.png)
The World Through Zen Eyes Podcast
What we do?
Once a week we take a look at the going-ons of the world and say something about ‘em.
The goal?
None, really. Just trying to make heads and tails of the great world roar of Ooommmmmm.
Why?
To try ‘n keep a modicum of personal sanity. And stay off both the meds and the cool aid.
The point?
Points are sharp and therefore violent. We just go around, and round….and round.
Disclaimer:
The views, perspectives, and humor of the speakers and guests of this podcast do not necessarily represent the those of any associated organizations, businesses, or groups, social, religious,cultural or otherwise. The entirety of the podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Topics discussed and views expressed do not constitute medical advice. As the saying goes “Opinions are like bellybuttons, everybody’s got one”.
The World Through Zen Eyes Podcast
Ep. 21 - The Raft Gets You There, But Don't Carry It On Your Back
FAN MAIL - Send us a comment or a topic suggestion
Words fail us at the mountain's peak. That deafening silence—somehow both empty and filled with something profound—defies language yet demands our attention. This paradox sits at the heart of our exploration into Zen's complex relationship with language.
Many seekers stumble when they encounter Buddhism's warnings about the limitations of words. They mistake this caution for a wholesale rejection of language rather than understanding its specific context. The problem isn't ordinary conversation—it's what happens when words attempt to capture transcendent experiences or when we mistake the menu for the meal.
Through vivid metaphors and personal experiences, we unpack how language functions like rocket boosters—essential for achieving escape velocity from ordinary thinking but ultimately discarded when entering the vastness of direct experience. We examine the Buddha's famous raft metaphor: after expending tremendous effort building a raft to cross the river, would you then carry it on your back once you've reached the other shore?
We also explore the psychological dimension of fixed ideas—how past experiences can hijack our perception, like a child unable to cross a rug where he once saw a beetle. These mental patterns don't just color our world; they can freeze us in place, unable to absorb new information or move forward.
The path of Zen isn't about endless philosophical debate. Two people can argue forever about whether water in a cup is hot or cold without ever taking a sip. Direct experience trumps conceptual understanding every time.
Is Buddhism pessimistic because it acknowledges suffering? No more than windshield wipers are pessimistic for clearing rain from your view. We don't leave the wipers on constantly—we use them when conditions require better vision.
Join our conversation and share your thoughts. This podcast isn't meant to be a one-way broadcast but a living dialogue across time and space. What experiences have taken your words away?
Dr. Ruben Lambert can be found at wisdomspring.com
Ven. MyongAhn Sunim can be found at soshimsa.org
Hello, this is Nicolas Sotomayor from Los Angeles. The World Through Zen Eyes is brought to you by listeners like you. The World Through Zen Eyes is brought to you by listeners like you, the only podcast where you can get your Zen questions answered by real, live monks, not the AI kind. Consider making your humble donation today.
Speaker 3:Welcome back to another episode of the World Through Zen Eyes podcast. I'm Jan Ansenim here with Dr Ruben Lambert. Welcome back. Last was what the 20th, so this is the 21st episode, and usually the circles, the come-around circles, are like the even numbers. So like the 20th, right, right, right, because we're sort of full circle in a sense. Tiny little circle, but nonetheless Circles are circles, size don't matter, because somebody still and so we have to exhume. You know, it's the saying of beating a horse, beating a dead horse, I think Right right right.
Speaker 3:So now I thought the horse was dead. I thought it was buried. So I have to exhume a horse to beat it yet again.
Speaker 1:And I say this Resurrect, resurrect.
Speaker 3:Yes. So I say this because yet again, the idea of relationship of Zen to language came up as a question. Naturally, I believe the person did hear the initial episode of the words on words or whatever it was. Um, we discuss it, and, and here and there we discuss it. So, but nonetheless, I I think it's such a but nonetheless, I think it's such a difficult thing to organize, perhaps for people, because it can appear and there's another topic suggestion, and we'll tackle that in the next episode regarding the seeming pessimism of Buddhism and Zen and how people view it as sometimes a negative path.
Speaker 2:I believe that to be a myth that needs to be dispelled. Sure.
Speaker 3:So we'll talk about that one. Language has just in general such shortcomings right, we, we've, and, and that's the thing we said the story about.
Speaker 2:Well, this would be homophones right words that have multiple meanings. The story of the crib, move the crib. But I remember another time too. This would be a translation issue where language and culture, not having a good understanding of the language because you're from a different culture, can create a lot of misunderstanding. But we used to go often to the Chinese Buddhist temple, shifu's temple, and I recollect one time going to his bathroom. Oh, right.
Speaker 2:And right there on the toilet was a. I guess the toilet had some kind of a malfunction and it said do not. And then the curse word of going to the bathroom and doing number two or defecating, right. And I look at it, I was like whoa, it's a little jarring. You know, this is what's going on, this is a Buddhist temple we're supposed to teach you know proper use of words, right.
Speaker 3:Google Translate.
Speaker 2:And here we go. I had to go out and tell him Shifu, you're cursing.
Speaker 3:I had to make a new sign. You're cursing there.
Speaker 1:Did you know you were cursing? He had no idea, right.
Speaker 2:So he was just translating and he doesn't have the grasp of the actual use of the words right.
Speaker 3:And it is culture of the words right, that's right. And and it is culture. Again, it's what we mean by culture because, ultimately speaking, every, each individual person is their own culture, their own world, and we're not saying because then there's the sutras or the scriptures, right, that hold the teachings, and so what do we do with that? How do you think about that? And so maybe that's the way to approach it. So we have to understand, whenever we mention the shortcomings of language and things of that nature, is not the territory, comes in the whole idea of a cookbook if you rip out the page of peach cobbler and you eat it, there's no peach cobbler flavor in it. So the organization, when you hear within the Zen tradition and this is very much Zen thing whenever you hear this idea of words being inadequate and language falling short, it's not talking about a conversation between two people on the last, the latest episode of I don't know what sitcoms out there currently.
Speaker 2:Yellowstone, yellowstone.
Speaker 3:Yellowstone. It's a popular show, so that's not, of course. That's not what we're talking about. We're going to use language and communicate and discuss ideas and things like that, and there's a need for it, right? There's a definition, a commonly used definition, perhaps somebody made for Zen.
Speaker 3:You know, you see it on websites frequently of Zen places and stuff that Zen is the mind-to-mind transmission outside of the scriptures, I think if I get it right, and this is largely what we're talking about, but it's also not the fact that we just are like, nah, we're not using language because we're cool or special or fancy or whatever. Yeah, we're not using language because we're cool or special or fancy or whatever. What it points to is that there is a place within the spiritual journey, if you want to call it, within one's Zen journey, where we get to a point where things are simply beyond language. It's not even that, you know, it doesn't suggest that the speaker doesn't have a vivid enough imagination to express what they want to express. It's just that there are. It's a wordless thing, and so this is the idea. So what we then get and the warnings regarding language within the Zen context essentially says is beware of how pigeon-toed you get in the words and what the words are saying, because, for one, they cannot fully explain a thing that is ephemeral.
Speaker 2:that makes me think of like we've done a lot of hikes and I think, uh, maybe around 2021, you and one of our Shindo members, rafael, were doing some peak bagging and I was able to join you guys on one of the trips and we went to the top of Mount Rogers and one of the things that I remember, and from other types of hikes that we've done, is the deafening silence that you can experience at the mountain peak. And yeah, I'm saying deafening silence, but that nowhere near captures what my experience was, because the experience was one of silence, but there was something there, Right?
Speaker 3:It wasn't silence. It wasn't silence, it was also something there.
Speaker 2:And then how do you just explain? It was just this again, overwhelming, peaceful silence, that I don't know how to put into words, but if you go there, then maybe you can know. But words for me in that moment fall short. Gob smacked, that's a word. I'd have to go to Webster for that one, right, but words for me in that moment, fall short, gobsmacked, that's a word.
Speaker 3:I'd have to go to Webster for that one that you're just sort of the gift of the gab, is the talking of gobsmacked. It just kind of takes the tongue out your mouth, takes the words out of you and it's sort of awe, behold the thing. That is awe, and sublime, and transcendent and all of those terms make a feeble attempt at trying to get this point across. Essentially, what we're talking about is I was teaching a healing arts class at one point in time and someone had taken up yoga also and we were working on a balance exercises, so lots of standing on one leg, and they borrowed from the yoga class this concept of you know, imagine a triangle of your foot, which is, you know, these are useful tools, right?
Speaker 3:So, your big toe, your pinky toe, your heel form this triangle and you want these three points to be balanced and that's you know that kind of thing and these things are useful things, and these things are useful things. But what happens? And even though clearly the person knows that the foot is not triangular, and no one would suggest or suspect that a person just doesn't know the shape of their foot and they're just thinking triangle, but it does create essentially the triangle, enters into the physiology and then we miss the middle toe. There, the there are five toes on the foot if you are proper foot endowed right and and so what it does?
Speaker 3:it skips over, it's a tool and it is as a tool to be used, as a tool to get to some place, so to get to a balance. So this idea of like, think of your foot as a triangle, it's a helpful thing, but it's not the foot and it also is not the sensation of the foot. It points, sort of it's the finger pointing to the moon, yeah, or the map is not the Right, the map is not the territory Right, and so the problem becomes. This becomes more and more so apparent and almost really stifling and really inhibiting and really crippling.
Speaker 3:Later on in the spiritual journey is when the experiences of certain meditation, the levels of meditation, have been, and again, in a sense, we entice to say oh, you know, there's a, if you continue meditation practice, you're going to feel X, y and Z, you're going to have such and such experience, you know whatever it may be, and they get exponentially fantastical. Sure, and that is where this kind of comes back and bites you. That is to say, you're sitting there and you, let's say, an emotion or a feeling or sensation or what have you, an experience comes to you and what the mind is going to do as the mind does, it's going to dredge up from the annals of history and its memorizations. You know, oh, this is this feeling, this experience I'm having. Ah, this experience is like the experience that Sunim talked about.
Speaker 3:This experience is what I read in X, y and Z book, what I saw in X, y and Z documentary, what I saw on TV, what I saw in a magazine, what I saw whatever right and Z documentary, what I saw on TV, what I saw in a magazine, what I saw whatever right. And so the mind is going to do this, because that's what the mind does, but it's going to do this. And as you're sitting there having your experience, you don't have the experience in a virgin state. You have the experience in a virgin state. You have the experience. And that experience becomes clouded by identifications, categorizations, by words, by what that means.
Speaker 3:Oh, because if that means that I'm having this experience, then the next experience is gonna be that thing that we heard about, that thing I've read about, et cetera, et cetera, and it will cleave itself into your mind. And the second you identify the experience as such experience, you will lose your experience, your real experience. The second you identify it by name, by what it it means, by where it supposedly stands within the trajectory, what, what landmark of the spirit journey am I currently on? Oh, I, I've seen a thing, I've heard a thing, I felt a thing, I've all of that. Whatever it may be. It's going to trigger the mind to wake up from its meditative state, into its regular daily state and it's going to ruin the experience. It's going to take away the experience, and this is where this comes back to bite us. This is perhaps why, as I'm saying this, this is perhaps why this may be the very reason why people find it so difficult to grasp. No, but I love reading books. Fine, no one's saying don't read books.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 3:No one's saying don't study. No one's saying. No one is saying that. What we're saying is in the context of genuine experience. The story you have read about said genuine experience will become an inhibiting factor when that experience comes, and so this is where the long ago stories frequently take us, to these places of practitioners who did the work. This is how you do meditation, this is what you do, and let's say they did the work and they weren't given the litany of fantastic experience. You're going to have the emotional state, whatever. Whatever. You're going to see a thing, you're going to hear a thing, you're going to fly. You're going to fly, you're going to whatever. Right, we read this stuff and it's interesting. Right, it's intriguing, it's enticing, but ultimately what it is is it's I don't know what to call it.
Speaker 2:Well, you can't dig out any of the benefits that you're describing by simply reading and knowing the steps, being able to regurgitate the steps. Step one, do such and such. Step two, do such and such. It's like knowing how to pick up a dumbbell and curl it. You can know all the names of the muscles, you can know all the tendons, all the bones, the exact movements, but you're not going to strengthen any of those things unless you put that exercise into practice. And I think that's where the hindrance occurs. There's a use for it, but understand the use for it.
Speaker 2:I think Ilbong Sunim, one of the great Zen masters of the Korean Zen lineage, highlighted this when he created his own je by naming it Ilbon Songyo John. So he recognized the need of the sutras, but highlighting that Zen is the actual putting into practice, the experiential. And if you just look at the, let's say, the academic curriculum in some professions, the way it's supposed to be, uh, done, let's say medicine, for example, it's you know, you have the academic portion of it and then you have the practicum, you have the internship, where you now have to take what you've learned and studied and go apply it, and in the initial steps, and we can talk about martial arts, for example, of any new activity that you're learning. You might, let's say, a front snap kick. You're going to know the steps, you're going to know the language associated with it, because someone's going to be teaching you and you're going to make associations. Okay, put your foot like this, bring your knee up, then snap.
Speaker 2:But then, when you get to a level of mastery, you abandon the script. But then, when you get to a level of mastery, you abandon the script. You don't throw in front of Snapkick right now as a black belt, thinking step one, step two, step three. It flows out of you naturally and in the same manner. I think that's where, in any mastery of a skill, they have to abandon the robotic. It's not you. Basically, you know and Sunim tells us that all the time you look at the book, you read the experience that somebody else's experience. It's not yours. And that's what I think we're trying to get at here is how do you let it inspire you, let it help you to understand? You know what you may encounter, but it's not yours. You have to make it yours, and I think zen is a beautiful tool that allows you to make all these benefits that you read about actually yours, to have it within your grasp, because then you can access it. Until then, it's just a fantasy, it's your imagination.
Speaker 3:And it's that very imagination, when triggered, is what it does. It takes away the experience, it clouds the experience, because it's not imagination, it imagines, it doesn't experience, it doesn't have the feeling of it. It imagines what it would be like.
Speaker 3:It imagines what it's going to be like, imagines what it's going to be like, so it creates a mirage of a thing based on, like you said, somebody else's experience. And so the relationship of language and Zen on one hand, we communicate, because so it's. You know, there's always a danger of skewing towards one side too much, and Yuk Cho Hennung kind of addresses that also. Now, yuk Cho Hennung was a sixth patriarch, he was a literate himself, as was our nojangim, as our monastic grandfather. And Yuk Cho Hyeonung addresses this In Yuk Cho Dangyong Sutra.
Speaker 3:He talks about this very rigid perspective of the no-language bit, because it is such a prevalent thing, but it's again also there's a sort of sickness about it, right, that no language, no talking, no thinking, no communication. No, you know, that kind of thing we're taking to an extreme, and we know that Zen is the path of the middle ground, not the path of extremes. And so Yukte Hanon sort of addresses one who would say that Zen cannot be encapsulated by language. No language can be used, or whatever the quotation exactly is, sort of no language can be used, or whatever the quotation exactly is. And so Yüksel Hanun suggests well, by saying no language, you're using language to say no language.
Speaker 3:So it kind of stands in opposition to the whole language doesn't suffice. Because if you declare that language doesn't suffice by mere declaration, that language doesn't suffice. Because if you declare that language doesn't suffice by mere declaration, that language doesn't suffice, you have used language to declare that language doesn't suffice. So essentially, that make no sense. And so, on one hand, what that suggests is that we mustn't be so fixated on this. No language can grasp it business, but also more so what the deeper and the actual point is that it's the experience, the practitioner, practicing not talking about the practicing, because this is where we get into these never-ending debates the philosophizing, the thing that the Buddha warned about, the philosophizing and you see this interaction commonly as almost like a part of the Zen culture. Also, you know, you'll have one person on one side say oh, you know, we have to do X, y and Z, and the other person.
Speaker 2:Sudden enlightenment versus gradual enlightenment.
Speaker 3:Once you start to get into those academic discussions it's just Dono donsu, dono donsu.
Speaker 2:Round and round, and round and round.
Speaker 3:Right, and that's exactly the idea, because that sudden alignment versus gradual dono donsu, dono jomsu is just forever and ever. And it does something. It's so strange because you could be clothed in your robes and you have your shaven head and you could be drinking your green teas and having this conversation that presents itself as supposedly some profound thing. But it's as worldly as conversations can get, splitting hairs one position entrenched in its position against another position entrenched in its position, right, two, let's say two monks talking back and forth and back and forth about this and this and this. Meanwhile, right, the Zen master may be looking and going I go, go do meditation, don't sit over here talking back and forth. That's the idea. So, again, it's philosophizing. This is the Yuk Cho Heng Nung's warning, in a sense, is don't discuss it if you truly hold to be true the fact that language cannot grasp and that's why there's a place, because we need conversation, we need communication with one another, right, but there's a place where that language does fall off, and the thing is, we get to that place and on that boundary of that there's a lot of discussion about the thing. So we've gotten to a precipice let's call it the solid ground of language and we've gotten to the precipice of it.
Speaker 3:Now we're looking over the abyss, if you will, and the abyss is devoid of soil because it's abyss and so we haven't a thing to talk about. We're standing on the edge of it, standing on dirt. We could talk about the dirt. Oh, look, there's a grass there and there's a rock and there's a pebble and there's a shell and there's this kind of dirt and a grass there and there's a rock and there's a pebble and there's a shell and there's this kind of dirt and that kind of dirt and there's clay and there's mud and there's jabber, jabber, jabber, jabber, right, so we could discuss the place we're standing on, but we cannot discuss the thing that we're facing, which is absent and devoid of all the things. They're in the abyss, if you will right the spaciousness, the void, whatever. You know, I'm just using words here but there's no rock and there's no soil, and there's no grass and there's no tree and there's no thing. But we could stand on this precipice talking about the thing that hasn't the things.
Speaker 3:So, if that's truly one's position, you come to that place and you shut up. It's truly one's position, you come to that place and you shut up, and this is kind of akin to your experience, what you were talking about. We come to a lovely place. Sometimes the ocean or sunrise will do it, or a flower will do it, or the glimmer of this rising sun in the eye of an ant right, the reflection of all the dandelions and the one dangly drop of morning dew that's just about to break off the tip of the blade of grass. You look at it and you shut up. Why? Because it's just awe, and what you do is you just then are there, you take it in, you soak it and you let that wash over you, and the second you make an attempt to talk about it, you bastardize the thing, you taint it, you taint it.
Speaker 2:I thought of this example as you were talking, I was thinking about a NASA ship taking off into space. If the rocket booster were words, it helps you achieve escape velocity, it gets you to the edge of the earth, but then, once you go into the gong, into the emptiness, the vast emptiness of space, you don't need that. So it sheds the rocket and it falls back to the earth. It cannot help you. Once you cross out of the earth's atmosphere and it's not necessary, because you know one thing about space is, once you move in a certain direction, you move in that direction infinitely. You don't need the rocket and the weight and all of that.
Speaker 3:So and if you crash into meteor, then that explosion of it is going to announce your arrival that's why that's why Zen masters have a sort of great kefal when they, when they reach the alignment, the ha ha, and you know they make a great declaration that's crashing into, crashing into the thing yeah, so words.
Speaker 2:there's a point where words fall short. Words are not necessary and you have to move past it and crash into your great enlightenment.
Speaker 3:It's also a useful way to think about just how much reliance there is on words For an experience as a placeholder for an experience. Oh, you went to that restaurant. Yes, how was, how was your whatever meal? Oh, it's fantastic. What does that mean? Right, oh, it was, it was. It was, you know, wasn't too dry, it wasn't too, you know, soggy. Okay, what does that mean? And we could go on and on and on and on, right.
Speaker 2:And the other person, Salty. That's just one of a whole combination of flavors that you could have experienced right.
Speaker 3:And that racket image that you brought up.
Speaker 3:We have that within the very Zen teachings, the Buddha talks about a raft building right, clearly, and it's the amount of time and and and you know the collecting the trees and and weaving rope and and tying the things together.
Speaker 3:And you go out there and it sinks and you're like, oh man, I get. You know, you try, refine it and we'll put all of this work and time and blood and sweet and sweat and tears and effort, and so there's an investment, in a sense, into creating this raft, and once buoyant, and once you know, you realize, oh wait, but the current is so we need some kind of ore or a mast or something sails or some kind of propulsion capacity, and so all of that work collectively to get across to the undershore. When you, however, get to the undershore, you don't pick up the raft and carry it on your back because you've arrived. And so this is this very point, and you know, in that story the Buddha is even talking, more profoundly so, about the very teachings of Zen. They were used as tools, they were used as the raft.
Speaker 3:But once you get to the other side, once you know for yourself, once you see for yourself, you then, and only then, really see the tremendous amount of shortcomings and you understand only then how these tools were used to get you there. And so this is again, it's not disparagement of language, it's a understanding of its function. That's what we're after. It's not and this is also true with our kojongkwanyom it's the same very principle. Kojongkwanyom are these fixed ideas that are sort of unmovable in the mind. You know the things we'll fixate around the arguments, the perspectives, the point of views. I mean, we've talked about gojong kwanyeom before a number of times and so understanding when I am entrapped by a gojong kwanyeom where it has come out of the unconscious, the chamja isik mind, into the current thinking, and where my perception is skewed towards some fixated viewpoint.
Speaker 2:I just want to add a little. We're talking about words, but let me illustrate the way it comes out. It doesn't come out just like hello hi, I'm here. Right, it's like an asteroid crashing into Earth, right, kojunkwan is your habit. Whatever you're thinking about.
Speaker 3:When that guy shows up, it pushes everyone out the way and it takes over that habit and it's certainty there's a terrific and horrific certainty that has that. These things, because this is the foundation that really hinders people from really growing because they are sure.
Speaker 2:You know, I know that if I go back to that school or that restaurant or to that play or whatever it is, or to that city, I know that such and such X, y and Z is going to happen.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Really, are you sure?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the city might not be there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the city might not be there, the same people that were there. Everything is different. Let's say, someone I don't know pickpocketed you or whatever. It was right. You cannot just declare the whole city to be full of pickpockets because it happened one time, but Kojunkwanion will declare it to be certain that will happen once again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's not a living thing. Then. And again, this isn't to say because one someone might dredge up a counter-argument to say well, if you've been to a place, you went hiking on the way to Woodstock, when we go to the Tibetan temple, and then there's the mountain with the observation, the fire tower, the observation tower, just before you get to the tower there's a sign for rattlesnake Right, and from time to time on those trips, people have mentioned that they saw the rattlesnake even on the mountain top. And so, again, what we're not suggesting is that you ignore history, that you, you know that, oh, the saints, ah, the rattlesnake, that's, you know, that's yesterday. Today is no rattlesnake. That's not what that suggests. What it suggests is we have to understand the mind working, the mind doing what it's currently doing. Have I been triggered? You know, we could put it in that context. It's a common, it's a common word nowadays, you know. Have I been triggered?
Speaker 3:um, now I, I, I might have just opened up a can of worms over here pandora's box with the word triggered because everybody's, you know the, the commonality now, the term triggered and everything being triggering, I'm talking about more psychologically, kind of within the context of psychology right, that the triggering things trigger a very visceral response to a situation.
Speaker 2:So what we're saying is In that moment when you're triggered and the stale, old past ideas come into the moment and kick any other possibility out and it just literally hijacks your way of thinking right.
Speaker 2:No new information can enter your mind. Yeah, you don't even bother to check or look. Were there any rattlesnakes on the road? And recently I had this experience with my son. We were at my sister's pool and there are a lot of like the water tracks, beetles and on the rug near there there was a beetle a dead beetle on there, and he had saw that and then we had to go inside. You had to cross the rug but he couldn't go through it barefoot, Even though I checked and I looked and there was nothing there the rug.
Speaker 3:He couldn't cross the rug. He couldn't cross the rug, so he couldn't get inside to go to use the bathroom. Went around the rug.
Speaker 2:Well you couldn't you use the bathroom. Went around the rug well you couldn't. You had to go through the rug. I had to put shoes on him and then he was like he didn't want his foot hitting the beetle, but then I had to. After we got through him you know he took care of the potty I had to very slowly help him to let go right to realize that yes, it was there, it was clean. It's not always going to be there, but he had to examine further, examine the rug and see it and whatever. But at that moment he was frozen. He could not traverse the landscape of the rug the rug even though his biology was saying I gotta do pp.
Speaker 2:Right, he couldn't get across it. Yeah, because that beetle was there, stuck in the rug right, and so no new information enters and people become frozen.
Speaker 3:Right the correlation tether of rock equals beetle, I mean when you think of agoraphobia and you could open the door and the person stands on a threshold and they can't cross it magically, as if it were. So these things that hold us and captivate us so on one hand captivate us, so on one hand they distract us Essentially within, going back to the sort of meditative practice and the meditation experience and meditative absorption, samme, and things of that nature the idea really is that they interject themselves into the experience and by doing so, uproot the experience or soil the experience, making it. I mean, I haven't the words of how bizarre, absurd, ridiculous, stupid and annoying that state is when you are just there and then you have, oh, but ah, this experience.
Speaker 2:It robs you completely of the next moment. You can't enter, you can't, you can't enter, you can't, you can't enter. It's like a rug you can't move past. It's a rug in your life, you cannot enter Right, and so that's the idea.
Speaker 3:So when we, right out of the get-go, are taught and trained still, even still, because we use language to teach, we use language to explain, etc. Etc. We communicate. These are instructions and that they have their function and that they do what they need to do. However, their only purpose is to get us to do the thing, not to think about doing the thing, but to do the thing. Not to necessarily discuss the thing, but to do the thing, not to sit and, you know, for eons discuss. Oh, you know, is it tonodonsu, tonodonsu? Is it gradual enlightenment or is it sudden enlightenment? Is it a thing? You know what is the? It will never end. The one will never enter into enlightenment.
Speaker 2:The distance between you and enlightenment and a new, groundbreaking experience is wider than the Grand Canyon, because it's like the Dono Donsu. What is the other one? Dono Donsu, dono Jonsu, dono Jonsu. It's like you put a cup there on the table and I'm on this side and you're on that side, and it has water in it, clear water, and we're debating whether it's hot or it's cold, whether it's salty or whether it's flat.
Speaker 1:Right, Not having tasted any of it.
Speaker 2:Exactly 10,000 years going back and forth. As to why, crouching down, looking at it from different angles, holding one eye shut and looking at it Until you taste it, like you said, you'll never know.
Speaker 3:So just sitting there talking about it for days and weeks and months and years and lifetimes. So that's a good image and for the audience.
Speaker 2:there is this point of entering even from a psychological perspective, because I wholeheartedly believe and research supports this that meditation can bring people to a new point of freedom, where it can cut the tethers of the past experiences that have haunted you and have binded you in place and not allowed you to move into a feeling that you desire, such as happiness and peace and contentment. Meditation can really bring you to a state if you can learn and apply the things that we're talking about to focus and not allow the noise or the distractions to hijack that moment and literally pull you back from all of the progress that you were making, because it will hinder you at that moment once you allow that to become the center of your focus.
Speaker 3:And I think this is a you know, we could kind of take this as a segue into the next episode, if in fact we do. I don't want to make any promises, but if in fact we do end up talking about the supposed pessimism.
Speaker 2:You know how we feel about isms.
Speaker 3:Isms calls schisms Exactly isms kohls schisms, because you know, then the question for the listener who tried to explain the the setup is that they were talking to someone and someone said they said I'm a Buddhist and someone said, oh, buddhism is so negative, only talks about suffering. And our member tried to. You know, they said that, they tried to explain as best they could that Buddha talks about the transcendence of suffering, etc. Etc. But, they felt maybe it wasn't sufficient enough, or you know, Don't worry, we got your back.
Speaker 1:Whoever that member is.
Speaker 3:So for one you know, if a person truly thinks and no one truly thinks that, well okay, I'm not going to say what people think. Perhaps If the person truly thinks that there's no suffering in their life, then they don't have a need for the Buddhist path.
Speaker 3:That's fine, you do you, then I learn from you. Well then I would ask a question when you're driving and it rains, do you put on your wipers? When you had splatter of dirt or mud and bugs on your windshield, do you use your wiper with a little squirt of you know wiper washer with?
Speaker 2:fluid to wash your windshield. If you're going to travel to Death Valley, where it's scorching hot, do you not bring water with you?
Speaker 3:Well, that's the thing as we're going through life, right is then because? Then because then this is just the position is all of the Buddhist teaching talks about suffering, and that's the thing. And then, by the same logic, one could say if you're driving and your windows are dirty, you never clean them, why just talk about dirty windows? Why have wipers? It doesn't mean all your wipers are always on. It means when the need is, you tend to that which inhibits your vision.
Speaker 2:That's suffering, because more suffering will come if you don't, which inhibits your vision, with a change, that suffering, that a more scurvy will come if you don't and you're driving, not only can you get hurt, but you hurt other people sure that's why you know it is.
Speaker 3:It's an understandable thing, because I think we all. It's a very common thing for people to to consider it because, oh, suffering and the suffering, we'll address it. Yeah, I mean, what else can we say? Anyway, that sounds like it's our time.
Speaker 2:Sure, we're going to end with the sound of one hand clapping there. It is there, it is there it is yes, I'm.
Speaker 3:Milgan Sanyam. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Speaker 2:I'm Dr Ruben Lambert. If you like what you heard, pass it on to a friend. Share our podcast so that other people can be informed, right?
Speaker 3:Right, if you are a listener, I would really love we would certainly to feature your suggested topic or answer perhaps or discuss your suggested question. Right, and I say this on the account that, in as much as this is, I think many people listen to this. Very few people watch the video of it, because it's just a video of two heads talking, but I think more people listen to it and they listen to it perhaps while driving or doing things. I don't suppose anyone's sitting deeply engrossed, eyes closed, and listening to the great wisdom flowing. I'd rather we not be a radio station, sure that just simply pumps stuff out in like a, you know, like out into the into the ether. I would love for this to be almost a, perhaps a delayed discussion.
Speaker 3:you know, we have a conversation, I say a thing and two seconds later you say a thing and we've said a thing, and if a person listens to this episode seven years from now, it's just a two seconds that's been stretched out so how about a conversation?
Speaker 3:you know what you, what your positions, what your thoughts are on the topics discussed. Do you agree or disagree? Do you want to kind of isolate some element that you heard and you wanted addressed? So please try not to think of these podcasts as just a broadcast of something. This is the other reason why language and its relationship with Zen has this kind of interesting relationship. Books don't know you personally. You can't ask a book and it will not answer your question. We read a book, our mind scans, tries to pluck out things that are, that are echoing within one's mind and heart and life experience. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, but it won't answer anything because it can't hear you and and I would love for this podcast to be treated and thought of in the same way we speak. We are alive, you are alive. Speak back.
Speaker 3:Let's have a sort of like. I said it might be a delayed conversation, so do send us the fan mail. You go to the Buzzsprout page. It's there. You can text us, email us. You could address it in person when you're here if you are a member of the Zen Center.
Speaker 2:And if you're not, we welcome you to visit, Of course absolutely yes, visit.
Speaker 3:So I would like for this to be not just yet another, because we have a sufficient amount of programming on TV. On the radio, podcasting has become a thing.
Speaker 2:Rumor has it, it's being done everywhere, 24-7, wherever you turn.
Speaker 3:That's right, but I would like it to be more interactive and I say this to all of our listeners who hear the conversations and, one would hope, have a thought about what is being said. Have an aha or a nah, both are welcome.
Speaker 2:Right, and this is the true spirit of Zen Buddhism Right, you ask a question, the Buddha answered. So, in essence, we're building a modern day sutra here, right?
Speaker 3:We don't want it to be. You know, it was always intended to be, if viewed correctly as a living tradition it's living it's breathing, it's the holy communion of the exhalation of one is annihilation of the other. The way that we are in communion with plants and trees and and plankton and and seaweeds and whatever we are, there's a back and forth. So let's have it. That's my rant, all right, until next time, take care of yourselves and each other. From my heart to yours.
Speaker 2:Have a good day.
%20(2).png)
.png)