How to Mind Your Problems

This talk was given as part of a One-Day Intensive at Boulder Zen Center's new Mountain Zendo. It takes the following quote from Suzuki Roshi as its jumping-off point: "When you're sitting in the middle of your own problem, what is more real: your problem or you yourself? That you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact." Usually, the contents of our minds seem more real—objects of sense perceptions, emotions, problems. What does it take to shift into experiencing the medium of mind, in which these contents make their appearance, as more real? An important part of that shift is to realize that NOW isn't just a moment in clock time but that it is a HERE that isn't opposed to a there, a space that extends indefinitely to include everything all at once. Our small self disappears. This wide inclusive sense of space and self allows us to form a different relationship with our everyday practical and psychological problems. They don't disappear; we still need to deal with them. Finally, the talk explores what it takes to develop a genuinely "American Buddhist practice" and whether ritual monastic Zen forms (that were practiced during the weekend) are important for that development. The importance lies in generating the experience of a dharmic pulse that let's us notice and enter into a gentle mind that holds the simultaneity of "you yourself being more real" and "working on your everyday problems.”

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Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.