Thoughts on Susan Moon’s talk

[Shokai]

However, with a good Zazen practice, including vow and repentance; some healthy attention to your sense of homo(u)r and lots of tolerance, there is no need to be cantankerous and/or a codger, eh. Remember, everything is temporary and everyday is a good day.

gassho, Shokai
stlah

[Doshin]

However, with a good Zazen practice, including vow and repentance; some healthy attention to your sense of homo(u)r and lots of tolerance, there is no need to be cantankerous and/or a codger, eh. Remember, everything is temporary and everyday is a good day.

gassho, Shokai
stlah

You are spot on Shokai. However at 68 I like to play that cantankerous card sometimes

Gassho
Doshin
St

[Shokai]

However at 68 I like to play that cantankerous card sometimes

Yeah but, that's because the novelty hasn't worn off yet.

gassho, shokai

[Meitou]

However, with a good Zazen practice, including vow and repentance; some healthy attention to your sense of homo(u)r and lots of tolerance, there is no need to be cantankerous and/or a codger, eh. Remember, everything is temporary and everyday is a good day.

gassho, Shokai
stlah

Yes, that's exactly what I mean by the right mindset
Gassho
Meitou
Satwithyoualltoday lah

[Shinshou]

I had very much the same question listening to the talk as I thought about people I have known suffering dementia. Perhaps even the ability to love can be taken away...or lost. It's a very radical lesson in impermanence and not-knowing.

I had the same thought. I'm a Nurse Manager for two Geriatrics/Memory Clinics and a Counseling Center for caregivers and patients who have a memory-impairment diagnosis. The ability for end-stage dementia (which, depending on the type of dementia, may last for years) patients to express love has not been my experience, nor that of most of the caregivers I work with. There is still a sense of "I" being separate from others, and therefore the want to avoid pain, fear, etc., but no real identity or reliable tool to navigate the environment, either inner or outer. We have these types of discussions with patients their family members daily. We try not to let them become routine and remain compassionate. What else can you do?

Shinshou (Dan)
Sat Today

[Eva]

Thank you so much Kokuu,
Thank you so much everyone giving the opportunity to express their understandings .

What moved me mostly is seeing people knowing "loving" as an act of doing something. It is not my understanding and it's not what I know of love.
As of "doing" there are limitations may they be physical, mental, emotional, geographical, etc. But how can love be defined by any of these?
Yes we can act lovingly (or opposite) but what we all IS is Buddha, is love. No one can do it or undo it. No one can start being it or stop being it. It is a "default setting" of who you are.

I know I'm not speaking orthodox Buddhism here, please forgive me .
Just the overarching worry of not being loving is a mystery to me .
much much much Metta to Kokuu,
much Metta to everyone,
much Metta to our understandings and mis-understandings.

Sat today and also LAH
eva

[Jundo]

I had the same thought. I'm a Nurse Manager for two Geriatrics/Memory Clinics and a Counseling Center for caregivers and patients who have a memory-impairment diagnosis. The ability for end-stage dementia (which, depending on the type of dementia, may last for years) patients to express love has not been my experience, nor that of most of the caregivers I work with. There is still a sense of "I" being separate from others, and therefore the want to avoid pain, fear, etc., but no real identity or reliable tool to navigate the environment, either inner or outer. We have these types of discussions with patients their family members daily. We try not to let them become routine and remain compassionate. What else can you do?

Shinshou (Dan)
Sat Today

I would still say that the patient can receive love, can be the recipient of the love of friends and family who may surround the person. In turn, those friends and family members can know that somehow, somewhere, deep down the parent or grandparent would still know love whether overtly expressed or unexpressed. It does not need to show. It need not be felt by the brain, or expressed by recognition.

It is just the same with a loved one in a coma, or even a loved one who has died and left this visible world. It does not even need to be felt in this moment so long as the friends and family members can yet imagine the past. My children would still know (and I try to teach them) that I love them even if no longer here. In fact, in Buddhism, we have the ability to bend time in amazing ways, including by knowing that all the love of the past and future is ever present in any moment.

Gassho, J

STLove

[Jundo]

What moved me mostly is seeing people knowing "loving" as an act of doing something. It is not my understanding and it's not what I know of love.
As of "doing" there are limitations may they be physical, mental, emotional, geographical, etc. But how can love be defined by any of these?
Yes we can act lovingly (or opposite) but what we all IS is Buddha, is love. No one can do it or undo it. No one can start being it or stop being it. It is a "default setting" of who you are.

I know I'm not speaking orthodox Buddhism here, please forgive me .

I would say that this is very good and orthodox Buddhism.

I need to get a bit Dogen-y and Hua-Yen-y here, but basically all the world pours into everything, and every things fills all the world.

Everything we do, every gesture and feeling is, in fact, universal and fills all time and space to the Wise eye. All of time and space fill every drop of everything. It is a bit like the image of all the sea held in every drop of water, and every drop of water itself the sea. So, alas, a moment of anger fills the world, but so does a moment of love. What is more, points out Dogen, with his very fluid and interflowing sense of time(s) ...

https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?16375-Dogen-and-Time&p=227114&viewfull=1#post227114

... past is alive in the present as the past and present fill all time. Thus, a moment of love also fills all time.

So, the bad things like anger and jealousy we often call poetically as "Mara" or "Evil" or "the Devil" and the like. Likewise, gentle and caring qualities such as Compassion, Loving Kindness, Charity and Nurturing ... Love ... we might express as "Buddha" or "Kannon" and the like.

Very orthodox.

Gassho, J

SatTodayLAH

[Eva]

Thank you so much Jundo, for putting it into appropriate Soto Zen framework

Gassho,
sattoday and also LAH
eva

[sjlabat]

How to sit with pain (or, in some cases, is it even a good idea to sit with certain kinds of pain)? I have experienced certain kinds of pain – physical and psychological – but not to the level many have described here. In my experience, meditation/zazen has helped me with various kinds of pain even though I was not meditating to ‘get’ something out of it. When others ask, I try to advise against a ‘quid pro quo’ mentality of I’m doing zazen to get some sort of benefit – I try to do it to do it and if any ‘benefit’ comes, that’s just an extra bonus for something I was planning to do anyway. Does zazen make the pain ‘go away?’ – well, not quite, at least not in my experience, but (if I’m looking for the concrete benefit – and I like Kodo Sawaki in that he seemed to have very little truck for trying to ‘get something’ out of zazen) if I’m looking for a ‘benefit’ it may make me a tiny bit more calm and accepting of reality for how it is, rather than how I desperately want it to be.
(disclaimer!) – But, this said, if you have physical, mental, spiritual pain – do get help! Don’t keep it to yourself!
Gassho,
Sjl
Sat, lah

[Jundo]

How to sit with pain (or, in some cases, is it even a good idea to sit with certain kinds of pain)? I have experienced certain kinds of pain – physical and psychological – but not to the level many have described here. In my experience, meditation/zazen has helped me with various kinds of pain even though I was not meditating to ‘get’ something out of it. When others ask, I try to advise against a ‘quid pro quo’ mentality of I’m doing zazen to get some sort of benefit – I try to do it to do it and if any ‘benefit’ comes, that’s just an extra bonus for something I was planning to do anyway. Does zazen make the pain ‘go away?’ – well, not quite, at least not in my experience, but (if I’m looking for the concrete benefit – and I like Kodo Sawaki in that he seemed to have very little truck for trying to ‘get something’ out of zazen) if I’m looking for a ‘benefit’ it may make me a tiny bit more calm and accepting of reality for how it is, rather than how I desperately want it to be.
(disclaimer!) – But, this said, if you have physical, mental, spiritual pain – do get help! Don’t keep it to yourself!
Gassho,
Sjl
Sat, lah

That is a beautiful and wise comment. Thank you.

As a side issue:

Here is my rule of thumb for sitting with pain, both physical or psychological.

If there is a little pain, but it is not health or life threatening, sit with it. Let it be. See how much of your acceptance or rejection of the fact is in your control and between your ears in your own mental reaction to the pain. Thus, if you legs are just a little sore, or you are feeling a bit sad and worried, just let that happen and find the equanimity of a mirror to simply allow the soreness, the sadness or fear.

(I mean to sit with it during Zazen time. Afterwords, one might deal with it, e.g., by seeing the dentist for a bad tooth. But during Zazen, if there is a not too serious discomfort, sit with it.)

After a while, if the sore legs become really disturbing, one might Gassho and change to a more comfortable position, but try not to do so too often (we have had some sitters who cannot sit still, always moving and adjusting. That is not good at all. Our practice is very much about finding peace and acceptance even of that which disturbs.) Instead, allow the pain and find equanimity in the heart. Sit with the sore knees, the sorrow of loss, the broken heart, the worry about tomorrow ... to the degree it is not truly damaging to the body or will otherwise do damage to to do. In fact, in Japan, Zazen is supposed to be sometimes a little physically or mentally uncomfortable just for that reason. The Japanese tend to bear up to the pain, tough it out, and do not move. Rather, they release the resistance within.

If a pain, whether psychological or physical, is health or life threatening and might do harm ... stop Zazen. Get medical assistance from a professional, and follow their guidance about whether one should continue the practice that way or not. Period.

If there is a pain that cannot be avoid, and your physician or mental health professional allows, then one might sit with the pain or mental trauma, finding equanimity about even that.

That is my little rule of thumb.

Remember that an situation is not a "disturbance" unless the mind reacts by feeling disturbed. The situation is otherwise just the situation. One can even sit (and this is something that people forget) not being disturbed about sometimes feeling a little disturbed!

Gassho, J

SatTodayLAH