A Deep Dive into a Zen Master's "Teisho" Talk

Рет қаралды 1,724

Күн бұрын

A teisho is a Zen talk given during a Dai-Sesshin practice retreat. The Zen teacher or Roshi leading the retreat will engage with a classic Buddhist text or koan, and you get to see the master's mind in action as it grapples with the text and draws out its deeper meaning.
In today's (um, rather long) talk I pull out one of my teacher's old teishos and share with you what I consider to be the essence of Tathagata Zen, the practice he taught us. We go into the form or ritual around teisho, we read a great paragraph by Lin-Chi (the founder of Rinzai Zen), and then we explore my teacher's words as he interacts with Lin-Chi's words.
We unpack Roshi's statement, "There is no good, no bad, no God, no Buddha," and explore how this relates to Lin-Chi's notion of the "resolute Zen practitioner."
Roshi claims that we have to make both "living and dying our content," a loaded phrase that we slice and dice!
Then the fun continues! We parse the difference between the "conquering mentality" vs. "making relationship," a lifesaving teaching for those of us given to objectifying the world at the expense of our own contentment and fulfillment.
And, finally, we come to the very core of Tathagata Zen, which Roshi succinctly summarizes in one epic paragraph.
While longer than usual, I have broken this video up with chapter headings that can help you skip around. I wanted to spare no detail in sharing this teisho with you as I've found it to be quite worthy of my time and energy over the years.
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0:00 Intro
5:23 That Time I Stole My Teacher's Teisho
7:18 Teisho Time Is Nap Time!!
9:24 The Record of Lin-Chi
16:36 No Good, No Bad, No God, No Buddha
18:07 The Resolute Practitioner of the Way
19:18 Making Both Living and Dying Your Content
22:48 Conquering Mentality vs. Making Relationship
26:55 Anatta, No Self
29:09 The Crux of Tathagata Zen
33:50 The Principle and the Practice
35:09 Manifesting Relationship and Paying Attention
37:48 Expansion and Contraction
42:24 Teisho = Fuel for Practice

Пікірлер: 51

@ChuckBe 2 ай бұрын

Whatever you call what you’re doing here, I appreciate your engagement.

@zenconfidential25 2 ай бұрын

Thank you my friend.

@drgo9278 2 ай бұрын

The more words, the less clarity! The more thoughts, the less practice! Thank you, I get it!

@zenconfidential25 2 ай бұрын

Wonderful!

@baruchdespinoza6318 2 ай бұрын

Great video! Thank you! When you read the part about the fixated self, I had a thought that when Dogen speaks of shikantaza - just sitting, he means there is just sitting, and no sitter. I guess that is what is actually going on. There is only living and dying, but no livers or dyers, so to speak 😅

@zenconfidential25 2 ай бұрын

Thank you Spinoza!! ;)

@_Matt_handle_taken_ 2 ай бұрын

Good video Jack, I like the longer form content.

@zenconfidential25 2 ай бұрын

Glad to hear it! Thank you my friend.

@TYPHON2713 2 ай бұрын

I enjoyed this very much. One of the ways i "practice" aside form quiet zazen in my room, is i like to meditate in crowded, busy places. The mall food court, airport, busy bus stops ect. This is a little challenging to explain but, i center myself breath deeply, kinda "sink inward". Then mostly through hearing, i expand? My awareness... i place my awareness on say the food court, then the mall, then the tow, the state, and so on. After awhile, it feels like im just a little quiet piece of calm as i feel the universe dance around me. I hope that kinda makes sense. Lol i wrote a poem about it called "solitude in a sea of humanity" I hope that was kinda on topic😅 Now im gonna read Warner sansammaroshizenji's book "hardcore zen " and fall asleep COMPLETELY.

@zenconfidential25 2 ай бұрын

I love doing crowd zazen too. Being still in the busy places...

@TYPHON2713 2 ай бұрын

@@zenconfidential25 I have no teacher and no sangha. What is your advice?

@jamiensmith6 2 ай бұрын

The longer running time and the teisho content were great! Thank you 😊

@zenconfidential25 2 ай бұрын

Glad you like them! Thank you, my friend.

@tinadeemc8728 2 ай бұрын

I finished my first 3 day sesshin this morning 🎉 Im back to work this afternoon and clients are asking me if I feel rested and rejuvenated. Im laughing and telling them it isnt a day at the spa and my butt hurts. Teisho is perhaps the most "peaceful/relaxing" part of it.

@zenconfidential25 2 ай бұрын

Congrats on finishing your first 3 day! Zazenkai we call them. Reborn, probably, more than rested and rejuvenated, right??

@tinadeemc8728 2 ай бұрын

@zenconfidential25 it is always interesting to see the similarities and differences across the board of zen practices. My teacher has referred to our shorter gatherings of a half or full day as zazenkai. This spring sesshin is actually still in progress, but unfortunately, I was only able to join for 3 of the 6 full days. I felt like I was just gaining momentum as of Thursday, so I wish i would have been able to keep on beyond Friday morning, but duty called. I definitely will make sure I can do a full sesshin in summer or fall, because it was transformative. Impossible to explain to those who don't practice because words are not adequate.

@fhoniemcphonsen8987 2 ай бұрын

I luv that song ((Kansas' Eggplant in the Breeze) Myself is everything that is not everything that is not Myself

@zenconfidential25 2 ай бұрын

That sounds like an awesome psychedelic Dr. Seuss riddle!

@fhoniemcphonsen8987 2 ай бұрын

@@zenconfidential25 gotta picture it in a circle oroborus style

@danielpack6109 2 ай бұрын

Since we’re quoting songs, here’s one that sounds very Koan-like. “If two becomes, then who is the one two becomes?”, Hall & Oates. Great talk btw!

@jonwesick2844 2 ай бұрын

Good discussion. Thanks.

@zenconfidential25 2 ай бұрын

Very welcome

@WJSpies 2 ай бұрын

I love your channel.. Yesterday I was thinking of these lines from an old John Donne poem (17th century Catholic cleric converted to Protestant cleric).. I just woke up with this passage on my mind after a kinda oddly disturbing and deep dream (about several women advising me on how I should interact with them - given the complexities of human sexual relationships) ..as luck would have it I stumbled upon your teisho video (wisdom of the all knowing algorithm & AI). Anyhow these lines fit so wonderfully into your teisho talk, as if by predetermined luck of the cosmic draw (maybe God does toss the dice from time to time) 😁👍🏻 So here goes, it's almost a prayer but could be a zen koan too. He's talking to his wife here.. -- Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it. But we by a love so much refined, That our selves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind, Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do. And though it in the center sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th' other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun. -John Donne (English poet "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning")

@zenconfidential25 2 ай бұрын

Wow. I'm rereading and contemplating this poem. Thank you thank you. I appreciate your support and comments here on the channel, and I have for a while now. :)

@drachenlachen 2 ай бұрын

There are three more verses at the beginning of the poem: As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say The breath goes now, and some say, No: So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love. Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears, Men reckon what it did, and meant; But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent. I have to find a decent translation into german- I don‘t get it really!

@gunterappoldt3037 2 ай бұрын

The Nirwana-principle, being-thrown-ness, natura naturata and natura naturans - primordial nostalgia for Eden, as the old mesopothamian myth goes, an old song, a new song... Greetings, yeah all thrill-seekers

@WJSpies 2 ай бұрын

@@drachenlachen yes, I left those 3 out (though important to the setting). They seem somehow a preface or preamble to the verses I quoted. My concern was leaning toward some kind of brevity. But thank so much for pointing these 3 out since they also set the tone for the whole poem. Best regards... : )

@marcosantagata5847 Ай бұрын

Great talk, many valuable pieces of wisdom. Thank you Shozan.

@zenconfidential25 Ай бұрын

Thanks for listening dear friend.

@marcosantagata5847 Ай бұрын

@@zenconfidential25 Always a pleasure ! I can't wait till your novel comes out.

@zenconfidential25 Ай бұрын

Thank you Marco.

@pvlis 2 ай бұрын

There's a common misunderstanding with the term "anatta" as if to posit the negation of Atman. If Sakyamuni intended to teach that there was no Atta, then he would have simply said so. Instead, he used "anatta" adjectivally with respect to forms, feelings, perceptions, mental machinations, and empirical consciousness. This could be interpreted as saying there is no objective "self", but not that there is no Self (Atta); rather, the Self is the subject antecedent to all objective Skandas. When absorbed in the object of concentration, indeed the identification of the persona non grata seemingly dissolves, but that which concentrates (the citta) remains. The practice of Anapanasati is isomorphic to the removal of objectification. When objectification is burned away, the subject remains. This is why one cannot posit the Self, as if to point to it here or there. This is why Anatta was repeated so many times; not to deny the Self, but that the only method of reaching, of seeking, is approached by negation, by catharsis. The culmination of this is nisbandu, nirvritti, the subjugation of perturbations. Just as with an ore containing a precious metal, the contaminants must be burned away to collect (recollect) that precious prize which is sought after.

@zenconfidential25 2 ай бұрын

there’s a lot here, thank you.

@kashnomo 2 ай бұрын

Thank you for this.

@zenconfidential25 2 ай бұрын

My pleasure! (Well, if not pleasure exactly, it was an honor! ;) )

@dayamay8221 2 ай бұрын

Great. Enjoyed the longer vid! Useful stuff. Thanks. D

@zenconfidential25 2 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it! Thank you.

@Perltaucher 2 ай бұрын

Remind me on the Genjōkōan. 🙏🙏💡

@guido3771 2 ай бұрын

Where is the "evil" in Genjokoan?

@Perltaucher 2 ай бұрын

@@guido3771 I wrote „reminds me“ and i didn‘t referring on something special.

@kevindole1284 2 ай бұрын

Are "living" and "dying" activity the same as form and emptiness?

@zenconfidential25 2 ай бұрын

I think that’s one way of putting it.

@gunterappoldt3037 2 ай бұрын

Joseph Needham might have answered: These are all parts/aspects of the Sinitic general world-view of an “organic naturalism“ - whereby the “Dao“ functions, phenomenologically speaking, as the ultimate “bracketing device“, as the “ever receding general horizon“, the “unmoced mover“, and so forth, Then there is the classic aspect/experience of the “energie vital“ (Qi/Ki), less abstract than the Great Dao... Well, that would all be part of traditonall “casuistics“. “Alas, learning never stops!“, as an old saying goes.

@TYPHON2713 2 ай бұрын

@@zenconfidential25I like your opening line of this video , it could be your opening hook just like Brad sansammaroshizenji say "Hello thrill seekers" blah, blah, Dogen, blah blah ziggy, blah blah... just kidding. Love that guy❤

@ivrz 2 ай бұрын

Starts 9.30

@guido3771 2 ай бұрын

So i guess that you also believe the explanation of Rinzaiji to publish some of his teisho is made up (i.e. Sasaki had in the end agreed to it)? Anyway, his teisho can be found on the internet.

@zenconfidential25 2 ай бұрын

Hard to say. Roshi said a lot of contradictory things. in the end you do what you feel is right.

@eiko6171 2 ай бұрын

Saved this one- something there I need to hear many more times probably . So I’m grateful to you now for sharing it and to your picaresque past self for stealing it (picturing you sneaking about black robed with mission impossible playing in the background on a shakuhachi 🪈)

@zenconfidential25 2 ай бұрын

I’m going to Google that right now and see if there actually is a mission impossible cover out there in Shakuhachi flute! Thank you my friend.