So many are saying Where is God when I need him? Especially today. Many feel deserted and alone. But it is only that we have been looking in the wrong direction, searching everywhere but at home. The surprising answer to the question tells us instead, that all we need is right here with us in our everyday life. In fact it is right at the kitchen table. It is only that we have been looking elsewhere, searching all around. These episodes offer specific ways in which we can encounter God, fulfillment, enlightenment right here in our daily lives, wherever we go.
We have so many expectations about what is going to happen, what needs to happen and how to manage everything. So many hours are spent planning how to navigate the twists and turns of life, to be ready for everything. Yet, most of the things we expected, don't happen. And what we don't expect arrives on its own. Our reactions to this dominate our life, anger, upset, immediately trying to change, fix or alter what's going on. We're so busy opposing and altering life as it comes, that we have little time to experience it directly. To fully taste and digest what's going on, to live life truly. When we are willing to stop listening to our frantic reactions and running around, simply sit still with all that's happening, meet it, know it directly, it no longer threatens us. As we make friends with life, it makes friends with us. And beyond that, to our great surprise we see that there is no need to manage everything, life has its own rhythm and order, and when we do not oppose it, it is entirely beneficial for all.
Good morning, good morning. It's Brenda Eshen Shoshana back with another episode of Zen Wisdom for Your Everyday Life. And here we are on the cusp of winter, holiday time, all kinds of holidays, all kinds of celebration of our life, of love, of each other. We're celebrating each other, really, because that is a wonderful, wonderful way to celebrate life. Our friendships, our relationships, our meeting, our parting, all that has gone on in the story of our life. So many stories. And they seem to come out, they seem to repeat themselves on the holiday season, Thanksgiving, Christmas preparation, Hanukkah, all of the holidays, the many holidays. And we we it's a time really where there's a lot of remembrance of days gone by. The past, other celebrations, who was here, who wasn't, and like that. It's an intensity of memory, a time of a lot of memories and comparison of those days and the way it is now. Who's here, how the world is, how we are. And a lot of that comparison brings a lot of pain with it. Interesting, isn't it? Or always comparing. How was it then? How is it now? Different conditions all the time. I had a wonderful conversation this morning with a beautiful person whose birthday it is today, and he said, Oh I remember growing up, everything seemed so solid. The world was so secure, it felt like nothing could ever possibly change. We would grow older, but we'd always be together, the whole family, the friends, the neighborhood, everything like that. And then everything changes. He's a bit older now. He said, when I was young, I was always startled by all the changes, the different eras, going to college, going to getting married. The changes, changes. We're always startled. We do believe that we're living in a solid era, a solid world. That our home will always be there, our family will always be there, whatever we loved will always be right there waiting for us. That's the assumption when we're in the moment and in the experience. Takes quite a while to realize that this world is not fixed. It is nothing but change. Continuing growth, change, discovery, meeting, parting, loving, not loving. Constant. Constant, constant. That is the very nature, it seems, of our life and of our being. And one of the great things we learn in this world is how do we deal with this change? How to be with it, how not to be so attached and clinging to one moment or one person or one way of life. I would say we need to expect the unexpected. I love that title. Expect the unexpected because it's true. Rather than be thrown off our balance by the unexpected, rail against it, carry on. The first step is to expect the unexpected to be ready, to be open for things to keep changing, changing, changing. And then we're not thrown off our seat when it happens. Oh yes, this is the next breath. It's not the same as the breath that just went before it. It actually can't be. It's a new breath. But we don't realize that. We take every breath as the same because we're not aware of it. We're not present to it. Just the way we take a person as being the same one day and then the next and then the next. No, no, no. Every day, very different. Something new happening. We don't even imagine that could be so. And a relationship too. Growing, growing, changing, changing. We keep trying to pull the person back to the way they were or to push them forward to be the way we want them to be. But all of that is a great rejection of this moment, of what is here, right now. And you know, when we're very comfortable with change, when we permit it, when we expect it, when we allow it, then we can become very creative and we can become very loving toward all the new moments. And when action is needed, beneficial, productive, healthy action will emerge on its own. The action won't be to change things, to make them the way we want them, to pull them back to the way they were. It'll be action that's relevant for now, right now, and that's good for both of us, or all of us. Action that appears from a very different basis. We're not raging against the moment. We're not raging against the person, or some of us raging against the universe, because it's different from what we thought, what we expected, what we felt it would be. This seems so, so, so simple. And it is simple, very simple, but it's also extremely powerful and profound. You know, all that is really profound is simple. Very simple, and it's in front of our eyes all the time. Very profound. To know that we're swimming in an ocean with high tide and low tide and turns a horizon. We don't know what's behind the horizon. And we're swimming actually in the unknown. How do you do that? How do you navigate in the unknown? And I might add, in the unknowable. How do you do that? How do you how do you make your way in the unknowable vastness of life and and of change? It's a wonderful, wonderful question. And whether we say it out loud or not, underneath, it's always there. How do we where do I go next? What do I do? What's behind the horizon? What am I going to do when high tide comes? Right now, it's good, I'm in low tide. I can swim more easily. So the how do I these questions all boil down to how do I live my life? How do I what's going on? These are the Zen questions, the questions that Zen practice addresses. It's very fundamental to Zen practice, these questions. Or you could call them koans as we do in Zen. Where am I? What am I? Of course, these questions are universal. Universal. And it's a very mysterious process also to find some direction and some. I won't say answer because we're not going to get the kind of answer that we get when we go into a science book and look, one plus one is two, plus four is six, and like that. It's not that kind of answer. But it's a knowingness that will emerge. It's insight, different from an answer. Insight comes from a different part of us. It just arises and we know it. We don't question it. It's clear. Oh, really? We get all kinds of insights. Moments when we we know what's happening, what to do, questions we've had. Maybe we may not have even have articulated them, but they're answered. They're answered. And the way they're answered, the way insight comes in Zen practice is through actually embodying each moment, just living it a hundred percent fully, welcoming every single moment, really welcoming it in a very profound way, embracing it, becoming it. So if there's pain coming up, we're not fighting it off, we're not trying to analyze it, we're not trying to blame someone for it, we're simply really being that pain, experiencing it, you unifying ourselves with it in the silence. We're not usually we're not in this silence. Well, the pain came from this, and this is this is this person's fault, and what can I do so I don't have to have this again? We stop all that. Commentary, commentary, commentary. We stop it, and we just radically experience what's what's here, what we're feeling, what we're sensing, what we're seeing, we experience in many different ways. But we're silent. We're not rejecting it, and we're not paying attention to the endless thoughts about it. We are just with it, with the experience itself. Tasting it, eating it up, digesting it, swallowing it, taking the nourishment from it, discarding the waste, letting the waste go. Just like when we eat a delicious meal, we taste it fully, swallow it. Our body digests it, it takes the nourishment, it discards the waste. It's a beautiful paradigm for life itself. This is contrary to the way most of us deal with our lives and our experience. We want to navigate. Now, when we're doing it in the Zen Wave, no thought of navigating. In fact, we just sit with it. We let the experience navigate us. Let it guide us. Let it reveal itself to us. How beautiful is that. Actually, it's very beautiful because it takes a lot of the stress away that I'm in charge of this and I've got to know what to do. Well, as in practice would say you already know what to do, you know everything. Just be silent and let yourself know what you know, what is revealed. Be with it. Be still. Stop racing around trying to avoid it or to control it or to conquer the experience or to conquer life. We pay attention to our thoughts about it rather than to it. Our thoughts are always mixed up and changing and conflicting. But the experience is not. It's it. We're with it fully, and it teaches us in the silence. We don't know in our head maybe what we're learning, but the body knows, the spirit knows, the being knows, knows how to navigate, whatever that means. Better not to navigate, just sit on the cushion and let it navigate us, as I said, let it guide us. And it will. It definitely will, when we're silent and still and not combating everything that's coming to us in our life. Usually we're fighting it, we're opposing everything, fighting it off, demanding that it turn out differently. So in this practice, we actually turn our entire way of being around. Now, I don't mean our entire way of true being, but our entire conditioned responses fight, oppose, yell, demand, we we really let that go. We just sit when you sit still and you don't pay attention to those impulses when they arise or those kinds of thoughts. They will arise, of course, because we're used to it. And so habits arise. But if we don't follow it and we don't pay attention to it, we don't give it much credence. We're too absorbed in eating up the meal of life, tasting it, digesting it, finding out what it is really. What is this? And as we do so, more and more, there's a reason is called practice, because we need to do it again and again and again, day by day by day. It's like you brush your teeth. You wouldn't say, Oh, I brushed my teeth last month. No, no, it's it's something we do. We shower, we we put ourselves in some kind of order. And when we sit on the cushion, we're doing the same thing daily, daily, daily. It's the it's the ongoingness of it, the momentum that is so radically important. It is. Even if you can only sit ten or fifteen minutes in the morning. It's a little bit. Or in the evening, or whenever you can. Seems like nothing, but it's not nothing, I promise you. It builds strangely. It has its own momentum, its own power, its own force. When I started to sit, I could only sit for five minutes. It was what woo! My legs wouldn't my knees wouldn't go down to the cross-legged position, they popped up. I I was way too restless to sit for more than five minutes. That was a big deal. So I did five minutes, and that I began to notice, oh my goodness, this is funny, I feel different. Just five minutes? Hmm. So then in the evening I did five minutes again. That's it. Just did what I could do. Before I knew it, the Za Zen was active. I was sitting ten minutes. Now I didn't push that. It just happened. Then I was sitting 15 minutes. And it increases and increased. The next a little while later, I was at the Zendo. I didn't plan any of that out. I didn't navigate it. I just did what I could do and enjoyed it and felt different as a result of even those five minutes. It's quite miraculous. I believe all of life is that. If we do what we can with the fullest heart, just paying attention to that, that's all. Then everything else takes care of itself. It's very fascinating the way that works. Even in acting classes, they say, just be in this moment, and one true moment in a scene brings the next true moment. Don't, when you're on stage or you're working in a scene, you're not thinking, how am I going to be? By the end of the scene, how am I going to feel this? How am I going to do that? You just are true to each moment. It's very much like a different kind of Zen practice. And it's the same principle, though. And it's so true. It's the same principle. Just be fully present in that moment. Be true. Be uh don't pay attention to all the conflicting voices, which are endless. They are endless. And the conflicting feelings and whatever appears, just stay as you're sitting in Zen. Stay with your if you if that's what your practice is with your breathing. There are many ways of practicing, many practices within Zen, what to do on the cushion. That's beyond the scope of this podcast. That's to discover with a teacher, hopefully directly. But nevertheless, or or you can there are many ways to have instructions about practice. But the point is just do it. And expect the unexpected. When you turn your behavior around, it turns you around as well. So have a beautiful day, have a beautiful week, and a wonderful holiday season. Wonderful. Thank you for listening very much. The URL for this talk is www.zenwisdom today. And if you want to write to me for any reason, which I love receiving your emails, and I thank you for them, it's topspeaker at yahoo.com. Thank you and have a wonderful day. Bye bye.
