How to Be Awake

[@macdougdoug]

Right - rather than catching the moments of spaciousness, the practise is probably more about catching the moments of stupid

[@ateotu-t]

Thank you for your talks - they are very refreshing. I was about to say like a glass of clean water but they are a lot more murky - more of the taste of real life than one usually gets in goodi-buddhi Zen lectures and much more like the teisho the roshis used to dish out.

[@zenconfidential25]

Glad you like them! Thank you, my dear friend. Hope I make some good stuff for you in the future.

[@MrButlertron12]

I'm glad your back got better.

[@zenconfidential25]

Thank you!

[@dayamay8221]

Love it! My problem is that my highly avoidant mind will attempt to use this kind of teaching as a bypass - an excuse to not engage with the day-to-day life drama. It can be easier to laugh it all off or trivialize the pain, than to look it square in the eye, explore it and feel it deeply - which can definitely be beneficial. Love the lying in bed practice reference. I have done that for years. There's something about rest itself that is deeply nourishing! "Cultivate rest" as I think, Robert Atkins suggests in "Taking the Path of Zen". Gteat book! One more interesting thing. Shinjin, in the Pureland tradition is to be deeply immersed in the Other! To partake of the great enlightenment, which originates outside of our Bombu minds and is impossible to attain through self efforts! I love that the chasm between self-power and other-power closes up more and more as practice and experience unfolds. Thank you. Namo Amida Bu!

[@zenconfidential25]

Thank you, I'm going to check out Taking the Path of Zen.

[@dayamay8221]

@@zenconfidential25 Do it!! It's a Zazen fest. Very inspiring for me! It's Robert Aitkin,by the way. I think I put Atkins. D

[@lcbryant78]

Needed this video

[@zenconfidential25]

I'm glad to hear it my friend.

[@lshunt5462]

Thank you! So clear and beautiful.

[@zenconfidential25]

You are so welcome! Thank you.

[@CeejerWeeger]

That being said, I hope your back gets better.

[@zenconfidential25]

Thank you my friend.

[@MaterialWolf]

thank you, i forgot who I am for a second there

[@zenconfidential25]

That's good news!

[@pearlyung]

I find that when we pay attention to any detailed activity, like detailed sewing, decorating a cake, performing surgery, completing a difficult jig saw puzzle....i forget i have a body (dropped body)

[@Genpinan]

Well, thanks for this, as always. Your definition of Dhukka sounded really interesting. Hope you don't get too much of it (hopefully nothing) during the upcoming holidays. Edit: Hopefully nothing too serious was going on with your back.

[@zenconfidential25]

Thank you my friend, back is ok now.

[@Genpinan]

@@zenconfidential25 nice to hear, have a good one

[@jenniferballswitchhouse37]

My teacher has told us everyone is a buddha. ❤️🙏🏻❤️ I enjoyed this quieter video, nice change of pace.

[@zenconfidential25]

Thank you Jennifer!

[@brentweaver3092]

Jeezus! That was deep. I’m glad I did an hour and a half of zazen before listening.

[@TherapistwithTinnitus]

What your girlfriend experienced sounds something like what Jill Bolte-Taylor wrote about in My Stroke Of Genius, where a stroke wiped out the right (or was it the left) side of her brain

[@zenconfidential25]

Yes!!! She really related to parts of that book!

[@yolobanana9592]

I don't get the Shin-jin Mei. It seems to say "become a Zen Zombie without emotions". That is very contrary to all Zen teachers that i know and knew. Could you please explain this misunderstanding?

[@zenconfidential25]

Fully alive and present within the moment, that's the practice. Full attention on whatever you're doing, whatever activity you're in. Emotions ok! Just don't get fully caught up in them. That's the teaching as I received it.

[@simeondawkins6358]

Drugs bed dreams etc all gave me different kinfs of ego death its super blatant the ego is not real

[@peteuplink]

I'm probably being dumb here (nothing new there) but are we taking about non-judging here? (21:44) When I first started meditating using the Triratna Buddhist Order books, they often talked about not judging the practice. Not labeling things that come up as either good or bad.

[@zenconfidential25]

Hi Pete! Yes, this is non-judging, for me, anyway.

[@peteuplink]

@@zenconfidential25 Thanks, Jack. 🙂

[@fhoniemcphonsen8987]

Presence of god = Absence of self? Similar to coming back from a full KO Polish the mirror to realize the non existence of mirror or polisher😅

[@drgo9278]

隠蔽されていない? Undisguised? Thank you?

[@xlmoriarty8921]

My god man or you need to meditate more, take a Valium or become an actor in a soup serie. It's too much expression could you boil it down to some essence?

[@georgevockroth8806]

Katsuki Sekida, a lay Zen teacher of the late 20th century, devotes an entire chapter of his book, "Zen Training, Methods and Philosophy," to a discussion of "nen" (念) thought(s).

[@zenconfidential25]

Ahhh maybe that's the one I was taking about!! Thank you

[@ChuckBe]

I thoroughly relish the hour between starting to wake up and getting out of bed, at least when I see what's going on, and then can watch my mind work...thoughts, memories, wants...like stars twinkling in the night sky. This is also my current meditation practice -- a 30 min rest in mid afternoon, flat on the couch. I feel myself settling into that in-between state, and if I can halt the descent, it is so refreshing, even more so that when I fall all the way into sleep and wake my self up with a snore.

[@zenconfidential25]

I love doing that supine meditation too.

[@mattrkelly]

maybe lost souls trying to give their problems to you? 😅

[@zenconfidential25]

you might be right!

[@richardbriones-colman-yk2id]

I've been reading Stefan zweig (stories, beware of pity) and Joseph Roth (the Radetzky march) fantastic Austrian writers

[@zenconfidential25]

I am always on the cusp of reading him (Zweig)...you may have just pushed me over the edge.

[@richardbriones-colman-yk2id]

Zweig gave Freud's eulogy. Reading beware of pity, I think, of course this guy gave Freud's eulogy. The post office girl was good too, but lesser than beware of pity.

[@jethrobradley7850]

What is the "official" Zen line on spontaneous / accidental awakening experiences like the one your girlfriend had? I'm wondering if any famous Zen teachers have expressed any views on people who experience satori without Zen.

[@zenconfidential25]

It's a really good question. In my trad. they speak of a pratyeka Buddha, a person who awakens without the traditional training. We're told they're very rare. But what my gf went through feels different than that to me.

[@macdougdoug]

I think enlightenment or awakening includes the idea of somehow grokking whats going on - a weird experience or altered state of consciousness that does not transform your relationship to your experience of reality, or understanding of experience, doesn't really count as awakening. There must be some insight that responds to some personal confusion.

[@jethrobradley7850]

@@zenconfidential25 a glimpse of No Self?

[@lshunt5462]

Question: on this path, what is to stop a person from not being drawn into but also not engaging at all with anything or anyone, like a Zombie Zen person?

[@zenconfidential25]

That's the question. It's a razor's edge/the middle way.

[@macdougdoug]

Do not conclude from a position of confusion - a confused person's decisions ((ie.ours) on how to act and feel, should be taken as merely the decisions of a confused person.