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.
Many of us fear change, because we experience it as loss. We do all we can to keep our world stable, secure, and as we want it to be. Most of our time is guarding against change, fighting and refusing it. But the truth is that life itself is constant change. It is growth, discovery, and the precious unfolding of who we are. Change is the way we learn and ripen. To fight change, to judge ourselves as failures if things don't go our way is a cause of great suffering. A better way is to say Yes to change, to see each moment as a "wonder", and to enter the flow of what is going on.
Good morning. It's Brenda Eshan Shoshana back with another episode of Zen Wisdom for Your Everyday Life. And here it goes. Every time I come on six years, it's still our everyday life. It's still this moment. It's so interesting how time moves and passes and changes, and meanwhile, it stays exactly the same. There's both going on at the same time. This moment doesn't change. Here it is. Whatever, however it presents itself, however it looks, it's still right now. And yet six years have gone by, so that's a very interesting intersection of life. You know, we're so afraid of change, of loss. We conflate loss and change. But but change is not loss. It's just the inevitable natural alteration of the seasons, the seasons of our life, the seasons of our mind, the seasons of our dreams. And it allows us to really experience life in a new way each season, each day, each moment. So we feel we lost something, but we didn't lose our childhood. We grew out of it. We integrated it, we absorbed it, and then we experience ourselves and the world differently as we enter maybe our teenage years. That's a whole new experience. And on and on it goes. And then our adult years. And these later years are really something else. They're incredible, they're beautiful, they're the culmination of all these years that we've lived, all these seasons we've passed through, and life is very different now, has a different kind of urgency also. Each day has, oh my goodness, today, here it is. What and the word what, what is it? What's happening? I don't want to miss it. I want to be with it. There's much more urgency to practice now and to honor every single experience and person and event that comes your way and to see it as it is fleeting, fleeting. Startling too. You know, it's very startling because we think that the world is permanent and it's it's as it is, and a person is as they are. We put people into little boxes, into little labels in our mind, in our mind. This is who they are, this is who they are to me, this is how they behave, this is how they're always going to behave. And then the shocks come because that's just not true. We may know that intellectually, but to actually be able to see it and not only see it, but absorb it, be one with it, know it in our bones, and allow it. That's a very important word, allow, allow people to change, allow ourselves to change. Then the shock begins to wear off, and in the place of shock, or maybe disappointment, or maybe fear, we can experience it as what Joko Beck said when she got much older. They said that her very last words were, ah, this too is a wonder. Joko Beck was a really beautiful Zen teacher. Wonderful. She lived into her 90s, I believe her early 90s, and I'd heard that those were her very last words. Ah, too. This too is a wonder. This too is a wonder. Whatever it was she was going through at that moment. A wonder. You know, if we looked at these passing days and years and experiences as a wonder, like, and and really looked at it and said to ourselves, what is this? That's a very famous koan from many scriptures. What is this? Where does it come from? Where is this whole world coming from? Where is it going to? You know, we're so absorbed in trying to fix things and change them to our liking, to what we think it should be, in quotes. And then we make ourselves feel comfortable. But so most of our life is engaged doing that, fixing the world, fixing people, fixing ourselves. As if there's something fundamentally wrong. As if there's something fundamentally out of gear, out of sync. And the truth is it's another shock. There really isn't. Life proceeds as it proceeds. We may not like it. We may have ideals and images of how we want it to be, or how it should be, but this process of transformation going on day by day in ourselves and in the world, it has a mind of its own, a life of its own, a wisdom of its own, a trajectory of its own, and we are part of it. And so rather than always try to interfere with it and fix it and change it and judge it and rail against it, complain about it, that's the way most of us, including me, at many times for a long time, have operated. I still do, of course, I'm not immune to that. But but there's another way to be with all of it. And that what the other way to be with it will give us so much more happiness and pleasure and energy. And that way is the way Joko said, ah, this too is a wonder. It's what is it? It's beautiful. What is it? Maybe it's ugly, but what is it? Where does it coming from? What is this? That is the fundamental koon of Zen. And also other practices as well, and other traditions as well. So for many of us, for many years, as we've practiced, the practice is dedicated to our feeling good, feeling secure, feeling safe, feeling balanced, feeling healthy, happy, blah, blah, blah. It's always about me, me, me. I'm the center of the world. And whatever I do, it's it's somehow to make me feel good and secure. And they like centered, strong, whatever it is we're trying for. But that's not the ultimate place of Zen practice. The world really is not all about making me feel good. I'm not gonna feel good at different times. But that doesn't have to take me down or incapacitate me. Not when I see that it's even not feeling good is a wonder too. It's when we let go of all our particular wants, demands, needs, and just are, just be with what is and explore it. Not reject it or judge it, just really explore it. Taste it. Insights come, revelations come, strength comes because we're not fighting it. Most of our loss of energy or our feeling of being weak or troubled or whatever we feel comes because we're fighting life off. We're resisting everything. We won't say yes. Yes. Emerson has a beautiful quote which says sometimes we've receive the strength or the courage or the grace to say yes to life. And then peace enters us and makes us whole. That's so beautiful. Peace enters us by itself because we're not fighting things off, saying, No, no, no, I hate this. I don't want that. I'm gonna change it. No, we're just saying yes to life. Where we're not resisting. We're entering the door, the open door, or the gateless gate. You're I have a calligraphy here from my teacher that he made years ago called The Gateless Zendo. I was supposed to open a little Zendo years and years ago called The Gateless Zendo. And um I never I didn't think I did it. But I did, of course, it's always open. It's open. I have opened it, but in a very different way than it might have expected, or the way it might have looked. Yes, people come and sit, but also it's the gateless zendo, which means everywhere we are is the zendo. There's no gate, there's no separation between this place and another place, or this moment and another moment. It's one, one world, one life. One life, and we're all sharing it. One breath. We can see that we're all breathing the same breath. We're all our hearts are beating. What seems to separate us are the many thoughts and demands and desires and opinions, all of that. Not only does it separate us, but it causes destruction to ourselves and to others. So when we make that world all about me, me, me and my plans, my ideas, my beliefs, then we're in trouble. We are. And we lose the beauty of saying, ah, this too is a wonder, and saying, just thank you. Thank you. That's a big part of Zen practice. It's called Gasho. You put two hands together and you bow to one another, as if saying, I honor the beauty within you. I honor the Buddha within you. What does the Buddha mean? It means the beauty, the aliveness, the sincerity. I honor who you really are. Thank you for appearing in my life for as long as you do. That's the hard part. Because when we like something, we really don't want to let it go. We want it to last forever. And it can be very rough to when it changes. And many, many experience that is very grievous loss. And that again is one of the great pains in our life, the feeling that we're losing every minute, this or that we have to hold on to, we have to be attached to, we have to grab onto a person we love, a place we love, a business, a job, whatever it is, a relationship. Can't grab anything. Everything has its time to appear. And then to maybe not appear in your life. Now that's a ko on. And a ko on is simply just something that we struggle with. A question why does this happen? Where do they come from? Where do they go? It's good to view it as a ko on because then we're not enmeshed in the in the fear and the pain. The peer the fear and the pain will arise, but we're not enmeshed in it. We're taking a larger point of view, a larger perspective on everything that appears and so-called disappears. You know, I've come to really see at times that nothing disappears. It can't disappear. Even if we want it to. Once we've experienced it, one once we've integrated it, once we've connected with something, it's part of us forever. Forever. When there's been a real saying yes to it, I noticed that. When we've said yes and we've fulfilled the relationship, when it's been complete, it can't go away. It's there. And we don't grieve as much when that leaves in the physical world, when it leaves when we don't see it anymore. It's only when things have been very oppositional, we haven't fulfilled felt like we've fulfilled the relationship. We've been fighting it, we've been rejecting it, including ourselves. Then it's a lot harder because it hasn't been completed or fulfilled. So it's a very wonderful practice to say yes to life and to yourself. To the way you are right now. It's okay. It's because what it is. Say yes. Enjoy it. See that this too is a wonder the way I am right now. It may not fit in your images, your plans, your shoulds. It may not fit in the public idea of how things are, but it's what is, and it's true, and it's here, and it's a wonder. We take off all the images that we add on to what we need to be, and just return to what we are. That's like returning home. Big holiday is coming up now of liberation, and there's a beautiful question asked. What is liberation? What do we have to be liberated from? I discussed that last night on a wonderful radio show. Equal footings. And it was very it's a very beautiful ko on. What do we have to be liberated from? What does liberation mean? And in the Zen world, we would add on, and what is it that binds you? Anyway, it's a very good question. Again, koans. Not to figure out in the mind, but as we sit, to sit with them and allow them to tell us. We don't tell them. When you're figuring out an answer in your mind, you're telling them. When you're sitting, you let the koan tell you. Reveal itself. That's a nice way to do things. The koan knows much better than you do. And you know it anyway, but you know it in it from a different perspective. You know it in a different way. So by becoming one with it, you are knowing it. So thank you very much for listening. I will be offering live episodes, not every week, probably, as I used to, but certainly I'm delighted to when I can. And my other episodes are all being put up one once a week at my account on substack.com, which is Zenbybrenda at sub.substack.com. And you can find me there, and I will also be posting anew as I can. And I really thank you for being here. The URL for this talk is www.zenwisdomtoday.com. And my email, if you wish to write to me, is topspeaker at yahoo.com. And thank you. And have a beautiful, beautiful day. Bye bye.
