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.
So much of our lives are filled with questions that have no answer. We go around and around in our mind trying to figure everything out. These questions about ourselves, others, what will happen, and what's the best road to take, plague us endlessly. They prevent us from being present for what's going on and fully experiencing our lives. In fact the questions create so much confusion, they actually lead us in the wrong direction. Without doubt, there is another way to receive the clarity and insight so many of us are longing for. To begin it's always with us, waiting to be revealed. It is so important to stop trying to figure everything out rationally, and to open our minds and hearts so that our deeper truths can come to the surface and guide us all by themselves.
Good morning, good morning. It's Brenda Eshin Shashana back with another episode of Zen Wisdom for Your Everyday Life. And um good morning. Good morning, good morning, good morning. You know, it's very, very interesting. We all have so many questions. What's gonna happen? Who am I? Where am I going? Where did I come from? They're infinite, infinite questions. And and our life in a way is run by these questions, endless questions, that don't want to let go. It looks like they don't want to let go. Except it's us, we don't want to let go of them until we have the answer, a solution. And then we think, okay, okay, I knew I needed to answer that, and what a relief. I got the answer. Or maybe I didn't get the answer, and it's gnawing away at me. And in a sense, this is the basis in Zen practice of the koan practice. Where am I going? What's the answer? We we receive all kinds of koans from our teacher if we are practicing koan zen, Rinzai Zen. And these koans are not put quite so directly. Instead, they are very ambiguous, paradoxical. In fact, they don't have a logical answer. They're not something we can figure out, such as what is my original face before I was born? Fantastic ko on teaching us so much. When was I even born? Do we remember being born? How could it be a face before I was born? All of these logical inconsistencies, so-called. And there are many, many, many more. Oh, there are books are full of koans. They're very beautiful. They point to the truth, but not in the way that we can figure it out. The truth won't come through ideas, concepts, beliefs, stories. No, no, no, no. In fact, some of the koans have little stories in them. But the way they resolve, the way they work out in the actual koan, they're completely, it's seemingly irrational. The first part has nothing to do with the second part. He picks up his teacup and walks away, the teacher perhaps in one of their more the teacher smiles and says, Oh, I've got a cold today. Something that what doesn't people may say it doesn't make sense. Very beautiful. Very, very beautiful statement. It doesn't make sense. What does that mean? What makes sense? What makes sense in this world? Sen is pointing to that. If we approach the world in a logical, rational manner, what peep what is sensible, fair, just, all of those words that we long for. We want that. We want things to make sense, figure it out, fulfill our expectations of the way life is and the way life goes. But life goes the way it goes. It has a mind of its own. And if we are going to live it trying to make it make sense, we will be distressed a great deal of the time. We'll be confused. That's a very, very common experience many people have in life itself. Confusion not making sense. What does it mean? Meaningless, some people will say. Well, I may then they say, well, I may as well go and do whatever I like, because the life is meaningless. That's a whole other ko on, actually. When we ask where meaning and fulfillment come from. See, we think if we have the answer, the right answer, we'll it'll be meaningful. We'll be fulfilled, we'll know what to do. We all really want to have good guidance, what to do, what road to take, how to be. All of these questions endlessly besiege us. And that word besiege is a very good word. It's like a thunderstorm. We are besieged by this in one form or another. Sometimes at a stage in our life, that they these questions will subside for for a while, temporarily, when we're in a they call it a season or a phase or an era where things seem to be going beautifully, we may have a good relationship, we may live in the right place, we may be truly enjoying our friends and our work. Of course, those seasons come. And we're not filled with questions then. We're not asking what's the meaning of our life, then things are flowing along, and we're happy because they agree with us. We like them. Feels good. Feels as if we're in the harmony with something larger than ourselves. We're harmonious. It's another very beautiful word, harmonious. At one with ourselves, with the river, with the ocean, with the weather, with God, with the spirit, with whatever you want to call it. We feel in sync. But then that season inevitably, at one point or another, will pass or change or evolve, which is what life constantly is doing. Changing, altering, passing, evolving, growing, whatever. And then there's another season that comes where everything feels mixed up and a sense of disarray, and then the questions come. The questions come very strongly. Or maybe when somebody gets sick during one of these happier periods, whatever it is, when when there's a disruption, why is this happening and how can I fix it? That's the question. Underneath the question. What is it? What's going on? I want to fix it. I want to change it. I want to create harmony again in my life and the life of others. Well, here's the news of Zen. It's not up to us to create harmony. Harmony already is. Whatever is happening is part of the harmony. Even though we cannot understand it and see it or know it, even though it might seem to be chaotic and in great disarray from the Zen perspective, everything is part of the harmony. And we don't really touch that or know that if we're clinging to a certain image of how the harmony has to look, how it has to be, all to my liking. That's why these questions, these endless theoretical, abstract questions have, from the Zen perspective, no answer. They have an answer, but it won't come intellectually, conceptually, logically, rationally, because life is not rational. My teacher always used to say the real is not rational. So in Zen practice we really honor what is real reality, the largest reality, the truth of who we are and what this world is, how it operates, and what is needed from us. How beautiful is that actually. How beautiful is that? What the world is, what we are, what others are, of and of course, and what is needed from us. That's a very big and we call these koans though. We don't we that's a little different from a an a a normal question. A koan is different because we don't look to it for a logical answer or a rational answer. Instead we become the koan, we sit with the koan. We let it do its work on us. We just sit with it. We take it in, we absorb it, and we s live with it the way we live with life. We don't question it logically and rationally. We don't want it to give us an answer one, two, three. We might, but we don't expect any kind of answer one, two, three, a logical answer. If you bring the T in Rinzai practice, you go to your teacher and you put he gives you the koan or she gives you the koon, and then you bring different kinds of answers, and they'll always ring the bell and say, interview over when you bring an logical answer or an imitation answer, false answer. We're imitating someone else, which is often how we live our life, imitating something. Role model of the people will say, I need a role model. We want to be we want to be like something that we are not maybe, but we're imitating. So we a co-on stops, an imitation answer, somebody else's answer, the teacher doesn't want anyone else's answer. What do you say? What do you what have you experienced in this life and on your cushion in your practice? Not what do you know, but what have you experienced? What is the koan speaking or saying to you, not in words necessarily, mostly, but what is it? Very fundamental. What's the heart of this koan? And how have you become the way to know you have to become something in order to know it, become the koan in order to know it. How beautiful is that. So we just allow the koan to permeate us, we don't reject it, we don't try to figure it out. We become the koan, just the way in a relationship. In order to know your partner or the person, not to analyze them, stand back, judge them, analyze them, but to know them. Unite with them, become them, feel them, feel their experience. It's a completely different way of being together. To know something is to be it, to walk in the footsteps of the person. I I there's a beautiful, beautiful actually, I'll I'll share it with you now, it might be helpful. Uh the beautiful little exercise I developed when I was doing lots of workshops in those days. And once in a while, when I do a workshop now, I'll I'll I'll also offer this work this exercise, which is so powerful, and it's something everybody can use. I called it the turnaround procedure, and what it was and what it is, is say you're having a lot of conflict with someone in your life. How can it be resolved? Well, it can be resolved very easily. And this is one wonderful way to do so. Say you're having this conflict. Well, you take the role, do a little play acting, a little role-playing, take the role of the person you're having the problem with, and you play that scene from their point of view. You are you play that scene from their point of view. Take maybe if there are two people, take a friend and let them play you, and you're playing the role of the person who you're having all the trouble with. And the other person in the scene is playing the role that you take and saying what you would say, and so forth. Well, when you embody the other person and you really experience the whole situation from the other person's perspective, everything changes. Everything changes. They're not your enemy. You know them now. Your heart softens, your mind opens. It's very, very, very beautiful and simple tool. It's wonderful. And it it's applicable not only at that little exercise, which is a beautiful exercise, but in life itself. Take the role of the other, don't label them, reject them, condemn them, but instead become their friend, know, which means to know them from the inside out. And that is how we we do as then with our koans from the inside out. We just know it. We allow ourselves to sit from the point of view of the koan, whatever that might mean to you. So koan practice teaches us a new way of living in this world and receiving the world, not as a question and a problem to figure out, but as a wonderful experience to have. Very different. Nothing to figure out, but to enjoy, to embody, to live, and to express who you are through your living. To express your delight or compassion. When we when we let go of this feeling, you know, when we can't figure something out, we feel so inadequate. And we we we really we feel dislodged and confused and not at home because there's something missing, and that's the answer to our many questions. Okay, so put the questions down for a while. And the answers will be right here in a different way. In a different way. So I you'll just live your life and in the living, in the full-hearted living, without all every minute questioning in it and rejecting it, the answer will be right there. The meaning, whatever word you want to use, will be right there and is here all the time. It's just that we want to figure it out, and therefore it will not reveal itself because that's not the way. And have a very, very have a beautiful day. A beautiful day. Thank you. Oh, the um URL for this podcast is www.sendwisdomtoday.com. And if you wish to connect or send me an email, my email is topspeaker at yahoo.com. Thank you.
