Given at the Boulder Zen Center as the opening talk of the course Enacting the Four Noble Truths, this talk begins with the formula in which the teaching was handed down: there is suffering, there is a cause, because there is a cause there can be an end, and there is a path. The talk then asks how such a formula becomes alive in experience rather than knowledge to be filed away. It proposes that every tradition has an engine, a core that lets you go anywhere within it; the engine of Buddhism is that there is suffering and there is a way to end it. In the sutra itself, the talk notes, the truths appear as verbs: suffering is to be (1) comprehended, its cause (2) abandoned, its end (3) realized, and the path (4) cultivated. Following Stephen Batchelor's reading of these as four tasks, but setting aside "task" for its sense of an assignment, the talk calls them enactments and renders the first as being intimate with suffering: noticing, now, the friction (a root sense of dukkha) in one's own experience. The talk then warns that practice framed as work defers its payoff indefinitely. It offers instead the garden: tending that is never finished but can be enjoyed while it is done. This is how the talk reads Dogen's practice-realization: we practice not in order to be liberated but to enact liberation moment after moment.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Our live fall practice course, Enacting the Four Noble Truths, officially began on October 17th. The course explores the Buddha’s first teaching, the Four Noble Truths, through the lens of Zen practice. Together, we’ll look beyond what we think we already understand, exploring each truth not simply as an idea to believe, but as something to embody and practice. Through the traditional teachings, their enactment in daily life, and the surprising perspective of the Heart Sutra, we’ll investigate how practice can bring us into a more intimate relationship with suffering, reactivity, and the possibility of release.
Enrollment closes on October 24 - learn more and register here: https://www.boulderzen.org/four-noble-truths
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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.
