When something goes your way, do you ascribe it to your skills….to luck….to good fortune? When something turns sour, do you ascribe it to your childhood….to misfortune….to bad luck?
In any situation we tend to ascribe things to a source which is often something about our small self or some aspect of the material realm. Once we find the culprit we make some vow. When we make an error, for example, we vow never to do it that way again. This approach is common and workable on the material level, but most spiritual seekers recognize it as coming from a dualistic, functional understanding of life. And it tends towards blaming and shaming either the self or the other when something goes awry or boasting and tooting one’s own horn when things go well. Neither of which is recommended on a spiritual path.
Spiritual practice is daily practice with pots and pans, sheets and pillows, toothpaste and brush, with traffic and travel, with making a mess and cleaning up, with getting up and sitting down, with walking and talking, with changing diapers and putting on a coat, with sweeping and mopping, with paying bills and mailing them, with eating and sleeping, with laughing and crying, with giving and receiving, with asking and responding….and on and on practice goes.
And what makes it spiritual? Knowing that nothing is left out of practice, that nothing in the world is without Buddha nature (God, Brahma, G-D, the source of all things, the god with no name and form). It is not a belief, it is a practice with all things knowing not to pick and choose, love and hate. Spiritual seekers know practice with full attention to each thing we meet is the Way; without letting our attitude be influenced by our ego which wants to stamp things with some measurement of quality, i.e., bad, poor, fair, good, better, great. It is to treat things, whatever they are, as coming from the whole (holy). Nothing is left out. Nothing is hidden.
It is simple but it requires effort and determination to pay attention. Many times when students came here to sit, they kicked and threw the meditation cushions around. When instructed not to do so, they often got angry or felt put out or argued. All their backtalk showed was they needed to train to give their full attention to everything that came into their life. To do so requires effort and determination.
When we ascribe things to the Way, we are more likely to give full attention to it, and to actualize the Way Seeking mind right where we are. We can call the practice love or emptiness, but what matters is not the name or form, but that we no longer ascribe things to the self or to the other.
In the case of kicking and throwing cushions, the student often ascribed things as a personal affront or unnecessary. Again all this backtalk showed was the student needed training to relinquish the mind that takes things personally or feels put upon or wants things their own way and not the Way of a spiritual seeker.
Practice requires we meet what comes into our life without the ascribed self that takes credit or gives blame.
The material world is a world of measuring between all the opposites; it is a split view of the world. When we split the world we remove heaven from earth or the other way round, earth from heaven.
Our third Chan patriarch, Seng Ts’an in his poem Faith in Mind says it clearly….
The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
Everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
And heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
He goes on to say….
If you wish to see the truth,
Then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
Is the disease of the mind.
All his wisdom takes us back to practice. Practice without love or hate, without picking and choosing, knowing everything is Buddha (God, G-d, undying, without name and form). Give full attention to all the work of your life right where you are.
Live neither in the entanglements of outer things,
Nor in inner feelings of emptiness.
Be serene in the oneness of things and such erroneous views
Will disappear by themselves.
Samuel Coleridge, poet, philosopher and theologian of the 18th c. discovered at a very early age his interior unfaithfulness which he came quickly to realize was and is a part of human nature.
“I sported infidel: but my infidel vanity never touched my heart.”
At some point in life, in everyone’s life there are times when we play with “infidelity” which I take to mean “unfaithfulness” in relation to some person, some thing, some creed or way of life. In fact we may give way to infidelity while doing daily tasks. To some degree there are two foes that arise in the sport of an infidel. (1) a shiny new thing and (2) boredom. Coupled together they are a powerful force that play head games of doubt and set the heart on fire for the shiny new thing capturing us in our own vanity.
Coleridge as a young man was set to be a theologian at university, when he suddenly without warning was struck with a burning desire to become a surgeon. Apparently, he “….became wild to be apprenticed to a surgeon.” Youth and adolescence is often a time when infidelity (going from one thing to another) is particularly active, but it is not only in the young that shiny new things and boredom challenge our faithfulness.
Recently, I was speaking to an old woman who was struggling to complete daily tasks when she suddenly without warning was struck with the notion of taking an online class. What struck me was her inability to recognize her infidelity to the moment and her inability to see her own limits. She was very much like a whimsical teen who wants to do something new in order to escape what is right in front of her. Adolescence and childhood are famous for limitless wishes. Coleridge admit that he was a dreamer. With such an admission if we realize it is a way to get to what Berrigan suggests….that is, put your faith in your ass and stay put with what you are doing right now.
At any age, and during even one day we may falter with thoughts of doubt, our heart may wilt where we lose interest in the thing that was at one time precious and promised a zest of life. We may start out with a full steam of interest only to run out of steam and veer off into lethargy, doubt which leads to a search for something new.
Our strength to be faithful even to the smallest task slumps when the task at hand threatens to be too hard, too much, and too onerous. Our thoughts pile up in multiple ideas of discontent and negative mantras of I can’t, I won’t, and I don’t want to.
Infidelity may arise in relation to a thing (person, belief, institution, ideal, profession) in our life, not just once but multiple times and in various guises of doubt. When it does arise, we more times than we might want to admit, play with it. We, like the young Coleridge, toy with being unfaithful. Drawn away by the newness, the beauty, the allure of a thing (all of which stem from our vanity) we, in vain, become faithless. We need to master this compulsion and obsession to wander off. We, however may not have either the skills to master it or a master who might strike with a sword across of lustful wandering for something else than what we are doing right now. Coleridge was lucky. In his case his school master who had a reputation of a being harsh, believed in flogging as the best antidote to end Coleridge’s sporting with infidelity to leave theology and seek to apprentice with a surgeon.
I know, firsthand, the lure of a shiny new thing in my life as well as in my work with students. I was as lucky as Coleridge. My late teacher was a harsh master who believed in cutting through any infidelity that might arise. I learned the skill of cutting off such nonsense of thinking the grass is greener on the other shore even when the other shore is a compelling daydream for something else, something new and something exciting that showed great promise. I learned fidelity is not a matter of the head, not a matter of the heart but a matter of the ass. I learned to stay put and to stay with it no matter what happened which led to knowing not to play with infidelity.
I may seem restless, but I am deeply at ease.
Branches tremble, but the roots are still. Rumi
A Nobel prize, Lunar Communion, The Beatitudes
and a Song of David’s
Shakespeare gives us a fine image of good intentions gone awry: to his own detriment, a fellow so eagerly tries to mount a horse that he jumps clear over it. Just so, Macbeth, pondering his plan to murder the king, worries about his “…vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on the other.”
In the cause of separating church from state, we seem to have o’erleaped ourselves or, to use a more homespun metaphor, to have thrown the baby out with the bath.
As a member of a minority religion, I’m hardly in a position to denigrate the value of religious freedom. It’s a sacred right and the more vigorously it is preserved, the better off we all are.
But religion and spirituality are not the same thing. In trying to protect the interests of the former, we have all too easily sacrificed the latter. In banning spiritual expression from our public schools, a great chunk of what was once an integral part of American heritage and culture has been placed in escrow or some sort of trust account to which a few executors have access and a privileged few may derive whatever moral benefits can accrue to those who gain at the sorry expense of others.
Recently several events brought the problem into focus and clarified, without resolution of course, at least some of the pertinent questions: What have we lost and why did we lose it and what will happen to us if we don’t recover it? Something is terribly wrong.
On July 20th, l969, during the Apollo 11 Mission, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first men to walk on the moon. We earthbound citizen taxpayers were well informed about the lunar excursion and could track the whole adventure. To discuss the details of this scientific achievement, we learned a new vocabulary: lunar orbit insertion burns; lunar module docking and undocking; PDI (powered descent initiation); and a whole litany of terms. We knew how the crewmen urinated and what they ate. This was knowledge in its finest hour and NASA wanted us to know everything… except… well… not the fact that Buzz Aldrin celebrated Holy Communion before he and Neil Armstrong went down that ladder. That we weren’t allowed to know. NASA didn’t think it prudent to inform us that something spiritual was happening on the moon, that men of science could also be spiritual. Of course, we did know that the astronauts were religious men. They had to be religious. We wouldn’t have sent atheists to the moon or even let them into an astronaut training program.
But just a minute here… the Miracle of Transubstantiation on the moon? Somebody partaking of consecrated American bread on the moon? No way. Six years before the lunar landing, the Supreme Court had declared its “no prayers in public schools” version of the Constitution’s separation of church and state and that separation extended even to government-sponsored events on the moon. So NASA drew that religious line in the lunar sand. Why weren’t we allowed to be told about this lunar Communion? Not until a quarter century after the fact did word leak out to puzzle those of us who heard it. Something was wrong here.
Then last September in Boulder City, Nevada, at Grace Church’s interfaith meditation session, Gard Jamison, while speaking about Christian meditation practices, tried to rustle up some audience participation – always a dangerous venture – and referred to the Sermon on the Mount. Hoping to elicit a little feedback, he quoted Jesus, saying, “‘Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall–‘” and then he waited expectantly for the assembly to shout out the answer as to what the pure in heart could expect, but nobody said anything. There was this great silence as Gard, eyebrows raised and mouth open, sat poised to hear the vault of sound break open and the precious answer issue forth… but all he heard was a faint echo of his own voice. It was an awkward moment and I turned to Richard Smith, the Pastor of Grace Church, who, as you might expect, was groaning with his hands over his face; and I quizzically whispered, “See God?” Could it possibly have been something else? Again I asked, “Don’t the pure in heart see God?” “Good grief,” said Richard in perfect agony, “My flock sits there dumbly while a Buddhist knows the Beatitudes.” Well, in all fairness to his flock, his flock was a pretty young flock and this Buddhist was a pretty old Buddhist who happened to have learned the Beatitudes from hearing the Bible read every morning in Public School in Philadelphia.
But we Americans are not allowed to hear the Bible inside our public institutions any more. There’s a line between church and state and that line is drawn between the citizenry and one of the most beautiful presentations of spiritual truth the world has ever known. Nearly an entire generation of Americans have never heard the Beatitudes because the only voices that ever uttered them have been silenced. Teachers can’t teach anything spiritual. And where shall this generation learn? In most American families, Mom and Dad both work and are understandably too exhausted or too hurried to begin each day with a thoughtful Bible reading. And on Sunday mornings, Jesus can speak from the Mount all he wants, but he’d better be calling NFL play action if he intends that his voice be heard in American homes.
Then, a few weeks ago, during an email discussion of the cosmic Dharmakaya with Chuan Zhi, the webmeister of our Nan Hua Zen Buddhist Page, I quoted Psalm 8: “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him?” Our webmeister, trained in nuclear physics, emailed me back, awestruck, “That was so beautiful! Where can I find more of those Psalms?” Now, Chuan Zhi is a profoundly spiritual man, a candidate for Buddhist ordination, a man who happens to appreciate the finer things of life: the saxophone of Stan Getz; the poetry of Rumi; Nilsson singing the Liebestod; but he grew up under the new interpretation of a separate church and state; and though he had been apprised of the secrets of atomic power – the boast of a proud nation, nobody had ever so much as hinted to him that it was possible to stun a man with the beauty of one of David’s songs. Something is wrong here.
Is this what the Founding Fathers intended? As I write this, a neighbor is washing his car to the accompaniment of a boom-box that is dispensing Gangsta’ Rap by the decibel. In this lyrical exultation of free speech, we, the men, women, and children of the neighborhood, are permitted – indeed, we cannot avoid – the brute machismo celebrations of obscenity, violence, racism, drugs, the defiance of elected authority, and the abuse of women and families. Did the Founding Fathers intend that the State may not deprive us of the pleasure of hearing Gangsta’ Rap on our city streets and through our open windows while at the same time must protect us from hearing the Psalms of David in public institutions of knowledge and learning.? I may not have phrased it well, but it is a good question.
What are we really discussing by “knowledge” and “religion”? Certainly not wisdom and spirituality. No, wisdom is to knowledge what spirituality is to religion. They have a relationship but they are not kissing cousins.
To me, knowledge is information and shares this in common with religion: it is organized and disciplined; it is vocal and literal, it is something disseminated, broadcast, discussed. Knowledge wants to be known and seeks a forum’s setting just as a church, if nothing else, is an auditorium. What is a class to one is a congregation to the other.
While knowledge and religion are shared experiences, wisdom and spirituality are not. Nobody can participate in another person’s wisdom or intercept his experience of God. Wisdom is a quiet thing and so is spirituality. However much it’s sought, wisdom doesn’t seek. The wise don’t proselytize – that they are wise makes them know better – and the spiritual more than anything appreciate solitude. Wisdom looks inward and it looks deeply enough to see in itself the essence of all others. And that, of course, is what spirituality does. It retreats into the Void to see the ubiquity of God. Wisdom and spirituality are unitive. They see sameness. Knowledge and religion see and profit from differences.
Where Wisdom is recorded, the libraries of the world’s diverse religions keep the sacred books. And here we may perhaps find at least part of the source of the problem.
Who, ultimately, is responsible for the removal of sacred literature from the classroom? Were we acting to protect the atheist from being subjected to wisdom’s spiritual expression? Or, rather, when the issue first presented itself did we succumb to religious haggling and parochialism, masquerading bigotry as patriotism? Rather than risk having some doctrine of fairness applied, of having to expose our children to wisdom contained in other libraries, did we prefer to remove our separate versions of wisdom from the bargaining table, to secrete them in fortresses – the private schools and other institutions – where followers could flaunt their uniforms of exclusivity and privilege? Did we prefer to hoard our Truths rather than share them and accept a share of others?
If it is true that we have privatized Wisdom, is it not curious that though we insist upon our domestic separation of church and state we have no such requirement for those nations we consider allies? Americans who quite literally could be jailed for reading Proverbs before a public assembly of citizens may be asked to fight on foreign soil in support of governments which have, de facto if not de jure, state-sponsored religions and which, for that matter, may actually be intolerant of the religious views of those American servicemen and women who have come to defend them. It requires no great stretch of the imagination to foresee the possibility that the same fellow who commits a criminal act by reading Proverbs before an assembly of American school children would also commit a criminal act if, when drafted into military service, he declined to fight for the sake of any foreign government which mandated the reading of specific religious literature to its school children.
We are not so naive as to suppose that our government has separated church and state in any meaningful way. Religious institutions are tax exempt just as religious schools, in one way or another, are financially subsidized with state and federal revenues. While the children of the rich or of the righteous hear the scriptures and are nicely groomed for positions of authority – astronauts or politicians, the children of the poor and of the disaffected all too often become street-wise or discover the beauty of Truth by some chance utterance.
We all want the generation of citizens which follows us to have more opportunities than we had. Whether an illiterate man does or does not want his children to learn to read, we insist that his children shall at least attend school and be given the opportunity to learn.. That man, regardless of his desire, is unable to teach them; and we, therefore, supply by law the means of their education. But a religiously disaffected man, who is likewise unable or unwilling to impart traditional moral values, may raise, to use a Biblical quote, “a generation of vipers” for all anybody cares. We’ll simply build more prisons, a Constitutionally permissible solution.
No, we cannot be certain that the children who are denied access to scriptural wisdom will never occupy positions of authority. Power is no respecter of persons. We have had our fill of godless dictators just as we have also had a surfeit of religious fanatics whose fervor was never tempered by spirituality, or by anything resembling universal love and tolerance. Nothing in recent years has broadened the horizons of such persons. If anything, their vision, thanks to our turn towards separatism, has further narrowed to an on-edge knife blade’s. All proclaim One Virtuous Fatherly God but limit God’s legitimate offspring to the members of their particular society’s brotherhood.
What are the real ligatures of religion? Are they not those lines of Truth, those sutures, those Scriptures and Sutras and Suras that bind us to God? Those Sacred Lines of Thought which infuse knowledge with wisdom, which impart conscience to science, which inform fact with meaning and give significance to event? And do they not also tie us to the mystery of life with awe and reverence? For two hundred years the Republic flourished, enriched by freely stated spiritual expressions. Where was the problem that required judicial redress? The definition of prayer could perhaps have been clarified, but the system wasn’t broke and it didn’t need fixing. In repairing what was not broken, in tinkering with the freedom of expression, the Court created an instrument which no longer operates with any common sense. Gansta’ Rap versus the Beatitudes… and Gansta’ Rap wins? Is the quality of any American’s life improved by this?
Perhaps when public “prayer” was first suppressed we began to flatten the moral landscape, the topography of divine providence and individual responsibility. We no longer seem to walk resignedly through the Valley of Death or to climb the Path of Righteousness to reach self-discipline’s heavenly summit. We seem instead increasingly to be mired in a swamp of torts and government programs which compensate the consequence of immoral or self-indulgent behavior. Nobody is responsible for his own choices and mistakes; and were it not for the error of others, we should all live a thousand sybaritic years.
I recall no instance in a public classroom when a teacher used the Bible in an attempt to further his own religious agenda. Teachers, the educated among us who serve all too often as surrogate parents, were, in my recollection, invariably circumspect in their Biblical selections. Perhaps a professional pride made them respect their roles as being not merely purveyors of knowledge but as instruments of wisdom. I, for one, miss hearing that I could lift up my eyes unto the hills to find some needed strength and being reminded that though I spoke with the eloquence of angels if I didn’t have love in my heart, I might as well shut up.
And so we silence the voice of Wisdom; and many there are who, strangers to its resonance, will one day mediate the great issues of science and law, of genetic engineering and organ transplantation, of zoological experimentation, of weaponry, of interplanetary decorum, of privacy, of worldwide electronic communication, of censorship, of ethics, fairness, and political responsibility, and who will supply their generation with a definition of human decency.
The fourth event that led me to consider this problem was reading a poem by Wislawa Szymborska, the Pole who recently won the Nobel Prize in literature. Szymborska, too, seems to have been considering the problem of knowledge without wisdom. She, too, came of age when Communism had succeeded, admirably in its terms, not only in separating church from state but in replacing church with state and, of course, in eradicating spirituality altogether from its Manifesto of political ideology.
Meaning and Significance, Reverence and Awe were sent into exile, leaving Knowledge behind, alone, grim, and quite bewildered.
Her poem “Going Home” was sent to me by a thoughtful friend, Father Mark Serna, a Benedictine Abbot who knew how troubled I had been about NASA’s censoring the news of Buzz Aldrin’s lunar Communion.
I’ll leave you with Szymborska’s poem which has been translated by Baranczak and Cavanagh:
GOING HOME
He came home. Said nothing.
It was clear, though, that something had gone wrong.
He lay down fully dressed.
Pulled the blanket over his head.
Tucked up his knees.
He’s nearly forty, but not at the moment.
He exists just as he did inside his mother’s womb,
clad in seven walls of skin, in sheltered darkness.
Tomorrow he’ll give a lecture on homeostasis in megagalactic cosmonautics.
For now, though, he has curled up and gone to sleep.
By Fashi Lao Yue
For many years I have been aware of an underlying principle driving religious doctrines, a principle I never looked at with a clear eye. I imagine that I didn’t look at it because I was in some way satisfied with the two main components of the principle, the whip of encouragement and the place of exceptionalism. Let me explain.
My thoughts arise from a recognition that being off-kilter and out-of-step are two attributes used by religious teachers, both historically and presently, to determine the wayward among us (you and I, sinners, the ignorant) and to shape up and point towards a singular place on a path which is often described in exceptional language (the narrow gate, the Way, the Truth, the Mind of the great sage).
The list for both the whip and the place is extensive and well anchored in spiritual practices of all kinds. Spiritual practice, which may include encouragement and pointers out of the ditch are used to take the walls down not build up the separations and the divisions.
When, however I look at this principle with a clear eye both the whip of encouragement and the pointing to a path suggests that there is some special way, some special place where the wayward among us can find God. This approach has an implicit message of ….if…..then. If you do this special such and such, then you will find the special place which will lead you to find God. It is in many ways an approach that is supported by reason.
As I write this I find myself challenged by years and perhaps lifetimes of being instructed that this is how to find God. This instruction often comes in the form of giving up that which is labeled bad and relinquishing life to a small, narrow footpath on which to get to God. It is a bit like the yellow brick road in the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Find the yellow bricked road, put on your special shoes and head off to the Emerald City. This approach can lead to self-flagellation and narrow thinking as well as a dividing up life making us all into judges.
There is no doubt sameness-and-difference is part of the human condition, making tolerance for difference and affinity for sameness into yet another division. It is a human attempt to continue doing the same old thing, using the whip of encouragement to shape up an acceptable image to make it to the place that is exceptional.
God is not anywhere else except right where we are, wherever we are and whatever shape or place karma shows up. Whether it is entangled in the brambles of the material world or robed in solitude on a mountain top.
God, the eternal existence of being is never apart from us. And God shows up as Jesus, the son of god, Shakyamuni as the mind of the great sage, Sri Ramakrishna as the avatar of God, Mohammed as a prophet….endless manifestations to awaken us. The pervasiveness of generosity is immeasurable. There is sameness and difference, but don’t see it as such.
If sameness and difference is what we look at, the tendency to whip and point continues to separate, divide, and worst of all exclude and exile. This tendency if enacted and followed leads to ossification. Groups tend to want members to look and act like them and exclude and exile those that don’t. In some respects we might call it spiritual nationalism.
The problem is that this approach divides the world of creation into them and us and those who are right (those who look and agree with us) from those who are wrong (those who look different and don’t agree with us). Anytime right and wrong dominate, whether in the group or the individual, a tendency to hide and conceal increases. Odd shaped tumors form often manifested in acts of splitting, ridicule and arrogance. The tumors from whipping and shaping compounded by right and wrong increase the possibility of no growth. Creation bound in such a way has ossified and is gasping and is all but dead.
The ossification has become rigid in such a way, that growth, which comes in the form of change, is a threatening prospect. Form and measure, which are quite helpful and necessary, become lords of the house. And when form and measure rule, creativity and aliveness suffer. Separating-out becomes the axiom and anxiety about doing it right follows. It is an endless snake eating its own tail (ouroboros).
Creation (God), thankfully, cannot be killed. IT flourishes as the grass and mosses that make their breakthroughs in cement show us. There is no arrival-place of special and separate as these beings remind us. Life experience, whatever it might be, comes daily to awaken us to our true nature. (The emphasis on whatever it might be.) When we are encouraged to show up wherever we are, invited to do so, we begin to include whatever might be separated and excluded finding the whole (holy) life creation.
When we realize our oneness in the midst of sameness and difference we offer what we have been given back to the giver (God), we offer it back to life. We are the offering….the oblation….and we live beyond the wrongdoing and rightdoing….in the field where when the soul lies down it is too full to talk about the world divided by ideas (Rumi).
Offer it to God, not to get anything at all, but to be an oblation, a sacrifice that is pleasing to life. IT no longer is you, hidden in the shadows of self-interest, but you, all of you is IT. IT is lived beyond wrong-doing and right-doing….in the field where the soul lays down and there is no you or me, where there is no anxiety, no separation, no right way or wrong way, no ossifications.
And so the question may be, how do we find this field? Wherever we are. We are standing in IT….no matter where we are….we are there, never separated from IT. When we know where we are, life (creation) beckons the soul to lie down beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing….where we are all one.
In the Zen tradition there is a ritual for tending to and disposing of the remnants left after burning a stick of incense. When the incense burns down it leaves a tiny bit of incense in the ash which is still in stick form. It is smaller but it is still of the same form and goes by the same name of incense.
The ash in the bowl after many burnings looks a lot like a miniature logging accident. There are tiny logs of incense scattered helter-skelter poking up throughout the ash.
The Zen ritual is to clean the ash by removing the remnants that did not burn and saving them until the New Year. At the New Year, the remnants along with the burnt matches are gathered and burnt in a ceremonial fire.
It is a simple, loving act of care with a deep message for spiritual adepts. The deep message is also a simple loving act of care but we need to know what to do and how to do it. In a very real sense we need to clean up the remnants of the seeds deposited in the form of old hurts and old grudges in the body and mind. It includes old loves and old wants; these bits of old attachments still floating up into consciousness that disturbs and harms.
When we look at anything whether it is in the external world of name and form or the internal world of name and form we look with attachment. Often the attachment comes disguised as wanting or hating. This attachment is the unburned bits, the remnants that continue to surface distracting us from what the eye has not seen or the ear has not heard. The eye cannot see and the ear cannot hear when it is looking at name and form that floats up from the past. These remnants veil our true nature.
In order to understand the deep message and in order to know what and how to find it for ourselves we need to look at one section of the Heart Sutra. Arguably there are many versions of the Heart Sutra in an ongoing, continued debate of the origin and the author, but for most practitioners there is agreement that form and emptiness as well as a negative approach is the common ground of this sutra.
In this sutra we have a saint who gives us the message and tells how to know it.
Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva (Saint A.) when practicing deeply the prajna paramita perceived that all five skandas (the five heaps of stuff we call the stuff of the body and the stuff of the mind which include the remnants of attachment) are empty….empty of form, feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness. That’s it. It is to practice seeing and hearing everything we meet without form, feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness.
A recent example is a trip to the Y to go for a swim. The pool is small, just 5 lap lanes. There are close to 9 million names and forms close by. During this time of year the pool is packed with these five heaps which includes this close-up bag of heaps in the shape of complaints…too many people…my lane…rude swimmers. If I go and begin to look at any of the remnants of the heaps, form, feelings, perceptions I go full and not empty. Full of concepts and judgment and wants and aversions and you name it. The fullness of mind remnants guarantees a blocking of transcendent wisdom.
That is what the message is…to go empty….without a hair breadth of desire…. then what we find is the perfection of wisdom. Empty the body and mind of attachment to the remnants of the heaps.
The word empty can be substituted with the word love. It could read from a connotative perspective….all five heaps of the body and mind are love, but when we look at just name and form we do not see it as empty or love. Name and form trick us into seeing it as something to want or something to hate, something to attach to and something to discard. Name and form conjure up old hurts and old desires.
If the face of someone we knew comes to mind notice how all the heaps come up along with all the attachments to one or more of the heaps. These are the remnants. And they are not to be attended to except to be gathered and burned up.
As we go along, it hopefully will become clear that this love is not the romantic, brotherly or parental love depicted in most art forms (film, books, paintings, poetry). Although parental love sometimes comes close it in itself is not IT. This love, this emptiness is not seen with eye or heard with ear. It is transcendent.
Now we need to clarify the method, the approach Saint A. used.
When we lose a set of keys, as a common example, we often go through rounds of searching for the keys which is certain to include a round of – no, not there – I didn’t leave them in the car even though we might have to double check that we didn’t. No, not there in my jacket pocket, no, not there in the junk drawer. This method is a familiar way of finding something. The familiarity of the search suggests we somehow intuitively know we have lost something or are separated from something we once had. This intuition is based on the waking up to the sense of something is missing. In the example, the keys are missing. For Saint A. transcendental wisdom was missing. When this awareness happens, many of us begin to look for what it is that is missing. Often we go through rounds and rounds of finding out no, not there. We all have a list of no, not there.
How many times have you looked for something you never had and never lost?
Saint A. practiced deeply looking for transcendent wisdom and found it. She did it. She saw and heard the emptiness, the love not seen with the eye and heard with the ear. And her method was very much rooted in – no, not there.
Saint A. found transcendent wisdom on a negative path which we all know. Saint A. was looking for something. There is some subtle factor that cannot be overlooked here. She looked because she had some intuitive sense she knew something was missing. And when something is missing we tend to rely on this negative, – no, not there – approach.
And with this approach she sums up where transcendental wisdom is not. The method is to be done not believed. Is the body where the eternal, unborn, undying is? Nah. It ain’t. The body is subject to aging, sickness and death. It is going to vanish and return to the dirt.
How about those feelings? Nope. Our feelings seem to be at times in a hyper state of change, especially if we fall in love. It’s that time when everyone waits for the lovers to sober up.
How about perceptions? Ah….it too succumbs. At one point in life we perceive a toy as our biggest treasure only to give it away, throw it away or store it in some dusty attic.
Impulses? HA! These little babies are on speed and not to be trusted.
Perhaps the hardest one is consciousness. This seems to be pervasive, prodigious and perpetual. Everything has consciousness. But wait. Does consciousness itself change and fall apart. Yes it does. Here is my example.
I was sitting with someone who was courteous in conscious listening until a bee buzzed through bombing any ability to concentrate and focus in a conscious way. What happened to their consciousness?
No form, no feelings, no perceptions, no impulses, no consciousness. All let downs as far as the transcendental. No, not there.
In short order we are able to see, hopefully, these heaps of what the body and mind are made of are not the unborn, undying, eternal nature. God ain’t there.
What does this mean?
It means when Saint A. studied the perfection of transcendent wisdom she eliminated these things from the list. She no longer polished them up because polishing them up led to suffering. No matter how much you rub the five heaps it will not lead to finding what is missing.
But she goes further. She goes through every part of the body as not it. The logic being the gross form is not it, but maybe God is in the little stuff, like the eyes, the ears, the nose. But as you read the Heart Sutra we soon discover – no, not there – continues to be what is found. But this is all on the way to finding God on the path of the perfection of transcendent wisdom.
In short, stop looking there. It’s like the keys. I looked in the car and I know they are not in the car. More precisely stop looking in the way you are looking. Begin by looking at what it is not and then shift to looking at what it is. Transcendent wisdom is not in the heaps.
Where, then do we look and how do we look. Well, you look backward into that which is powering up the looking, the hearing, and all the actions of life. You stop looking at the remnants and you look at the Source. This is the emptiness and love that Saint A. discovered. It is right here, in everything waiting for you.
We meet the Source. In order to meet the Source we must know all the heaps are empty of transcendent Wisdom. This is a two-step process. (1) We meet everything for what it is not. (2) And then we can meet it for what it is. This is love, transcendent love that is indefinable, ineffable and immeasurable.
When we approach life from the place of benefiting and generating from the heaps, we will miss the Source. If we meet anything with the remnants of the heaps, we will get sick and look and feel very much like a logging accident. All sorts of miseries will come along. When we meet everything empty, we meet everything with the love not seen by the eye nor heard by the ear. And IT is indescribable, ineffable transcendence.
Everything is waiting in this great patience to come alive from what is powering up everything. In a very real sense every single thing is waiting to be, to awaken and to be transcendent. IT is never apart from right where we are.
All religions at their base level – the level at which they intersect the plane of ordinary citizens – are merely civilizing media. They post their Commandments, Precepts, Yamas and Niyamas; and through the nearly foolproof means of threatened punishment and promised reward, impose law and order on a community. Nobody has ever improved on the system.
While we notice many differences between the participants and practices of various religions – especially at the fanatical extremes of the base level – we also see that each religion has a mystical ladder by which individual members may ascend to spiritual heights. And, astonishingly, the people who climb and the methods they use to ascend are strangely identical. On mystical ladders, all saints are saints and all holy books holy.
Why, we may wonder, are the people at the bases so dissimilar while those who attain spiritual goals, those exalted mystical states, are so similar – indeed, identical to the point of being interchangeable? The answer is simply that geography and culture have everything to do with religion but nothing to do with spirituality. A human being’s ability to experience divine grace is genetically encoded.
And the methodologies for attaining such spiritual exaltation are predicated upon the same universal physiologic facts.
An old Hasidic tale illustrates the point:
It happened that a great Rabbi was scheduled to visit a small town. As was the custom, the religious elders would meet with him and present him with their spiritual problems and he would answer all their questions. The Rabbi’s visit was regarded as a great honor and so, feeling the pressure of so significant an event, each elder struggled with the daunting task of formulating a proper question, one that would not only help him to overcome an obstacle but would also reflect his piety and maturity and intelligence and scope. What question should he ask? What question? And how to phrase it?
On the appointed evening, into this agony of competitive self-doubt came the great Rabbi. He was used to situations like this.
He entered the temple’s library and allowed himself to be seated in the place of honor at the head of a large table. The elders sat around the table, but after the scraping of chairs and the adjusting of robes, there was silence. They stared at him not knowing what to say.
Suddenly, the great Rabbi began to hum an old Hasidic song. The elders looked at each other quizzically, and then courteously they began to hum, too. And then the great Rabbi began to sing the words of the song; and they, too, began to sing. Soon the great Rabbi stood up, and as he sang he began to stamp his feet and clap his hands to the rhythm. And so did they. And then he sang and raised his arms and snapped his fingers and danced in little circles around the table; and they merrily followed him dancing and singing and snapping their fingers as they circled round and round.
And after they had all sung and danced so joyfully together, they returned to their chairs.
The Rabbi cleared his throat. “I trust that all your questions have been answered,” he said.
If we ignored differences in architecture and dress, would we have seen anything different in a Sufi meeting of Dervishes, whirling to the music in a transcendental moment? No, and not with the Spinners of the Grateful Dead, either. And if we looked at the participants of an Amerindian Pow Wow, wouldn’t we find the same rhythmic beating of the feet and turning round and round to the drum’s demand? Yes.
The engaging power of a humming sound we have many times heard when “Mu” or “Om” is chanted in our ashrams and Zendos.
As to the song, there, too, we find the same exhilarating cadence of breath and phrased tempo when, for example, the great Dharani to Guan Yin is recited in unison by temple congregations. A group of monks singing a Gregorian chant may sing with seemingly less verve, but always with the same depth of emotion.
And the clapping of hands and stamping of feet, and arms and voices raised in song… this could just as easily have been a Revivalist Meeting or a choir of Gospel singers.
People are people and when they seek to unite their spirit to God’s, there is a limited number of ways they can proceed. The question is, why do these ways work at all?
The late and much missed Itzhak Bentov, a mechanical engineer by profession and an observer of spiritual expression by avocation, gave the problem some thought. He studied and measured the effects of self-generated harmonic motions upon the meditating body. Using as his subject a person who is sitting in an apparently motionless posture while practicing deep, controlled breathing, Bentov identified five separate wave motions which, through rhythm entrainment, beneficially amplified their effects, conducing to the meditative state.
The principal resonating oscillator – the pulsating heart/aorta system, entrained four other systems and produced a fluctuating magnetic field around the brain.
According to Bentov, the beating heart and the standing wave produced in the long “stretched” aorta create an oscillation of about 7 Hz in the skeleton, including, of course, the skull. This movement causes the brain to accelerate up and down, actions which generate acoustical plane waves that reverberate at KHz frequencies. These waves drive standing waves within the brain’s ventricles which in turn, noted Bentov, “stimulate the sensory cortex mechanically, resulting eventually in a stimulus traveling in a closed loop around each hemisphere. Such a traveling stimulus may be viewed as a ‘current’, and, as a result of these circular currents each hemisphere produces a pulsating magnetic field. These fields are of opposing polarities.”
He illustrates the pathway of these stimuli as follows:
Cross section of the left hemisphere of the brain. (Illustration taken from Bentov’s Micromotion of the Body as a Factor of the Development of the Nervous System Published in Kundalini, Evolution and Enlightenment, edited by John White, Anchor Books.
After citing his experimental results, Bentov concludes, “Thus by meditating in a quiet sitting position, we slowly activate five tuned oscillators. One by one these oscillators are locked into rhythm. This results eventually in the development of a pulsating magnetic field around the head. When this occurs one may simultaneously observe other characteristic and automatic changes in the functioning of the nervous and circulatory systems. It is the purpose of meditation to bring about these changes…”
We get an image of these circulating waves engulfing the brain and immediately we recall the term “vritti” to which Eastern meditation literature so often refers. Vritti is a whirlpool, a little brainstorm that produces an idea and has a purifying, clarifying effect. And indeed, anyone who has experienced Satori speaks of the sensation of his brain revolving backward in his head, turning half-way round, as the ego is engulfed, totally submerged beneath the weight of a divine hand, or shriveled to nothingness by the scintillations of a divine glance. Chakra activation is likewise experienced as whirling energy.
There, too, is that peculiar sensation of the soft light at the back of the head gently pulsating, and the tremendous glare of the frontal white light that stops the breath and obliterates everything except itself.
But the great Rabbi danced as our beloved Rumi danced and now we wonder to what degree forceful rhythmic movement affects the spinal cord. Can this vital pathway be entrained to produce spectacular transcendence – the euphoria that leads to rapture and ecstasy, to Samadhi or Divine Union? Hmmm. How do the body’s various rhythmic activities resonate with this celestial harmony?
We know that there is a runner’s high. After ten minutes or so – even on a treadmill – a person may enter a zone in which time is cancelled and mundane thoughts vanish and there is only the feet’s rhythmic beating on the hard surface, a percussion wave that travels up the legs and spine to the brain. Many runners run only for this reason: to recapture again and again those moments of entry into eternal, “outside of time,” precincts.
And the sexual charge of Samadhi, the exquisite delirium in which the pleasure centers of the brain are clearly and unambiguously accessed, this, according to ancient Chinese lore, is connected to the activation of the Kidney Meridian, the beginning point of which lies immediately behind the ball of the foot. In the marvelous Chinese film, Hang The Red Lantern, when one of the wives is chosen to join the master in his bedroom, a servant comes into her room and gently beats the soles of her feet, stimulating that sexually critical point. This, too, is the rhythmic sole-beating of the dance.
The repeated striking of the buttocks such as a yogi may practice when he takes the Mahabheda posture, or the little man tou cushion’s anal pressure which exaggerates the blood’s pulsations at the base of the spine – it all seems magically to tie together, the foot fetishes, the flagellations, the rhythmic recitations of mantras, the cadenced breathing -all comprising an array of methods which human beings of every culture may employ to ascend to spiritual heights.
Bentov scientifically explained why sitting in meditation works. We turn our attention inward; we concentrate on the beating of our heart or the pulse in our Hara – that point deep in the abdomen where the aorta bifurcates; we mentally repeat the Buddha’s name or intone “Om” holding the “m” as our lips gently close and vibrate; we measure the inhalation and exhalation of our breath; and one by one the systems rhythmically entrain and gather the strength to carry us up, rung after rung, to the final step of Unity.
This kind of communion is best attempted when we are alone; and then it is indeed sweet beyond description.
But for gatherings or for overcoming obstacles in the meditative path, there is the great Rabbi’s advice: to hum, to sing, to clap our hands and dance, to circle round and round as the Dipper circles the Pole Star. There is the divine gift: music.
Perhaps the last Psalm, 150, says it best:
Praise the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens. Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre, praise him with timbrel and dancing, praise him with the strings and pipe, praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals.
My purpose in writing this essay is to offer a spiritual practice of examining what comes out of our mouth. In other words, to scrutinize what we say about our world, whether it is the world of our family or the world of our neighbors. When we study what comes out of our mouth about others we get a chance to see our tendencies that block the shining light of illumination.
What comes out of our mouth is a mirror of where we are.
We begin with an image of everything that we meet as a mirror. This mirror image includes the face of the other, the things in the world, the voice of someone else, the touch, the smell and the taste of what we meet everywhere we go. And most certainly this mirror includes the thoughts in the mind. Nothing is left out.
Everything is a reflection of the ego-self until we see everything with Buddha eyes.
All of what comes out of our mouth mirrors our spiritual state. And that in itself is a mouthful. This is a boon, a spiritual boon for us. It means the mirroring of everything is an omnipresent teacher, a characteristic of our Buddha nature, of God, of the undying, eternal Self. But it is only a teacher when we look into it as a self-reflection of our spiritual state. If we are unwilling to see our ego-self’s condition in this mirror we remain in ignorance, mired in the swamp of suffering.
We need a skill to look into such a potent spiritual mirror.
The skill requires a glimpse of the illumined Self. It is the illumined Self veiled by ignorance that shines the light on the ego-self in such a way that the eyes begin to see, even just a little, that everything is a reflection of the ego-self until we merge with and disappear into the Illumination. We practice the skill by recognizing that what comes out of our mouth is a reflection of the mess of me. This change helps us to see the hindrances for what they are and when we see what they are, we have an opportunity to let them go.
The true spiritual seeker is able to see what needs to die off. He begins to know everything that comes into his life as a light reflected on the ego-self. He begins to see without shame, pride or fear. There is less and less defensive protection around the ego, because there is no ego to defend.
He begins to see how he is in a crap shoot between good and bad or right and wrong and how it is best to get out of the crap game. A standard test to see where one is to notice when, where and how we experience shame, pride and fear and under what situations we defend our position as a being a somebody. When that drops away we begin to see through the reflected light of the indescribable, ineffable nature that is present.
The limitation for those who are wholly or even partially attached to the opposites is a stiff-necked defensiveness, an arrogant hold on a position, a fear of being seen, a shame that stymies and makes him hide out, often in anger and greed. But even these states are spiritual jewels. They tell the seeker where he is. Once the seeker moves in this direction and is able to reveal where he is he moves toward the light. It a divine grace to have such freedom to see the pride, the shame, the fear. It’s an essential part of the practice. If, for some reason, the seeker bucks this acknowledgement, he veers into a ditch. The ditch also is part of the practice. But it is a psychological ditch, a battleground between what he sees and how he wants to appear. Often a teacher is needed to help the seeker out of the ditch. The ditch can quickly become mud turning the ground underneath to a swamp. The seeker in a ditch either seeks help or covers over the mess and pretends to be something. It is a painful place which all those who have gone before know.
The true seeker does not give up even if he finds himself in the swamp of suffering. He keeps going. With each effort upward the old dead karma drops away bit by bit even when the seeker does not see with Buddha eyes; even if he finds himself covered in mud up to his eyeballs. It’s never too late. It is a realization, a grace to see how ignorant he is. He continues to practice with the mud all over him. He puts himself into situations that support his practice of finding the Dharma, being illumined and letting go of the ego-self defense team. This is a remarkable indicator when the seeker sees the spiritual help in pride, shame and fear as grace from above. If he is stopped by these states, he has given in to them and given up.
Still the seeker is encouraged to continue. Begin the practice, don’t give up and continue.
Everything is workable who are willing to find the Way.
by Ming Zhen Shakya, OHY
I wish I didn’t enjoy my prison ministry so much. If it were less agreeable I could make myself seem like a martyr for making the trip out to Jean every Wednesday.
But the fact is, I like going there. It keeps me on my toes. Every cleric is a philosopher of sorts and prisons are often the true enclaves of philosophy. The men don’t have an awful lot to do in their free time. So they think and then discuss what they think and then, I think, lay intellectual traps for me to see what I think.
The subject of heaven and hell came up recently. One of the men quoted Milton to me…. or threw him at me, I should say. “‘Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,'” he challenged. “Geez,” I said, responding with the standard comeback, “What makes you think that if you go to heaven you’ll be a servant but if you go to hell you’ll be a king?” And he countered with a certain, histrionic flair, “If? If I go? I am in hell.” And after the others stopped grunting in affirmation, I said, “Well, Your Majesty, there you may be, but not for the reasons you think.” And then I had to start thinking about reasons and as I say, it keeps me on my toes.
Fortunately, he had picked the best known passage in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Had he been more esoteric in his reference, he might have made me switch subjects… after all… I haven’t read the whole of it. He probably had… but then it would pretty much take a prison term — I’d better quit before I offend Milton lovers.
“Well,” I said with a sizzling riposte, “just before Satan said that, didn’t he say something about the mind being its own place and inside itself could make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven?” This equally famous line constitutes, you see, the core belief of Zen Buddhism. We can’t help it if Milton put the line in Satan’s mouth. Satan surely can get a few things right. As they say, even a stopped clock is correct twice a day.
Then, to illustrate the point I was trying to make, I invited the men to play a kind of game and tell me what I was describing: I said, “I see a group of buildings surrounded by a high wall and a locked gate. The inmates wear uniforms of plain, coarse material. They eat simple food, prepared without garnishment or sauce. They rise early and retire late. Everywhere they go and in everything they do, they are subject to someone’s absolute authority over them, and to endless rules and regulations and punishments for breaking same. They are expected to work for many hours a day and to keep silent for many other hours. They have virtually no freedom of choice. They sleep in rooms called cells, and when they retire to their beds at night, they are alone… for no female companionship is allowed them. OK,” I said, “What am I describing?”
I didn’t fool any of them. “A monastery,” they all answered, and we laughed because it is funny the way a monastery headed by an abbot and a prison headed by a warden are so strangely similar in design. But there the similarity ends. The obvious difference between monks and convicts is that the former desire to live under such conditions and are usually happy and the latter are forced to…and are usually miserable. The conditions are the same. The state of mind… the desire… is different.
Zen has a very pragmatic approach to the subject of heaven and hell. We recognize them as two states of mind that can be experienced in the present moment. Regardless of whatever happens at the end of life, Nirvana and Samsara, our earthly states of Heaven and Hell, can be experienced right now while we’re still breathing.
According to Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths, life in the world of the ego, which we call Samsara or Hell, is bitter and painful. No argument there. And the Second Noble Truth is that the cause of this bitterness and pain is egotistical desire. And isn’t that the difference between monks and convicts? One group wants to be where they are and the other doesn’t. The question is why… specifically why do monks want to be there? If you ever spend any time in a monastery, you’ll likely ask yourself that question a few times a day.
But the answer is really quite simple. The monks are seeking heaven and they’re trying to qualify for gaining it. They’re turning their attention inwards – away from the world – because they wish to become One with the King who reigns there, in that Kingdom that lies within. And before they can do that, they must learn to serve that King with unconditional love, in egoless humility and purity. The convicts were still living in the world of desire.. the one presided over by Satan or Mara – to use his Buddhist name.
What is the nature of this desire that in seeking its satisfaction they, and we, create such hells for ourselves? Back in 600 AD Saint Gregory listed the Seven Deadly Sins and they’re still very much alive and well – even after Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman got finished with them. Those seven universal expressions of egotistical self-indulgence have lost none of their virulence: pride; greed; jealousy; lust; sloth; gluttony; and anger. The mind that is infected with any or all of these Seven Deadly Sins is attached to, i.e., is emotionally engaged by desire or aversion to the people, places and things of this, the ego’s, world. This ego-mind wants to be loved and admired, to be feared and respected, and to indulge itself in a variety of sensory pleasures; and it doesn’t much care what it has to do to get what it wants.
If Zen’s goal had to be stated in a single word that word would be non-attachment… freeing the mind from its fixations on the things of the outer world and turning it inward, to its relationship with God or the Buddha Self. And it doesn’t matter whether you are housed in a monastery or a prison since the accomplishment of this goal depends not on the nature of the real estate, but on the nature of the heart.
I’ll close this little Dharma talk by relating one of Zen’s favorite stories:
There was once a very proud and powerful king who fancied himself a philosopher. After much disputation and argument, mostly with himself, this King reached the conclusion that there was no such thing as heaven or hell. These were mere superstitions, he decided, and he therefore decreed that henceforth there would be no further talk of heaven or hell in his kingdom. Anyone who defied his Royal Will by even mentioning them would be severely punished.
One day a holy man visited the kingdom; and despite numerous warnings, this holy man began to preach about heaven and hell. Naturally when the king heard about it he was furious and ordered the man arrested and brought to court.
“Everyone knows that my conclusions are correct,” the king said to the holy man. “Why do you persist in preaching a doctrine that is so obviously false?”
The holy man sneered and laughed at the king. “Do you expect me to discuss philosophy with a buffoon like you?” he asked.
Instantly the king was on his feet! Enraged, he shouted at his guards, “Seize him!”
Then the holy man raised his hand and said, “Sire… Sire… Please… One moment! Understand! There is a hell and right now you are in it!”
Suddenly the king understood! He saw himself standing there, burning with rage, consumed with violence and contempt; and he understood that hell wasn’t a place where the body burned, but where the spirit burned.
And horror-struck by his own actions, he sat down on his throne and trembled and covered his face with his hands. And when he finally looked up again, he was filled with love and gratitude, and the wonder of enlightenment.
Quietly, he said to the holy man, “And to think of your great generosity in teaching me this! To think how you risked your life just to enlighten me to this truth! Oh, Master! Please forgive me.”
And the holy man said, “And you see, Sire, there is a heaven, and right now you are in it.”
When discussing what a “master” is or can be in our tradition with Yao Xiang Shakya, in preparation before her Master Transmission, she said “I feel being a master is sinking further into the mud so the lotus may rise higher”.
And indeed, knowing we sink into the mud so the lotus may rise is the essence of practice. It is essential to have some basic self honesty to see how shitty and humanly dark we can be. How our tendency to be self-involved is a threat to the rising lotus.
We need to be able to admit our mistakes and our self-centered tendencies.
Yes, my basic thoughts, habits or desires are a mess leading nowhere at all. By directly seeing the mess, knowing it, chewing it in my daily life, I can point to it without shame, pride or fear. With this in mind, especially to those who want to share and teach the Dharma, the question is, do you see how shitty you are? Are you able to be honest about it without being defensive? Are you still hiding out in the walls of your defensive cover-up?
In order to be matter-of-fact and honest, one must know the darkness and light that arises in the mind without shame, pride or fear. Much of the work is busting up these tendencies so one is illumined by our true nature.
A master transmission is not much different from a new ordination; masters don’t forget that the taking of the precepts is a transmission in itself. The main similarity may be symbolized in the fact that when receiving master transmission, we take precepts facing the same altar, the same goal, with the same mindless mind of satisfaction as our own master! In addition, Masters vow to teach our own students and also instruct them to teach. To do this we remain open and focused on the Sincere Center (our awakened Self). Being a master comes with humility from an inner illumination that is bright enough to know darkness and light without seeing it as such. It is a non-dual awareness.
Masters are just very respectful and grateful for the attention and training we received and we try to manifest our Old Teacher’s Dharma (Ming Zhen Shakya), in our own flesh, life, and heart. Much of the work is done in our homes with those we live day to day, and in our communities.
Masters don’t spend time thinking about establishing a big center or figuring out what Buddhist ministry will arise. Our Zen groups/hermitages are close to house churches. They are the nests of our practice in this world, in the middle of all the joys and difficulties, in the middle of all the things we do.
Masters recognize each student who enters the door to be ordained as a lay, novice or full priest has his or her own story, interests, and capacities. Each one could become a teacher and it is a matter of what type of teacher will they become. We have no interest in turning them into clones, like blind and soulless parrots. But whatever their particular Dharma is, we help them grow in it where we both learn and are taught along the Way.
Their interest may change, their lives may take another turn but, like us, they keep mirroring their lives in the tradition our teacher has left us. Everyone has his own relation to that lived tradition. But what binds us is that we keep mirroring our life and spiritual practice in the same mirror.
So despite our differences or personal affinities, may we all sink further into the mud so that, under our Old Sun’s teachings, the lotus may rise higher.
When we first begin our path of self-inquiry, we have often been driven to it by a profound notion that there is something missing in our life. We begin to realize that life can’t be just endless burdens we face day after day. Something else exists….but it is hidden from our every day consciousness.
This is how we think when we first begin to examine our daily life. We begin to look beyond the burdens.
These feelings of constant dissatisfaction fuel our problems as well as spur us on to find a spiritual path. We, however, sometimes end up putting our faith, our confidence, in this false reality. We think we need the dissatisfaction as a prod to keep us going. We are like Sisyphus….we believe we are cursed to push the boulder up the mountain until the end of time. But as we will see, all we need to do is step aside and let the boulder barrel down without us holding on.
There is no doubt suffering exists. It does poke and push us to find a way to liberation. To see and recognize suffering is a grace. It is a small touch of grace but it is nonetheless grace. But we need to develop our inner urge for freedom from suffering. For a long time we may believe we need the suffering to practice, thinking if we lose this constant prod we’ll give up. But to rely on the prod solely is not enough, we may begin a spiritual endeavor but we won’t continue. We need more than the prod to fulfill the two laws of Zen, begin and continue.
With time, if we are lucky, we learn to put our faith in our Buddha Nature; we switch our object of confidence to an inner reality we call Buddha Nature. An inner illumined awareness. This change often feels like an awkward beginning, a new step of faith. When we recognize we need confidence (faith) in the practices we gain a little more grace. It is true we do need confidence (faith) to begin to turn within to realize there is something more than our everyday burdens.
We need to put confidence in living out our Buddha Nature, (our divinity).
This living out divinity requires a lifelong, daily commitment of dropping the complaints of the hungry ego and accepting our divine, Buddha nature. More grace is needed to rely on the practices of discovering and relying on our inner true Self. Our hungry ego and our over thinking intellect challenges us. The ego wants something else, something more and the intellect thinks it knows better.
Another taste of grace is to know no matter what the ego gets up to, no matter what the intellect figures out our Buddha nature is untouched. It is immeasurable and ineffable and remains steadfast and unchanging.
As we begin to we know this Truth our confidence strengthens and broadens and words and ego desires diminish.
Our focus changes from finding our true self to living out the climb on the mountain of our true self in everyday life. This takes time. Patience, Effort. Endurance.
Our obstacles are in our distorted mind, a mind absorbed and identified with whatever arises; we go around the mountain instead of up it. We believe in our own myths much like Sisyphus. We don’t see that there is a possible path out of this endless inner cycle around our misery. In the cycle of misery we tend to rely on our wrong nature (our hungry ego and our know-it-all intellect) and not on our True steadfast one.
When inner faith/confidence is developed we see the path heading upward, we choose to go upward and know the difficulties and joys of going on this upward, unknown track. Discovering things at every turn of the tradition we sometimes think that there is some kind of secret teaching around this so-called Buddha Nature. And so we go on the arduous upward track for years and years, testing our selves. Instead we need faith in the simplicity, and humility of meeting what shows up in our day to day life of a practitioner.
We learn not to give up. Even a glimpse of our True nature helps us not to give up. We meet what shows up as the myriad forms of the undying and unborn nature. In all circumstances we are able to see through our Buddha eyes and hear with our Buddha ears. We realize everything is Buddha.
Everyday life is the path up to the summit.
Our intention encompasses bringing to mind the three pure precepts in every circumstance: we do no harm, cultivate goodness and purify our mind.
