Way of Oneness: A Sangha Podcast

Mother's Day Dharma Talk

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.

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Loving Kindness

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. 

 

Your Story is Not You: Anatta

below is an excerpt from Dharma talk given at the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship Aril 21st 2019

 

I want to start from the account of the Buddha’s retelling of what happened on during the night just before his awakening experience.   From the MahaSaccaka Sutta and for me this has become the practical understanding of non-self for my everyday life.

 

“When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, & attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of recollecting my past lives. I recollected my manifold past lives, i.e., one birth, two…five, ten…fifty, a hundred, a thousand,,,

 

 ‘There I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose there. There too I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose here.’ Thus I remembered my manifold past lives in their modes & details.” — 

So I want us for a second to imagine this - we are going into the imaginal capacity of the mind to help us understand an important truth about identity.  Let’s say you could remember all the people and beings that you have been. You could remember not just who you are but you could remember being Maria Delgado, mother of 4, daughter of 8 who lived at this place and how you loved the sunrise in the morning and you were Maria who loved these things and was afraid of this or that who loved Max who died because of the war, what war?

 They all start to bleed together all the wars you know, many you were the victim and in just as many you were the perpetrator - in this reimagining you see yourself as mother and father, sister and brother, but not just as human, but as the bird that flies over, the fish that swims, the tree the climbs toward heaven. You remember being predator and prey and they all become a cacophony of lives and just as meaningful as the one you are now in with the same attachment to I AM.

 This is the story of what the Buddha experienced the night before the rising of the morning star and his awakening -

 This story speaks to me of fluidity of self - it breaks down the barriers between myself and others -  If I have been all these things, If I have been, mother, father, brother, sister, victim, perpetrator, hero, villain, bear, wolf, rabbit, fish, tree and flower, why do I hold on so tight to Christopher? And Who is Christopher in the midst of these long long dance of life?

The Three Marks of Existence

A Dharma talk given By Christopher Kakuyo Sensei at the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship March 24th, 2019

 

" On first blush – Impermanence, suffering, and non-self – this sounds rather dreary. Nothing lasts, life is suffering and you’re not anybody after all. The curious thing about this and the insight of the Buddhas is actually the opposite, understanding impermanence, the nature of suffering and our true selves is actually the path to boundlessness, equanimity, and joy. Our engagement with the Four Noble Truths and our practice of the Eight-Fold Path help us to develop a new relationship with these realities.

Right Speech - Right Listening

From our Right Speech Dharna talk

"As humans, we are worded beings – we engage with the world through the abstraction of language. The thing we call “us” is a language created story. It makes sense that words can both heal and harm and reveal and hide. Our very existence in a languaged existence; verbal and non- verbal.

Is that the reason we all long to be heard, to be deeply listened to?"

Violence as Entertainment?

an excerpt from a Dharma talk given Jan 27th at the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship by Christopher Kakuyo Sensei

 

" I don’t think that violent images make us more violent  but I do think that it makes us numb to violence, and also teaches us to objectify the "other" as objects that we can justify hurting or killing because they are different from us, because they are bad, because we do not see them as "subjective" beings with; fears, hopes, dreams and their own tender suffering that may be like ours. As long as we see them as inherently different from us or as something to gratify our needs, can we ever arrive at peace? 

Just the idea of violence as entertainment makes me uncomfortable. Why do I engage with violence as entertainment?  I don't really know.  

 

 

 

Intimacy with all Things

Dharma talk delivered April 26th, 2019 by Christopher Kakuyo Sensei at the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship 

 

Excerpt from Intimacy with All Things, 

If I am a stranger to my own mind carried away by the rise and fall of thought and feelings I am going to be blind to see the grace that abounds and the final aspect of intimacy that I want to talk about is, the cultivation of the practice of intimacy with “all things”  as Dogen teaches

 

When we forget ourselves then we are awakened by the myriad of things.

 

This is because as one teacher puts it,

 

The myriad things communicate their wisdom with their forms and sounds, and the emptiness, harmony, and uniqueness of the ephemeral self and the world are understood clearly. 

 

I see this as a call, as an integral part of our mindfulness practice. Through our practice we are invited to become intimate with the sunrise and sunset, slow days basked in boredom, days shorter than a heartbeat. We are invited by the silence to turn our attention to the dance of bees and butterflies, of the color blue or that scent of lilac, the sound of thunder or the crash of waves, to turn our attention to the soil, the sun, to each leaf helping us to breathe, and to become aware of the grace of clouds and their gift of rain. We are invited as we let go of the primacy of self to become aware of the support of the universe sustaining us in each thing on our plate for dinner – In this awareness, in the cultivation of intimacy with these things we can learn their wisdom  we can learning from them oneness, It is in the myriad of things that we can meet in the absence of the idea of each another. That is where true intimacy is found.

The Gray Parrot and the Bodhisattva Vows

 

"Our aspiration is for awakening but If we decided to wait until we are awakened to help others, what good would that be. Our vows are the vows of ordinary human beings sparked by love, we vow to become wounded healers. Our awakening is in the vow itself "

- Christopher Kakuyo Sensei

Freed From Knowing

"I don’t know" also applies to our practice. When we think we Know with a capital K what mediation is, what Buddhism is, what awakening is, even who we are, we cut ourselves off from what these really are and by so doing we keep them from manifesting in our lives naturally, unhindered by our silly meddling."

 

Christopher Kakuyo Sensei

What are you carrying?

In this Dharma Talk, Christopher Kakuyo Sensei looks at how we can get stuck in the past and how doing so pulls us away from the ground of being that can only be found in the flow of "Now".

 

From What are you Carrying,

 

" My biggest reason for visiting the past was to find the answer to the chant-like question that echoed in my heart and in my head, "Why me?, Why me?"  Why me? is ultimately an unknowable question. Maybe it is the first "koan" we are ever given. In my own experience, wrestling with that questions, caused me to spend so much time in the past that I missed so much of what was in front of me. The flow of Now carried me along regardless and I discovered that when we get stuck in the past we become nothing more than spectators looking backward. Our lives are so much more than that. At the heart of every living thing is its innate suchness, an inherent beingness that can only be found in the flow of Now.  Ultimately everything else is either wake or illusion." 

Christopher Kakuyo Sensei