as well, asking ourselves, you know, what is this that thus comes? Or as you sit, zazen, and you find yourself, you know, having a thought or a feeling, you can ask yourself, you know, what is this? Maybe, and maybe we begin to break a feeling down into, you know, sensations and maybe automatic thoughts that come with it. And by doing this, you know, by asking ourselves, developing some curiosity, you know, asking ourselves, what is it, you know, that this is in response to our rising thoughts and experiences, we actually start to lessen the power that these things have over us. We come to maybe better appreciate the idea that reality is actually quite ambiguous and different. You've probably seen this in your life. Different people can attribute wildly different meanings to the same thing and even see things a little bit differently. So I think this koan may be asking, you know, how can extensive discussion compare to me here, planting the fields, you know, tilling the earth? And I would argue, I would say that, you know, maybe one is kind of an outer activity and one is an inner activity. Discussion certainly might help us change our point of view. I think usually we want to help others change their point of view, but we could, we could turn that around and work with ourselves. But interactivity is for sure something that will help us internally change our point of view. You know, both both discussion and zaza and reflection, contemplation are ways that we can change our awareness. So a koan leaves us with two questions, you know, what can you do about the world? And the other question, what do you call the world? Now, almost everyone wants to try to do something about the world. And unfortunately, what we generally want to do involves changing those wrong thinking people out there. But as Yoga chara teaches us, you know, out there is not that different from in here. And if we think about. If we think about this from a yoga chara perspective, others who have a very different view have come by that view by having very different experiences which have led them to interpret maybe the same things in very different ways. So even knowing that can help us to maybe soften a little bit in our feelings of, you know, how we. How we interact with others and for ourselves. You know, we can maybe be a little bit like Jizo, you know, going, okay, there's. I'm really oversimplifying a lot, but. But I do want to bring in another aspect of Jizo, which is Jizo comes from. I said that Jizo is kind of the guardian of the Hell Realms. And there's a story about Jizo that she was a girl, a little girl in this incarnation, and she went down into the Hell Realms to. To save her mother. And she saw the suffering in the Hell Realms. Her mother who had died, she saw the suffering in the Hell Realms. And she vowed to be present for those of those in the Hell Realms. So we can, you know, kind of go down into our own Hell Realms, our own suffering and our own discomfort and, you know, turn things over, plow the field, chill the earth, see what comes up, see how we can work with this. And so through our zazen practice, we can really begin to see and understand, you know, what it is that's in here on a very deep level that influences our perception of out there and maybe, you know, can help us become more skillful in our attempts to help the suffering beings that we want to help. You know, we can, through our practice and maybe even through, you know, understanding a little bit more about our. Our psychology through a Buddhist lens or understanding Jizo, you know, help us to. We can come to see that, you know, each of us. Each of us is acting out of our own suffering. Even when our outward actions or others. Outward actions may appear to be very different or, you know, to be, in some cases, unhelpful. So understanding ourselves a little bit more and. And can really help us to understand better how to transform suffering in ourselves and in others. So I will close with just the question. You know, what. What do you call the world? What. What is the world? And how do we work with that? And I invite anyone who has some thoughts about the world. Jake will help us online, I think. Okay, Jake will help us online. And if you're in the room, if you're in the room or online, please raise your hand and let's go. Sandra. [00:22:14] Speaker B: Some of you may know That I started my life in a. In a Mormon community. Okay? So that was my field that I was planted in and at a certain point, had enough evidence to disprove what I had already always been taught to believe that, you know, it really was a shattering experience to say, oh, you know, I. I can't live out this expectation. But I didn't go from there to Buddhism. Excuse me. You know, there was a little journey, and kind of the interim piece of my journey from there to here was the course in miracles. And I don't know if any of you are familiar with that, but I often refer to it as Buddhism in Christian verbiage or terminology. Right. And so it flat out says, you know, this is a course in mind training. And the very first exercise was looking at each thing and saying, this has no meaning. You know, this carpet means nothing. You know, the sky means nothing. Which is really simple. But it was very powerful to write at the beginning, you know, to go to that point of saying everything you think you see, you think you have given the meaning to. That is the world for you. And to actually, you know, start to say, but really, it doesn't have a meaning. [00:23:55] Speaker A: Thank you. Yeah, the meaning. The meaning can be very ambiguous, Jerry. [00:24:01] Speaker C: I. The. The idea of, you know, there's a lot of discussion. To me, discussion is really important because it's a way of getting. It's a reality check. Sometimes if we just. And I used to practice in a place where there was no discussion about. After the Dharma talk, talking was not something they promoted. But the thing about discussion is it gives you a reality check, and it helps you sort of. I don't know. I have this sense that, you know, faith and religion has a very dark side that could flop into very easily if you didn't have a discussion with people that. And somebody didn't say to you, you know, what are you thinking there? You know, it's a little goofy thought you have going on there. And so in some ways, discussion helps us sit upright because it helps us understand what everyone else is thinking, and it helps us adjust our own thinking to say, okay, yeah, this is. I'm getting a little squirrely here. And to come back to a sense of normality. So I was wondering what your thoughts were on that. [00:25:09] Speaker A: Sure. I. I completely agree with you. I completely agree with you. And yet also, I think both maybe have their limits. And I think you're. You're pointing to where, you know, inner reflection maybe has its limits because we can get caught up in our. In our own. You know, feedback loops. And sometimes we do need that little, you know, thanks. I needed that. But discussion can also, as probably everybody's seen, I think, can really devolve very quickly into not really listening. So something that I've heard of as a practice that I sometimes also try to practice is thinking when you're in a conversation, am I actually listening, or am I just waiting for my turn to talk? Or am I not even waiting for my turn to talk, but, like, trying to think up my position while this person is kind of, you know, talking? And so both. Both really have their benefits and both really have their limitations. I'm. And I. I don't know that this koan is saying one is better than the other. [00:26:26] Speaker D: Thank you, Aishan. So many things to respond to. The thing that kind of stuck out to me the most as you were talking was this. It was. It was like an almost like an offhand statement of, like, this is how we have these, you know, the karma. We have this karma that we've inherited, you know, before we were even born, right? And then we have these. I don't know, these predictions, right? These priors that we have that help us make sense of why the world seems to, you know, wiggle the way it does. I started taking a satipatthana course with Bhikkhu and Alio over at the Berry center, and I'm in a bipoc group. And we were struggling because we were going through elements practice. We were going. We're doing maranasati death contemplations now. And being in this bipoc group has been really interesting because we're all talking about, like, you know, like, breaking the body down into constituent parts and seeing that it is empty, right? Like, just encountering emptiness over and over and over and over again. This, as you. As you were saying, Sandra, like, not this. It's not that. It's nothing. Like, you keep coming back to. Like, this does not. Hold still. This does not. This is not what you think it is. And yet we keep coming back to, oh, my God, we have pain. We have so much pain from the karma that we've cultivated ourselves from the karma that we have inherited. You know, you. You sort of. Whatever storehouse stuff that you kind of grew out of now, there are black bodies in there. There are Latinx bodies in there. There are Asian bodies in there. And I guess what's really sticking out from this talk is, like, okay, these are coming out from a place also of, like, how do we respond to our own suffering, including the karma that we didn't intend to make Right. So I guess I don't know if there's a question exactly, but there's something of like a. I wonder what's going on for, on how you approach it about, you know, there's the karma that you, you, you kind of look back and go, oh, why did I do that? Why am I still doing that? But then there's the karma that you grew up with, right, that you, it was not your responsibility, quote, unquote. And yet here we are. You can't escape it, especially if you sit and stare at a wall for, you know, so many hours after a certain point. So I'm just kind of curious where you've practiced with that. [00:28:45] Speaker A: Yeah, that, that is a hard question and a, and a deep question. And I don't, I don't know that I really, I don't know that I really have an answer. It's, it's continuing to, to just practice with it. It's obviously it's not even, you know, it's karma from our culture that has been up and running before we, or even our parents were born. And what I kind of do is just try to notice it when I notice it, when I can notice it because. And also notice it when it's pointed out for me, because as you're pointing out, people from different bodies and different cultures and different skin colors in the US can have very, very different perspectives. And that's valuable. It's not saying that my perspective is wrong or someone else's perspective is wrong, but that we really all need all each other to be able to see something more fully. In my own life, I, I, I know I kind of, I kind of said it offhandedly, and I haven't. I, and I did so because I, I wanted to acknowledge that it was there, but I also haven't put that much of my own personal, you know, reflection into it. But I do know that people come into the world with their own temperaments. There's, it's been proven in, in infant studies as, as you probably know that, you know, infants come with their own temperaments, but right away, you know, they're having experiences that are, that are, that are modifying that even, you know, the order of, even the birth order that they're in which they're welcomed into a family or not welcomed into a family. So, so it's, it's, it's way down the rabbit hole for me. And yeah, I don't, I don't have a, I don't have a really good answer for you other than to, to really just continue to practice it with it. And that's where another place where maybe discussion with others and practice within ourselves can be really helpful and also, you know, finding places that feel safe to have that discussion. So I'm glad that you have, you know, a group of people that it feels safe to kind of explore and unpack that with. Chris Cadman was before you. Oh, okay. Oh, thank you, Asian. [00:31:23] Speaker E: I was kind of hoping you were going to wear your devo hat. And seeing I can't get no satisfaction. And I'm kind of thinking about that. And my question is, in whatever we see as the world, how does do we stay engaged so we can work on our bodhisattva vows in the face of I can't get no satisfaction. [00:31:50] Speaker A: When you say, how do we stay engaged? What do you. What do you mean? [00:31:54] Speaker E: Because, you know, my response to social media is just to not do it and be disengaged. [00:32:05] Speaker A: Okay. Well, you know, I often find myself wanting to disengage from social media and I often, I secretly find myself sometimes wanting to, like, unfollow somebody or, or, you know, I, I've never gone as far as unfriending somebody, but I sometimes want to unfollow people. And I actually use Paula as my example in my mind because Paula, from what I remember, from what you said, I'll just turn this. Paula just. [00:32:34] Speaker F: Paula. [00:32:34] Speaker A: Paula just laughs at it. Paula just is like, look, look at that. And I. But which, which I think is part of this meta taking a step back and just saying, okay, that person thinks that and that person thinks that and, and, and find Paula finds a way to, like, do this joyfully. Do you have, do you have any secrets for us? [00:32:58] Speaker F: I remember you and I having conversations about it years ago. Okay, right on. Should we be on Facebook? Should we not? This is the Facebook conversation years ago. I do think you have to be engaged in some way if you want to keep your finger on the pulse of the world because it's too influential on how people think. One, two. It requires a lot of self discipline, though, onto how deeply you engage. And our practice hopefully helps us learn self discipline over our behavior. But I, like everyone else, know how easy it is to go down the rabbit hole, right? So I'm saying that with a disclaimer. 3. I do like seeing other people's opinions, though, even if they could be extreme, because I want to get an idea of what people are responding to and getting manipulated by. But then it goes back to your Own self discipline. Can you not get buffeted by that as well? But I do think the key is not to be on it all the time. And we've gone through our waves with this, you and I, in conversation. Like, first you're on it. Especially like if you, if you do work too, where you have to put yourself out into the world. Like, just like Ancient Dragon, we have to have a social media presence because that's where people go for their information. You know, so you almost have to engage with it, but you really have to be careful because it is like this virus that could take you over without you realizing it. But I do laugh at a lot of it. Yeah. [00:34:31] Speaker A: So laughter can be good medicine for this. But also, you know, just practice just finding a way to kind of read that painful thing or look at that painful thing and just, you know, calm your mind down. Just that, that is really an opportunity to just go into your own personal hell realm and just see if you can bring a little peace to that. And there may be times when you need to like, turn it off or, you know, snooze somebody for 30 days or, you know, whatever. But it's a practice and not an endpoint. I think Nyozan had a comment. Not that I'm aware of. [00:35:18] Speaker G: Yeah, thank you. I just, I was just wanting to point out, just to note it. I don't know if anybody has any thoughts about it. I'm not sure what to do with it myself. But, you know, there was just this thing in which a sequence of three people went from, you know, the thing was positive about engagement from the world. And this immediately got reduced or pigeonholed into engagement with social media. And boy, I, you know, when that happens, I just think, boy, they really, really, really have us, you know, that we what we are thinking about the world. You know, that's what it is. And I just would like to point out that is part of it, but not the most. I mean, an important part. But. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know where to go with that. It's just something about that. Just like, holy smokes. So thank you for, thank you for pointing. [00:36:15] Speaker A: Just thank you for pointing that out. You know, this is like that. I appreciate those kind of meta comments because those. The kind of meta comments that we need to do with ourselves. Like, hey, I was going along thinking that, you know, this was okay, and now I'm like, in this place, you know, what happened? So, so thanks for, for just observing that. We. Okay, we are. We are. Maybe Margaret, you'll you'll be the last person. You'll have the last word. [00:36:44] Speaker H: Do justice to being the last person. I just wanted to totally second what. What Wynon had to say because I was struck all that way. Also, I'm one of the people who any social media ever. And there's plenty of other ways of finding out what's going on in the world. There's a ton of other stuff on the Internet, for better or for worse. There are actual still real news sources. Every. There's a bajillion people writing substacks. There's all kinds of other stuff and there are ways of like, besides the total value of zazen and introspection and discussions, you can volunteer. Go out there and volunteer for your local whatever. So I just wanted to say, I mean, it's bad. Social media is. Can really be a sinkhole. And so we just need to be careful not to. [00:37:29] Speaker A: And it can also not end up there ourselves. [00:37:31] Speaker H: Thank you for the talk. [00:37:32] Speaker A: Thanks. And it can also provide really helpful information for those online. There's that phrase, drop the mic. Margaret just threw the mic. So. I appreciate everyone's comments, Chris. I will. I'm not going to sing Satisfaction, but I did actually have a song go through my head when I was writing this talk. And I'm going to date myself, but it's by the. The. And the. And the line is, everybody knows what's going on with the world. I don't even know what's going on with myself, So. Oh, yeah, that one too. But that was a throwaway. Sorry about that. But, you know, I'm glad that we can laugh, because I do. You know, it's heavy. It can be heavy stuff, but also, you know, we can laugh and we can have a song in our hearts. And. And really, I really. My whole goal for my talk was just to have a little bit of a discourse on how we can bring a little bit of peace and a little bit of reflection to some of what's going on in the world and in ourselves, because we're not different from the world. So thank you all. I believe we have bodhisattva vows and announcements, but do we say goodbye to the online people if there's. No, not yet. Okay. I start the vows. Oh, yeah, of course. Right. Yes. You know, you're in a different position and you forget. But anyway, beings are numberless we vow to free them Delusions are impossible. Our machines are boundless. Buddha's way is unsurpassable Remounts realize it being. Freedom Are any thoughts to blow. Leave out. Gates are boundless. We bow to enter them with us ways unsurpassable. We vow to realize it.