SokukoJi Buddhist Temple Monastery

Constant chattering fills up the space with phrases, protecting the body-mind complex we think we are. Even if the conclusions are relatively correct, it’s still a disturbance as far as the spiritual path is concerned. Before the story there’s just not much going on. The leading edge of the story is your opportunity because it is still texture until we start constructing something about it. There’...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9mur1vqkNg

It’s not what you know that’s the issue; it’s the knower, the mistaken identity that’s the problem. Whatever shows up in your mind stream, you know that. The first arising is free from a knower. Then you leave the immediacy for what you think about it. The issue is not the feeling that comes up, it’s trying to stop it, fight with it or blame someone for it. It’s called samsara. Liberation doesn’t...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnSHeaM3n7w&t

Your basic instruction is to sit down, hold still without being rigid, and intend to see what’s moving. If it’s a daydream, then observe that. There’s nothing to correct. Whatever arises, that’s the path. Don’t maintain it and don’t fight with it. Notice the tendency to do something with it. If you want to do something with it, enjoy it. Allow it to be just that, as it is. It’s not separate in the...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwHRi0oYaAk&t

How does renaming what we call negativity help us to work with that in a different way? How do we not fight with what’s arising? If we are functioning out of the bodhisattva vow, what do we do? Can not doing much look like activity? How can we meet someone where they’re at if it looks like they’re insane? What is your primary teaching? Sokuzan responds to these and other questions in this Mountain...

We are always trying to protect, extend, and defend ourselves, or do something about me me me and my wonderful stuff. When you are being accused of something and fear getting pulled into others’ projections, meet people where they’re at. The paranoia is dependently arisen; you can’t get rid of it. You may need to relate to whatever arises in your mind stream or the apparent mind stream of others i...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7VP41IdYhU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gaTyNXWQjc&t

Minding your own business doesn’t mean you shouldn’t step in and help when you see something terrible happening, but do it situationally. Don’t do anything unless you have to. It doesn’t mean that you ignore things; in fact, when you lead with your awareness, you are very attentive to everything going on. When the thinking process is in the service of ego and paranoia, the situation isn’t seen cle...

The ego, or what I might call the land baron, is the one who has territory, owns things, and puts things there in the mind stream or even the life stream if they have a chance. When something arises in the mind stream like anger, the self-centered mind claims it and wants to hang on to it. That property owner gets support as someone whose anger this is. You don’t have to claim any of that. You’re...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62A6MWCU6qo

Full intention here means not spending time looking for results. The spiritual path is not about results, or using the structure of the mundane path to evaluate your progress. It doesn’t mean you won’t notice change as you go along in your meditation practice. If you give your full attention to practicing, to training your mind by watching and receiving whatever is moving, you won’t spend time eva...

Rationalizing is abandoning what’s in front of us for why it makes sense or doesn’t work. It is caused by suffering and pain, by being mistreated or the perception that you’re being mistreated. From the perception of buddhadharma it’s a teaching. If you are a student, there are much, much deeper levels of learning and understanding. The understanding goes way beyond what arises in dependent origin...

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche once said, “If you get too far away from the teacher you don’t get enough heat, and if you get too close to the teacher you get burned.” Just because you have the illusion that you have control of your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings, your life with some kind of goal, that does not mean that the true teacher is doing that. What is meant by receiving the teacher’s he...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZtw9UEdCSQ

We tend to rationalize anything we don’t understand. We don’t want to look at the fundamental situation. Anytime you jump to some sort of idea about what’s happening, you abandon what’s right in front of you. Ego does not want to lose its fuel supply of rationalization about everything. Look at the chaos in the world. The situation we are in is dependently arisen in its multiplicity and its comple...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trMQQyFRLjk&t

That things are empty is an ultimate teaching and is also a path quality of Buddha-dharma. The Sanskrit word is shunyata. It’s not a relative emptiness, but that doesn’t mean it abandons relativity. It’s a concept that points to our grasping at how something appears as some kind of otherness, as a singularity. Once emptiness is seen, everything comes back and is full as it is. This is the third tu...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DP-AeXHjfQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QS2i0UTSiU

The five skandhas, or “heaps” are an ancient teaching. Simply put, form is the body and the other four are aspects of consciousness: feeling, perception, memory (or concept), and consciousness. Feeling includes the emotional quality that flows in through the thought patterns, which are very spacious until we seal it up with what we think about it. What an excuse to miss your life! You can actually...

Don’t demand anything, especially if you think you have a right to do so. In order to not demand, you might have to allow the feeling, the emotion, the energy to arise without hooking up your vocal cords. It seems to be very necessary to experience and accommodate the emotions that arise in the mind stream. The emotion is not the demand. It’s what we do to get away from the emotion. The way to wor...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4WgMguVaJg