One of my favorite Pema quotes is the one where she says, “You are the sky, everything else is the weather”. In this podcast episode, I will discuss the concept of mental weather patterns and the way I correlate weather forecasting with understanding my own mental patterns and tendencies.

Koan Discussed: As the roof was leaking, a Zen Master told two monks to bring something to catch the water. One brought a tub, the other a basket. The first was severely reprimanded, the second highly praised.

Koan Shared:

Rikyū’s Poem “Only This”

First you heat the water.
Then you make the tea.
Then you drink it properly.
That is all you need to know.

Transcript:

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Secular Buddhism Podcast. This is episode number 135. I am your host, Noah Rasheta. And today I’m going to talk about the weather of the mind. Keep in mind, you don’t need to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist. You can use what you learned to be a better, whatever you already are. If you’re new to the podcast, check out episodes one through five for an introduction to the main concepts and teachings of Buddhism, or visit secularbuddhism.com and click on start here. If you’re looking for an online community to practice with and interact with, consider becoming a supporter of the podcast by visiting secularbuddhism.com and clicking on the top link that says, “Join our online community on Patreon.”

Before jumping into the topic that I have for today, I wanted to discuss the koan that was shared in the last podcast episode. It goes like this. As the roof was leaking, a Zen master told two monks to bring something to catch the water. One brought the tub, the other a basket. The first was severely reprimanded. The second highly praised. I want to share some of the thoughts that were discussed in our Patreon community, because there are always good perspectives shared there. And this first one comes from Darlene who says, “This koan makes me think of the emotional enlightenment you discussed in the episode. We think that happiness comes from cleaning to pleasant emotions, but that actually causes suffering. In the same way if the roof is leaking, except that it is leaking and water will get on the floor because that’s what happens when the roof leaks.

If we catch the water in a tub, it will eventually overflow. In the end, we can’t deny our emotions because they will find us somehow. We can find peace by accepting them wholeheartedly close.” Tani says, “I wonder if this koan speaks to our tendency to try to control our emotions. If the roof is leaking, we must wait until the rain is over and fix the roof. Work on the source of the anger or pain. Bringing a tub will only result in a harder time removing it, or it will overflow later causing a bigger mess. The basket, I’m imagining one of those meant to carry water from the well to the house. So it holds the water, but not as much as the tub may require more trips outside to dump the water, but it doesn’t let us ignore it for too long. We still have to pay attention to the basket and water.

In this way, instead of trying to stop emotions from happening, we need to weather the storm as best we can. And then work on the source of the pain and emotions when things are clear, if possible.” And then Mike shares this, he says, “Maybe I’m doing this wrong, but I seem to be interpreting each of the most recent koan’s the same way. And most of them, I see it as a reminder to not look for wisdom in others, but to look for it in yourself instead. In this case, the answer of the tub was clearly the more appropriate tool for catching water, but the student who chose that severely reprimanded. There’s no reason to reprimand this student. He chose an appropriate tool for achieving the particular goal. Perhaps the student’s only error was in believing the Zen master to be more of a master than himself.”

I really liked the ideas that were shared. These are only three of the several thoughts that were shared in our Patreon community, but I particularly liked Mike’s thoughts here at the end. And I wanted to share some of my thoughts about this koan, one, I think that we tend to make meaning of things and we make assumptions and we don’t know all the details. So we fill in the gaps. I think it’s what we do. It’s a human thing. So with a story like this, we immediately make the assumption, if there’s a hole in the roof and water is coming in, we paint a whole picture around that. That water must be leaking on the floor, we need to bring something to catch the water so that it stops leaking on the floor, a tub in this case, what does it mean, a tub?

Is it a bathtub? Because if it we’re a bathtub on one hand and a basket on another, it very much could be that the tub was the wrong answer because it was too big. And the thing is, we don’t know. So we paint the story, we fill in the details and then we make the assumption based on all of these details that we just don’t know. So we’re really good at making meaning of things and because of our discomfort with not knowing the details we fill in the gaps. And that’s what this story kind of reminded me of, the fact that I don’t know the details. I mean, first of all, why do we even assume that just because the master reprimanded one and didn’t reprimand the other, that, that means one was wrong and one was right. What if the one who brought the basket has been struggling in class and has been getting everything wrong and was feeling really down and the Zen master decided to praise him this time, so he wouldn’t feel so bad and reprimanded the one who brought the tub.

Who always gets things right, and maybe needed to feel a little more humbled. The point is we don’t know, who knows. We don’t know the details. We get so little information out of this story and then we fill in the gaps. And sometimes we do that in life, taking very little information about an overall story we make meaning. And as soon as we make meaning, we fill in the gaps and we might just be making wrong assumptions. That’s what I thought about as I was listening to this one. It does seem like the obvious answer is the tub, unless you gave me more details. Again, is this a bath tub we’re talking about? Is it a little tub? Is it a basket that has holes in it or is it a basket that’s capable of carrying water?

I don’t know any of the details. I just know that I immediately made an assumption and that the point of this, of the koan is to make me stop in my tracks and say, “Hmm, I don’t know about this.” And that’s kind of what it does, especially when you hear that the basket was praised and the tub was not. So what does the koan make you think of? What does it cause you to think about? Again with all koans really what matters is, what does the story tell you? What does it help you think about? Or what does it make you feel? The topic I had in mind for today’s podcast episode has to do with weather. Weather during the storm, the weather of the mind, and this kind of comes from an experience that I’ve had in the past couple of days, while I’m out here training a couple of new students who are learning how to pair motor.

So there’s an expression that pay my users that I really enjoy. She says, “You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.” Now in the training program that we do to learn to paraglide or learn to pair motor, there’s a lot of ground schoolwork where you learn about weather, how to forecast the weather, how to make proper decisions about when and where to fly. And I always tell students that perhaps the most important decision that you’ll ever make as a pilot is the decision to not fly. There are certain circumstances and weather phenomena where you’re not going to want to be flying because you do not want to be in the air, wishing you were on the ground. And this is a very important decision to make as a pilot, especially for the very light or ultra light aircraft that we fly. Paragliders.

Now, I kind of pride myself in my ability to be very good at forecasting the weather. So for me, I have a threshold and I know that if the conditions are beyond my threshold, I will not fly. When I got into the sport and decided I wanted to fly. I knew that the reason I was getting into this is because I wanted to have fun. So the litmus test that I use before every flight is I decide, “Is this going to be fun?” And if the answer is yes, then I proceed. If the answer is no, then I don’t do it because that’s the whole reason I got into this was to have fun. So when the weather reaches a point where I know it’s going to be bumpy, or the wind might be too strong, I don’t even attempt it. And I’ve never gotten into any trouble because I never pushed myself. And this ability to forecast the weather has saved me from a lot of situations where I could have been in the air, wishing I was on the ground.

So I mentioned, I’m out here teaching this course. And today we had forecasted the weather. And today I knew that there was going to be a storm passing through and we’ve had very strong gusts of wind. And right now it’s actually raining. I don’t know if you can pick up that sound in the microphone, but it’s been raining and very gusty for the last several hours. And I had this mental correlation as I’ve been sitting here, weathering the storm, thinking, “I could have been out there. I could have been caught. Even if it wasn’t flying, I could have been caught unaware of the storm and then dealing with inconveniences that would have to do simply because I was not aware.” For example, all of my equipment was outside. I have totes with paraglider wings.

We have several pair of motors, all the gas cans, the just lots and lots of gear. And it’s all been sitting outside because we’re doing this course. Well, in observing the weather, which I check several times a day, I knew that rain was in the forecast and that it was coming. And as soon as I knew that I made all the decisions of the things that needed to be done to make sure that when that storm came, it wouldn’t be a much more than an inconvenience of time, because we’ve been out here for days now, working on this training and sure enough, that’s exactly how it unfolded. By the time the storm came, the tents were down. All the gear was safely stored inside of the trailer. And it’s been nothing more than an inconvenience of time that we could have been practicing or flying, but we can’t because of the weather.

But this got me thinking about the parallels with this specific situation and how we approach life. I think people who are capable of forecasting the weather of the mind can take preemptive steps and precautions to avoid any inconveniences for the moment when that proverbial storm hits. And I’m sure all of us have experienced that feeling of being caught in the storm. The emotional storm that is suddenly there. And a lot of times it’s there because we’re not very good at forecasting it, or we’re not very skillful with understanding our mental weather patterns and all of us experience this.

But imagine being able to be more skillful with forecasting our own mental weather. And I thought as I was preparing for all this, with the actual weather, how cool would it be to be able to forecast the emotional storms that we have coming up in our lives. And I think to a certain degree, we can. If we know ourselves well, we may know for example, that if I haven’t had breakfast today, I’m much more susceptible to that emotional storm that could hit when a car cuts me off. But I know that about myself. So perhaps I’m going to drive with a little bit more caution and not be in such a hurry, or the big clear example would be if I understand myself and my emotional weather patterns, I may know when is the most appropriate, or perhaps the least appropriate times to have a discussion with a spouse. Or with a parent or with a child about a difficult topic.

Because it’s going to be much harder to navigate that when the conditions are not ideal. In the same way that for me and for my students, as paraglider pilots, it’s much more difficult to navigate the skies under the wrong conditions. So part of what makes that experience so pleasurable and enjoyable is that we do it during the right conditions. And I think in a way it could be that simple to think about things like, “Oh, if I have to have a discussion with my spouse about this sensitive topic, well, let’s do it when the conditions are more favorable and not when there’s a gus front coming in.” It’s kind of a fun way to make that mental analogy. It works for me and my mind.

So the idea would be that knowing yourself and knowing the weather patterns of your own mind, that’s kind of at the heart of what we’re trying to accomplish with a lot of these practices. The whole notion of what we’re doing is that we’re learning to understand ourselves a little bit more so that we can do what, we can be more skillful, skillful with how we navigate life. Skillful with how we navigate the small day to day decisions, whether it’s talking to the teacher, your kid’s teacher at school. Talking to your spouse, talking to your boss, having to bring something up to a co-worker or things of that nature. We can do things more skillfully and very much like the decision of knowing when not to fly.

I think it’s important to know when not to bring up a certain topic or when not to bring up a certain emotional conversation that needs to be had because maybe the conditions aren’t favorable. And that was a fun mental correlation. And the funny thing is, I’ve been saying all of this while sitting here in my camp trailer in the middle of a storm, and the winds have been gusting to 30, to even 35 miles an hour at times. And at one moment I decided to leave the trailer and go sit in my truck because it felt a little more stable and safe in there. Because this thing is just rocking back and forth. And as I was sitting here, I had this thought that, I can look out the window and I can see the storm and I can see everything happening around me. Some of the tin from one of the roofs of the hangar about 100 feet away from me.

I saw it come off the roof and that was kind of scary to watch. And the whole time I was thinking there’s stormy craziness outside, but I am somewhat finding refuge here inside. And then I had this mental correlation of that’s kind of how my mind is, that my mind can be the refuge that I go to, to observe the weather patterns. And this is why I like that quote by [inaudible 00:16:20] who says, “You are the sky, everything else is just the weather. And that was a fun correlation to think, “Here I am observing a storm and finding somewhat of a refuge inside a safe place.” And in my real life, it can kind of be that way at times, finding myself in the storms of emotional discomfort or whatever it is I’m weathering. Weathering that storm by being in the safety of my own mind as the observer. The one that’s just watching, watching it all unfold and watching the mind as the sky and everything else as the weather.

So that was the correlation that I wanted to make. That was kind of the topic that I came up with because like I said, I’m literally sitting here in a trailer, weathering the storm, and I thought it would be a fun correlation to make with everything else. That’s actually all I have for this podcast episode. And as always, I want to thank you for listening. I hope that these concepts and ideas can give you pause and give you a way of thinking of things slightly differently. And of course, if you want to support the work I’m doing with the podcast, you can consider becoming a Patreon and joining the online community where we discuss the koans in these podcast episodes and much more. And there’s even a weekly study group there. You can learn more about all that on secularbuddhism.com.

And I’ve enjoyed sharing these koans. I have another one I want to share today. And the koan is called Rikyu’s Poem. It’s called Only This, and this is how it goes, first, you heat the water, then you make the tea, then you drink it properly. That is all you need to know. And that is his poem, Only This. I look forward to hearing your thoughts about the poem and discussing my thoughts about it in the next podcast episode. Thanks again for listening until next time.

In this podcast episode, I will discuss the idea of Emotional Enlightenment and what that means for me. We often find ourselves seeking certain emotions and avoiding other emotions. I’ve found that by giving all my emotions a sense of equanimity, I’ve found a tremendous sense of peace.

Koan Discussed: Once Ma-tsu and Pai-chang were walking along and they saw some wild ducks fly by.
“What is that?” the Master asked.
“Wild ducks,” Pai-chang replied.
“Where have they gone?”
“They’ve flown away,” Pai-chang said.
The Master then twisted Pai-chang’s nose, and when Pai-chang cried out in pain, Ma-tsu said, “When have they ever flown away?”

Koan Shared: As the roof was leaking, a Zen Master told two monks to bring something to catch the water. One brought a tub, the other a basket. The first was severely reprimanded, the second highly praised.

Transcript:

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Secular Buddhism podcast. This is episode number 134. I am your host, Noah Rasheta, and today I’m going to talk about emotional enlightenment.

As always, keep in mind you don’t need to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist, you can use what you learn to be a better whatever you already are. If you’re new to the podcast, feel free to listen to episodes one through five, or visit secularbuddhism.com and click on start here, that will give you a good introduction to a lot of these basic teachings and concepts that I talk about in the podcast. And if you are looking for an online community to practice with and interact with, consider becoming a supporter of the podcast by visiting secularbuddhism.com and clicking on the top link that says join our online community on Patreon.

So before we jump into the podcast episode for today, I want to share a few thoughts about the Zen koan that I shared at the end of the last podcast episode. So the Zen koan I shared goes like this. Once Matsu and Pi Chang were walking along and they saw some wild ducks fly by. “What is that?” the master asked. “Wild ducks,” Pi Chang replied. “Where have they gone?” “They’ve flown away,” Pi Chang said. The master then twisted Pi Chang’s nose and when Pi Chang cried out in pain, Matsu said, “When have they ever flown away?”

Now, this is another fun Zen koan in that it does the same thing most Zen koans do it presents you with a little story and leaves you thinking, Huh, what is that all about? So I wanted to share some of the thoughts that were shared in our Patreon community. We discuss the Zen koan there anytime that I share a koan in the podcast episode. So this first thought comes from Denise, who says, “Pi Chang says the ducks have flown away, but if you could ask the ducks, they probably don’t think they’ve flown away. They might think they were on their way to finally arrive somewhere. This koan is, to me, a reminder that it is important not to hold our views too strong. My view might be very different from another person’s view on the exact same matter and we might very well be equally right or equally wrong, just like Pi Chang thinking the ducks are flying away and the ducks thinking they’re actually on their way to arrive.”

Mo kind of expands a little on this too. Mo says, “This koan made me wonder what we mean when we say gone. When is something here and when is something gone? In actuality, there is no clear line between the two and nothing is ever truly gone, in the same way that it is never truly here, because of the nature of interdependence. The ducks may seem to be gone, but if you ask yourself, what is a duck, you start to realize there is no such thing as an individual duck that is independent and separate from the rest of the world. It is, by nature, dependent on the causes and conditions of everything around it. Now that I think of it, this koan leads me to the becoming nobody episode. I am nobody, the duck is also nothing, and it has never gone because from one point of view, it was never here and from another, it is always here.”

I enjoyed those thoughts by Mo. Anushka says, “When I first heard this koan, I imagined a state where the ducks are flying but not going anywhere. I then started thinking what is flying? Then, if it’s not going, for example, transitioning to another place, in my mind I could still see ducks flying, but not necessarily going anywhere. A state of flying or a state of movement, but not gone yet and not away yet. I then landed on a final thought, well, who is doing the going? And I wondered if it was Pi Chang, because he was the one projecting the idea of their going, their departure. All of this reminds me of how we impose our interpretation on events that happen and how we get so caught up in things that haven’t happened yet, or will happen at all.”

And then the final thoughts I want to share with you come from Robert, who says, “Ducks fly south for the winter and fly north in the summer. So, Pi Chang may have assumed that they were flying away somewhere, as they do, depending on the season. The master may have been trying to get Pi Chang to relate duck migration with our thought migration. When we sit to meditate, our thoughts come and go away, depending on the season of our life, that day, or moment, our thoughts may be with us or away from us. In winter, our thoughts are away and we know not where. In summer, we have our thoughts focused on our breathing.”

I really enjoyed everyone’s thoughts, their interpretation and analysis of this specific Zen koan. This is a fun one for me because I, like the ducks, enjoy flying, and often when I find myself flying, I think similar thoughts, that when I’ll pass someone on the ground and wave at them and they wave back as I fly past, and I often wonder if they have a similar thought. I wonder where this person is going? Or they watch us fly away saying, “Oh, they flew away.”

And just like the koan invokes that deeper thought of, when have we ever flown away? From my perspective as the flyer, I’m always just right there where I am. I’m not flying away or I’m not flying away from anywhere, or I might be, and I might be coming towards somewhere. Going and coming is just the perspective thing. But from my perspective, wherever I am in that moment, I’m just flying. That’s what I’m doing. And I think, like the ducks, so many good thoughts were shared here, that the nature of interdependence, the nature of impermanence, the nature of seeing things from a certain perspective, these are all great thoughts that I think are really relevant to this specific koan.

And of course the most important one is, what does this make you think of? What does it invite you to ponder about? And I wanted to share some of my thoughts regarding this koan as they link into the overall concept that I wanted to discuss in this podcast episode, which is the notion of emotional enlightenment. But before I dig into what that means to me, I want to update you on a couple of things just to explain how I even started thinking about this concept.

As many of you know, I’ve kind of maintained you, updated. In the past few weeks, I’ve been missing in action, and I had to go to Texas because my dad was having a procedure done and I wanted to be there with my family to provide support and to be there with my dad and to help my mom while being there, she can run errands and do things that she needs to do, which she can’t normally do because she’s with my dad. And in a nutshell we’re going through a transition phase with my dad with his health and advancing in his age. We celebrated his 80th birthday while I was there.

I was spending time with my family, and during the course of this time, I decided to spend a little bit of time revisiting some of my old stomping grounds. I grew up in Texas and it was fun to go drive to the old neighborhood where I grew up, the first house that I remember. And this is a house that’s at the end of a cul-de-sac and my memories of the neighborhood, of all of our neighbors, all the other kids that I used to play with out there, I have very fond memories of this specific stage of my life.

And across the street from the house there’s a creek. I remember going down to the creek and there was a pipe we used to walk across. There was a bridge where we would play under the bridge in the water, overturning rocks there looking for crawdads. Just lots of fun memories growing up in this specific neighborhood and this specific home. And it was fun to go back there.

When I pulled up to the house, I parked at the, it’s a cul-de-sac, so I just parked in one of the available spots and it happened to be right in front of one of the neighbor’s homes, and as I got out of the car, I saw the lady who lives in that house outside doing some yard work. So I walked up and said hi to her. And this specific house has two giant stone eagles greeting as just statues there at the entrance to the house.

As I was talking to this lady, I told her, “I remember when those eagles were set up here.” And she was shocked, she was like, “Whoa, we’ve lived here five or six years,” or whatever it was, “and I’ve never known the story of these eagles.” And I said, “Yeah, the lady who used to live here was obsessed with eagles and she had all things eagles inside her home, and I remember when she put these statues out here. They were actually painted gold at the time. They looked like golden Eagles.” And she was fascinated to hear some of this story.

All of this was done, I don’t know, 30 years ago or so, when I lived there. Maybe 35 years ago. As I related more of the memories I had of the neighborhood at the time, we started chatting and another neighbor came out, she was getting ready to walk her dogs, walked past, this neighbor introduced us, and then that neighbor stayed. And then a third neighbor came out and before we knew it, the four of us, three neighbors and myself, were just out there talking, and they were asking me all kinds of questions about this specific neighborhood and what things were like 30 or 35 years ago when I lived there. And I was sharing a lot of my memories, talking about who lived in this house, who lived in that house, certain stories I had that reminded me of this area and this phase of my life.

It was a really fun experience to speak with these total strangers who, for this one moment, we were all bonded by the unique attachment that we each have to this specific cul-de-sac, this little neighborhood and these specific homes. And in this case, I felt like it was unique because the home that I lived in and all the homes right around it, were built by a family friend of ours from Mexico. That’s how we ended up buying that house. Our friends built these several homes. They moved up from Mexico, built several homes, and we ended up buying one of them, and we knew everyone who lived in all of the other ones.

So they were kind of speaking to someone who represents the original building of the neighborhood, so to speak. And it was a really cool experience for them, it was a really cool experience for me. But it was fascinating to realize how different this neighborhood is now. There are no kids who live on that street. When I grew up there, almost every home there had kids and we were all friends and we all played outside. It had a very different feel and a very different dynamic than what the neighborhood has now. Now it’s a neighborhood where a few of the neighbors know each other, the three that I was with, and they were telling me that the other neighbors, specifically the ones who lived in my house, that they don’t interact with anyone else who lives there, that they just keep to themselves, that they’re a little unfriendly and unpleasant to be around. They don’t seem to enjoy anyone else’s company. And a few other neighbors are like that.

It was interesting to get a vibe, a feeling, for what this neighborhood is like and thinking how different this neighborhood is from the neighborhood I grew up in, and yet here it is, it’s the same neighborhood. Not one single family from my time growing up there remains. It’s all new families. And it got me thinking about just this concept of seeing through the lens of interdependence and through the lens of impermanence, that you can have something, we’ll call it a neighborhood, and in this case it was really our street, just the everyone who lived in the cul-de-sac, and it has its own energy, it has its own way of being, it has its own mood, its own feeling. And that was the neighborhood.

And then there’s the individual homes. Our home had a certain way of being that was determined by everyone who lived there, my twin brother and I, our older brother, my mom and my dad, our pet Labrador. We had a an energy that you could say was the energy of that home. In this case, it was a very vibrant home where we played games in the swimming pool and we were often found outside climbing our trees and playing in the front yard, playing with the other neighbors. And then each other home had its own little unique energy and way of being.

And none of that remains. All of these homes are completely different in terms of energy and vibe. I don’t even know how to say it. Just whatever that word is. That’s ambiance. I don’t know. But it’s not the same. It’s different in every home now. And the neighborhood, as a whole, is different than how it was when we were there.

And through this lens of impermanence, through this lens of interdependence, I was thinking so much of what made us who we were had to do with our neighbors being who they were. And so much of what made our neighbors be how they were, had to do with us being how we were. And so much of what made the neighborhood, as a whole, the way that it was, had entirely to do with the people who lived in the neighborhood at that time.

So here, through the lens of interdependence, we had a way of, if you could take a snapshot of how it was in that time, that’s how it was because of everyone who lived there, and now it’s a whole different picture.

The crazy thing is, the house is the same. It’s the same house. The colors may have changed. It’s the same original bricks. Same walls. It’s the same glass on the windows. The sidewalk is the same. Several of the trees and plants look different because they’ve changed over 30 years, but there were several elements that seem the same. And it got me thinking along the lines of non-self. If the house or the neighborhood has a way of feeling, that feeling is an illusion. There’s no, I guess you could call it the soul of the neighborhood or the soul of the house, and yet there actually isn’t one, it’s just that energy and that vibe that it has, which is real and feels very real, is not permanent.

And I thought in the same way, that sense of self is really no different. The DNA of my body may be the same as the one that was there when I lived in that neighborhood, but that was the 10 year old me who lived there. And that me is. In a lot of ways, very different than the me that lives where I live now.

It was fun to correlate this concept of the house being like my body and all the other dynamics of the neighbors who live there, the people who are in the house, are like my thoughts and my feelings and my emotions and my memories, all of that has changed and morphed and evolved in the same way that that neighborhood has changed and it’s morphed and it’s evolved. And now you essentially have two entirely different neighborhoods. They’re just completely different, one from the other. And there are elements that remain the same, the concrete, the sidewalks, things like that. And that’s how I feel about myself and the me that I am now versus the me that I was before, and the me that will be me when I’m 80 years old.

I had the same experience with my dad last week while I was there with him, and we had a lot of fun bonding moments and just reminiscing and nostalgia and talking about his life experience and what it was like growing up in an orphanage and what it was like… Different milestones of his life. And it was fun to realize, like that house, these are stages that have come and gone and they’ve changed.

Now in front of me, I had this 80 year old man who has lived a very full life full of all these cool chapters and cool milestones, but those are long gone, in the same way that the neighborhood of yesteryear, of 30 years ago, that’s just not the same neighborhood that’s there now.

And of course I was going through all of this, simultaneously experiencing all these intense emotions, because I’m visiting my old stomping grounds. I’m spending time with my dad. Who’s battling cancer and he’s dealing with health issues. He’s entered a new stage in his life that’s not the same stage that he’s been in in prior chapters. And we’re coming to the realization that this is just a new stage. Things are changing. And we all know the inevitable outcome of all of our lives is that eventually the book closes, the final chapter is done, and it’s all over.

And it got me thinking what a cool experience it is to see life as a whole, as the greatest journey, the greatest adventure. I thought of this because when I was there in the neighborhood and I walked down to the creek and I was replaying memories of going exploring in the creek with my brothers and just these little epic adventures that, as I remember them in my head, those were just little chapters. It was a little story within a chapter. And yet I’ve wanted at times to identify or single out a memory and say, this one here, that’s the big journey, but no, it’s the whole thing. The whole thing has been the big journey. To be alive is the greatest adventure story ever told.

I think it was really fun to have that feeling while I was there reliving some of these memories of my past. It was a really cool experience. And then as I navigated all of these things and these emotions, intense emotions at the time, and even now as a sit and think about it, it helped me realize that there’s this concept that I’ve been playing around with in my head called emotional enlightenment. And for me, this isn’t about achieving a certain state. It’s really the radical acceptance of whatever state it is that I’m currently experiencing, and it made me recognize, I’ve echoed this in the past in other podcast episodes, that there is a level of equanimity that can be spread out across all my thoughts, all my feelings, all my emotions. And for many years of life I’ve been chasing after one. I want this one and I want to avoid this other one.

And as I’ve studied Buddhism, as I’ve come to understand the nature of what Buddhism actually offers and brings to the table, it’s this fascinating realization of the equanimity of all my thoughts and feelings and emotions. And I like I’ve said before, it’s not about feeling good, it’s about being really good at feeling and feeling whatever it is you’re feeling in that moment. And I was experiencing this in Texas the last week as I’ve been there with my family and processing the emotions and the realizations of what’s to come and allowing myself to fully feel the full range of emotions.

When it was time to laugh, we were laughing hard, and when it was time to cry, we were crying hard, and when it was time to reminisce, we were reminiscing hard, and when it was time to try to feel optimistic and hopeful we were trying, that’s what we did. And what I felt all throughout all of it was just this equanimity across the full range of emotions, and it made me come across this notion of this is what I guess would be emotional enlightenment. It’s the recognition that all my emotions are completely valid and completely fine and the radical acceptance of whatever it is I’m experiencing in that moment offers me the peace that ironically I thought could only come by having this emotion and not having that other emotion. But no, the peace came from fully accepting whatever emotion is there, whatever emotion is present. And as I mentioned, there was a broad range of emotions while we were there.

And then that line of thought of emotional enlightenment, it’s like being able to fully accept any emotion that you’re experiencing and recognizing how it’s the chasing after one and the rejecting of another that puts us in this crazy game that we can’t win. And by recognizing all of them, they’re just thoughts and feelings and emotions that arise. A lot like the ducks in the Zen story. The ducks are just flying and our thoughts are just flying and our emotions are just flying, and I, as the observer, I’m the one that says, where did happiness go? And I think the Zen master would twist my nose and say, when has happiness ever gone? That’s just a perspective. And from one perspective, I might say it was here and now it left, so it’s gone, but it’s never been gone. It’s the same with sadness. It’s never been gone. Same with anger. It’s never been gone. They’re all there all the time, it’s just the shift of perspective and the shift of focus that helps us to see and pay attention to one a little bit stronger than the other.

And that to me is a really cool mental exercise and a mental correlation. It inspires me to want to spend time thinking about what things I’m grateful for. And this is what I did as I walked the neighborhood, I was just grateful for all the range of emotions and memories and experiences that I had while I was there. And not just the pleasant ones, there were unpleasant ones too, interactions with neighbors that may have been unpleasant or dealing with new experiences as I was growing up that were unpleasant moments and just being grateful that I was a part of this incredible adventure called being alive, and this is one chapter. I got to go back and revisit one of those chapters. It was a really fun experience.

It got me thinking a little bit about how, in a way, enlightenment is hopelessness. Hopelessness is something that we experience in the present moment. I’m not talking about hopelessness, meaning, Oh, no, things will never get better, or resigning to the fact that this is how things are. I’m talking about hopelessness in the present moment, which is the acceptance of I don’t hope to be feeling anything other than what I’m feeling now. I am just going to be fully aware of whatever it is I’m feeling now. So in that, there’s no hope of feeling anything different than what I’m feeling. This is just what I’m feeling.

And again, I got to practice this intensely last week because there were moments that were very difficult, reminiscing things with my dad as he’s losing his health, there were moments where we just sat there and we cried in each other’s arms, and I didn’t hope to feel anything other than what I was feeling in that moment. I welcomed the sadness. I welcomed the impending fear of loss. I welcomed the gratitude and I welcomed the humor in thinking of some of the fun stories. I welcomed all of it. And in that sense, I was experiencing total hopelessness and it was such a beautiful thing. I didn’t hope for anything to be other than how it was. I was fully accepting the broad range of emotions as they were arising just as they were in the present moment.

I think hopelessness gets such a bad rap, it has such a negative connotation in our typical Western way of thinking. And here I was experiencing truly utter hopelessness, and I was so at peace because I was just allowing myself to fully feel whatever it was that I was feeling in that moment. I didn’t hope to be experiencing anything else. I just was fully aware of whatever was there.

And I watched it change. We would feel this, and then that would lead to this thought and that would lead to this memory and boom, here we are now experiencing another emotion. And then you just watch that and that one morphs and that one changes and then boom, another emotion. And it was a really neat process. It was a really fun experience to spend some time with my family, my two brothers were there, my parents, it was the whole family gathered, spending some quality time with my dad, celebrating his 80th birthday and just trying to help him have strength to recover from this procedure he had just gone through and the upcoming and intense procedures that he’s facing with his cancer. It was a really cool experience.

But what came out of all of it was this notion in my mind of emotional enlightenment and the concept of hopelessness in the present moment being a beautiful thing. And that’s not to say that hopeless… I do think hopelessness towards the future, that that can seem really difficult. I’m not talking about the future, I’m only talking about the present. Hopelessness in the present moment allows me to fully accept whatever it is I’m experiencing now and to act skillfully on whatever is going to have to happen next, which ironically is what gives us hope about the future, that we’re going to handle it a little bit better than we thought we would, because we’re actually being more skillful about it than just sitting in the present moment, wishing that the present moment was something other than what it is. So again, I just want to get back to that, apply this concept of hopelessness specifically to the present moment.

Those were the thoughts I wanted to share with you. That’s all I have for this podcast episode. This was somewhat a way of me just trying to get back caught up with having a podcast episode out. As always, thank you for listening. If you want to support the work I’m doing with the podcast, consider becoming a patron and joining our online community where we discuss these koans and we discuss the podcast episodes. There’s even a book club study group in there. You can learn more about this by visiting secularbuddhism.com.

As always, if you enjoyed this podcast episode, share it with others, write a review, give it a rating on iTunes. All of that helps. And that’s all I have for now, but as always, I look forward to recording another podcast episode soon and before I go, I want to share another Zen koan with you to work with between now and the next podcast episode. So this one goes like this. As the roof was leaking, a Zen master told two monks to bring something to catch the water. One brought a tub, the other a basket. The first was severely reprimanded, the second highly praised.

That’s all I have for now. Thank you for listening. Until next time.

In this podcast episode, I will share five daily life guidelines that have been beneficial for me in my personal practice. They are: consume mindfully, practice loving kindness, practice gratitude, discover wisdom, and accept constant change.

Koan Discussed: When the many are reduced to one, to what is the one reduced?

Koan Shared: Once Ma-tsu and Pai-chang were walking along and they saw some wild ducks fly by.
“What is that?” the Master asked.
“Wild ducks,” Pai-chang replied.
“Where have they gone?”
“They’ve flown away,” Pai-chang said.
The Master then twisted Pai-chang’s nose, and when Pai-chang cried out in pain, Ma-tsu said, “When have they ever flown away?”

Transcript:

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Secular Buddhism podcast. This is episode number 133. I am your host, Noah Rasheta. And today, I’m going to talk about five daily life guidelines.

Keep in mind you don’t need to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist. You can use what you learn to just be a better whatever you already are. If you’re new to the podcast, episodes one through five give a good introduction to the basic teachings and concepts of Buddhism. You can visit secularbuddhism.com and click on the Start Here link and get started there. If you’re looking for an online community to practice with and interact with, consider becoming a supporter of the podcast by visiting secularbuddhism.com and clicking on the top link that says, “Join our online community on Patreon.”

Before jumping into the topic for today’s podcast episode, I want to talk about the Zen koan that I shared in the last podcast episode. The koan says, “When the many are reduced to one, to what is the one reduced?” I want to share some of the thoughts that come from some of the community members on Patreon regarding this koan.

The first one comes from Lauren who says, “To me, this week’s koan made me think of the interdependent nature of reality. I also thought about the often used car analogy. If you are taking a car apart piece by piece, when does it stop becoming a car? The many car parts are often reduced to the concept of a car in our minds, but the reality is that each component is unique and interdependent with all things. So I think it’s a lesson to remind ourselves that every concept we have of a physical thing or an idea is made up of subcomponents, and those are made up of subcomponents, and so on. This is so we can be mindful of what it took for this thing, this concept, this moment to arise so we may act more skillfully by having right view in the world.”

Mirella says, “I really like this koan, as it makes me think about the concepts of oneness, interconnectedness, and non-self all in one sentence. If the sense of separation between self and other disappears, then there is no one left, at least not in the same way as before the many were reduced to one. This doesn’t mean that the one is reduced to nothing, but rather that the one has become the many.”

Then, Matt says, “I am reminded of the story of the men and the elephant. In this situation, reducing the number of blind men would reduce our understanding of the elephant. I really love this koan. It also made me think of how a forest benefits from a diversity of species. A reduction of species makes the forest less able to cope with change. I think humanity is learning this from the internet. We can become trapped in thought bubbles on the internet. Reducing the views that we are exposed to makes us more vulnerable.”

I enjoyed the thoughts that were shared on the Patreon community, specifically these by Lauren, Marella, and Matt, and I wanted to share some of my own thoughts regarding this specific koan. I agree with what was shared where the invitation of the koan is to see the interdependent nature of things. What’s fascinating to me, when we start to think about this in terms of the one and the many, if you think about it in terms of a line that goes up or a line that goes down, you end up at the same place, which is the point of uncertainty and the point of not knowing.

So if I were to take the car as the analogy, car is a concept. It’s an idea. And yet, it’s a thing. It’s real. And yet, I could reduce it to all of its parts, and I end up with another concept, for example, an engine. The engine of the car. Now it’s not the car, it’s the engine. But, you do the same there. The engine, reduce that to its parts. Oh, well, now I have piston, and all these other parts of an engine. You take the piston, reduce it to its parts, and at some point you go all the way down to the lowest known particles that we know of. Then, what are those made of? And you’re still left with, well, we don’t know. We just know as far as we can go, there’s this, I think it’s quirks, right? Quarks, quirks? But, you get to that. Well, what are those? What are those made of? Is there anything smaller? And again, the answer would be we don’t know, at least for now.

But if you go up the line, it’s the same thing where many states make a country. Many countries make a continent. Many continents make the planet. Many planets make the solar system. Many solar systems make a galaxy. Many galaxies … And you go up, up, up, up, up, up until you say, “Okay, we’ve got the universe, and the universe is expanding.”

Now you can go into the theoretical explanations beyond that. What if it’s a multiverse? What if it’s string, bubbles? The various explanations of what there could be with a multiverse theory, you end up at the same place, which is we don’t know. And I think it’s kind of fun to think about that in terms of this koan, with the many and the one. What you have is, again, the many and the one, the one and the many, the many and the one. It just depends how you want to define it. Many states make up one country. But if you reduce the country to its parts, you’d have many states. Well, reduce the many states to their parts. Well, many counties. What about the many counties? Many cities. What about the many cities? And it goes on, and on, and on. But what we have are just concepts and ideas. So that’s fun to think about in terms of this specific koan, that when the many are reduced to one, to what is the one reduced? For me, this is, again, it’s an invitation to see the interdependent nature of things.

Those are the thoughts I have about the koan. And now I want to jump into the topic for the podcast for today. I’ve been thinking a lot about different topics, and I keep a list where I have my ideas of topics. And for some reason, I thought I’d share this one today. This is a list that I first encountered when I was doing my lay ministry program with Bright Dawn. This was one of the teachings from the Bright Dawn way of oneness Buddhism, and I really enjoyed it. I wrote it down, and I’ve thought about it over the years and what it means to me. And I thought I would share it with you. But, this was taught to me in the context that there are five daily life guidelines.

I must say real quick that when I first heard about these as guidelines, it made me think of that scene in Pirates of the Caribbean where Keira Knightley, Ms. Turner, is trying to get Captain Barbossa to follow some specific rules or codes, and she invokes the pirate’s code. He retorts with, “First of all, you have to be a pirate to follow the pirate’s code.” But then, he says something that always stood out to me. He says, “And thirdly, the code is more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules.” This is something that I think about often with concepts in Buddhism. There is no compelling in Buddhism. There are no commandments. It’s not like a hard set of rules. Almost everything that we learn about is in the context of being guidelines.

So when we think about these in terms of guidelines, remember there is no compelling. There’s no rigid requirement to follow these things. But, I enjoy these guidelines. I think they are worth thinking about daily on a daily basis. So, I want to share them with you. These are the five guidelines that I learned about.

The first one is the guideline to consume mindfully. When we talk about consuming, we’re not just talking about consuming food. I do think it’s wise to eat sensibly and to not be wasteful and not take a whole bunch of food on my plate knowing that I’m probably not going to eat at all. I think there’s some sensibility with that and skillfulness with that. But, this goes into other things as well. The fact that we can pause before we buy something and see if breathing is enough. Sometimes we buy things because we feel that we need to have something that’s going to make us feel a certain way.

This is actually exactly how marketing works. The goal of marketing is to make you feel the pain point in your life that you are experiencing, because you do not have this specific thing, this house, this phone, this vacation, this whatever it is that we’re trying to market to you. I know this because I come from a marketing background. I worked at an advertising agency. Marketing has been one of my specialties for throughout most of my career. So I know that the proper technique to get somebody to buy something is to help them feel the pain point and highlight that. Your life is the way that it is because you don’t have this. We don’t say it exactly like that, but we make you feel that. Then, the solution is, well, you buy this product, or you buy this service, or whatever the thing is. And guess what? Then life’s going to be good.

So to consume mindfully is to pause before we’re going to buy into something and see why do I really want this. What’s the real motivation behind me acquiring this thing, whatever it is? And again, I’m not saying that buying anything is bad. I’m just saying it’s very skillful to know why we’re going to buy something. And in our society, sometimes we don’t entertain the thought of why we’re buying something. We just buy it because we want it.

The next form of consuming mindfully is paying attention to the effects of the media that we consume. So when we consume content, we acquire content through various sources, whether it be books, podcasts, television shows, music, social media, and there’s a way to consume more mindfully. Again, it’s not that one or another is bad, but what does it do to you to consume what you’re consuming? I know people who really struggle with the emotions and feelings that they consume by watching the news. And it seems like a really skillful thing would be to just stop watching the news, and yet they can’t. It’s like, “There’s this thing that I hate, and I got to keep watching it because I hate it if I don’t have it, and I hate it when I have it.” It’s just really strange. And there may be a much more skillful approach, which is, well, then stop consuming that thing that makes you feel that way.

Again, I’m not saying that we need to do any of these things. These are just guidelines. It’s all about you understanding yourself and then consuming mindfully based on what you know is best for you. It would be highly unskillful for someone who’s allergic to peanuts to decide, “Well, I’m still going to eat peanuts anyway because I like the flavor.” It just, it’s not that that’s good or bad, it’s just that it’s highly, highly unskillful. Why would you do that? But we do that all the time with the many things that we consume. So, consuming mindfully.

The second one is share loving kindness. So again, these are five daily life guidelines. I like to think about share loving kindness. And to me, this means consider other people’s views deeply. And I like the keyword deeply. Because oftentimes, I think about my views and how meaningful my views are to me. We all have meaningful views. Our way of interpreting reality is real to us.

Now, nobody goes around living their life saying, “I know that my way of interpreting reality is wrong, but I’m going to stick with it anyway.” Why? Nobody does that. Why? Because we all genuinely think that our way of experiencing and interpreting reality is the correct way. And you can see this in any form of ideology, right? Everybody believes that their way is the right way. So to consider other people’s views deeply for me means I’m going to go beyond the view. To view it deeply means, where did this view come from? What are some of the causes and conditions that gave rise to this view? You know, just you go down layer, layer, layer. And we don’t know the answers to all these things. You can’t know all these things, but you know that there are causes and conditions. So that helps me to not get so hung up on whatever the view itself is.

I can talk to someone who might have a very strange view that makes no sense to me, but I can see it deeply and understand that that view has causes and conditions. And I may not understand those causes and conditions, but knowing that there are causes and conditions and those causes and conditions have causes and conditions changes the relationship that I have with the specific view. I think that’s really helpful when we’re talking about political views or religious views. Those are always hot topics. It also means sharing loving kindness to me means that we work for peace at many levels. It means that I’m trying to experience more joy and less negativity with my interactions with other people.

Another component to this sharing loving kindness to me is recognizing that it takes bravery on my part to be kind and compassionate. Now, one quick example of this to give a little bit of context is the way that we interact with people, like homeless people. In Pema Chodron’s book, When Things Fall Apart, she has a section where she’s talking about how when we see someone on the street and they’re homeless, most of us tend to not want to look at them, especially if you don’t have anything to give them, because it’s awkward and it feels uncomfortable to not be able to help.

It’s not that we go around saying, “Oh, I don’t want to help you.” Maybe some people do. But for most of us, what we go around feeling is I wish I could do something, but I can’t. I’m not in a position to. I don’t have the money. I might not have money on me. So I’m just going to avoid looking at this person because I can’t help them anyway, which is actually sad because it kind of makes them feel invisible.

So the idea of bravery and compassion or having brave compassion is recognizing for me to look at this person in the eyes and just acknowledge them and say, “Hi, how are you?” Or, “I hope you’re having a good day,” or just a smile. It takes a little bit of bravery because there’s going to be a little bit of awkwardness, which is the awkwardness of I don’t have anything for you or I can’t do anything for you, but I’m okay with the discomfort of the awkwardness because I’m brave. So I’m just going to share that compassion and share the smile. That’s how I think about it in my head, this term of brave compassion. So that second daily life guideline is to share loving kindness, to be willing to share that kindness to other people even when it’s hard to do because it’s uncomfortable at times.

The third one is practice gratitude. This is always a good one, right? We can respect the people that we encounter because everyone and everything is a teacher. This is a helpful one for me. When you encounter someone that’s unpleasant, a coworker or the annoying person in the store, or whatever it is, we can start to see these people as teachers. What can I learn from this? What can I learn from this behavior I’m experiencing? What can I learn from … And when we have that mindset of learning, then you can have gratitude. Thank you for teaching me how not to be, or thank you for teaching me how … I don’t know, whatever the lesson is that you get. If you’re the one who can make a lesson out of anything and learn from anything, then it’s natural to feel a sense of gratitude towards whatever situation, or scenario, or person.

Then, we can be equally grateful for the opportunities and the challenges. I think it’s very easy for us to be grateful for opportunities. That’s natural. But, it’s not very common for us to feel a sense of gratitude for our challenges, but the challenges are often the more formative of the two.

I’ve had plenty of nice opportunities and experiences of things in life that I was grateful for, and I’ve also had many challenges or situations that were extremely painful and difficult, and I didn’t feel a sense of gratitude for it at the time. And yet, those events are the ones that went on to forge something much more significant and larger for me in terms of my character or in terms of life changes that I can look back on. And if I’m being very honest with myself, I would have to say I am much more grateful for all of the challenges than I am for the opportunities, because the challenges are the ones that really helped me learn more about myself or really helped me to grow. So when we practice gratitude as a daily life guideline, we’re looking at both the opportunities and the challenges and trying to practice gratitude towards both.

There’s a quote that I like to share in terms of gratitude. This is by David Steindl-Rast. He says, “In daily life, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.” I think that’s so true. And if we can develop practicing gratitude, we’ll find that we tend to be more happy going through life not because we’re happy, but it’s because we’re grateful. It’s the gratefulness that makes us happy. And I think a lot of times we have that mixed up. We try so hard to find ways to be happy when instead we should just try to find more things to be grateful for. And really, what is there to not be grateful for? Anything that teaches me something is something I can be grateful for. So, yeah, there’s a lot to be grateful for if you just think about it.

The fourth one is to discover wisdom. And to me, this is about finding the connections between the teachings and our own life. And like I said, anything can teach us. Anything can be my teacher. So when I make the correlation between that thing that’s teaching me something and what that means for me in my life, that’s a matter of discovering wisdom. I find I discover wisdom in the little things, the wisdom of being annoyed at the red light, the wisdom of dealing with the coworker that makes annoying sounds or whatever the situation is. There’s wisdom to be had there if we’re willing to look.

Now, another concept here related to this discovering wisdom is that we should not become attached to our conclusions. When we see something that we say, “Oh, I’ve gained some insight,” that’s fine. There’s nothing inherently wrong or dangerous with gaining insight. But, how attached are we to the insight that we gain. This to me is like the blind men and the elephant. I gain wisdom when I feel the elephant then I discover, yep, these are … The elephant consists of all these little stringy things. And then later, I might discover, yeah, that’s the tail. That’s just the hair on the tail, and that’s only one part of the elephant. But to me, that might be the only real part. But, how attached am I to my conclusion? If I’m attached to my conclusion, then I don’t want to hear from the other person that’s saying, “No, it’s not. It’s one big sidewall,” the one who’s feeling the side of the elephant. So, let’s not get too attached to our conclusions.

And again, we can always keep the beginner’s mind, the empty teacup. As soon as the teacup’s full, there’s no more room for more tea so we keep it empty. That to me is not becoming attached to our conclusions.

There’s a quote that I think goes well with this concept, discovering wisdom, which is the Tibetan proverb that says, “If I know I will die tomorrow, I can still learn something tonight.” And I love that thought. I’m always trying to learn something new. I’m always trying to read a new book, listen to a new podcast or do something that teaches me something because I’ve come to understand that there’s so much out there to be known. And so very little of it that I’ll ever get to know that it’s just exciting to learn something new, that’s exciting to gain any kind of insight about any kind of topic, and that has affected the type of things that I watch. I enjoy documentaries that teach me things because I know that that’s something that I’ll never even get close to scratching the surface of knowing all the things that there are to know. And that’s true whether I’m just thinking of one specific topic or subject or just in general all that there is to know about anything. We’ll never get there.

The fifth one is to accept constant change. To me, this means it’s an invitation to be open to whatever arises in every moment. Again, this is cultivating the beginner’s mind. But to me, I like to picture this with the Tetris analogy. I’m going through life, and the Tetris game is always changing because new pieces are always showing up, so I don’t want to get stuck for too long. We all get stuck from time to time. When that piece shows up, we’re like, “Ugh! I almost had this figured out, and then that showed up. Why did that have to show up? “And sure, I might be stuck there for a few seconds as that piece is coming down and I’m trying to figure out where to put it. But don’t get stuck there too long because then comes the next piece.

This is equally applicable to when the piece shows up that you didn’t want as the piece that shows up that you did want. You’re like, “Finally! I got the pieces that I need. Everything’s finally going to work.” And yeah, it might. Then, it shows up and they all lock into the same place, and everything’s good. That line disappears from your game. Because that’s the way the game works, right? And then it changes again. So don’t get stuck too long. Because when it’s good, it’s good while it’s good till it’s not good. But when it’s bad, it’s also bad while it’s bad till it becomes good again. And that’s just the nature, as Pema says, of things coming together and things falling apart. And that is life, right? Things come together, and then things fall apart, and then things come together, and then things fall apart. And it goes on, and on, and on until our game is over. I love to think about that when I think about Tetris.

I want to close this with a invitation to keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Always keep going. So these five daily life guidelines are consume mindfully, share loving kindness, practice gratitude, discover wisdom, and accept constant change. These have been fun for me in the past several years to try to think about often, daily, really, because they are useful guidelines. And with time, they become a little bit more habitual in the way and affecting the way that we interact with people, and with situations that we’re going through in life, and with life in general. So my invitation to you is to think about these five daily life guidelines and see if any of them seem like they would be good or relevant for you to apply into your day-to-day life.

And that is all that I have for this podcast episode. As always, I want to thank you for sharing. If you want to support the work I’m doing with the podcast, you can consider becoming a patron and joining the online community where we discuss these koans, and the podcast episodes, and more. There’s even a study group/book club. You can learn more about all this by visiting the online community at secularbuddhism.com. And if you enjoyed this podcast episode, feel free to share it with others, write a review, give it a rating tonight tunes. And that’s all I have for now, but I do look forward to recording another podcast episode soon.

And before I go, here is another Zen koan for you to think about. Once, Mat-tsu and Pai-chang were walking along and they saw some wild ducks fly by. “What is that?” the master asked. “Wild ducks,” Pai-chang replied. “Where have they gone?” “They have flown away,” Pai-chang said. The master then twisted Pai-chang’s nose. And when Pai-chang cried out in pain, Ma-tsu said, “When have they ever flown away?” Till next time.

The nature of reality is that difficulties will arise, and we’ll experience suffering. We can begin to embrace that fact by recognizing that suffering, in general, is not personal. It’s simply part of the experience of existence. And we will experience suffering, no matter how hard we try to avoid it. In this episode, I will discuss the pervasive suffering that sometimes affects how we see our relationships, jobs, and parenting.

Koan Discussed: What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping?

Koan Shared: Elder Ting asked Lin-chi,
“Master, what is the great meaning of Buddha’s teachings?”
Lin-chi came down from his seat, slapped Ting and pushed him away.
Ting was stunned and stood motionless.
A monk nearby said, “Ting, why do you not bow?”
At that moment Ting attained great enlightenment.

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Transcript:

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Secular Buddhism podcast. This is episode number 131, I am your host, Noah Rasheta and today I’m going to talk about the truth of unsatisfactoriness. As always keep in mind, you don’t need to use what you learned from Buddhism to be a Buddhist. You can use what you learn to be a better whatever you already are. Furthermore, if you are new to the podcast, listening perhaps for the first time or you’ve jumped in on these podcast episodes recently, I want to remind you that episodes one through five have a summary of the basics of Buddhism, and you can find these by scrolling all the way back to the original first five, or you can visit secularbuddhism.com and click on start here.

Also, another request I’ve received quite regularly is a request for suggestions for reading material and books. If you’re interested in learning more about these concepts and ideas, feel free to visit secularbuddhism.com/books and there you will see my recommended books that I’ve read and that I wholeheartedly recommend for anyone interested in exploring more about Buddhism or about any of these general topics and concepts that I discuss in the podcast.

So quick update on my own life, I recently, as you may have noticed, I didn’t record the podcast episode last week because I’ve been on the road. Many of you know that I moved to Mexico for a year with my family to help my kids learn to speak Spanish and to identify with the culture since that’s where I’m from. But in light of the recent worldwide events and the potential social unrest and economic changes that are happening all over the world, including for me, much of my work related to online advertising, which I can do remotely, has dried up. So I had to make a decision and rather than waiting till June to move home, we decided last week that we should go ahead and make the move.

Now flying home was not the tricky part, we knew that would be easy. The tricky part or the scary part was how to get all of our possessions home, because we knew that that would require me packing them all up into the car and driving all of the possessions back home and that’s exactly what I did. So I’ve been off the radar a little bit for the last seven days. It took me seven days from last Wednesday. I left early in the morning, made my way through driving from essentially the Southern part of Mexico all the way to the North, crossed into Texas, made my way up to Dallas, visited my parents and then made the journey westward from there and recently made my way back to Utah. So that’s what I’ve been up to in the last seven days. And that’s why I was not able to record a podcast episode last week. So here I am catching up.

Okay, jumping right in I want to talk a little bit about the koan that says, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Now this is a koan that I wanted to bring up because it’s one of the classics. It’s one of the main ones that you’re going to hear when you start studying or reading about zen koans. I want to share some of the thoughts that come from the Patreon community and I’ll start with David Spots who says, “For me, the answer to this week’s koan is, whatever is perceived by the listener.” Nina from the community says, “This koan brings up the emptiness of things, as well as intervene. A clap is made up of non-clap elements, which dismantling it would be the fingers, the hand, the skin, the bones, the brain, the cells, et cetera. So ultimately the sound of one hand clapping is empty of sound because a clap is relative to what is perceived to be a clap.” I like those thoughts by Nina.

And then Matthew says, “Whenever I hear this koan, I remember when they had it on the Simpsons and it opened Lisa’s mind. I agree with a lot of what others said, which is interesting because before I used to try to solve the puzzle, but it is much like if no one is around and the tree falls in the woods, does it make a noise? It is about perception. I think it is also about things not having an intrinsic meaning. What is a clap? Is it two hands hitting each other? If so, how hard? What if I touch them ever so softly? Can one hand clap? Maybe. You can hit your palm with the fingers of the same hand. And what if you slap your thigh with your palm, like you often do at a sports event, or if you have a drink in one hand, that is one hand clapping and I know the noise that it makes.” And that’s the end of Matthew’s thoughts.

And I agree with all the sentiments that were shared in the group, it was as always it’s a fun experience to hear other people’s perspectives and their thoughts regarding one single topic, in this case, what is the sound of one hand clapping? Now for me, I feel like trying to answer is the problem, because I could equally ask other questions, like, what is the sound of anger? And if I were to ask, what is the sound of anger? You can give me an answer, you can say it’s yelling or it’s grinding your teeth, or it’s punching the wall with your hand. All of which could be correct, but all of which are also incomplete because perhaps there isn’t an actual sound to anger, there’s events that can arise with anger as its cause or its condition. And I think with the sound of one hand clapping, you can run into similar issues because you’d have to define what is clapping.

I remember in school sometimes when you had to be quiet in class but they wanted you to clap, you could lift your hands in the air and kind of rotate them back and forth like air clapping, but there’s no sound taking place and that counts as a clap. So then it forces you to have to define is clapping an act of celebration, where I want you to know that I’m celebrating with you and that counts as a clap? Is it specifically the two hands that come together? If so, what about at a sporting event where I take those two long sticks, the clapping sticks and I hit those together to make my clap louder, does that not count because my hands aren’t touching?

And it can become problematic because I have to define what is a clap, so then I’m left with this idea with one, what is the sound of one hand clapping? Well, the sound of one hand clapping is the sound of one hand clapping. However, I define it I may be missing the point, but I will always be correct by saying that the sound of one hand clapping is the sound of one hand clapping. And now I leave it up to you to imagine what that means to interpret the meaning of that. That’s how I like to think about this specific koan. It’s an invitation as always to go inward and ask myself, “Well, what does clapping mean to me? What does the sound of one hand clapping mean to me?”

So jumping into the topic that I have for this podcast episode, The Truth of Unsatisfactoriness, I’m going to echo some of the sentiments I shared in episode 122, We Don’t Eliminate Suffering and episode 57, Discovering All Pervasive Suffering. The truth of unsatisfactoriness is a title that we could use to talk about the first of the noble truths. So in Buddhism, if you were to ask almost any Buddhist, what the core basic Buddhist teachings are, they would probably summarize the four noble truths. And the first of the truths is the truth of suffering or the truth of unsatisfactoriness. And I like the word unsatisfactoriness more than suffering, but it’s the same general idea.

And here what we’re trying to understand is that the nature of reality is that difficulties will arise and we will experience suffering or unsatisfactoriness. We can begin to embrace that fact by recognizing that suffering in general is not personal, it’s simply part of the experience of existence. And we will experience suffering no matter how hard we try to avoid it, whether we search for a magic formula to remove it, or we chase after money to buy it off or seek fame to drown it out or whatever. If we pray, meditate, perform rituals, to try to shield ourselves from it suffering in some form will find us. It is the central problem of human existence. The diagnosis is universal. It’s not just you, it’s all of us, the rich, the famous, the powerful, the pious, everyone. If you think you’re alone with your difficulties, just spend some time talking to others and ask them about their problems. And if they’re open and they’re honest, you’ll soon discover that everyone has struggles and pain and unsatisfactoriness to contend with.

What we learned from the Buddha about embracing suffering is that life is going to be easier for us when we truly accept the suffering is a part of life for everyone, there’s simply no way around it. Now I wanted to bring this topic up because in recent weeks, I had a discussion with a friend of mine, Matt, who brought up this concept, this idea of acute suffering versus chronic suffering. And what he wanted to elaborate on was that sometimes when we approach Buddhism and we approached these big concepts or topics around suffering, it seems easy to apply these to some form of acute suffering, like some big change. Like you lose your job or you lose a loved one, or you realize that you’re sick, things of that nature.

But what happens when we experience this level of unsatisfactoriness in a chronic sense? It’s a lower magnitude of unsatisfactoriness yet it’s there and we just kind of deal with it day in and day out and often for months or years or even our whole lives. And in that discussion, it made me think about this Buddhist concept of all pervasive suffering. So if you’ve read some of my books that talk about the topic of suffering, I mentioned the various types of suffering, and I think it’s important to recognize and highlight that there are indeed various forms or ways to suffer. One of them is what we call all pervasive suffering. Keep in mind for a second, this notion of all pervasive suffering, which is essentially that there’s always at any given moment, some underlying unsatisfactoriness that’s there. And what we want to identify is where does that come from?

So just as an example, on my drive here, I spent seven days sitting in the car driving. My shortest days were 10 hour drives, and my longest days were 14 hour drives. So doing this day in and day out, I had a lot of thoughts about discomfort and unsatisfactoriness, and it stemmed from things like, my foot is going numb, to my legs are really uncomfortable, my lower back is hurting, all of the discomforts that come with sitting in a car for that long. But it got me thinking, “What if I went back in time?” At some point I would say, “Transporting my possessions is really hard on this sled.” So I invent wheels. Oh, well, that made it a lot easier. And for a split moment, I’d be grateful that it’s so much easier to pull this wagon with my possessions, rather than pushing it or dragging it on a sled. And then I might realize, “Oh, it was way easier when I tethered this wagon with wheels to an animal and I let it pull me. Oh, I’m so grateful for that now.”

And then there would be discomforts that arise from that. “Oh, I wish my animal didn’t need to rest so I could keep going. I wish it could go faster because this is taking forever.” Or, “I’m going numb sitting on the back of this horse.” Or something like that. And then motors are invented and they come along and, “Oh, well now this is easy. I get in this vehicle and I just go.” And again, “Well, but it’s slow.” And what I’m trying to get at is that over time this process has become better, and better, and better, and better, why? Because we generally don’t like discomfort so we’re constantly looking at ways to ease or minimize the discomfort.

And thanks to that, we’ve evolved to the point where here I am taking a seven day drive that traverses from one whole country to another, it’s pretty incredible that I can do that in a car. And sure there are difficulties that arise because that’s the nature of life is that there are always going to be difficulties and that’s what I wanted to highlight. Sure, I could make this better. What if I cut it from seven days down to three days, there would still be discomfort for sitting for three days or one hour. We do this when we’re on the airplane, right? We can be on an airplane, taking a flight that’s going to be an hour or two hours long that covers thousands of miles or something and we’re unsatisfied that the internet right now isn’t working and I can’t watch the movies, the screen in front of me is broken or something like that. And this is what I want to get at with the idea of all pervasive suffering or what Matt was talking about a more chronic form of suffering.

This is evident in things, not just because I was taking a drive, but let’s use another example, Matt and I talked about this and the example would be, let’s say you’re in a job and you’re not completely satisfied with your job. There’s an underlying level of unsatisfactoriness with your job. The problem that arises isn’t the unsatisfactoriness, I think the problem that arises is that we feel the unsatisfactoriness and we think that we shouldn’t feel it. t’s like we’ve believed for, I don’t know, from societal views or wherever these views came from that if we’re suffering, even a little bit, then we’re doing it wrong.

And I see this all the time when I receive emails that ask about tips or advice about parenting, for example in Buddhism, and the general vibe I get from these types of emails is that, “Hey, parenting is pretty hard, therefore, I must be doing it wrong. How can Buddhism help me to do it right, so that parenting isn’t hard anymore?” It’s almost like nobody told us that parenting is hard. Somehow we all bought into this lie, which is that if you do it right, parenting is easy. And that’s the problem. The problem isn’t that parenting is hard. The problem is that parenting is hard and we don’t want it to be hard. So here we are comparing, because of social media or whatever, what we think other people’s parenting experience is like, and we’re thinking, they must be doing something right and I must be doing something wrong because if it’s hard, I’m not doing it right.

And Buddhism kind of steps in and it’s saying, “No, all pervasive suffering is that parenting is hard.” There’s just no way around that, there’s no escaping it. Imagine that you have a restaurant that you really enjoy. And at that restaurant you have a specific dish, a meal that you really enjoy, so you always pick that. Now you may have this underlying unsatisfactoriness if you start to think, “I really like this, but man, what if there’s another meal at another restaurant that I might enjoy more?” If I think that, which absolutely could be true, then yes, it’s difficult to fully enjoy this meal because what if there’s another meal that I would enjoy more? So I want to go taste all of them. Now there’s no way around this because you cannot taste every dish at every restaurant in the world, it cannot happen. It’s physically impossible.

So when I recognize that, then I can learn to accept that there is going to be a level of all pervasive suffering every time I eat a meal, no matter how good it is, because somewhere in the back of my mind might be the thought, “What if there’s another meal somewhere else that I would have liked more?” Now take that same line of thinking and correlate that to other bigger things like relationships, I think this is a big deal in relationships. And we think, “Well, I’m in a relationship…” And some days I’m thinking, “Hmm, what if I had married this other person instead?” I don’t know someone you dated in college or high school and you start having those similar thoughts. What if there was a relationship out there that would be better than this one more compatible or whatever?

And the truth is, well, yeah, it very well could be, but here’s the catch you could be in that relationship and you’d be having the exact same thoughts, “What if I had married the other person?” And there’s no way around that because you can’t have the experience of being in a relationship with every single person in the world, it cannot happen. It’s physically impossible. So there’s always going to be that underlying all pervasive unsatisfactoriness in every relationship that is telling you, “What if, what if it would have been different?” Well, yeah, that’s fine. So what I want to get at with this, the idea here is that when these thoughts arise or when this general underlying form of all pervasive suffering arises, there’s nothing wrong with it.

The only time this becomes problematic is when that arises. And then we started thinking, “Oh, what does that mean? Oh no, maybe…” And don’t misunderstand me here, I’m not saying if you’re in a relationship, just stick with it, there’s no better relationship out there. That’s not true either, I know plenty of people who were in a miserable relationship and ended up getting divorced and ended up in a much happier and healthier relationship later. So I’m not saying stick with things, I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is, you’re never going to find the one that is perfect in the sense that I will no longer have any form of unsatisfactoriness, whether it’s the meal at your restaurant or the person that you’re married to, or the way that you’re parenting your children or the job that you have. And there’s always going to be that, what if. And I think it takes a lot of skillfulness to decide if, and when it reaches the point that you actually should do something about it.

I’ve done something about it in terms of my job. I wasn’t happy with a job once and I finally did something about it and I was much more happy in another job. And I’ve made career changes that even now I feel like I am really enjoying my job, I cannot imagine, the line of work that I do teaching people to paraglide, I cannot imagine something more fun. And yet there is the all-pervasive thought of, “Well, what if I had become a helicopter pilot? That was my dream as a youth.” Or, “What if I had become an air force pilot and I flew jets?” Or, “Ooh, what if I would have had the chance to become an astronaut?” And I can go down that path and sure, it’s true, what if one of those things would have been way more enjoyable that than what I do? And I don’t know, because I wouldn’t know unless I was in those shoes and I might be in those shoes thinking, “This is kind of stressful, I wonder what it would be like to just be a paraglider pilot or a paraglider instructor?”

So the point I want to make is that when we identify this all-pervasive suffering, this underlying unsatisfactoriness that permeates everything we can learn to recognize that it’s perfectly okay to experience all pervasive suffering or all pervasive unsatisfactoriness. That it only becomes problematic when we experience it and we think we’re not supposed to be experiencing this because then we start buying into strange conceptualizations that have in our mind, which is, “Well, if I don’t like this job, I shouldn’t be here.” And again, I’m not saying stick with a job you don’t like, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that there’s a difference between identifying the all-pervasive suffering, that’s there versus this is an acute form of suffering and I definitely need to do something about it. Like my boss is mean to me and I can’t stand my boss then yeah, do something about it. So please don’t misunderstand what I’m trying to get at here, I’m not saying stick with a bad relationship or with a bad job.

Another way to think about this, a way that came up in our conversation this morning in our live Zoom call, the community call, we were talking about the concept of judgment and how one of the listeners, or one of the participants mentioned that he’s trying hard to not judge people. And I brought up the fact that judging people is a natural thing, we all do it and it’s because we’re hardwired to do it. We have to make quick assessments to decide, are we safe? Right? This is an evolutionary thing where we can almost instantly say, “Is this person on team us or on team them?” And we’re hardwired to do that. So what I wanted to make clear was there’s nothing wrong with judging, it’s the attachment we have to the assessment we made in our judgment, that can be what’s problematic.

So for me, I catch myself judging people all the time. And when I do, I just remind myself, “Well, that doesn’t mean that I’m right and it certainly doesn’t mean that it’s true.” And I have reasons for why my judgment goes one way or the other and that’s based on my societal views, my upbringing, my all kinds of things, things that I cannot help. But when I realized that I’m doing it, I can remind myself that just because I thought that doesn’t mean that it’s true. And if I were to spend time getting to know this person, I may be pleasantly surprised at how wrong I was. And that has happened to me various times. It’s also happened where the more I get to know them, the more confident I am in my assessment that I had already made the judgment. I’m sure we’ve all experienced both of those things.

But the point here is that judgment isn’t the problem, the problem is attaching to the assessment we made in the judgment and saying, “I know that I’m right, and I am definitely not wrong.” That attachment can produce a lot of difficulties. Now it’s another thing to say, “I’ve judged this person, but now I’m open to see how they really are. And I’m going to spend time trying to get to know this person.” And it’s just a whole different thing. So the correlation here is that suffering a similar, we experienced suffering because the nature of life is that unsatisfactoriness arises, right, the moment we want things to be other than how they are.

So the problem isn’t that we suffer, the problem is that we attach ourselves to this idea that we can somehow through a magic formula, eliminate it. And I know it sounds tricky cause Buddhism proposes this as a formula, right? The four noble truths, the truth of suffering, the truth of the causes of suffering, the truth of cessation of suffering and the truth of the path that leads to the cessation of suffering. So there it would seem very clear that what we’re implying here is if you practice Buddhism hard enough and in the right way you eliminate suffering.

And although that’s what it sounds like, there’s a huge caveat there, which is first, we’ve got to define what is suffering and distinguish between what is natural and what is self-inflicted and then realize what we’re talking about in terms of eliminating any kind of unsatisfactoriness is the self-inflicted unnecessary unsatisfactoriness. Because the all pervasive, there’s always going to be that underlying form of unsatisfactoriness because of the nature of reality, because of the nature of the fact that I cannot taste all the meals at all the restaurants of the world, I will always be left with the prospect that this meal that I enjoy, no matter how much I like it, there could be another one out there that I would enjoy much more and I’ll never know because I will never taste it. And that to me is powerful to know that is the truth of unsatisfactoriness.

So going back to parenting really quick, being a parent is hard, there’s no way around that. And the problem isn’t that being a parent is hard, the problem is that we don’t want to fully accept that it’s hard because we somehow still believe that if it’s done right, it should be easy. And that is the problem, that is the lie, that is the mental conditioning. Parenting is hard. Being alive is hard. Having to go to work every day is hard. There’s no way around that. And that is the truth of unsatisfactoriness. So I hope that these concepts and ideas help a little bit with the understanding that in life difficulties arise and that’s not a problem. What we want to do is we want to start understanding the causes and conditions of our unsatisfactoriness and getting to know ourselves and getting to the point where we understand ourselves better.

And that’s all I have for this podcast episode, as always, thank you for listening. If you want to support the work I’m doing with the podcast, consider becoming a Patreon and join our online community where we discuss these koans and we discuss the podcast episodes, and we have a weekly study group and live interactions with a Q&A, and the Zoom calls, every Sunday. You can learn more about the online community by visiting secularbuddhism.com. If you enjoyed this podcast episode please share it with others, write a review, give it a rating in iTunes. And that’s all I have for now, but I look forward to another podcast episode soon.

Before I go here is your Zen koan to work with between now and the next podcast episode. Elder Ting asked Lin-chi, “Master, what is the great meaning of Buddha’s teachings?” Lin-chi came down from his seat, slapped Ting and pushed him away. Ting was stunned and stood motionless. A monk nearby said, “Ting, why do you not bow?” At that moment Ting attained great enlightenment. That’s all I have for now until next time.

In Buddhism, doubt is beneficial because it is the first step in weakening our wrong views. The wonderful thing about doubt is that it can propel us in the direction of more skillful views. There is a strong emphasis in Buddhism to avoid “believing in” Buddhist teachings, instead, we are encouraged to evaluate them and to understand them and ultimately, to test them against our own experience.

Koan Discussed: One day Chao-chou fell down in the snow, and called out, “Help me up! Help me up!” A monk came and lay down beside him. Chao-chou got up and went away.

Koan Shared: What is the sound of one hand clapping?

Book Mentioned: “Mind in Tibetan Buddhism” by Lati Rinbochay. Available at: amzn.to/3ezRfZa Read More

In this podcast episode, I will discuss the HALT Method and share my thoughts on the koan shared in the last episode: “What is your original face before you were born?”. I will also leave you with this new koan to explore: “One day Chao-chou fell down in the snow, and called out, “Help me up! Help me up!” A monk came and lay down beside him. Chao-chou got up and went away.”

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