So I wanted you. Good morning everyone.
Happy Moody Day. So I wanted to talk a little bit
about Birdie Day. It is the day that we celebrate
the awakening of the Buddha and why we do constantly teach.
The Buddha was just a man. We respect him, Revere him as
our teacher, because after awakening he decided to stick
around and continue to teach others what to do to find that
same awakening for themselves. There are, I guess, a lot of
reasons that we do continue to celebrate the awakening.
One of them is to thank him for sticking around and teaching us
the paths of the Dharma. The other becomes a bit more
religious based and on the mystical side of things.
The There's a non canonical collection of stories about the
Buddha called the Buddha Cara, and a lot of the things you may
have heard about the Buddha's life probably came from the
Buddha Cara rather than from the Buddha's own words in the
sutras. For instance, his the story that
at his birth he was glowing golden and stood up as soon as
he was born, took seven steps and declared this is my last
incarnation yet not in the sutras anywhere.
It's in the Buddha Cara, but also in the Buddha Cara.
It is at the moment of his awakening, it's said that he
declared I have awakened with me all the 100,000 beings.
Now 100,000 beings in Indian culture at the time was simply
the way of saying all beings. 100,000 was used as the the
measure of a huge amount. It still is.
Interestingly enough it when you're in India, they don't
report celebrities valued net value in millions of rupees,
they report them in locks of rupees and a lock LAKH is
100,000. So they count things in
divisions of 100,000 rather than divisions of 1,000,000.
So just a little interesting carryover.
But what that statement about or has been interpreted to Maine
varies by the school of Buddhism you're at, and many, especially
in the devotional schools of Buddhism, Thai Buddhism
especially, that became almost a mystical gift to people that
when the Buddha awoke, a wave of awakening went out and affected
all beings. We even carry this over in Zen a
little bit with the notion of Buddha nature.
But The thing is that, and there are some devotional sects of Zen
that this is a mystical thing that we wouldn't have Buddha
nature had the Buddha not awakened.
So it kind of ties back to that statement of with me, all the
100,000 beings awakened. But the way that for traditional
Zen and the way that we and pragmatic Buddhism think about
Buddha nature is more than it is simply the natural state of all
beings, that all beings have this the state of compassion and
awareness and awakening to the present moment, living in the
present moment and doing what is necessary in that present
moment. That is our natural state.
But we get thrown out of it by habituated behaviors that are
taught to us by our parents, by society.
By now, media were thrown out of this natural state, and that's
what we have to find again. That's why Dugan can say that
practicing zazen is simply the act of being a Buddha.
Because in sitting zazen we are sitting in our Buddha state, our
Buddha nature. We are coming back to that
realization that we live in this present moment and that we need
to to act in this present moment in ways that will be for the
betterment of all beings. So all this Bodhi Day, I would
like for all of us to think about what that Buddha nature
means to them. Think about how much do I live
in my Buddha nature? How often am I aware of and
present in this present moment? Not as a scorecard where you
should give yourself bad marks. I was hardly in there in this
present moment at all today, bad Buddhist, bad Buddhist, but
rather simply as a way of acknowledging this is something
I need to work on. I need to be more present.
I well, now I'm actually driving prior to sunrise, but for a
period there I was driving to my therapy appointments right at
sunrise. So I was going east on 670 while
the sun was rising, and I would consciously bring myself back
from fighting the other drivers on 670 to noticing the sunrise.
And I had tried to do that throughout the day, to bring
myself back, to notice what's truly going on in the present
moment and tear myself away from all these habituated tasks and
thoughts that are demanded of us in modern society.
So please use the morning day celebration as a jumping off
point to do that, to allow yourself to to notice throughout
the day. Hey, this present moment is fill
in the blank because mind you, it's not necessarily going to be
good. Some present moments are bad, it
just happens. But the more you notice the
present moment, I think the more you'll notice that far more of
them are good, the bad. And and spending time in them is
spending time with yourself, caring about yourself, caring
about others, and is a a place that we want to be.
So when you think about Bodhi Day, think about it in terms of
thanking the Buddha for teaching us about this Buddha nature that
we all have and bringing us to a Dharma of practices that will
allow us to live in it as much as we can.
My husband and I do very different time wasting things on
the computer. He dance dues and videos and
find some interesting things, but I always think always over
there wasting time, whereas I get addicted to a particular
computer game at a time. And I know it's a waste of time,
but you know, I do it. And I've been trying to do that
last. And there's one I play that's
exactly 5 minutes long and I'm always going just one more, just
one more time. And the other day when I finally
got up and I walked down the hall to the bathroom and I was
like, Oh yeah, I was going to do that.
Oh yeah, I was going to do that. Oh yeah, I was going to do that.
And none of those things take very long, but I was distracting
myself and that was a good reminder.
And none of them were things I was like dreading.
It's just. Yeah, it's amazing how often,
how easily we allow ourselves to be distracted.
And well, it's not amazing because much of modern culture
is built to keep us distracted. And so it is really a a fight to
remain aware. And there's nothing wrong with
even that awareness being, oh, I'm sitting here playing another
round of this game rather than getting up and scrubbing the
toilet. Fine, that is aware of it.
And the first step to cutting down our use of distractions is
to be aware of the fact that we are doing.
Without the awareness, we can't change the behavior.
Remember that the threefold ethic of pragmatic Buddhism is
awareness, acceptance, and action.
So the first thing we need to do is become aware of our behaviors
and thoughts, then acknowledge that they are the reality.
Yes, I will come home and pop down on my chair, watch mindless
TV for an hour or two. When I allowed myself to go over
that, then I began to say, OK, Nope, time to get up and do
something else. Yeah, Ark has raised his hand.
Yeah, hi. Everyone.
So I used to play a game called Tom Clancy's End War.
It was a game that you could play on PlayStation 3 and other
consoles back then, and we used to try to finish the game as
fast as we could all the round because sometimes the rounds
could be anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours.
And there was a a clan. Or a group.
Because you know, it's it's you, you, you call them anyway.
So their name was NTTW, so and that would translate to no time
to waste. So it's very interesting that
efficiency is the big factor when whether today's modern
technology that the robovac that vacuums the flow for.
You or. So on and so forth.
Like a food processor would be a good thing for, for the kitchen
that people use it. It's all about efficiency.
And then and, and it's, it's like that allows you to do more
things at the cost of compressing time, which is very
fascinating because then you can say, does that Take Me Out of
the present moment if that was allocated to me for me to do it.
So efficiency plays a big factor in it.
And and I find it very fascinating because, you know,
people always have the same time is money.
So I always try to relate all of these things together.
Yeah, thanks. So I'm in the, I'm in the lab
right now, so I apologize for the noise.
But whenever I think about being present or not being present, it
always relates to what emotion am I manufacturing in order to
not be aware of my own actions or my own emotions.
Like I have the same struggles with splitting my attention that
most people do, whether it's like game scrolling or whatever.
But recently I've been gone through a real metamorphosis
when it comes to recognizing how much emotional gymnastics I do
to avoid the underlying issues that I need to face.
So to me, recognizing those issues and trying to be gentle
with myself while realizing and working through them is my
version of trying to be with my Buddha nature.
Yeah, well observed DD and wonderful to have you here on a
Sunday. Thanks.
Yeah, to Doc's point also there is that constant struggle of are
these these things that have become time savers?
What are they saving the time for us to do?
And there's nothing wrong with having efficient machines
around. The question is, what are you
doing with the time that they free up?
And if you're simply using that time to sink into some
distraction, then they're not doing you any good.
But if you're turning that time to creative tasks or even self
improvement tasks, reading a book, self enjoyment, reading a
book, honestly watching the show that you really get something
out of, There's a there's a huge difference between what we often
do in front of the TV, which is plop down and watch whatever the
hell is on for however long it runs.
And there's a difference between that and sitting down and
watching a show that you're really getting something out of.
One of the ways to tell is could you be argued because usually
it's are you are you doing scrolling while you're watching
this show? If so, it's probably not when
you're getting anything out of so it it all comes back and damn
the man from constantly pounding this into my head.
But it's so true, Eubank says Rick mirror of rigorous self
honesty, looking at of what we're doing and instead of
blaming the activity, look at its effect on our lives.
So I really don't like the people who say, no, I'm going to
limit my television watching to one hour a day.
OK, well what if there's a very edifying 90 minute show on that
you would have gotten a lot out of?
You're cutting that out because you have drawn this arbitrary
line. Instead, let's say I'm going to
focus my television watching on things that inform or entertain.
Nothing wrong with entertainment folks.
Me in a way that enhances my Buddha nature instead of saying
I must sweep the floor every day.
Somebody gives you a rumba for Christmas, Take it and take that
time that it's saving you and do something else.
So this this idea that we have to turn down technological
innovation to return to our natural selves.
While it's often true, and it's often the case that yes, we
embrace these things simply to sync more of our time into
distraction, it is also true that sometimes we can embrace
these things and sync that time into creative and useful
activities. So turn that down mirror of
rigorous self honesty on yourself and your actions.
Well, in fairness, I think some people limit themselves in that
way because they know it's an addictive behavior.
Like I had a friend who did the South Beach Diet and he said
we've had cookies at work and I said man it's going to take me 3
days to eat this cookie. It's so big.
And he said I don't eat anything with sugar in it.
And I was like, why would you do that?
And he said, because I don't want one cookie, I want 12
cookies. And there is there is no, it's
like an alcoholic, there is no such thing as one drink.
So like if you know that this certain activity is going to
come to you for the next 10 hours, if you sit down saying I
can't do this at all as sometimes the only way people
can cope. Very true, and you were very
correctly turning that nerve for just rigorous self honesty back
on my statement and because I shouldn't have said it that way.
You're right, for some people that's the way to do it and it's
simply not for me. But that doesn't mean anything
except to me, so thank you. DD Damn cuts through it.
I was going to say, that's why I'm here.
DDS Darma name, by the way, translates as the one who cuts
through. Trying to figure out how to say
this. When I think of Buddha nature,
sometimes it is helpful to think that.
We are of. I like to think of it as
something like we are of the nature that we have Buddha
nature, right? And having Buddha nature is like
having a muscle. So this this being in the moment
thing, it sounds great, but it is also in some ways exhausting
to our brain right when we do scroll.
Think of the last time you did that and how much you actually
retained from the activity or the last time that you were
playing the video game of some sorts, how much your brain
actually retained from the thing that you were doing.
And it's usually very, very little, but I know that the last
time that I was in the moment, I have very precise memories of
the things that unfolded. And it is very difficult to
maintain that for a period of time.
And so this is where we talk about practice, right?
It is your Buddha nature is something that you have and it
is something like a muscle where if you need to access it, you
can, you can, you can lift weights and your muscles become
better. But if you come and try and lift
way more weight for a consistent period of time, you were just
going to hurt yourself and you were going to turn your stall
paw. So I think it's important when
we think about Bodhi day and Buddha nature and this thing
that you have that it is a, it is, it is not a thing that you
are inherently good at and can do whenever you want for a
prolonged period of time. It is a thing that you, you, you
get better at overtime if your intention is there to practice.
And so for people like myself where it's like, Oh my God,
being present all the time, that sounds like a lot.
It is, you know, but it is something that's the Buddha's
gift to us was showing us that man, if you just do it and you
practice, one, you'll get better at it and you can do it more
often. But two, it's fun.
Great. So do the thing, right?
So that's where I think if I do the globe today.
Thanks, Drew. OK.
Thank you all.