The World is Too Much with Us

I feel the weight press against my chest. It comes from some twisted expectation. I am sure you don’t know that pressure. You keep your self busy and near to becoming somebody. That’s the winning hand; becoming somebody. It’s not true.

You have to find out for yourself what is real and what isn’t. It is a big job and you have to want to see it.

Here’s a tiny taste of how it works.

Everything, yes, every damn thing falls apart and disappears. That is the simple truth of the games and plays on this board we call, life. At some point in time, if you are lucky, you will see it for yourself. You may not understand it, but you’ll see it. When you see it, you then get a chance, a lucky dip, a lucky moment to stop and pause and reflect on what is going on here. If you don’t take the chance, well all I can say is that I wish and hope that you get another chance to strike it rich. Oh, not the rich of getting and having the things of the world. All the stuff shipping and arriving in one gargantuan exchange of goods, but the immeasurable wealth of finding out what you are. You won’t believe it. You may think this is just more tripe. It’s not tripe it’s an opportunity to end suffering; your suffering. Yeah, your suffering. All the feelings, body misery, mental formations, impulses, and the mess-of-your-life suffering.  That’s the promise of all respectable religious traditions.

What’s the catch?

Glad you asked. There is no catch, but there is a price. It’s an odd thing this price. It’s odd because no one makes any profit on it but YOU. Yeah, you profit from paying the price.

What is that price?

A very important question. I am glad you asked.  Well, let me reassure you it is not a Ponzi or a Pyramid scheme. There’s no exchange of cash for goods promised. No cash at all. It is freely offered and freely given.

Yeah, I can see you’re skeptical. That’s just fine. Doubt is often a reaction to such an offer. Because what is offered is work-you-do or not. You see, it’s all up to you. It comes without warnings, coercion, judgment, and all the stuff that might make things worse than what is.

The price is what you are willing to pay. You set the price based on what you want.

Ah. Where do I get this…ah…what do I call it? What is it called?

I understand. Hard to fit it in anywhere in what we generally know and experience. Let’s call it training. Daily training right where you are in your everyday life. It doesn’t require special equipment or special outfits or special anything.

Now I see. What’s the catch?

I see you’re still skeptical. OK. That’s fine. And actually, I understand the doubt. I keep telling you what it isn’t. Fair enough. It’s training you to find out what you are? It often is said that the price is …to study yourself, to forget yourself…” then life, your life is liberated from…the world…which is too much with us.

But say, this is just the tip of your nose. If you’re interested, if you want to find out more…we are offering a retreat in November on ZOOM. If you want to know more about it, send your questions to the teacher, Marilyn at laodizhishakya@gmail.com.

Author: Fashi Lao Yue

A SINGLE THREAD is not a blog.

 If for some reason you need elucidation on the teaching,

please contact editor at: yao.xiang.editor@gmail.com

[1] Wordsworrth, William. 1802, “The World is Too Much with Us.”

Innumerable Sacrifices  A Daily Practice of Devotion

Let’s start with a chant, Innumerable Sacrifices.

Innumerable sacrifices brought us this food;

We consider how it comes to us.

We reflect on our virtue and practice, and whether we are worthy of this offering;

We regard it as essential to keep the mind free from excesses, such as greed;

We regard this food as good medicine to sustain our life.

For the sake of enlightenment, we now receive this food.

The key word, is sacrifices. An old world that is rarely used except perhaps to garner some gain or fame for oneself. Let’s start with a very brief look at the history of the word and then shift to a focus on birth and death.

The word sacrifice comes from the late 13^th century., meaning “offering of something (especially a life) to a deity as an act of propitiation or homage;” by the 16^th century the word came to mean an “act of giving up one thing for another; something given up for the sake of another.”

The 16^th century definition is more or less how the word is used today. Sacrifice is an exchange that occurs between one person and another person in giving up one thing for the sake of another thing. In other words, a sacrifice is more or less a transactional deal.

In the 21^st century, sacrifice or the killing of one thing as an offering to a deity as an act of care either a propitious care or a care offering of respect is admittedly hard to see. And here is where we shift to the focus on birth and death and the daily devotion of sacrifice.

We’ll begin with the apparent cause of death and follow it through in a bullet approach.

• The cause of death is birth. This teaching is what Shakyamuni Buddha taught.
• Death follows birth in the apparent world, the world of materiality.
• The cause of birth and death in the material world is change.
• Change is part of the nature of this world realm.
• Everything changes.
• To know and accept change serves our practice of devotion.
• When we take things for granted, we think and believe and assume things belong to me, my, mine.
• When we take things for granted, we claim them as made and owned by me, my, mine. We either claim them along the lines a myriad of opposites such as: success-failure, good-bad, right-wrong etc.

As I hope you see, if you are stuck in this ignorance, you suffer. And there is very little, if any, capacity to live a devotional life.

Devotion would mean very little to those amongst us who think we are the “boss” – the one who makes everything happen that has happened in one’s life. This situation, my friends, is most of us since we have been conditioned to claim everything as “ours”.  

Let’s take another look at that word, sacrifice, but this time let’s use the older definition.

 

“offering of something (especially a life) to a deity as an act of propitiation or homage“

Hard to see, isn’t it?

But that doesn’t mean sacrifice is obsolete. It is not an archaic activity. It is hidden behind our ignorance of thinking we are in charge; to be more specific, the ego has been conditioned to think it is in charge. This claim by the ego is ignorance.

With that in mind, let us reckon with sacrifice in the 21^st century.

Right there, where you are, sacrifice is in plain sight; but you may not see it because your vision is blurred by selfishness. Let me assure you that we have the opportunity to see sacrifice in the activities of everyday life; a devotional practice.

Preparing and cooking a meal is a good example of sacrifice

as a practice of daily devotion.

I cut up vegetables. I boil them, then roast them. I skin the avocado and dig out the green flesh inside and discard the seed. I prepare the carcass of a turkey by removing the neck and gizzards then wash it thoroughly before I season it and roast it. I pull off a leg to test to see it the bird is done. I mash potatoes which are the tubers of the plant. The tubers supply nutrition and help the potato plant survive the winter. Instead of leaving the potato on the plant we pick them and eat them. We eat the storehouse of nutrition of the potato plant. The potato provides energy to the plant as well as reproduction. The potato, the turkey, the avocado, and the vegetables are examples sacrifices on your table. The cook and cook’s helpers are the priests; those who prepare and make ready the sacrifices to eat.

When we look closely, study what is right in front of us, we see that our entire life has been a gift. A gift that is full of sacrifice. Not the type of sacrifice that boasts or claims the victory or the ownership of the sacrifice, but a deferential respect for what shows up in our life as an opportunity to care for whatever it is in such a way that it is an offering of devotion.

Nothing is left out. And you can see this sacrifice, this practice that is a universal offering to life that promulgates devotion for all things; visible and invisible right under our collective noses. Innumerable sacrifices, indeed, brought you your food, consider how it comes to you.

Happy Thanksgiving, 2020

Author: Fashi Lao Yue

A SINGLE THREAD is not a blog.

 If for some reason you need elucidation on the teaching,

please contact editor at: yao.xiang.editor@gmail.com

Flee the chit chat with others,

except as an act of charity.

Love people very much.

Talk with few.

Talk with moderation.

Put nothing or no one between

you and the Source.

Do not let the love for the creature

get in the way of love for the Source.

Love, in a Disciplined Way.

Compilation of Zen Buddhism and Katherine of Siena, 14^th C.

_____

This advice is at the heart of love, discipline and fleeing vain talk. If only we could remember, that vain talk aggravates the mind and leads to suffering. AND that…fleeing the chit chat of vanity is an act of charity. Chit chat gets in the Way of love for and from the Source.

What would it be like to speak from the Source, from the immutable, Supreme eternal?

When I contemplate this Awareness, I imagine Dogen’s 13^th century world.  I imagine it to be very quiet.  No planes overhead, no background traffic sounds, no pushing a button to get a movie or TV show, no phones to call someone anytime day or night to talk to.  It sounds wonderful, the silence which quiets the mind.

During this pandemic, however, many of us are struggling with staying put; not jumping into our cars to go somewhere.  In Dogen’s time most people lived their whole lives not leaving the place where they were born or if they went somewhere, they walked.  So, in this ‘silent’ world, what was the vain talk Dogen wanted people not to engage in?

I don’t think he was saying ‘don’t talk.’  I think he was saying don’t engage in gossip, demeaning or condemning talk. Don’t get caught up in opinions or judgments.  This kind of talk must have been as present in the 13^th century as it is now.  This talk is all about ‘me-my-mine.’  This kind of talk engages us in picking and choosing…right or wrong…good or bad, making judgments, reaching conclusions.  We take a stand and make our mind small and stingy. We speculate about the future and yearn for past that lives only in our minds.

What I think Dogen is encouraging us to do, is to talk from awareness.  Pay attention to the words that come out of our mouths.  To paraphrase a line from the movie Bambi:

‘…if you can’t say something

inspiring, comforting, encouraging,

sobering, enriching, unselfish,

informing, clarifying, questioning,

wise or nice,

don’t say anything at all.’

This is where we start, better to step away from ‘me-my-mine’ talk, than be a blow hard of opinions. We stop the worrying about whether it is the right thing to say…the worrying about what someone else thinks about what we say.

It releases us from wanting to look smarter…wanting to impress…wanting to have the last word.  We are free to concentrate and focus on what is right in front of us…not looking backward to defend or to the future to protect.

In this last Awareness, Dogen is doing what he did in his seven other teachings. He is encouraging, exhorting us to be aware. Right here, right now.  He wants us to have few desires, be content, enjoy quiet, be diligent, remember, meditate and concentrate, be wise and watch how we talk.  Unless or until we do this, we are stuck in the material world.

Without continually practicing these Awarenesses there is no ‘jumping clear.’  Without practicing these Awarenesses we cannot begin to study the self in order to forget the self to be awakened by myriad things.

Dogen shows us eight ways to know deeply that whatever comes into our lives comes to awaken us. It is a simple teaching. Flee the chit chat, the vain talk with others, showing off what we know or how to do something, blowing our own horn, or lording it over someone else with the latest news or the most entertaining gossip.

It is love to stop our babbling. We stop the babble and love in a disciplined Way not in the way of the material realm of fascinating subjects or juicy gossip, or the latest bad news.  We keep our nose out of others business. We offer succor when asked. We offer our words from the higher source of knowledge and not from our puny ideas and beliefs.

It’s a practice. A disciplined practice which is difficult to do, but not impossible. Discipline, our restraint of our mouth, is needed to do this practice. My encouragement is for each of us to consider it and begin to use our self-control. To watch how we often jabber needlessly and feel sickened afterwards. This is love – and to love in a disciplined Way.

Author: Lao di Zhi Shakya

Old Earth

Zen Contemplative Priest of the Order of Hsu Yun

A Single Thread is not a blog.

 If for some reason you need elucidation on the teaching,

please contact editor at: yao.xiang.editor@gmail.com

So much talk about heroes these days…bashing them, calling them “names” – misunderstanding what and why someone is heroic. Here is a short reminder of what the mightiest hero is…

The Mightiest of Warriors

But the mightiest warriors enemies are not common foes of flesh and bone.

          Then what is the enemy?

The fight is with the inner delusions, the afflictions of self-cherishing and ego-grasping…

those most terrible of demons that catch living beings

in the snare of confusion and cause them forever to wander in pain and sorrow.

What is the mission of the mightiest warrior?

The mission is to harm ignorance and delusion…

never living beings.

Look upon living beings with kindness, patience and empathy…

cherishing them like a mother cherishes her only child.

The mightiest warrior is the real hero….

calmly facing any hardship in order to bring peace, happiness and liberation to the world.

Author: FaShi Lao Yue

A Single Thread is not a blog.

 If for some reason you need elucidation on the teaching,

please contact editor at: yao.xiang.editor@gmail.com