Eon Zen: Recent Episodes
Paul Gyodo Agostinelli
This podcast is brought to you by the Eon Zen Center, led by Paul Gyodo Agostinelli, Sensei and based in Boulder, Colorado, US. To support this podcast and the programs of Eon Zen, or to find out more, please go to eonzen.org. We thank you for your support, and we wish you peace, joy and fellowship on your path of awakening.
As we come to the end of our 90-day intensive period we enter a liminal place that can feel like a birth.
In surrendering completely to what is happening within us -- in the supportive environment of our practice -- we emerge both exhausted and renewed, baby and mother both. This is the koan of transformation, the tail of the water buffalo that remains after the body passes through the window.
Zen practitioners celebrate the Buddha's Awakening during Rohatsu. While much myth encrusts the historical record of this event, we can follow the Buddha's model of deep investigation through the meditative mind. Many practitioners have felt this inner emergence for themselves, discovering a ground of being that is both personal and impersonal, undeniable and inexpressible.
We are never really outside of our sensory experience or our life story. From them, we create sense and meaning. With conscious Attention and Intention, we shift from a background/foreground to a single ground, creating the field where subject and object dissolve. Then karma and dharma are seen as one.
When we don't take anything for granted, a natural appreciation arises for all that we have been given. This appreciation is the direct experience of the One Heart, and is not contrived. As we atone for our twisted karma, we can be grateful for our positive karma. Every day both are abundantly present!
Calm and steady, linking together all the elements of our lives - A talk by Geoff Shōun
Anger is wisdom energy that has the power to heal. Aggression is when that energy is enlisted by the ego. Our holding capacity for our moment-to-moment sensory experience is what allows us to maintain a connection with the elemental wisdom dimension without a hidden agenda. Talk by Sam Sokyo Randall
Mysterious and vast, the One Body extends through space and time. Its healing potential is actualized through the mysterious and vast power of intention, or vow. Intentions seeded in the past bear fruit now as intentions seeded now will bear fruit in the future. Meanwhile, we are in direct communication with our past and future selves right now. Who can say where it all began?
Anger carries a profound transformative potential, but only if it is felt. If we cut ourselves off from feeling, our anger will ultimately burn down whatever is keeping us from feeling.
We are fooled by others when we look outside for our own self-understanding. When we look inside, we find ourselves grounded as the functioning of awareness itself. “Absolute Subjectivity”. What name does that go by?
Mark Eckhardt shares the dharma of raising a temple in the very place where we stand. For a Black man in America, that place can be a hell.
When we put on the kesa, we take refuge in teachings that give our lives support, protection and meaning. The simple act subtly affects ourselves and others.
In times of complexity and chaos, what is the sacred work you are called to do? What does that type of inspiration look like? When the world seems overwhelming, it is our minds -- not the world -- that is overwhelmed.
A marriage is a union in which two streams become one. While "not two, not one" is an infinite Zen teaching, a marriage actualizes the equally infinite depth of "both two and one." From this one the myriad things arise. There's definitely something here.
Our inner and outer worlds are permeated with disturbances. To be undisturbed outside means seeing the True Nature of phenomena without adding anything extra.To be undisturbed inside means seeing the true nature of oneself without sprouting delusions.
Skillful means invite us to consider time, place, person and degree in all we do and say. Enlightening beings may rescue you from a burning house or set fire to your house to wake you up, depending. What will you do next?
Bearing witness is intense and often uncomfortable like zazen. If you really pay attention you can’t NOT feel. This is as it should be. When the demon Mara became discouraged in the face of Buddha's resolve, the Buddha exhorted him not to stop for without Mara he could not be Buddha. In witnessing our delusions we awaken.
Master Dogen asked Master Lu why he worked so hard in the hot sun instead of asking his assistants to help. Lu responded, “If I do not do it now, when else can I do it?" We misunderstand if we believe Master Lu was caught up in our modern neurosis of time poverty. Instead, he affirms that Now is always the time to do our work.
What happens when the "stuffing comes out"? Sam Sokyo Randall shares how falling apart together can be transformative for us as individuals and sanghas.
Master Hyakujo said, "a day without work is a day without food." When asked who he did the work for, he said, "There is one who needs it, and that one has no hands." In our most purposeful work, we are the hand that serves something greater.
Spiritual bypassing is understood as short-changing our path of "growing up" (or "cleaning up") while we pretend to focus on "waking up". But "stepping up" is the important third aspect of our lives. Ignoring our responsibility to step up is equally harmful, whether we are "spiritually bypassing" or "emotionally bypassing" (an excessive emphasis on our emotional growth/healing, i.e. "woundology")
Entering 2020, we saw the ecological crisis as an opportunity to "come to our senses" and re-envision a life dedicated to every day transformation of the three poisons of greed, aversion and ignorance.
Spiritual growth is about more than "letting go". Letting go is essential for working with the toxin of craving. We work with the the toxins of aversion and ignorance by "letting come" and "letting be".
You have come full circle from the innocence of the child to the innocence of mastery. Naked, seeking nothing extra, carrying nothing extra, practice ha completely dissolved into ordinary life. You ceaselessly arrive home.
With joy, you experience the reward body. Mountains are mountains again and rivers are rivers again! Every moment is vividly and uniquely alive, and your heart flutters in consort with life.
Whip, tether, self and ox have all merged, no traces remain. The vast blue sky cannot be reached by thoughts. Even the thought of stages is gone. You are in accord with the ancient way.
Technique, artifice, and need for external discipline are gone! In the seventh stage, the practice does itself. Your life is meditation, practice, dharma. The world is illuminated.
In the six stage effort has become effortless. We are ok with not knowing where we are going, because we are confident in what is unfolding. Twists and turns are no longer a cause of suffering!
In the fifth stage, we reap the benefits of discipline. We broaden the aspects of our lives that are informed by awakened nature. There may not be fireworks, but there is profound and subtle deepening that affects others as well as yourself.
A first true bodily understanding of the insubstantiality of the self can be exhilarating, but very quickly a forceful ego can create struggle and effort. Self-realization is not a simple thing!
In the third stage, you've had a powerful glimpse. You are not who you think you are! There's something greater going on, but if you think about it too much, it's gone.
In the second stage, we see "footprints" on the path. It might be an encounter with a teacher, or a teaching, or a tradition. Others have walked this path!
In the first stage, we find ourselves lost in confusion and even desperation. Our search begins with a sense that something is out of alignment. We feel a gap between the truth of our life and our experience of life. We go searching for the ox, our true nature, to heal the painful divisions we've created.
The ox herding pictures represent a map of the spiritual path. Brought to practice by the experience of our suffering and the sense that something is out of alignment, we embark on a journey. We find that this path is non-linear and each stage is rich with its own opportunities and pitfalls.