Zen Contemplatives
May we with all beings realize the emptiness of the three wheels,
giver, receiver and gift.
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
The Moon Calling 
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
Once there was a kingdom that was ruled by a man who thought he was a great philosopher. He had studied all the great minds and he had come to the conclusion that religion was nonsense…unacceptable nonsense. There was, he said, no such thing as heaven or hell.
This king held so tight to it that he made it his doctrine: the law of the land. From that day on, he decreed that it was against the law to speak of heaven and hell. It was a crime punishable by death. No one could ever speak of these things again in his kingdom.
One day it happened that a holy man traveled to the domain of the king. He stood on a street corner and preached about heaven and hell. Someone shouted to him, “Friend! Keep calm! If the palace guard hears you talking like that, you will be dragged to court and punished!”But the holy man just smiled and kept talking about heaven and hell.
And as soon as the guards heard about it, the holy man was dragged before the king. “How dare you preach about heaven and hell, a subject I have banned?” the king asked the holy man, “Do you think I am discussing philosophy with a jester like you?” the holy man replied. No one has ever dared to speak to the king in such a way. Immediately the king arose, shouting to his guards, “Seize him! And kill him!”
The holy man raised his hand and said, “Sire! Please! Listen to me for a moment. You are furious. Your mind burns with hate. Your face is red and the blood traces the race of anger. Your heart burns with fury… with the fury to kill. Right now you are in hell!”
The king stopped and remained motionless, struck by what the holy man had said. And yes, it was true…he was furious…his face was red and his blood raced…and his mind and heart were furious…burning with hate.
And suddenly he put his hands on his face and was sitting on his throne again. He realized that hell was not a place where the body burns, but where the spirit is burned. And then, with tears in his eyes, he looked at the holy man and said, “To think that you risked your life to teach me this great truth…. Oh, Master. Can you forgive me? And the holy man said, “And, Sire, there is also a paradise… and now you are there.”
RememberThe mind is the forerunner of all things. Whatever we put our mind on is what we identify ourselves as.If we put our mind on the things of the world, we identify ourselves as a thing in the world. If we put our mind on the unborn, undying, immutable, we identify ourselves with the infinite, eternal existence of being.
Study the mind and see what you think you are? A thing in the world or the unborn, undying, immutable being. Watch how the mind causes suffering with the thoughts and ideas that you put your mind on. All sorts of likes and dislikes, judgements and opinions, wanting and getting any thing at all, longing and fretting are the cause of suffering.
We make a mistake when we think the external world of things is the cause of suffering. REMEMBER: The mind is the forerunner of all things.
May we with all beings realize
the emptiness of the three wheels,
giver, receiver and gift.
Don’t give up. Keep going.
OM
Fashi Lao Yue
If you need assistance, please contact yao.xiang.editor@gmail.com
Preliminary to the solemn ceremony in which students of the Buddha take vows to uphold the moral precepts of this spiritual path, students first sew a robe. There is a sewing teacher to guide the process, but students make their own way through the complexities of learning and executing this time-honored project. With each stitch that is sewn, the sewers silently chant a vow to take refuge in the Buddha. This vow sets the intention to be fully present to the stitches as they are made. When concentration lapses and the stitches are uneven or the pieces are put together wrong, the stitches are taken out and the work begins again.
The days of our lives are our spiritual practice in much the same way as sewing a robe. Every step we take as practitioners contains the vow to wake up to the Buddha Way. When we aren’t fully awake and the steps we take are crooked, harmful and ignorant, we do the necessary spiritual work of repair.
We humans don’t like to fail. We hide our errors, we pretend that mistakes didn’t happen, or we simply cannot see the problems we cause with our steps. Sewing a robe, we just want to get it done, we want to be told it looks fine, despite the puckers and the crooked pieces. Our level of skill with sewing and with paying attention are reflected back to us when the stitches are all different sizes, when because of our tendencies to hurry or be distracted the robe is carelessly made.
The errors we sew into the robes we make are plain to see, and the sewing teacher will instruct us to repair them. Students typically spend months or years moving slowly and carefully through the process of measuring and pinning and stitching and checking in with the sewing teacher and repairing the mistakes the teacher points out. All the while, the mind that stitches and the mind that repairs are the focus of the students’ ongoing spiritual work.
Part of my personal moral code has been to take seriously the act of making a commitment. The laws of the land, the marriage vows I took, the vows of confirmation at age 13 are all commitments that I treated and do treat with sincere respect. The sewing of a robe shone a light on my ego’s tendency to identify with my commitments. To be honorable and skillful were perceived as personal accomplishments. I treated each stitch and its potential for crookedness as a potential fall from grace. Making mistakes, especially visible mistakes, was cause for shame and dread. When my robe was finished and accepted by my sewing teacher, I was greatly relieved. I felt secure, knowing I had done it “right.”
The vows taken in the Precepts Ceremony are expressions of the highest ideals: to not kill life; to refrain from all intoxicating substances and habits; to be harmless, to not be stingy, to be honest and kind, not angry and judgmental. During the ceremony we receive our carefully crafted robe along with a new name to honor our commitment to our true nature. The robe we have worked so hard to sew and repair is now a symbol we wear to honor and remind us of our devotion to the beauty and perfection of these aspirations.
Vowing to uphold the moral values of this spiritual path, we speak the words that tell us who we truly are. Our karma, however, that which compels us to speak and act out of pride, anger and avarice is also our inheritance. With it we must contend. It is through these very failures to act from our Buddha Nature that we come to know the karmic ground on which we stand. Seeing our tendencies toward greed and hatred gives us the gift of choice. From then on, we can choose whether to repeat these errors and add to our karmic load or return, through the practice of relinquishment, to a deeper, fuller and more honest honoring of the vows and of the Buddha within.
Once I had taken vows to uphold the precepts and had received my new Buddhist name, my own karmic baggage of tension between success and failure followed me into my ongoing practice with the precepts. I experienced the breaking of my promises to honor my Preceptual vows as transgressions that were deeply troubling. I lived with the burning shame this brought by avoiding dealing with a problem whose solution I could not imagine. Without examining my motives, I tried to circumvent these failures by asserting my successes in my practice instead.
Day-to-day practice with the precepts was especially made difficult by the encouragement to confess my errors. To acknowledge ethical and spiritual mistakes felt like jumping off a cliff. Surely, I would not survive it! My mind sought another avenue, anything but to name the problem of personal defeat and share it with someone else. For a long time, I remained stuck in the unexamined never-never land of needing to succeed, to be right, to be a good person. I could not see that the stitches I was sewing into the robe of my life were crooked.
I was lost in an inner darkness, without a robe to spotlight my crooked stitches. The light of truth and goodness that we all seek lives within each of us, even when we cannot see it. Our zealous delusions blanket the light and obscure the truth that our vows hold out for us like candles, beckoning us to come home. When we find ourselves suffering and alone, it is critical to remember and recommit to the vows we have taken. To remember that we have vowed not to disparage or demean, through self-centered thinking, the treasure of awakening to the Dharma. To remember that we have vowed to do no harm, not to ourselves or another. To remember that we have committed to honestly continue on the path that leads to purification. Will we pay lip service to these powerful spiritual aspirations or trust the steps that practice asks of us?
The process of penetrating our life-garment with awareness and repair is up to us. But just as in sewing a robe, we need help to make the crooked straight and the rough places plane. Sharing our struggles and failures with a teacher is a turn away from the ego. Confession carries us from the shore of our karmic fumbling in the dark back to the brightness of our vows. It is up to each of us to walk across this bridge or return to the lives our ego has built for us.
Noble aspirations are the stuff of hard work, not lip service. Just as we penetrate the fabric pieces of our emerging robe with a sharp needle and thread, so we penetrate the pieces of our lives with the sharp needle of BuddhaDharma. We sew the Buddha’s mind into our lives by holding our crookedness up to the light of honest acknowledgement. Our willingness to penetrate through the veil of our shame and fear is our brightness. The clarity of our commitment to the vows in the face of failure is the lid that fits with the metaphorical box of our teacher’s wisdom and compassion. This powerful pairing creates the conditions we need to see clearly through our mistakes, take out the uneven stitches and begin again.
When I finally understood that the way to honor and uphold my vows was to walk through the failures, not around them, I had discovered gold buried in the mud of my harmful tendencies. I learned to hold my mistakes gently but firmly with awareness and determination not to do it again. I began to see the ego’s defeat as a gift given to me so that I might truly contend with the power that pride has over me. I learned to rest into the guidance and skill that my teacher offers as she walks beside me. I trust that she will work as hard as I do so that I can, finally, relinquish harmful ways of being.
I came to know that the vows we take are so much more than words often repeated. They are who we truly are. Like beacons, they show us the way home to our true selves from our exile in the dark pain of the lies we live. Our commitment to these precious vows is our greatest hope. Their power—our power—is manifested through repentant awareness, sincere confession and the honest, courageous work of change.
The robe we have created is a powerful symbol of making each step, like each stitch, reflect our vows, not our karma. We wear the robe close to our hearts where love for the whole and healing rituals of committing to our vows and engaging with our failures grows stronger with every day of sincere practice to wake up.
Author:Lao Huo Shakya
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
First, I am going to go through the dialogue and action between the mother and her 16 month old little girl.
This is how the mother begins in the video. It appears the mother knows her little girl wants to get the remotes that are resting on the arm of the couch. The mother repeats, “Not for You.”
The child gets excited with her mother’s admonition. She turns towards the mother after she has touched one of the remotes.
The mother repeats her admonition with an encouraging comment,
The mother confirms to the little girl what the little girl knows. “You know those aren’t for you.” Again a repetition. The remotes are not for her. The child picks up two toys from the couch and what looks like a plan, tries to conceal her actions. She tosses both tops to the floor while hiding the remotes with her body.
The child feigns giving them. The mother changes her voice and becomes even sweeter, “pleez…pleez”….the mother cajoles extended. “Give them to Mommy. Oh NO! Can I have them please?” The child gives her foot as a substitute.
The little girl offers the mother the remotes…but takes them back.
The mother is exasperated. Exclaims with a sigh, “Oh, child.” and tells her child that she knows they are not toys. Near the end of the video the mother says, “stinker.”
At this point, the child has entered the realm of attachment.
What makes this important spiritually?
Desire followed by attachment are hindrances to awakening.
The little girl shows us the desire-to-get-what-she-wants is paramount.
It appears that we are born with a desire-to-get-what-we-want. This beiing the case, we can see the uphill climb we have to be free of a desire.
Our sense doors focus outward making us prey to wanting and attachment to what we see, hear, taste, smell and touch. The little girl, at such a young age, illustrates how desire and attachment work in concert with one another.
In a spiritual practice we need to know when desire is arising. This is no simple task. But if we study our tendencies that arise in the mind we can begin to spot the desire and prevent it from taking hold as an attachment.
Buddhism, along with many other traditions single out desire as one of the three major hindrances of freedom. Adam and Eve were in paradise and had access to whatever was in paradise except for one thing. They, like this charming little girl, could not keep their hands-off the forbidden thing. We are all like this child.
“We want what we want when we want it!”
How many things, (persons, places, stuff) have you been told or know for yourself that – that thing is NOT for YOU. When the mother tells the child to leave that forbidden thing alone, she takes it anyway. The mother’s interaction is the way in which the mind develops a conscience.
The admonition: NOT FOR YOU is brilliant. It is worth repeating and repeating and repeating as the mother so carefully and clearly did. It is a mantra for all of us.
When we are capable of spotting desire in ourselves, we need to purify our tendency to fabricate the desire into a habit. You see, once it becomes a habit it enters the second hindrance of attachment.
The child exhibited an attachment to wanting the remotes. She puts a scheme together to distract the mother with the two colorful tops, Then she throws them on the floor followed by using her body to hide the forbidden remotes.
Isn’t that what we all do when we want to get something that is forbidden…not good for us. The mother knows beforehand that her daughter wants the remotes and gives her a mantra:
But the mantra does not hold her. The desire apparently has paired with attachment. The little girl has to have the remotes.
My friends, this is what we do. We want something we see, hear, smell, taste, touch and imagine. The object becomes a mental form in our mind and we imagine getting the object. Now we are not obliged to follow the desire-attachment binding. There are always WARNING SIGNS to stop going after whatever object we want. Much like the child, however, we press on with distractions, decpetion and acquisition.
NOW…once we act on desire we enter the grip of attachment! Spiritually, this desire-attachment pairing is a big hindrance to liberation. Let me say that again. Whatever you are attached to ignites all sorts of tendencies to get and keep whatever thing you wanted. Once we get attached to a thing, we are bound to it. Being bound is not a liberating state of mind. Being bound is suffering.
What follows being bound?
Disappointment and disenchantment. Yep. that’s what follows.
This scenario is a mental activity. The little girl acted on her desire which led to attachment followed by disappointment. She liked the game of wanting, getting, having, teasing, keeping and…well…attachment.
Yet, if we study ourselves carefully we might be lucky enough to see our disappointment and disenchantment She got what she wanted but it did not satisfy her. Isn’t this true for you? Find out for yourself.
The spiritual adept recognizes being bound and begins to wonder how to get free. Detachment is the method that leads to freedom. But it does not happen until the spiritual adept studies the mind enough to see how and what binds them. Whatever it is, it comes in the form of mental formations.
Simply put, the adept must study their mind.
Are you able to do that for yourself? Or are you prone to find yourself in sticky situations not knowing how you got stuck?
Detachment comes when you realize that you tied yourself to a post. When you feel sick and entangled in your head, you are getting a chance to get free. Thinking it is the external conditons, however, is not the way to liberation.
The video of the little girl ended without knowing whether she gave the remotes to her mother or not. But our work is to do our very best to purify the mind in such a way that we are able to relinquish all the things that bind us to the material realm. The delusion we suffer is that we think and believe that if we get what we want, we will be happy.
Check with yourself. How long did that happiness last? It, like everything in this world, is impermanent. So, it does not last because everything changes. BUT…giving the thing to Mother is an act of relinquishment. Mother in this case is that which is unborn, undying, immutable. Mother may take the form of an ideal, or an inner sense, or an icon that speaks to your heart.
In simple terms, detachment is Giving-to-Mother what we possess in the mind that cause suffering. What are those things. you ask?
The best approach is for you to study yourself and note what are the things in your mind that you have made into habits. All the stuff you think you cannot live without. All the things that you somehow mistakenly identify yourself as being. The word identify and possess are strong give-aways to helping you decipher what things bind you to a position in the world. Opinions and views are just two simple examples.
Giving-to-mother is a difficult act as the little girl exemplifies. We do not want to give-to-mother, whether it be a physical person or an ideal of that which is beyond the material world. As long as we think that the material world is what will free us from suffering, we are bound to suffer. We do not see that the thing we want and attach to is a binding that keeps us ignorant of who and what we are.
Desire and attachment bind us to the material realm. It is as simple as that. The emphasis is on attachment. Desire is at the root of our suffering and attachment binds us to the suffering. In all spiritual traditions, there is a method of relinquishment and renunciation. We are asked to give away the attachment; letting go is the most common admonition. Let ,whatever it is, go.
As long as desire and attachment abound, we cannot know our true nature. We remain chained and tied to the things of the world that are born, age, get sick and disappear.
We must be Mother to ourselves. Although exasperated by her child’s attachment, the mother in the video did not give up. She persisted in teaching her child to let go of that which the child wanted, took and kept. The spiritual adept needs to practice mothering to the self that wants, takes and possesses.
The repetition of NOT FOR YOU is a start.
May we with all beings
realize the empriness of the three wheels,
giver, receiver and gift.
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
Conversion, the process of changing one thing into something else, is on our side.
Conversion is a universal principle which we count on all the time. Our problem
with conversion is that we want it to be something we like. something
we desire.
Simple, isn’t it?
Not really.
Our focus is off. We focus on the result rather than on our best effort devotion to the work.
The best we can do is…well…is our best. When we do our best we experience confidence,
not in the result of our efforts, but in knowing we did our best. That’s the best we can do!
Doing our best as an offering is work as spiritual devotion.
May we with all beings realize
the emptiness of the three wheels,
giver, receiver and gift.
Don’t give up. Keep going.
OM
Fashi Lao Yue
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