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.
It's so easy to become upset when things don't work out our way. Many feel like failures, that no matter what they do, but life just proceeds as it wishes. Nothing to feel badly about. We do all we can and certainly can bring benefit, but let's take a moment and dwell upon the most significant koan, question of all. Ultimately, Who's In Charge? You are a visitor here and life will continue on in its own way, long after you have departed. What did you come here for? Just focus on that. Where are you headed? Offer what you can and don't dwell upon the outcome. That's not in your hands.
Hi, good morning. It's Brenda Ash and Shoshana back with another episode of Zen Wisdom for Your Everyday Life. Or you could also call it finding God, finding spirit, finding source at the kitchen table, or in the grocery, or anywhere you are, everywhere you are. You don't even have to find it. It's with you, it's finding you every single minute. And isn't that wonderful? So good morning, good morning, and what a beautiful day today. Suddenly sunbreaking through, clouds a little earlier. Every moment is a new moment, a birth moment, a birthday moment. Many birthdays coming up, and also a very, very significant week of Rohatsu session, which is the most important session of the year, and all Zen centers sitting together to celebrate the Day of Enlightenment, December 8th, the morning of actually the founding of Zen practice, of Buddhism, whatever you call it. Names, names. You know, if we hear one name, then we can recoil from it. Oh, I don't I don't want to do any isms. You know, that's why Zen comes to point to the essence of it, the heart of it, the soul of it, the spirit of it, which is the kitchen table, taking a walk, meeting a stranger, meeting an old friend again. That is Zen practice. Usually when we sit, we feel wonderful. Sooner or later we feel wonderful. We may have some discomfort, but that becomes wonderful too. The discomfort, when it comes up in the context of sitting, it's fine. It's fine. It's just a momentary passing of something. Doesn't matter. It turns into something wonderful: energy, love. It turns into many things. The whole practice of then is don't hold on, don't fixate, don't expect, don't demand to be able to be with the unimaginable, unthinkable changes of life. And as we become able to do that, we realize that what we've planned, what we've expected, what we've hoped for, what we're counting on, what we're counting on some often, isn't going to turn out that way. It turns out the way it turns out. It doesn't turn out the way we often hope, planned. Other factors arise. And sometimes when that happens and we see that what we've planned is going to be disrupted, there's two ways to handle that. And in certain a certain aspect of practice is you don't pay attention to the disruptions, the interruptions, you just sit, you just stay focused, you just stay with what you've planned. Don't move. Don't shift, don't allow anything to disrupt your practice, your concentration, your your discipline. And that is very valuable, very important. It's certainly nothing to sneeze at, huh? Because many things that do come along to disrupt or interrupt, if we just keep going with that all the time, we can become just in a whirl or pretty lost or confused about what's happening. That's one part of practice, and it's a very, very, very necessary practice, maybe for the first 50 years or so. However, there comes a time when that is so much a part of our nature that we begin to look at all these so-called, so-called interruptions or disruptions differently. And we receive them differently. We receive everything that looks potentially like an obstacle or an interference as if this too is it. No difference between what's coming and the silent, focusing sitting. Not rejecting, not trying to be in charge of the world and of everything that's happening in it. When we're sitting very in a very silent, focused way, we want to be in charge of the sitting, of the practice. We have made up our mind how what how it has to be, and we won't let that go. We're in charge, we're in charge. And then as we keep practicing on and on, the question, the ko on, a natural ko on, appears, which is who's really in charge of all this? Are you in charge? Really? Or is that a delusion that we all live with? So we can feel and strong, so we can feel balanced, so we can feel anchored. And so we can do that very important practice of staying focused. That's very so it's it's it's a paradox. Both parts are very, very, very important. Because as we go along and we realize we're not in charge, that is a huge freedom to realize that, and a huge moment. Oh, I'm not in charge. I didn't create this incredible world. Now, on the one hand, there's a whole stream of thought. Yes, our thoughts created, your karma's creating it, interdependence is creating it, conditions are creating it, and you can step back and create things differently. Well, you can step back and perceive things differently, you can respond to things differently, but the question is, are you really in charge of all that's happening in your world and in the world at large? You can contribute to love, to calmness, to sanity, of course. You can make a difference, of course, by who you are and how you handle things. No question. But who's in charge? I just love that co-on. It hits at a very fundamental assumption that this whole world is all about me, what I want, what I think, what I plan. I'm in charge of my life and my relationships. That that can come from a very fixed egoistic position which sets us in opposition to everything else, including many beautiful things that are trying to reach us. You know, I had a plan for Thursday. Important day, very important day, the last day of Rohatsu and many other things. A plan for the day, practice, how it would how it would be. And for the whole week, different things kept wanting to come. Enter. You could call it disrupt, but I don't call it disrupt. Invitations, I call them invitations, kept coming to let go of maybe a very fixed plan and allow the universe to bring what it wanted to bring and to take what it wanted to take, whatever plan I might have had. And actually, when I allowed that and I said, okay, I'll I'm not that I'm not sitting and focusing, but okay, even more waves of things wanting to come and wanting to have its own voice be heard. That's real silence when you say, okay, and listen for what's really happening, what what all of these different people or events or situations are really trying to say to you. This day has a life of its own, an energy of its own, and rather than block it out a lot of it out, just okay, and be there deeply for it, with it, listen to it. Engage it, allow it. It's a very different way of doing the day, and one can fight against this, which but or one can say, okay. You know, that okay, it brings a very unique feeling of peace, of of surrender to something bigger than you and your particular plan. And it it creates a quiet because you're not fighting fighting things off. It's quieter. And you're more present and more strangely enough, more whole or complete. That's a very strange way of putting it, but it's true. You're including every single thing and allowing it to touch you and allowing it to reach you and to teach you. What a relief it is when we allow everything that happens to teach us to show us something else that we had no idea of before. So being in that position is it takes a lot of the ego striving away. And there's a sense of not that I know everything or I'm gonna organize it or I have to have it work out the way I want it to, but just okay. Okay. Kudoroshi many years ago, who ran the Soho Zendo, he's not alive now. He was also the abbot of Ryotaka G. He used to say, just take it. I loved that always when he would say, very simple, very grounded guy, wonderful, wonderful man, teacher, then master. You know, I'll tell you one thing about him. He would never in those days, he would never even advertise or put list that that Soho Zendo in the what it's called the there were no big big books with everybody's address and you could look up where they and their phone number. The yellow pages, I think it was called. He wouldn't even list the Zendo in the yellow pages. No, no, no. People came just because they came, as he would say, through karma or through destiny, or they just came. They they had to find the Zendo. It wasn't gonna try to bring them in, bring anyone in. No advertising. Oh my god, he'd never advertise a thing. He just sat and allowed something much different to be in charge. So the co-on for today and for this week, and a beautiful colon for your life, when you feel disrupted or upset or as if things aren't working the way you wish they would, who's in charge? Who? Where? What? What's in charge? Who's in charge? Any way you want to put it, that touches you. And when we realize, when we look at the bigger, bigger, bigger picture, and we realize there's a much, much greater force in charge, which doesn't mean that we don't have dominion, that we don't have meaningful, significant actions to take, we take them. But the outcome of everything, who is in charge? Thank you very much for listening. It's a pleasure to talk to you today. I hope you have a beautiful, beautiful weekend. And um the URL for this podcast is www.zenwisdomtoday.com. Thank you for listening. Bye bye.
