Way of Oneness: A Sangha Podcast

Excerpt: At the heart of the teaching of impermanence is conditioned existence but what is conditioned existence? Conditioned existence is the reality that all phenomena, all things that exist  arise in dependence upon other phenomena: "if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist"  This is the heart of impermanence of all - because all things all phenomena arise out of conditions and when the condition causes it to arise, cease then, that which arose, vanishes or transforms into something different.   That is way the Buddha says, “All conditioned things have the nature of vanishing,” Let that sink in  Everything by its nature vanishes. In Japanese the heartbreak, the melancholy of the impermanence of all things is summed up in the phrase Mono no Aware.  Mono-no-aware can't truly be translated. Any one who speaks another language understands this but it can be literally translated to “the ahhness of things” The isness of things or “the bittersweet poignancy of things.”   I remember some years ago reading the introduction to one of my favorite poets Eugenio de Andrade.   The poet writes from his love of the world and the grief and praise that come from its transience.  Something that I am learning as of late is that Grief and Praise are intertwined, as Martin Prechtel teaches us in his book, The Smell of Rain on Dust.  So too are impermanence and gratitude.  Now the concept of mono-no-aware is born from the teachings of shinto and Buddhism, and was first used to explain Japanese aesthetics to explain uch traditions as cherry-blossom viewing and haiku.  But this insight is much more than simply aesthetics.  Mono No Aware is at the heart of a meaningful everyday Buddhism.

In this talk we explore the idea of bonbu - of each of us being "foolish beings" and who this informs our community and practice. Excerpt "It is our studentship that we share, not our specialness or holiness. It is with humility being aware of our limitations. As I have said time and time again,  I too will be disappointed, and that I do not nor have I ever claimed to be a guru or a master, just a foolish being.  This idea of the foolish or ordinary being is the foundation to what we do.  And I want to continue our translation of the Shin Tradition. Today it is an idea that is very central in the Shin Tradition - called bonbu."

EXCERPT "Breathing in I am aware that I am breathing in, breathing out, I am aware that I am breathing out.  To really live life we can touch this simple reality with deep awareness – underneath my  stories, religion, ideas and philosophy –  I appreciate this so much,   At the time Akegarasu Sensei began teaching he was rather revolutionary, looking for a way to take the teachings of Buddha into people's everyday lives. His language is different, more direct, less dogmatic and more personal Rev Akegarasu goes on to write in Shout of Buddha.  "Besides my own living I don't need religion, philosophy, and morality.  Religion, philosophy, morality, and art and politics, are not in the world of my living beside my living. Beside my being alive there is no God or Buddha. When I die God and Buddha will also die. Look at me.  What do you think his point is in these lines? For me it is the realization of Being Alive in the flow of now is more important the ideas of being alive – Life is more elemental, life is process, to live is a verb, it is the state of simply being.    

Excerpt "That aside, here I am driving to work or home from work, like I do every day and the reality that I want, the reality that I EXPECT  is the following:       no red lights,       goodly speeds,       graceful lane changes,       blinkers, yes blinkers.  I expect traffic to be light and if it is heavy, still moving efficiently.     But what happens when these expectations are dashed after the first right hand turn? Anger? rage?  We, I mean I become frustrated, my pulse races, my vision narrows.  I am assigning all kinds of character traits to people I don't know. I transform into an enemy, one of Mara's henchmen. I have also noticed that since the pandemic it has gotten worse. I even noticed during the week as I was preparing this dharma talk, that as it says in the Dharma Highway Sutra,   “Even the virtuous follower can find themselves overcome  by blind passions when someone invades their lane of traffic  or crowds their rear bumper at high speeds.

Excerpt "The fellowship is our training ground in our practice.  It is where we come as we are and that means there is lots of opportunities to practice the virtues of patience, humility, compassion, deep listening, letting go of views and expectations  The practice of sangha can be very difficult because your come as you are is really screwing with my come as I am are right now.   The spirit of come as you are or sonomama in Japanese keeps us steadfast and open.  Over the years you have heard me compare the Sangha to a Rock Polisher, it is one of my favorite analogies.  The practice of Sangha is like an old rock polisher where all our sharp edges are crashed against one another until we both become smooth and shiny.  Come as you are opens our practice up to all within the sangha within the fellowship family, accepting each other as we are means we are taking responsibility for our own shit." Christopher Kakuyo Sensei

This is a dharma talk the shares what we mean when we translate Namu Amida Butsu as "come as you are." What does that mean in a contemporary context?  I also share how the mythic Buddha Amida fits into it all and how this Buddha is relevant today, even for the more secular minded of the West.    The text of the talk can be found here. 

Here is a slightly longer version for our podcast followers- regrading moving back to in person meetings.

Excerpt:   At the heart of the teaching of impermanence is conditioned existence but what is conditioned existence? Conditioned existence is the reality that all phenomena, all things that exist  arise in dependence upon other phenomena: "if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist"  This is the heart of impermanence of all - because all things all phenomena arise out of conditions and when the condition causes it to arise, cease then, that which arose, vanishes or transforms into something different.   That is way the Buddha says, “All conditioned things have the nature of vanishing,” Let that sink in  Everything by its nature vanishes. In Japanese the heartbreak, the melancholy of the impermanence of all things is summed up in the phrase Mono no Aware.  Mono-no-aware can't truly be translated. Any one who speaks another language understands this but it can be literally translated to “the ahhness of things” The isness of things or “the bittersweet poignancy of things.”   I remember some years ago reading the introduction to one of my favorite poets Eugenio de Andrade.   The poet writes from his love of the world and the grief and praise that come from its transience.  Something that I am learning as of late is that Grief and Praise are intertwined, as Martin Prechtel teaches us in his book, The Smell of Rain on Dust.  So too are impermanence and gratitude.  Now the concept of mono-no-aware is born from the teachings of shinto and Buddhism, and was first used to explain Japanese aesthetics to explain uch traditions as cherry-blossom viewing and haiku.  But this insight is much more than simply aesthetics.  Mono No Aware is at the heart of a meaningful everyday Buddhism.  

yearly before our Summer Retreat we review what going for refuge to the three jewels means. In this Talk Christopher Kakuyo talks about taking refuge in general and more specifically regarding taking refuge in the Buddha.  As westerns we seem to have a challenge taking refuge in the Buddha. This may be because of our Post Religious' Stress Disorder. We embrace the Dharma and even the Sangha, but the Buddha we keep at arms length, lest he becomes some sort of deity.  Christopher thinks, that by doing this we are doing a disservice to our practice.    EXCERPT By keeping this distance from the Buddha, we miss out on something; we miss out on the Buddha's personality, temperament, and example. We miss an intimate human connection to one of the most fully and realized humans.  I struggle with this.  There are times that I feel so connected to the historical Buddha and or the mythic Buddha Amida, that I find tears in my eyes when washing the statue'd face of the Buddha. I have found that my practice is easier and more natural during these times. I am easier to get along with, and when I feel disconnected from the Buddha, or the Buddha feels like nothing more than some dusty figure of history, my practice becomes more challenging if I am practicing at all.  I appreciate this from Subhuti, a Buddhist teacher in the Tritania order. Subhuti writes about re-imagining the Buddha and how we need to try to imagine the Buddha and his Enlightenment in a way that intellectually and emotionally stirs us.   Why emotionally?  Our practice is not just a practice of the mind but the heart-mind. In Chinese kanji, the symbol for heart and mind are the same; there exists no independent thought without accompanying feeling, no distinct feeling without thought, and no compassion in the absence of intellect—in short: no heart without mind or mind without heart. Our connection to the Buddha is intellectual and emotional at the same time so that we can mobilize our energies to Go for Refuge to him, to his teachings and example. How do we do that for us who have and will be taking refuge in the Buddha? He writes,  "We can only imagine the Buddha wholeheartedly by discovering his image in our minds, inspired and supported by the images around us. Images of this kind cannot be ordered or devised. They must live and grow and, like plants, they must emerge from their own natural environments: the psyches of the individuals in which they appear.   

We use an old Zen story to look at Doing Nothing as skillful action. Excerpt "A young monk is struggling and he goes to his master, telling him he is really struggling. So he asks his Master Ganto. When the three worlds threaten me, what shall I do?" Ganto answered, "Sit down." "I do not understand," said the monk. Ganto said, "Pick up the mountain and bring it to me. Then I will tell you." .. You can just see the poor monk, overwhelmed by the three worlds, which are the world of form, the world of thought and the world of desire… basically everything -  He is coming to the master for help – in my own translation, the young says again to Ganto, I am at my wits end, what the hell am I supposed to do.   Ganto looks him right in the face and says sit down.  Can you imagine, I don't think it was what he was expecting – he probably was even more confused because  he was already sitting down....  

  Here is a dharma talk from one of the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship's community on Juneteenth,    Enjoy

Excerpt   When I first started to explore and examine this precept, my first inclination was to feel guilt for taking paper clips from work or printing things for personal uses on my work computer.  Funny, that I found ways around it Like buying a ream of paper to replace the 40 pages I used. I started to make sure I paid for all of my Trax rides. I did start to examine some of my motivations for doing what I was doing, but for me, most of these simple practices were very superficial and more a residual of my old relationships with the Judeo- Christian commandments.  Again, we do not practice the precepts to appease a deity, or because it makes us a good Buddhist, but to help us gain insight into the mindset of an awakened being, a state of mind that is grounded in contentment. A practice-based on any kind of checklist is just a checklist and ultimately non-transformative.  There is a much deeper meaning in the second precept than simply not taking something that belongs to someone else. That is a legalistic approach.  Buddhism teaches that there are 10 fetters - mental chains that keep us bound - one of them is the dependence on moral rules and religious observances as an end in themselves – Being circumspect and never “stealing” even paperclips may be laudable but is it transformative in itself. Maybe.   From my life experience, the end of the second precept is not simply about not stealing, about observance a rule but about how we perceive the world and our place in it.  It is about cultivating a state of mind of contentment, of enoughness. Gyomay Kubose Sensei teaches us that an agitated mind cannot see things as they are, only a calm mind can. A continual sense of lack, a subtle greed, creates great and subtle waves of agitation. And over time this creates a subtle and pernicious sense of entitlement. At the heart of the second precept is an antidote to this continual refrain and rationalization of taking something not freely given, “I deserve this” or I deserve more than I am being given.  These are all manifestations of the poison of greed."

Even though the precepts were not directed to the community directly, they are all about community. The precepts are about action and intention.  I appreciate this from Wendell Berry, “ To act in short is to live. Living is a total act. Thinking is a partial act. And one does not live alone. Living is a communal act… He goes on to quote Emerson, “I grasp the hand of those next to me, and take my place in the circle, to suffer and work.” I love the lack of sentimentality in these words. For us, the suffering is the first noble truth- dukkha – the acknowledgment that in the midst of life there is suffering and for us, the work is the practice.  The precepts can be seen as the practice.  This is what we do as a Sangha, we take each other's hand in our suffering and do the work. And what precept is more at the heart of community than affirming life?  The first precept is from which all the other precepts flow.   

Excerpt from the dharma talk.   The heaviest burdens we can carry are the burdens of the past- either for something that was done to us or done by us, and we spend so much time there.   I have talked about this before, that we are constantly time-traveling from the past to the future and rarely present in the flow of now.  We fix ourselves firmly in the past or because our dissatisfaction with the present or our unwillingness to change in the present, we travel constantly to the future, where everything is controllable, and the outcomes can be as expected. As Gyomay Kubose Sensei teaches,    "Many people get attached to the past or to the future and neglect the important present. We must live the best "now" with full responsibility."    I think we understand this though many of us do nothing about it. I think that is why Gyomay Sensei ends his teaching with the idea of living with full responsibility.  

From the dharma talk,   "Whatever it is inside of ourselves that we are running from – that is what we attend to because we know we can come as we are. As Jung said, I would rather be whole than good. This is meeting each other in the open field – the pure – land – out beyond good and bad. This is attending to yourself.  This acceptance is the opposite of spiritual bypassing.   When we attend to ourselves and others, we take the journey into all the places we have hidden our suffering, our woundedness from view and bring it as an offering to the Buddhas and ourselves – This is not so much as needing someone to go with you but knowing that someone is there, without judgment, waiting for you to return with open arms.   This acceptance is shown in the moving towards – moving towards wholeness, healing, and awakening.  As Gyomay Kubose sensei has taught Acceptance IS transcendence.    

This is something I have been thinking about in our current environment. With so much polarity in our greater community, we stop listening to one another and when we do we start seeing one another as enemies. The Buddha taught 2600 years ago that hatreds never cease through hatred ... through love alone they cease. This is an eternal law. The challenge we face is that our own righteous anger can be a barrier to listening and close us off from love. Sometimes I think we fall into this trap when we see our anger as " righteous", a species of anger the embraces duality and sees only victims and perpetrators, and anyone of a different tribe as alien and a threat. Unfortunately for us all, regardless of what side of the polarity we abide, we are both complicit of such thinking. It makes me wonder how much of my righteous anger is more about my suffering and could the depth of my righteous anger be the level of my own suffering and more about me no matter how much I pretend it is about others? And if that is true should I not attend to that suffering within me that is overflowing?   I want to always remember that protective anger, it is not violent but assertive, not blinded by “righteousness”, not fickle, but determined. Protective anger is awake, intentional, wise and focused on liberating ALL beings from suffering delusion and stupidity   Namu Amida Butsu

excerpt "The first thing we need to remember is that the five precepts are fields of practice and not a checklist of our failures- that sometimes the commandments were for me. Our relationship with them can be contemplative in nature and whose manifestation comes from within in a natural outflowing instead of from guilt or shame of some external ideal. The ethical ideal is not something outside of ourselves but something that comes from with us and flows outward. They are the practice that brings us into harmony with all things.  As John Daido Loori, the abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery writes, To practice the precepts is to be in harmony with your life and the universe."  

From the dharma talk   "Many appreciate and value the teachings of the Buddha,  post endless memes with quotes he said and never said, there are some who have got out of bad marriages, bad jobs because of something they read or heard on a Buddhist podcast – and all this is the fruit of the teaching. At the same time, going for refuge is more than just an intellectual appreciation of the Buddhas Brains. Going for refuge is not simply an activity of thinking, of ideas or concepts but the walking of the path of the Buddha. It is an activity of the heart. It is important to note that in Chinese the same character is used to convey “heart” and “mind,” and that the two are seen by the Chinese as one inseparable “heartmind.” Taking refuge in the dharma can be seen as taking the teachings from the conceptual to the everyday – we take refuge in the dharma in our hearts."

excerpt...   "Awareness practice is not just breathing in and breathing out, it's not just noticing the breathing of your lover or the dharma talk of a meadow of wildflowers, it is also going down in the muck and mud of ALL of who we are, not just the curated parts of who we share on Facebook.   Awareness practice supports our aspiration to forgive and be forgiven, it is at the heart of accepting who we are as we are, and others as they are, and this aspiration is at the heart of come as you, is at the heart of namu amida butsu."  

  excerpt from the Dharma talk delivered May 26th in Salt Lake City.   "..that brings to my mind the Mojave desert at night - the Mojave Desert Preserve is also a dark skies Preserve meaning that any artificial list is restricted and it is one of the few places that you can see the Milky Way the way our ancestors did for millennium - Lots of tourist come get of the tour bus and look up at the night sky for about 5 minutes and say “that’s nothing I can see that at home”  disappointed they get back into the tour buses - The reason they didn’t see anything is that they didn’t let their eyes adjust to the darkness - they actually didn’t see anything - those that were willing to stop,  sit and wait in the darkness and let their eyes adjust - are shown the same view of stars that the first humans stood in awe of and made into the gods of their myths.   Are we not the same in our spiritual journeys - if all spiritual journeys start in darkness is not the first step not a step at all but to finally and courageously sit silently in the darkness and let our spiritual eyes adjust to the darkness -   Isn’t that what meditation is, it is sitting in the darkness of ourselves being still and allowing the darkness to show us the light of our inner luminosity?   For me it's similar to the lyrics from Leonard Cohen - but instead of all the cracks in the world letting the light in - I see all the cracks in the world letting the light out   May we all sit silently in the dark so we can finally see the light of our own Buddha Nature, show us the way to freedom. "  

excerpt of a talk given on May 12, 2019, in Salt Lake City.   I really love this from Gyomay Kubose Sensei. He was talking to a bright you man who said his mother did nothing for him growing up, that she only caused him trouble. I appreciate this insight from my teacher.   In ordinary moral life and modern utilitarian point of view if someone was kind to us then we express our thankfulness. This is to say, if we received some benefit, then we expressed thanks and appreciation. This kind of human relationship is nothing, but business give and take.    In the world of truth, religion, and love, it is altogether different. In fact, it is the opposite. The starting point is not mother or any external things but ourselves. If we are saved [awakened] now, our whole past will be saved [awakened]. Our Salvation [awakening] goes backward into the past. If we find meaning in our lives now, then the whole world becomes meaningful just as when we are cheerful the whole world is cheerful.   To the abovementioned young man, the problem is not what his mother did that that she is the one who gave him life. His mother and he are not separate in the world with truth, they are one. This practice of Naikan reflection is a way to awaken in the flow of now. This practice is a powerful practice especially when combined with the two other questions - what did I give in return and what troubles I did I cause.  It is a powerful way to deconstruct our stories. ”

Dharma talk given May 5th in Salt Lake City   Excerpt "Here is something that many are not aware of and I have heard this before but just found this quote  Samyutta Nikaya,   “We will develop and cultivate the liberation of mind by lovingkindness, make it our vehicle, make it our basis, stabilize it, exercise ourselves in it, and fully perfect it.” The Buddha    So what is the Buddha saying is the path to cultivation a liberated mind? Loving-kindness. Loving Kindness is the way, the ground from which we practice, it keeps us stable in our practice, it is for ourselves also – and our practice is to perfect it. It is hard to practice loving-kindness toward others if we do not start with ourselves and our own need of loving kindness not just from others but from ourselves.   

below is an excerpt from Dharma talk given at the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship Aril 21st 2019   I want to start from the account of the Buddha’s retelling of what happened on during the night just before his awakening experience.   From the MahaSaccaka Sutta and for me this has become the practical understanding of non-self for my everyday life.   “When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, & attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of recollecting my past lives. I recollected my manifold past lives, i.e., one birth, two…five, ten…fifty, a hundred, a thousand,,,    ‘There I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose there. There too I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose here.’ Thus I remembered my manifold past lives in their modes & details.” —  So I want us for a second to imagine this - we are going into the imaginal capacity of the mind to help us understand an important truth about identity.  Let’s say you could remember all the people and beings that you have been. You could remember not just who you are but you could remember being Maria Delgado, mother of 4, daughter of 8 who lived at this place and how you loved the sunrise in the morning and you were Maria who loved these things and was afraid of this or that who loved Max who died because of the war, what war?  They all start to bleed together all the wars you know, many you were the victim and in just as many you were the perpetrator - in this reimagining you see yourself as mother and father, sister and brother, but not just as human, but as the bird that flies over, the fish that swims, the tree the climbs toward heaven. You remember being predator and prey and they all become a cacophony of lives and just as meaningful as the one you are now in with the same attachment to I AM.  This is the story of what the Buddha experienced the night before the rising of the morning star and his awakening -  This story speaks to me of fluidity of self - it breaks down the barriers between myself and others -  If I have been all these things, If I have been, mother, father, brother, sister, victim, perpetrator, hero, villain, bear, wolf, rabbit, fish, tree and flower, why do I hold on so tight to Christopher? And Who is Christopher in the midst of these long long dance of life?

From Already Broken a Dharma talk given March 31st, 2019 at the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship.   "Without an intimacy with impermanence, our whole lives are spent in what we can do or will do tomorrow or we spend time worrying about the past, not living in the here and now. The problem is that we think we have time. We don't. Living without an intimacy with impermanence, our lives lack a deep transformative gratitude and in its place, there is a subtle but stifling entitlement. Somehow we think that we are entitled to tomorrow. We are not. Without intimacy with impermanence, we take tomorrow for granted. How foolish we can be."   Christopher Kakuyo Sensei

A Dharma talk given By Christopher Kakuyo Sensei at the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship March 24th, 2019   " On first blush – Impermanence, suffering, and non-self – this sounds rather dreary. Nothing lasts, life is suffering and you’re not anybody after all. The curious thing about this and the insight of the Buddhas is actually the opposite, understanding impermanence, the nature of suffering and our true selves is actually the path to boundlessness, equanimity, and joy. Our engagement with the Four Noble Truths and our practice of the Eight-Fold Path help us to develop a new relationship with these realities.

From our Right Speech Dharna talk "As humans, we are worded beings – we engage with the world through the abstraction of language. The thing we call “us” is a language created story. It makes sense that words can both heal and harm and reveal and hide. Our very existence in a languaged existence; verbal and non- verbal. Is that the reason we all long to be heard, to be deeply listened to?"

an excerpt from a Dharma talk given Jan 27th at the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship by Christopher Kakuyo Sensei   " I don’t think that violent images make us more violent  but I do think that it makes us numb to violence, and also teaches us to objectify the "other" as objects that we can justify hurting or killing because they are different from us, because they are bad, because we do not see them as "subjective" beings with; fears, hopes, dreams and their own tender suffering that may be like ours. As long as we see them as inherently different from us or as something to gratify our needs, can we ever arrive at peace?  Just the idea of violence as entertainment makes me uncomfortable. Why do I engage with violence as entertainment?  I don't really know.        

Dharma talk delivered April 26th, 2019 by Christopher Kakuyo Sensei at the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship    Excerpt from Intimacy with All Things,  If I am a stranger to my own mind carried away by the rise and fall of thought and feelings I am going to be blind to see the grace that abounds and the final aspect of intimacy that I want to talk about is, the cultivation of the practice of intimacy with “all things”  as Dogen teaches   When we forget ourselves then we are awakened by the myriad of things.   This is because as one teacher puts it,   The myriad things communicate their wisdom with their forms and sounds, and the emptiness, harmony, and uniqueness of the ephemeral self and the world are understood clearly.    I see this as a call, as an integral part of our mindfulness practice. Through our practice we are invited to become intimate with the sunrise and sunset, slow days basked in boredom, days shorter than a heartbeat. We are invited by the silence to turn our attention to the dance of bees and butterflies, of the color blue or that scent of lilac, the sound of thunder or the crash of waves, to turn our attention to the soil, the sun, to each leaf helping us to breathe, and to become aware of the grace of clouds and their gift of rain. We are invited as we let go of the primacy of self to become aware of the support of the universe sustaining us in each thing on our plate for dinner – In this awareness, in the cultivation of intimacy with these things we can learn their wisdom  we can learning from them oneness, It is in the myriad of things that we can meet in the absence of the idea of each another. That is where true intimacy is found.

  "Our aspiration is for awakening but If we decided to wait until we are awakened to help others, what good would that be. Our vows are the vows of ordinary human beings sparked by love, we vow to become wounded healers. Our awakening is in the vow itself " - Christopher Kakuyo Sensei

"I don’t know" also applies to our practice. When we think we Know with a capital K what mediation is, what Buddhism is, what awakening is, even who we are, we cut ourselves off from what these really are and by so doing we keep them from manifesting in our lives naturally, unhindered by our silly meddling."   Christopher Kakuyo Sensei

In this Dharma Talk, Christopher Kakuyo Sensei looks at how we can get stuck in the past and how doing so pulls us away from the ground of being that can only be found in the flow of "Now".   From What are you Carrying,   " My biggest reason for visiting the past was to find the answer to the chant-like question that echoed in my heart and in my head, "Why me?, Why me?"  Why me? is ultimately an unknowable question. Maybe it is the first "koan" we are ever given. In my own experience, wrestling with that questions, caused me to spend so much time in the past that I missed so much of what was in front of me. The flow of Now carried me along regardless and I discovered that when we get stuck in the past we become nothing more than spectators looking backward. Our lives are so much more than that. At the heart of every living thing is its innate suchness, an inherent beingness that can only be found in the flow of Now.  Ultimately everything else is either wake or illusion."  Christopher Kakuyo Sensei

Hello everyone,   I have gotten behind in my recording schedule and I am working on getting back in the groove.  So here is a guided meditation that I wrote for our Summer Retreat in the Uinta Mountains. This meditation was inspired by a book written by Hideo Yonezawa where he talks about when we breathe we have no control over it - we just breathe and with each breath, we touch the inconceivable.  So the idea behind this meditation is to help cultivate our awareness of our interconnectedness to all things and through that awareness realize how much we are supported every day by the world around us. And this awareness opens us up to a profound and transformative gratitude.    Transcript In this practice, we’ll be cultivating awareness of our interdependence –   “During quietness, you breathe together with the whole world. We breathe as one.” – Gyomay Kubose Sensei GUIDED MEDITATION   Breathing in, Breathing out Feel the air filling your lungs as you breathe in and out feeling the air fill your lungs, Honor them for allowing you to breathe. Now think the of trees and plants and all the processes that make breathing possible. Acknowledging your utter dependence on them for being here right now Breathing in, Breathing out – be aware of your breath, aware that you are breathing in unison with all living brings – Now say to yourself, With each breath I become awarethat the very air I receive into my lungs has been shared by trees, and flowers, by bees and bears, by wolves and whales. Let us now sit together in this awareness Now be aware of your breath feel it fill your lungs notice the wave-like motion of your breathing Be aware of how your very life has been, gifted to you, by the stars that make up the very elements of your body, by the earth's ocean, that lives in your in your blood, gifted to you by soil, moss and light. Now sit gently in this awareness. Breathing in Breathing out Feel the air coming into your lungs Now say to yourself I am so grateful for all the causes and conditions allowing me to breathe and share breath with all living things, in this very moment Now while centering your attention on your breathing opening your heart Say thank you to the stars, the sea, to the moss and light. For each inhale and exhale. Now Breathe in, Breathe out Feel the air coming through your nose past your lips, feel it filling your lungs. Bring to your awareness of how your very life has been, gifted to you, by all your ancestors. Acknowledging that you are breathing in the very same air, that all your ancestors both human and non-human down through the lineage of time – each sharing the same breath, their first breath, and their last breath. Now with each breath say to your self, “I am breathing in the first and last breath of my grandparents, Great-grandparents, even back 100 generations, The same air that filled their lungs is now filling mine. Their first breath and their last breath gifted to me. I now sit in that awareness.” Now with each breath be aware that the earth. You are breathing in the same air of the lineage of all our teachers even back to the Buddha himself, breathing in and out, first and the last breath of the Buddha – With each inhale and exhale the Buddha breathes through you Now – In this still moment as your breath in and out feel the whole world breathing with you breathing as one. Feel that endless connection that supports your existence. Sit in that awareness.     Now slowly open your eyes    

Kakuyo Sensei continues this podcast with ideas of the Four Graces of Won Buddhism and looking how Naikan reflection relates to this grace.    Excerpt   "Gratitude is born out of the realization of how much is given, up until now we have not been able to see the abundance. The small egoic-self’s constant craving and its relentless state of perceived scarcity is finally permeated by the reality of so much grace; by a new understanding of the oneness of life. This is only magnified when we realize that a similar grace surrounds us because of the many others that support us."

Kakuyo Sensei continues talking about the Path of Gratitude. In this podcast episode, he shares his thoughts on oneness and the Four Graces of Won Buddhism and how we can cultivate our awareness of our absolute interdependence will all things.    From the podcast "So understanding the truth of our interdependence our mutual resonance as Soga Ryojin writes, our very being is relational; this is oneness – and our natural response to oneness is an appreciative humility. We become aware of a daily grace – something that is beyond self-power, self-conceit – an inherent gift, something beyond us that is also us. The whole, the one.  These simple insights offer us an invitation to take notice of the grace we receive every day."  - Kakuyo Sensei   Kakuyo Sensei on the Four Graces of Won Buddhism   "Contemplation and practice with each of these graces open us up to the reality of our interdependence or as the Buddha taught Pratītyasamutpāda translated as dependent origination dependent co-arising – and as we reflect on each of these realities, each of these intersections, we begin to cultivate a deep awareness of each of these graces, and by doing so affirming the universal self as our habitual primacy of the small-self begins to dissolve in to the very ground of gratitude."   Enjoy the podcast

In the podcast episode, Christopher Kakuyo Sensei talks about the problem with the ideas of deserving and not deserving, and how we all can aspire to transcend the dualism and suffering inherent in these concepts.    "We love our concepts of deserving and not deserving, it gives us a sense of controlling our worlds., I am not saying that we do not need to “earn” a living or do the things that we need to do to be responsible for our families, what I am saying is that our sense of “deserving” is skewed. "     This podcast is based on a Dharma talk given at the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship on 7/8/2018

 Over the years we have talked a lot about our stories of self and how these stories are rarely examined, and how our sense of a solid, unchanging self is really a creation of these unexamined stories – today I would like to talk more about this – As a child I was raised to be a martyr – my mother being Catholic, unconsciously had sewn the book of martyrs deep within her heart and when I came along, into mine also ...it too became my story, a dubious one at best.  Guy Claxton has written,   “..consciousness is a mechanism for constructing dubious stories whose purpose is to defend a superfluous and inaccurate sense of self. " So begins our podcast about our stories of self and our need for introspection, as Haya Akegarasu wrote, to identify which ones are ours and which ones were stolen, borrowed or painted on so we can give them back or scrape them off to touch our true selves.

The title of this podcast comes from a poem by Rumi. “What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.”  Here Kukuyo Sensei shares how darkness is not something the be afraid of, but something to learn from.  He draws on various teachers to share their insights and his in regards to the valuable lessons we can learn from the dark, not the dark that can be tamed by electric illumination - but the wild an unknown parts of ourselves –

Kakuyo Sensei starts this talk with a quote from his mentor Gyomay Kubose Sensei,   “ A reporter from a local newspaper came to our house to interview my wife about the Japanese tea ceremony. This report continually asked, “What is the meaning? What for? Why do you do that? What is the purposes for that?” This kind of question was directed at everything in the making tea – at every gesture, every implement. Without thinking or deliberating, my wife finally replied, “No meaning. Meaningless meaning. It is purposeless purpose.” – Gyomay Kubose Sensei   Kakuyo Sensei reflects on the meaningless meaning and purposeless purpose and how it makes more sense then we might think.

“It’s important to take time to have some quiet moments in our lives, otherwise we get caught up in the busy-ness of always having something going on.” Gyomay Kubose Sensei   With this quote, Kakuyo Sensei shares his thoughts on the importance of Quiet in our lives and seeking out silences.

A talk by Christopher Kakuyo Sensei of the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship.  Many people aren't aware that gratitude and grace are a very important part of the Buddha Way - Grace from a more modernist Pure Land Buddhist view can be seen as the "other-power" that Amida Buddha represents.