On Saturday October 30, 2021, Santa Barbara Zen Center welcomed Ōshin Jennings as our Guest Teacher. 

Ōshin is the founder and leader of No Barriers Zen, a Zen Buddhist group in Washington, DC. Ōshin is the first known Deaf Buddhist priest, and he has made it his mission to use his experiences as a Deaf and disabled practitioner to help make meditation practice and the Buddhist teachings accessible to all people, especially those with historically limited access. Ōshin is also a psychotherapist and artist, and he really wants you to meet his dog Scout.

Full Transcript

Okay. Yeah, so another wonderful thing that Zoom has brought us is this ability to visit other sanghas with a click, you know, and to be across all these worlds and be able to sit with people and make new friends. It seems a shame that I pretty much know everyone here already except for about two faces. I've met you all at different centers and different walks and on different coasts even. So it's really, really fantastic to be here.

There's a really lovely little funny thing we're doing, bringing kind of sign language into the Dharma. We're bringing Dharma into sign language. And it's really beautiful meeting people from Santa Barbara's sangha who already know the signs for the Four Vows, which is really great because, you know, something. And it's not that many years ago it was just me in my little bedroom, doing it alone by myself as a way to understand myself and a way to understand the teachings and embody them as best I knew how. I was encouraged by my then teacher to, well, how do you chant when you're by yourself? I signed it, I signed it. What does that look like? And so I just naturally started signing it in this zendo when I was with others. And being the kind of people I think we are as Zen Buddhists, people naturally kind of embraced it and supported me. But I first felt very alien and othering and it was really kind of difficult. How do I find my way? What's my expression in the Dharma here? It was others, it was that being affirmed and upheld by others that really made it happen.

And so it's really charming when I go to other sanghas and I see people signing it, and they don't even know that those are like my words, those are my signs, you know. So it's really humbling and really fun. As a matter of fact, I went back to one of my old centers and they still sign there. And not only do they still sign there, I just plunked myself down. And I was watching this room and half these people signing. It wasn't great sign. It wandered a bit, because no one knows actually what they're signing. It was so beautiful to me. So I was in this moment of just looking around and watching people sign the Dharma. I never thought this would happen. It's beautiful. And the guy next to me, he's starting to kind of model the signs and I realized he's trying to teach me how to sign this. And he said, I'm not signing. I'm just sitting there watching. He's trying to teach me the signs. I said, oh, okay, show me. So I start doing his versions of my words, right? And it was so beautiful. What a moment. And then at the end of the set, they announced the guest speaker and I get up and I take my seat at the front of the room and they say, this is Oshin, he's deaf, and all this stuff. And I'm like, oh, I get it now.

So yes, my talk is a little bit about that today. And I usually have my standard introduction of, hey, I'm deaf. I know I'm deaf. And I'm deaf. So if at any point any of you don't understand my words, we have the talented Tess to help us out with my interpreter. And just give me a little wave, give me a little sign and I'll repeat myself. You can't offend me. Again, I know I'm deaf. So I feel just par for the course.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about that today. I wanted to talk about kind of including all of it. And for me, that often meant including parts of myself that I wasn't bringing into the zendo. How do I not leave anything out? And this seems to be like my Genjo koan and this seems to be this lesson that keeps appearing in my life. It's like, I mean, Pema Chödrön would say, maybe it keeps coming back because it still has something to teach you. You know, so I'm trying to keep that really near and intimate. I keep working with that.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about this saving sentient beings, you know, all these numberless beings. I want to talk a little bit about that today. And talk a little bit maybe about emptiness too. So I want to read you a case. I want to read a koan.

So this is actually case number two from the Blue Cliff Record. When Zhaozhou spoke to the assembly and said, "The real way is not difficult. It only abhors choice and attachment. But with a single word, there may arise choice and attachment or there may arise clarity." But the monk asked, "If you do not have clarity, what do you appreciate?" And Zhaozhou replied, "I don't know that either." Then the monk asked, "If you do not know, how can you say you do not have clarity?" Zhaozhou replied, "Asking the question is good enough. Now make your bows and retire."

And the verse that goes along with this case:

The real way is not difficult.

Direct word, direct speech.

One with many phrases.

Two with one. Two with one.

Far away in the heavens, the sun rises, the moon sets.

Beyond the hills, the high mountains, the cold waters.

The skull has no consciousness, no delight.

The dead tree sings in the wind, not yet rotten.

Difficult, difficult.

Attachment and clarity.

Watch and penetrate the secret.

So yeah, this is one of those cases for me that every time I encounter it, I feel like I get a little something more from it. The real way is not difficult. It only abhors choice and attachment. So some of us already are familiar with this phrase, because they aren't Zhaozhou's words exactly. He's calling out a manuscript that is often translated as the Faith in Mind or the Seal of Faith in the Heart by the Third Patriarch. And that line is "The ultimate path is without difficulty. Just avoid picking and choosing." Most of us know that one. Just avoid picking and choosing. He goes on to say, "Just don't love or hate. You'll be lucid and clear."

I'm going to say it's that easy. There's a little line in the Dharma talk right there. It's just that easy, right? Just avoid picking and choosing. Just don't get stuck anywhere from now on. Here we are. Here we are.

So today for me is really interesting. I moved yesterday. I arrived in my new house about 9:30, 10 o'clock last night. Slept in this beautiful but barren room. And, you know, laid out my mat. Got some sleep. And I woke up to this space that I haven't seen like this and this light before. And no curtains so certainly got the light coming in this morning. And it was such a contrast for me because yesterday, driving my moving truck, I had the smallest moving truck ever did see. It's like this is a monk-size moving truck. It's like, this is all you need. Let's go. And I was towing my little hatchback behind the moving truck, which complicates things and adds a layer of spiciness for sure for the drive.

So I left in a storm system from Philadelphia and moved down to Virginia where I'm at now. And paradoxically went from one storm system to another. So while both places experienced lovely weather, I experienced only intense weather the entire time. So crossing these little bridges in Maryland that go over these bays and forest bands. This little box truck that is just getting rocked and rocked by the wind. And it was so intense. It's just so intense the body picks up all this tension and you just white-knuckle ride just hanging on just trying to make this right.

I'm taking stock. I'm thinking about my life. You can't help it when you put everything you own into a box. What is what even is why do I. Okay. And you get everything into a box and you put it all in one spot. And you chuck yourself into oblivion like that. It makes you think. Makes you think about life and makes you think about your history makes you think about. What am I doing here. Where am I sticking.

And so this is a difficult practice for me in my body because I, as mentioned in the little info, I have multiple disabilities. I have a musculoskeletal issue. And I have an autoimmune issue. And they create very different symptoms in my body. So, the one condition likes to be fatigued to reset, feels good to do things and get my body kind of tired. And some of those things will go away. The other disease doesn't want to move. Doesn't want to, doesn't want to interact with, want to bump into anything. Doesn't want to sleep on the ground, doesn't want to do anything like this. And so they kind of cancel each other out but most of the time they actually make things a lot more complicated.

So yesterday is really kind of threading the needle. I have to move, I have to do these things, I have to get my life together. All those stories that are coming up and you're trying to get this thing done in a storm. And you know so I've got this body, I've got this very specific thing, this body teacher that I'm practicing with. It's very confounding too. I barely have it figured out now after four decades. I'm barely starting to get it. It's very complicated. My doctor loves it. I'm like his favorite case study. Nobody's had these two diseases at the same time. This is hilarious. I'm glad you like it. Glad you're happy.

So it was a tough day for me. I'm panting and having nervous issues and I don't have curtains. You know, you're just so it's all of a sudden, you know, everything that's a little bit more real or more focused in a specific kind of way. And this morning that grayness and the storms just gave way to this amazing light. And it's kind of penetrating every little corner of my new space. And so I'm spending this morning just rising really slowly, taking care of my body and stretching and knowing that this box is still lift and things still to do. And I just decided, I'm going to give myself a little more room. Doesn't mean I wasn't in pain or that I'm not in pain. I just maybe I'm going to stop struggling with even that fact, just a little less. Make a little more room for myself and myself.

And for me there's something really interesting about pain, emotional or physical pain. It has this possibility, the capability, maybe, to put you on point to get you really intimate with certain parts of your life. I was thinking about this recently after spending a month at Jikoji. Really, you know, trying to settle into the lifestyle and the energy there, the people there. Its lovely surroundings and I was like, yeah, yeah. But it also brings up for me this certain other thing which is, this is really hard on my body. The next thought that comes after that thought is, I'm not built for this. This isn't a fit. I don't belong here. You know, fill in the blank. I'm sure there's something that resonates with you in that. I couldn't do this full time. You're out. I couldn't live like that. I need a different kind of schedule. I need different kinds of food. I need to be able to control this. And so immediately I use that and weaponize that against myself and I cancel myself out and say, I'm not good enough. I don't belong here. Instead of just saying this is this body. This is this place. This is what's happening.

And then something really kind of funny happened. A couple of years ago I had a similar thought. I was thinking about residential practice at that place, and I felt like maybe I'll live at this monastery for a while and this feels like a fit. But my health got unstable again and I had to walk away from the opportunity. And I was really sore about it. Because my body, my body was keeping me from doing the thing I wanted to do. You can see already I know I've practiced with some of you for some years. So I know there's some maturity here, dare I say. But you know what happens when you separate from others, from yourself. You know what happens.

So I was having this moment of saying, what is actually happening. What's real right now. Not my story, my story about my story but what's really happening. What's really happening is I need to get back down on the floor and I need to do my 20 to 30 minutes of stretching and care for my body. And I need to eat at this time. So that I can take that pill. And it needs to be this many hours before the next. So I need to make sure I buy this time. So then this can happen, the nap and then this can happen. This pill needs food with it, that one needs to be right before sleep, this needs to. And everything gets like this.

And so what happens is you end up having this moment of clarity, looking down at your pill case going. There's the monastery. There it is. There's the han. There's the bell. That's the next meal. The next, the next, and then you go to bed. Go back to the beginning. One, two, three, four, and I make my way through my days like that. That's my container. This is my container. This is my practice. This is what I'm doing.

Just like, I don't know about signing in front of other people. I want to, I want to, one day I don't want to take away from any height. And then I start signing it and people say, I like this, this has some validity or something in my life, I feel, I don't know sign but I feel this when I sign, I feel this. So, you know, we say you know vast is the robe of liberation. Right. You can't sign vast without at least becoming a little bit more vast. And within this sign language that I didn't think I was embarrassed. I don't think I'm embarrassed to this body. But noticing the resistance and noticing the story. And as is so often in our lives. It's nothing like what's really going on. Because then all of a sudden people are signing with me. And wow, and there it is, there's my life, all unfolding all happening for me right now, and other people are getting some benefit from this. Wow, that's not what I thought at all.

So then it becomes. Can I accept that. I'm going to throw down more resistance to that. Can I weaponize, can I figure out a way to weaponize that back then. I used to still be you should have known that. Okay. So a little more room. A little more room.

So yeah. That room comes from. Maybe we call that emptiness. Maybe that's what we say that room is. We understand emptiness to be empty of what? Empty of separation. You know we understand we're all interconnected. So, our suffering comes when we start pretending like we're not all connected or connected to parts of myself. My whole being. So, I think that's kind of what it means in this case too. When we start thinking we're separate from others that's usually when we are causing the most suffering to ourselves and others.

I'm looking at my cup of tea and I just think. That's whole perfect and complete too. It's full of its own tea-ness and its own relationship to me and others. And the more I sit there and I look at it I think I can understand the essence of it. I can see the tea-ness being expressed. Because as we look at it. It's just the cup of tea. But we also understand that it's also its clouds, its sky. It's everything else that is completely present. Because we know without rain, without sunshine, without insects. Without the farmer. I don't have this tea. And that's a very surface level understanding of interdependence.

So we understand cloud and sky and tea become interdependent. And when you take a sip. You realize, yeah, I'm taking in the field. I'm taking in the soil. I'm taking in the whole earth. The sun, I get to drink the sky. It's a cup of cosmos, it's a cup of the universe. And the farmer, down to that little worm. And everything else in the soil. But there's another level. The farmer picked the tea, right. So this cup depends on him. But he wouldn't or she wouldn't be able to farm without their breakfast. Without their supports, without their life. And that's the level of all their karma and all their experience and everything they bring to bear in farming. The farmer's family, all of it. It's in this cup. So we're drinking the cosmos, we're drinking the farmer's father and mother. And in our life, we drink it in. And then we understand this includes me.

And when I experience that tea, it includes my perception. And my senses and all the aggregates and everything. It's there too. And you're perceiving it too. So I get to drink your mind. And you get to drink my mind. It's the cup, it's the sky, it's the cosmos, it's the farmer, it's the worm. It's my deafness. It's a box truck blowing around on the bridge. It's there. And you get to drink my mind.

So we start to understand that this emptiness is really quite full. And all it's empty of is this illusion. All it is is empty of independence. And then we start to understand that. So when we can really practice this way and we can really see the tea for what it is. Or the Zoom or Virginia or Jikoji or Santa Barbara. All of a sudden for me, a lot more space comes in. I all of a sudden have a lot more space for me, all of me. And I want to be a space for myself. I want to be a space for that. This is what I'm aiming at. I want to be a space for myself. I want to be a space for all beings. I want to be a space that welcomes all of my experiences. I want to become that space.

And the more that I've practiced this, the more that I've found it's profoundly healing. It's difficult to talk about, but it's really deeply transformative for me. And that's why we said you must experience it for yourself. Then you just take a sip and say that was the tea. That's the whole teaching as well. And we all kind of scratch our heads and think, what do you mean by that? I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I'm trying to practice as deeply and as intimately as I can with where I'm at at any given moment. Until those eyes open, I'm going to be talking about that.

So I'm doing that. I'm trying to practice as deeply and as intimately as I can with where I'm at at any given moment. Until those ideas, those stories about myself drop away, at least a little bit. And I notice when I do that, a lot of my old wounds and my stories kind of drop away with it. And that heart mind, the real heart mind that is ocean, has a lot more room. It arises much more out of this full emptiness.

So that's our practice. How can we see it? How can we see it more clearly? How can we respond to what's happening in front of us right now? Not our story about it, not what we hoped would happen, but right now what's happening? How can we wake up to that? And when we can see our experience more clearly, we also see that your story and your emotions are a lot more hollow too. They're real as anything else is real inside here or outside here. But as we know from our Zazen, we watch them drift in and out, play themselves out. Everything that we needed and we thought we needed pops like a soap bubble. And we experience that great ease.

And then we get off the cushion and we pretend like that lesson that I just had doesn't apply to Zoom. Doesn't apply to the next meeting aisle, doesn't apply to box trucks and moving help that's two hours late. But it does. That's my modesty. That's my practice spirit. That's what's happening.

I want to tell you a brief little story. So I lived in New York City. I lived in upper Manhattan. And one day I was leaving the Zendo really late. And it was during a heat wave. And when there's a heat wave in New York City, it's quite often power outages. It's just a fact. There's a lot of knowing nods going on. So, and with power outages, there would be problems with the subway system with these power outages. So quite often I'd find myself on the only train that's headed uptown. And I would be there late at night. Packed. Hot, sweaty. And we're all crammed in there. All of humanity. It's New York City. That's the teacup. That's what's happening. We're all here.

You know, I'm wearing a samue. I'm waiting 45 minutes for the train. And I'm watching not too far away from me. Like a young couple. And a guy points to the gal that she's got a little worm. I was writing this talk and I was thinking about the worm and the tea and the teacup. And I was thinking, oh, up and just kind of gets it onto the wall of the subway car and the thing just you know keeps doing what worms do. What a miracle to be stories underneath this island flying with all of humanity crammed into this car and this worm is inside going 45 miles an hour you know and I just thought this is my life this is happening and then I immediately think well what's going to happen to the worm you know and showing up I think that and at the next stop the couple gets off and leaves and this worm is and the whole subway our eyes are just watching this thing make its way trapped in this car with us.

You know and you think man somebody's got to do something about that you know look at that out over there man saving all sentient beings or something or other yeah I think that counts and no sooner I think that that um it's like 10 12 year old girl goes over and stands up on the seat and plucks the worm down oops sorry about that she puts the worm down and brings it through the crowd over to me and she's holding this worm out and says you're a monk right? Shit. Uh yeah sort of okay yeah I'm in this wall of humanity swaying flying under this island and now I've got this worm in my hand and I'm needing to kind of do this hand over hand thing while this worm is starting to like really shift it you know he's really moving and I think oh hell I can't hold on anymore I don't know how to do this and I'm doing this and I'm and I'm doing this and I'm doing and I thought well yeah yeah saving all beings yeah I'm I yeah I took those vows I'm I'm gonna try and do this it's not about my abstraction it's not about my story there's a literal being in my palm that needs this and I'm trying this and it's not easy and it's just one worm and it's not easy and as soon as I'm thinking I don't know how I'm gonna get this done I've got about 140 blocks north to go still got half a dozen express train stops to get through that I feel somebody grab my backpack and somebody else put their hand on my shoulder and now I don't need to hold on I can just focus on the work and keeping myself upright keeping myself upright and keeping this worm going and my sincere was I hopefully my sincere response to the causes and conditions that were present for me in this moment this little inchworm people felt that intentionality they felt that vow without thinking about it as vow without thinking about it as anything other than yeah save the worm and their energy and their physicality rallied around me to hold me up to keep me going to save the worm so I eventually get off at my stop find the first suitable looking shrubbery a little difficult in Manhattan but I did and I placed it there and I thought good luck good luck and I went home

So how you know how do we make space how do we get ahead of our stories how do we get around ourselves and get out of our own way and show up fully in our lives show up fully to serve to save all sentient beings how do we do that how do we become as I said a space for ourselves become a space for all beings become a space that welcomes our experiences we become space we trust we take that next step just like that worm it's just a matter of inch by inch just inch by inch that's how we practice moving forward like this yeah so hopefully you can experience that as well and hopefully some of that made sense and I really appreciate all of you and seeing some of you again after many years and hopefully you can appreciate this and practice this well and embrace inch by inch.