Love & Emptiness w/ Emily Eslami

     “What if there was no qualifications for the things that we accept in ourselves? What if it was just us? What if it was all just reality? We think of light as this shining good thing and darkness as this dark thing, but we have both inside of us and we have nothing inside of us, and we have emptiness inside of us…” - Emily Eslami

Let’s talk about love! We all know Zen can be reluctant to talk about mushy things like love and kindness, but Emily bravely tackles loving kindness head on in the latest installment of her series on the Bramaviharas. From Buddha, to Dogen, to us, it’s a 2500 year long epic love story where the happy ending is always right here and now. How do we love the people we hate? (Boundlessly!) How do we let go of the ones we love? (By letting them go!) And what do we do about those pesky tree demons bothering us when we sit?? (Love them too!)

Dave Cuomo - Good Friends (History of Zen - The Platform Sutra)

“Your mind already contains a Buddha. That’s the real Buddha. If you didn’t already have a Buddha mind, where else would you go find one?” - Huineng

In our latest installment of History of Zen, Dave gets very excited about sharing one of his favorite books with us that also happens to be the original defining text of Zen as we know it. In this 1300 year old sutra, Dave reads to us the warm words of our self professed good friend Huineng, who offers up a surprisingly modern take on secular spirituality. With humble wit and good humor, Huineng lays out a religion that asks us to only believe in what we already know - that we are perfect just the way we are. And in case we ever forget, there will always be a good friend here to help remind us.

Michele Roldan-Shaw - Street Buddhism (Jataka Tales)

“This is street buddhism… There’s no right or wrong. Sometimes there is no good option  Sometimes your’e backed into a corner and just have to live with the results or do nothing at all.” - Michele-Roldan-Shaw

Michele Roldan-Shaw spins classic Jataka Tales (folk tales of the Buddha's past lives) for us with all their ambiguities, tough love, and hard choices. We get to meet sea spirits, unruly crows, guilt ridden partridges, and yes a renunciant hermit disappointing his parents, all running around out there trying to figure out how to be decent beings in a world that rarely wants to make that easy for us.

You can check our more of Michele's work at - https://www.micheleroldanshaw.com.

And our own Brad Warner posted a video about the stories and this talk up here! - https://youtu.be/SHOHnzQl9xg

Erik Andersen - Worry Time

“Zen is about finding certainty in uncertainty, it’s about not knowing anything that’s going on and being completely solid about that.” - Erik Andersen

Erik looks at anxiety in a wide ranging and well informed discussion of everything from the intricacies of classic Zen literature to contemporary psychology and all the vulnerable (and personal) twists and turns he takes to be able to share them with us. With readings from the great Huangpo, and tips and techniques from the latest in mental health science, Erik generously presents us with his own in the moment process of the anxiety of giving the talk itself to bring us a full meta exploration of how to manage and maintain through the method of no methods.

Dave Cuomo - Catastrophe! (History of Zen - Shenhui & The An Lushan Rebellion

“Welcome to Zen, it’s all built on a lie, but it’s a good lie, and the lie itself is true.” - Dave Cuomo

In the year 757 in the middle of a catastrophic civil war surrounded by ruins and disaster, a monk named Shenhui stands on a hastily built grass platform and invents Zen as we know it with fiery speeches of enlightenment right here and now. The country, and the fledgling Buddhist school, are torn apart and put back together into something new and unique in world history. Continuing our series on Shitou’s classic poem, “The Harmony of Difference and equality,” we also get to see the historical context of why that piece was written in a story of meeting the moment and finding harmony in conflict and chaos. 

Dave Cuomo - Siren Songs and Bluejays

“You are creating everything around you at the same time as everything is creating you. And when you start to really notice that, you realize you have nothing to lose and nothing to prove.” - Dave Cuomo 

Dave reads us excerpts from Suzuki's talk "The Bluejay Will Come Right Into Your Heart" and adds some of his own commentary on embracing distraction, sound and listening as practice, and fighting the urge to run after sirens. Along the way we get good advice on how to thoroughly hate the person next to sitting next to you on retreat, why maybe enlightenment is more trouble than it's worth, and how to be a good Dad by doing less. 

Emma Roy - Buddha's Anger

“Sometimes anger is like a sunset, even though it looks like anger, actually it is a beautiful red sunset. If a buddha is not upset when he should be upset, that is also a violation of the precepts.” - Sunryu Suzuki

Emma Roy takes us on a journey through one of our favorite pieces of Zen writing, The Harmony of Difference and Equality. We get a poetic reading of the piece, helpful context of the why, when, and where it comes from, and commentary from the great Sunryu Suzuki himself. The sangha runs with the conversation in a wide ranging discussion about how to measure time from the moving platform of life, whether learning is possible, how and when anger is necessary and good, some helpful dog training advice, and how this all relates to dating.

Dave Cuomo - Explaining the Joke (History of Zen - Shenxiu)

“Listening to someone explaining Zen is like listening to someone read a textbook on the academic theory of comedy. You can do it, but in the end a joke is just something that makes you laugh.”

In the year 700, a humble mountain monk named Shenxiu was called to the Chinese capitol by the Empress Wu. Within just a few years he almost single handedly made Zen the foremost religious school in China and was universally recognized as the greatest spiritual teacher of his time. Emperors bowed to him, thousands converted. For the first time, Zen was cool. But within decades of his death, Shenxiu's name was written into history as the biggest loser in Zen, his teaching was universally mocked, and even his poetry was said to be weak. 

What could turn such a beloved teacher into a laughingstock so quickly? Was his reputation deserved? Was his poetry really that bad???

This month on History of Zen, Dave takes a look at the story of Shenxiu, the famous anti-hero of the Platform Sutra, and what we can know about him beyond the legendary histories. We look at the so-called Northern School of Zen he comes from that all later Zen would define itself against to see if its was really as weak and corrupted as would later be said, delving into the books and teachings of Shenxiu and his forbears themselves to see what they have to say in their own defense. Along the way the sangha discusses the pitfalls of success, whether or not there’s such a thing as “true history,” and why explaining the joke is never as satisfying as laughing out loud.

Dave Cuomo - The Great Cosmic Joke (Nishijima’s Four Views)

 “You start to realize, my needy whiny little problems are the entire universe, even while the entire universe doesn’t give a crap what I want. That is the great cosmic joke.

   And then when I’m feeling really crappy, and wondering why I do all this Zen, this little voice starts to creep in whispering, “No, no, this too. This is part of it…” And that little whisper can get you through a lot.” - Dave Cuomo

Dave Cuomo delves into Nishijima’s Four Views with SOAR!, the handy four letter acronym that explains all reality. It’s the “philosophy of action” that Nishijima humbly tells us is “the solution to western philosophy.” It’s the place where the rubber meets the road, where your subjective experience meets an objective world that might very mush disagree, and the great sparks of reality that fly when that happens. It’s the ultimate battle of idealism vs materialism with all of reality at stake! And the whole universe always wins. Also it’s a handy way to remember who and what we are at the times we need it most, and how to make a perfect plan and see it through to an unpredictable reality. Have we oversold this one? We think not, but find out here!

Emily Eslami - Stupid Joy

“To better yourself - to be better, prettier, thinner, richer, more popular than the person next to you, is a myth they use to sell toasters. We have this myth that if I attain something my neighbor doesn’t have than I’ll be better, and if they attain something I don’t have then I’m worse. 

But there’s always a place for things. Maybe your eyes are lower than the eyebrows, but they can see. The misconception that not everything has its place is what stops sympathetic joy from arising, and only hurts you.” - Emily Eslami

Emily Eslami gives us a Zen take on sympathetic joy. With readings from Dogen, Sawaki, the Pali Canon and more she takes us through on honest and vulnerable look at the difficulty of taking selfless joy in the successes of others, even when that seems really hard to do…

Jack Taylor - What Am I Doing Here??

“I had to sit and think, what am I doing here?? Why do I do this? But that was very apparent when I wasn’t meditating at all.“ - Jack Taylor

Jack Taylor regales us with his personal practice story as part of our ongoing series where sangha members try to answer the question of what they’re doing and why they’re here in the off chance that we might learn something about those things for ourselves.

This month Jack looks at the fits and starts to maintaining a regular practice and how falling off the wagon can be just the push you need to get back on. He discusses his time around monasteries in the Northwest, how to deal with panic attacks in the zendo, and the unexpected fruits of a college PE requirement. 

Emily Eslami - No Death

"Right now is the only moment that exists. 

And now it's gone 

(and now it's gone, and now it's gone, and now it's gone…)”

 - Emily Eslami

We wish we could tell you this was the talk where Emily unveils the secret Zen teachings on immortality, but alas, as you probably could have guessed, that's not what we do here (at least not publicly...). But just as helpfully (if not more), Emily instead gives us a thoughtful and thorough exploration of Zen teachings on death. Starting with Buddha's (quite graphic) recommended meditations on the ultimate fate of our bodies, she draws on her own fears around the idea to help us all confront what exactly it is we're so afraid of. From there she explores the more confusing Zen notions of "No Death" as chanted in the heart sutra and talked about by Dogen. I know we love our emptiness around here, but how can we talk about no death when we know death as the one great inevitability? And can understanding this "no death" help us to manage our fear and maybe live a more fulfilled life in the here and now by realizing the death and rebirth happening within every moment?  (Spoiler alert: yes!). Along the way we get an introduction to Dogen's trippy notions of time and the sangha opens up and shares their own stories of love and loss.

Dave Cuomo - Zen Begins! (History of Zen - Bodhidharma)

“The whole problem with Zen is that there’s no money or power to be had in the truth. There is nothing to be gained from telling people they’re perfect just as they are.” - Dave Cuomo

He's the man, the myth, the legendary founder of Zen himself. Some claim he never existed, some claim his eyelids invented tea leaves while he was off inventing kung fu in his down time. Clearly he is a legend that cannot be ignored, and Dave gives us the full scoop as we finally get to the story of Zen itself and its beginnings in ancient China. Dave claims this might be the greatest story ever told, and while we know he's prone to hyperbole, this one really does have it all with magic, wars, disasters, and crazy and often hilarious characters all trying to pass the great football of truth down through all the twists and turns of history. In this installment, we first get a full telling of the legend of Bodhidharma with all of its weird myths, deep koans, high drama and solid jokes that still land 1500 years later. Then we look toward the "true" history using the latest scholarship, and what can reasonably be believed from the earliest sources about why a monk by that name did come to China and what his legacy is up to the present day. And finally, we look at what it was he actually taught in his own words (or close enough) and why the unvarnished truth is always going to be a hard sell, even while it's something we've all always known deep down.

Miranda Javid - Faking It

“Sometimes while sitting you might just get bored enough with worrying about whether or not you’re faking it that you finally just decide to do zazen.”

Miranda Javid brings some light to the tricky and relatable issue of feeling like an imposter in the zendo. Is it possible to fake it in zazen? Can anything or anyone ultimately be inauthentic? And what do we do when we feel that way anyway? Miranda looks into imposter syndrome as a modern phenomenon, and what our old friends Sunryu Suzuki and old Master Linji might have to say about how to being yourself when that self forgets exactly where it’s supposed to fit in. Along the way the sangha discusses what authenticity might really mean, whether goalless practice is a blank check to get it wrong, how to work with a teacher in a world of no ranks, and how to avoid giggling inappropriately while discussing “secretions” in a talk called “faking it…”

Emma Roy - Zen and the Art of Marketing Zen

“On the infinite canvas of time and space the way the geese cast their shadow on the water without any idea of doing so, while the water reflects the geese just as naturally and unintentionally. Just so, the zen practitioner turns their own life into a work of creation which exists, as the christians might say, in the mind of god.” - DT Suzuki

“You can see how DT Suzuki presented Zen in a way that would sound really cool in 1950s America… Like Zen is the most democratic, or it’s like American transcendentalism but better and older. And you can critique it and say the proper way to understand Zen isn’t through western philosophy. But as someone who’s grown up with the history of western philosophy there’s a lot of it that makes sense to me that doesn’t make sense in translation from Sanskrit.” - Emma Roy

Emma Roy looks at the legacy of DT Suzuki and his outsized role in shaping the way we’ve come to understand Zen from its beginnings in the West up to the present day. As a Zen pioneer in the US after WW2, Suzuki was arguably the great introducer of Zen to America and the canniness with which he shaped his presentation to appeal to our native sensibilities is a story of historical sausage making and savvy marketing at its finest. Was Suzuki merely a great panderer, or was Zen really the great answer America was waiting for? Is the Zen we were sold the real thing and would we be able to understand the difference? Is there a ‘real thing’ outside of cultural and historical contexts??? As always, Emma doesn’t shy away from the big questions…

Emily Eslami - Well, This is Uncomfortable (Death by Fire, Death By Ice)

“When it is cold, let it be so cold that it kills you. When it is hot, let it be so hot that it kills you.” - Dongshan

Be honest, how much of your life is uncomfortable? If you're paying attention (and anything like us), the answer is probably a good chunk of it. So it might be a good idea to get to know that discomfort, get good at it even, or better yet, get deeply and intimately comfortable with that discomfort. Luckily Emily is on the case, taking on the famous koan of looking for the place that is neither hot nor cold. But we'll just let Emily explain because she always has that way of boiling it down to what we need to hear:

   "Are we going to go through every winter and summer without experiencing winter and summer? Are we just going to go through every winter hoping for summer, and every summer praying for winter? Or are we going to sit and be in our summers and winters?”

Dave Cuomo - Something from Nothing (History of Zen - The situation in Ancient China)

“China seemed to notice there is now something, and that something was born out of nothing. Therefore this something we live in is also inherently nothing.”  - Dave Cuomo

We have finally wrapped up our story of Buddhism in India and head over to where the real story of Zen begins - China. But first we have to get a little background on just who China was (old) and what it was doing (dealing with chaos like everyone else) when Buddhism and Zen first made their inroads. It's a fascinating look into how one society tried to cope with the problems of civilization through philosophy and deep thinking. This is the story of a single line drawn to represent the unity of all reality, and some spoil sport quickly pointing out that one line had just cut the universe into two. It's the story of two ancient rival philosophies trying to put society back together- stodgy old Confucianism trying to get everyone to fall in line and play nice, and witty anarchic Taoism telling everyone to just stop doing... everything. It's the story of why these two rivals absolutely needed each other to make any sense and how their fractured dualistic unity was exactly the ground Zen needed to do what it's about to do.

Dave Cuomo - A Brief History of Not Knowing

Don't-know mind is before thinking. Before thinking there is no God, no Buddha, no “I” no words -  nothing. Then you and the universe become one. Some people say this is God, or universal energy, or bliss, or extinction. But these are only teaching words. Nothing-mind is before words. - Seungsahn

We know, Zen loves to talk about this "not knowing" stuff. And they sure seem to think they know a lot about it. But inspired by a koan that beautifully illustrates the idea, Dave got curious just how, when, and why this "Not Knowing" idea got stuck onto Zen. So Dave traces it all the way back to Buddha and what he said we could know, and then follows the bread crumbs up to the present day to see where Zen teachers got so confident about their own confusion. Along the way Dave tells some of his favorite stories from old Chan and even delves into his own history for some prime examples of what you think you know and what happens when you finally admit you don't. 

Emma Roy - A Time Outside of Time

“When it’s working ritual is not in the least bit boring or stupid. its emotionally exciting and intellectually fascinating. I produces ecstatic states of consciousness, provides purpose and drives commitment to action. It ends alienation and creates experiences of wonderment. I think of a spectacular concert or a dramatic protest rally for what modern ritual should be.” - David Chapman 

Emma Roy takes us on a full exploration of Zen ritual from its decidedly non supernatural intentions to it’s full ecstatic and world defining effects. Specifically she takes us on a close reading of the short well being chant, Enmei Juku Kannon Gyo, to see how it’s seaming invocation of a mythical Bodhisattva of compassion is more accurately an active awakening of our own true selves. Along the way Emma treated us to a full playlist of contemporary ecstatic sutras by the great Bodhisttvas Stevie Wonder, Joan Jett, and more as we compare rituals both mystically ancient and thoroughly modern.

Emily Eslami - The Great Mistake

“A Zen master’s life is one continuous mistake.” Dogen Zenji (sort of)

“If life is one continuous mistake, and if we all make mistakes, then what the hell is a mistake??” - Emily Eslami

Emily takes our mistakes head on with an in depth look at the concept of mistake itself, starting with Dogen's famous quote. It's pithy, it's perfectly Zen ironic, and it opens up a whole can of worms of conundrums. What exactly is the Zen master's mistake, and come to think of it, what is a mistake at all? The Zen vows tell us not to discuss past mistakes, and yet here we are engaged in what most consider a serious practice of self improvement. How do improve on what's already perfect, and how do we forgive ourselves if we can't admit our mistakes?? (Spoiler alert, turns out forgiveness doesn't make a whole lot of sense). Is it a mistake to see our lives in terms of mistakes, and wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense! Emily explores all of this in personal terms and with deep dives into Zen lore as she traces Dogen's quote to its roots. The sangha takes to the topic immediately and applies Emily's talk in real time while they see if they can wrestle with their own mistakes without making any more while they do.