The Joy of Meditation

There are two important words in the title of this essay: "joy" and "meditation," and I want to talk first about why I chose those words before exploring how we can combine them and find this as a truth in experience.

First joy.

I realized when writing this talk that I've thought and talked about joy a lot recently.  That's something for me to meditate on :-).

The foundation of Buddhism is the Four Noble Truths: the existence of suffering; the cause of suffering; that it is possible to end suffering; and the path to the cessation of suffering.  And the way to end suffering, which I regard as the basic teaching of Buddha and of Buddhism, is to follow the Noble Eightfold Path of right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right mindfulness and right meditation.  So from this it might appear that Buddhism is all about suffering and about the hard work that it takes to end suffering.  What does joy have to do with this.  In my experience of Buddhism in particular, and spiritual practice in general, we are drawn in by our suffering, by  our need,  but we quickly find that it is not so much about dealing with suffering as it is about finding joy.  I find the structural Buddhist tendency to think about suffering is unfortunate, and believe it to be a result both of lack of understanding of the culture in which these teachings arose, and also of the cultural traps in our modern American - or western - society. 

Buddha grew up and taught in northern India 2,500 years ago, and the language and structure of his teachings was tuned to that world.  for example Indian and Hindu culture had a heavy leaning on numerology: 2 squared is 4, 2 cubed is eight, giving us the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Noble Path; we have the 108 delusions - 2 squared times three cubed; and so it continues.  To be understood we have to adopt the language of those we are talking to.  You still here an English accent in my voice, but I have dropped and softened consonants and changed my vocabulary to be understood, and so I sound American in the UK, not so much by accent but by communication style and structure.  I say "just kidding" when I'm cracking jokes and have a greater tendency to take jokes without this caveat seriously.  You might say I'm becoming a literalist!

Similarly the Hindu tradition in which Buddha was teaching already understood the world in which we live as samsara, a cycle of birth and rebirth caused by ignorance and craving, and had a well developed spiritual path that could lead to moksha or release from this cycle.  So for Buddha's teachings to work, they needed to fit into this framework, they needed to use this language.  They needed to be framed in samsara, suffering, the recurring cycle of birth and death.  But I believe that where Buddha's teaching diverge, and therefore where we should place the emphasis in his teachings, is that release - nirvana - is possible in this lifetime.  He described a set of spiritual practices which, if followed, could lead to one could find liberation here and now in this very life.  Buddha talked of the Brhamaviharas, the four immeasurable minds of loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, as a state of being available in this lifetime, and I would suggest that to live in the full embrace of these is on the one hand to attain liberation, but more importantly from my standpoint, to live in joy.  Buddhism for me is not about the suffering, but about liberation, about joy. 

Now let's talk about the spiritual practices suggested by Buddha, the Noble Eightfold Path.

The discipline of following the path is not something we are trained to like by modern society: quite the opposite.  Discipline is work, and in America we work because we have to in order to earn the right to have pleasure later.  I see this is an error of thinking.  There is a wonderful and very popular book written by a Quaker titled "Celebration of Discipline," in which he talks about this, and I recently wrote a blog post, "The Joy of Ramadan" which recognize the truth of this is Islam.  Similarly following the Noble Eightfold Path is itself a source of joy.  To truly practice right speech, right action, right livelihood is to actively participate in making the world a better place, in giving happiness to others, and we all know that great happiness comes from giving.

Our fundamental confusion is to mistake happiness, which can exist independent of our state of pleasure or pain, for the experience of pleasure.  Happiness is a state of mind that arises with the four immeasurable minds.  It resides in full awareness and acceptance of our place in the universe, of our fragile and imperfect human form, and of the wonder and beauty of our individual, personal contingent life which somehow, out of billions of billions of billions of possibilities - not to mention the untold number of non-possibilities - which somehow has come into existence and gives us the gift of this life, of this experience. 

Pleasure, on the other hand, is something we "have" - an experience, a possession - that gratifies the senses.  It cannot by its very nature, last.  If sustained it will get boring then annoying.  It will grow old and dull and insufficient and we will want more.  And yet if it disappears or is replaced by something that gives less pleasure we find ourselves dissatisfied.  Pleasure is as fleeting as our very breath, whereas joy is the foundation of being, just as love is the fabric of the universe.  We know this in our hearts, in our souls, in the core of our being, and yet we have built an entire society based upon our ability to use technology and materialism to generate one pleasurable experience after another, and the illusion that this will bring happiness.  We have build our society on a fundamental misunderstanding of the right enshrined in the Declaration of Independence to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," instead pursuing a life of imprisonment by our desires and possessions driven by our reckless pursuit of pleasure.

Joy is possible independent of pleasure and pain; it is our natural state of being, albeit one from which we have drifted.  And it is Buddha's basic teaching that we can follow a set of practices to help us recover this experience in a sustainable manner.

That's a lot about joy, but it's important, both because it hopefully redirects  the way we look at Buddhism, but also because it talks about a fundamental error in the way we as a society direct our lives.

Let's move on to meditation.

Why did I use the word "meditation" when most of us come out of the Zen tradition and we all know that the word for what we do is zazen? 

"Zazen," the Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen tells us, "is not meditation in the usual sense, since meditation includes, at least initially, the focusing of the mind on a "meditation object"... Even such aids to zazen practice as koans are not meditation objects in the usual sense...The purest form of zazen is dwelling in a state of thought-free, alertly wakeful attention which ,however, is not directed towards any object and clings to no content."

That sounds great, doesn't it?  It sounds like just the recipe for enlightenment.  Why don't we all just do this for the rest of the day?

I don't know about you, but when I meditate I most certainly do not "dwell in a state of thought-free, alertly wakeful attention which ,however, is not directed towards any object and clings to no content."  The truth of zazen and meditation is more complicated by far.  I'll make three points, though I'm sure there are a lot more, and also other ways of deconstructing this.

First, while it sounds great, for most folk zazen as I described it is not attainable - and it may not even be desirable.  Even those who practice at this seriously for decades cannot sustain this state.  Beyond this the quality, the vibrancy, the feeling of zazen depends enormously and fundamentally on the conditions preceding and surrounding its arising, such as whether the practitioner is approaching his or her practice after a car wreck, an argument with their spouse, watching a sunset, or eating a big meal.  It depends upon whether he or she has chanted before sitting; and if so what was chanted; whether the practitioner is smiling; it depends on the mudra

; and upon the physical posture of the practitioner, which is a big deal for Dogen and others.

Secondly, the truth of zen is that we begin and often continue our practice with concentration on an object - our breathing, counting, or a koan - and I simply don't buy that these are special to zazen in not being objects in the normal sense.  No object under the scrutiny of meditation is an object in the normal sense; rather all objects are reduced to ephemeral contradictions of being, non-being and interbeing. 

Third - and this is well recognized by many, many traditions - there are kinder, gentler paths of meditation that converge on objectless meditation.  Over time if one sits with attention on an object, whether it is a guru or deity, a line of scripture, a scene from the passion, or the loving-kindness practices of meta or tonglen, the object sinks deeper and deeper into the stillness of the mind until the big awareness of our  Big Mind in sense sits on top of our small awareness of the object.  As the object sinks deeper and we settle more into stillness, big mind becomes ever more quiet and our practice converges on the non-thinking of zazen.  At this point we can see the original object of our meditation as become no more than the mantra or chant that the zazen practitioner used to start their period of zazen, it is that which establishes the quality of the stillness.

So I think we've covered our basics of joy and meditation here.  Let's put them together and move on to joy in meditation.  How do we find joy in meditation? 

Actually we really don't "find" joy, but instead if we meditate with the right intention, joy naturally arises in and from the practice.

The Shambhala Dictionary asserts that meditation is the "general term for a multitude of religious practices, often quite different in method, but all having the same goal: to bring the consciousness of the practitioner to a state in which he can come to an experience of "awakening," "liberation," "enlightenment." 

There are a number of practices that popular culture describes as "meditation" whose intention is not to clarify the mind, but rather practices designed for health benefits.  This is a critically important distinction, and it is a distinction Foster, the author of the Celebration of Discipline makes when talking about fasting.  "If our fasting is not unto God, we have failed.  Physical benefits, success in prayer, the enduing with power, spiritual insights - these must never replace God as the center of our fasting."  In the same way, for us meditation has to be first and foremost a spiritual practice.  There is an important and clear distinction between meditation undertaken intentionally for health benefits and meditation undertaken as a spiritual practice, a practice with the intention of leading to awakening - or, in theistic religious traditions, to attain closeness to God, which is analogous.  Meditation, like fasting and spiritual practice in general, is not for the purposes of gaining powers, but rather for gaining insight and waking up to compassion for self and other.  Foster goes on to say, "Once the primary purpose of fasting is firmly fixed in our hearts, we are at liberty to understand that there are also secondary purposes to fasting.  These include revealing the things that control us, reminding us of our interconnection with the world, and helping us restore balance in our lives.  If meditation is undertaken as a spiritual practice, the physical benefits are not even secondary but tertiary.

Returning to the Shambhala Dictionary, "a common mark of all forms of meditation is that the practice of meditation concentrates the mind of the practitioner, calms and clarifies it like the surface of a turbulent body of water, the bottom of which one can see only when the surface is still and the water clear."  I love the metaphor of water settling, a metaphor I've often used in the context of a glass of dirty water which we can stir with our thinking, analytical mind or allow to settle though meditation into clarity, transparency, reflectivity.  I love this metaphor because I find it points so clearly at what actually happens. 

Thich Nhat Hanh, in "The Heart of the Buddha's Teachings," says, "We don't use concentration to run way from our suffering.  We concentrate to make ourselves deeply present.  When we walk, stand, or sit in concentration, people can see our stability and stillness."

The joy of meditation is really as simple as that.  If we adopt meditation as a spiritual practice then we are entering a space in which our concentration heightens, in which we become more present.  As we become more present, we gain greater clarity and insight into what is really going on.  We understand human behaviors better; we connect more deeply with those around us and with the world in which we live; we see our own idiosyncrasies more clearly - often for the first time.

And then a miracle happens.  When we are present, the space from which joy can arise opens up. 

Joy comes into existence when we know we belong, when we know in our heart that we are part of something bigger, when we are so much part of that which is bigger - in our vernacular, we recognize and open to the Buddhanature which underlies existence - that our boundaries blur and we cease to be discrete.  When we are really "here," loss of self is possible, and out of that the joy of meditation arises.  It happens on the cushion, and as the habit grows it happens doing the ironing, driving the car, even sitting and really listening.  It happens in meditation on the cushion, and in the awareness that is being present, the awareness that is living meditation in our daily lives.

May the joy of meditation find you today.

Living The Buddhist Path

In the opening sura of the Qur'an we hear, "Guide me on the straight path..." and the theme of straight path is repeated many times in the Qur'an.  In Christianity and Judaism we also hear about "the Path of the Lord."  We've talked before about the recurrence of the theme of path in religious traditions, and I do so again because I think it an important metaphor, since it implies a way of life.  I read the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism as a clear prescription for how to live as a Buddhist, but one that offers us considerable flexibility in how we take the basic technologies and apply them to our own circumstances.  I'd be really interested to know how Buddha would have framed his teachings if he'd grown up in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, or seventh century Arabia.

But he didn't, so today we're going to look at the teachings developed twenty-five hundred years ago and I'm going to try to play with them a little in the context of our modern-day American world view and language.

First the basics: Buddha, as you know, woke up, and having done so was unsure what came next.  He felt the need to return to the world and teach in order to guide others down the same path, but his experience was so...experiential...that he had no idea how to do this.  I suspect he reflected on and deliberated about this for a long while before he came up with an approach that he thought might work.  If it was brilliant to frame this as the Four Noble Truths, developing  the technology of the Noble Eightfold Path was an act of towering genius.

The Four Noble Truths are an explanation the state of the world, of existence; as such they could be read doctrinally, as a profession of faith.  I have come to the conclusion that in many respects the Four Noble Truths are not that different from descriptions in many other traditions.   Buddha's formulation that all is suffering, that the cause is our own attachment, that there is an end to suffering, and that there is a path to get there has parallels in other traditions:

·         Socrates described thought that all people wanted to exist in a state of eudemonia, a word that is generally translated as happiness, but which as best I can tell has an underlying sense of flourishing.  His path to eudemonia was cultivation of the virtues.  Implicit in this worldview is that prior to eudemonia we are suffering and unhappy, and cultivation of the virtues is a discipline that brings our normal cravings and ego under control;

·         Hinduism, which predated Buddha and Socrates, recognized this world as suffering - samsara - and that there was a way out, moksha, which a couple of Vedanta monastics recently told me they cannot distinguish from nirvana.  I think we all know that much of the basic psychological framework of Hinduism is similar to Buddhist thought - which is not surprising, since it was Buddha's original culture;

·         Even Christianity and Islam have similar constructions.  They both see the world as suffering and see the cause as our distance from the divine.  The end of suffering exists in heaven, and both offer a real practice path to get there - though in both religions many fail to practice and resort to "belief" as the way out.

To my mind what makes Buddhism different, and Buddha's teachings extraordinary and revolutionary is not the framework he offered us, but the development of the Noble Eightfold Path as a technology which he encouraged people to adopt into and as their lives without reliance on a teacher, on a scripture, or even on a divinity.  "Practice this and rely on your own experience," is what he told his followers and those who came out in vast numbers to listen.  He did not need to dismiss alternative views of salvation, rather he could simply say that they were not interesting or relevant to him.  For example, he refused to discuss what happened after death.  "All you need to do," he said, "is practice these eight disciplines and pay attention to what happens in your own experience.

It is my experience that these eight disciplines are relevant and useful to all spiritual practices and religious traditions and can be used within them without compromising the foundation or beliefs of that religion.  Some of the more belief-oriented traditions have a hard time, for example believing that meditation empties the mind and makes room for the devil, but in doing so they fail to recognize the richness of contemplation practices within their own tradition.  Additionally many traditions - including many within Buddhism - do not fully employ practices of this nature and can take the descriptions of reality given by their founders and leaders as doctrine, and rather than follow spiritual practices that allow the personal realization of Truth, they leap to belief.

I am inclined to believe that Buddha knew the secret sauce of his teaching was the Noble Eightfold Path, and knew that his ability to lead others to his experience would be based upon the utility and acceptability of these practices.  And let's be honest: what's not to like?  Let's look at them in the order that Walpola Rahula discusses them in "What the Buddha Taught:

- Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood.  These are ethical practices, and collectively form one half of the basic construct, which is that compassion and wisdom should be cultivated together.  Compassion is both exercised and developed through its practice.  I've talked before of how many of us - myself in particular - need to practice generosity, to practice giving away possessions, to actively help others in order to even open up those parts of ourselves, let alone to cultivate them.

- Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Meditation.  These are the wisdom practices, designed to allow things to slow down, maybe even stop, so that we can see more  clearly.  Taken in isolation of the ethical practices they can lead to introversion and an extremely limited view of the world, ultimately seeing clearly that "I'm angry and resentful and mean, but that's who I am and that's okay."  But if the ethical practices are sincerely undertaken, this is not a possible outcome.  If one is actively engaged in the world in ethical action as one is undertaking wisdom practices, one is cultivating the recognition of connectedness, of inter-being, of codependence, and ultimately of compassion.  The two work together allowing compassion and wisdom to support each other in their respective developments.  

- So we come to the last two steps of the path, normally listed as the first two: Right Thought according to Rahula is "selfless renunciation or detachment, thoughts of love and thoughts of nonviolence which are  extended to all beings."  This is normally listed second, but it is an aspiration that grows in possibility and actuality as one pursues the ethical and wisdom steps.  Right Understanding is seeing things as they really are, and though normally listed first, it is perhaps the highest wisdom and the highest compassion, a wisdom beyond rational ken.  It is a wisdom that has shed the scaffolding of Buddhist teachings and has reached the experience and understanding that Buddha could not explain.  Which brings us back to the beginning: Buddhist teachings aren't wisdom any more than they are compassion, they are a framework for us to utilize that allows us to cultivate wisdom and compassion.  I believe that the most important of these teachings is living the Noble Eightfold Path.

Buddhism has become a religion, and as Wade often reminds us, this is a good thing, but at its core I believe Buddhism is cultivating the practice of the Noble Eightfold Path.  It is about putting on these practices as our clothing and wearing them every day in our lives, personalizing them so they fit our own cultural and social history.  There are many teachers who perform the protocols in extraordinarily beautiful ways and who talk eloquently and articulately about sunyata and the twelve-linked chain of causation and the Abhidharma, but what I find most interesting and compelling are not those who stand out as good teachers among Buddhists, but those Buddhists who are universally recognized as exuding compassion and wisdom among ordinary people and people of other religions.  Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama can both talk in incredible intricacies about Buddhist teachings, and I'm sure can perform exquisite ceremonies, but for me their most important attribute is that they are exemplars of living the Noble Eightfold Path.  It is for this reason they are held in broad reverence.  They have both said words to the effect that right now the world doesn't need more Buddhists, rather it needs more Buddhas or more compassion.

Buddhism for me is about internalizing the Noble Eightfold Path as a way of life and thereby cultivating wisdom and compassion.  It is about deciding to get on the path, gritting your teeth, and plugging away every day.  This might sound a gruelling, rugged determination undertaken at all costs, but as my mother told me, "the good things in life are worth working for."  Wisdom and compassion are not just a good thing, they are the best of things, I am increasingly believing the only things that actually matter.  It's a wonderful blessing that as we climb the path the air becomes clearer and sweeter, the climate cooler and fresher, and the view grander.  If we are patient with ourselves and with our practice we can eventually feel the fruits of our effort following this straight path as more joy in our lives.

Zen Rebels And Reformers

This is a talk inspired by the latest book club reading by Perle Besserman and Manfred Steger.

It is a book about charismatic individuals who broke with the establishment and did had very different approaches to zen.  They each seem to have found a way to true Zen practice, and their stories point to sincerity, truth, real zen.  I have spent a lot of time thinking about how these stories are relevant to America today.

In the introduction which sets up these stories as being “different” the authors say:

“The tendency of students…[is]… to revert to dependence on gods, the Buddha, and the “holy” scriptures persisted…This book is not concerned with scandal.  It focuses on those religious Zen geniuses whose training, commitment and realization experience led them to a free life, unconstrained by religious etiquette, rules, or hierarchy.”

“We are encouraged by the Crazy Clouds’ [the authors’ general name for the rebels] commitment and hard training and by the true realization of emptiness that prompted them to take their experience out into the world and live as compassionate bodhisattvas.”

I’ll spend some time looking at my own favorites from the book and then draw some conclusions and look at what this means for my own practice.

Layman Pang – He famously refused to become a monk and never gave up family life.  But even Layman Pang visited monasteries and spent a year early in his career with Sekito.  Eventually though he gave up the bureaucrat’s comfortable life and the monastery and left the world.  Like many Zen masters he wrote poetry, one of his most famous poems is:

My daily activities are not unusual

I’m just naturally in harmony with them

Grasping nothing, discarding nothing

In every place there’s no hindrance, no conflict

My supernatural power and marvelous ability

Drawing water and chopping wood

He took his daughter as his traveling companion and in a sense as his disciple, and they settled in a cave.  One of my favorite stories about him happened two years later when Pang decided it was time to die.  He sat down in zazen and instructed his daughter to go outside and come back to inform him when the sun reached its zenith.  She went out and later rushed back in saying, “It’s already noon and there’s an eclipse of the sun.  Come and look.”  The Layman rose and went to the window to look and his daughter jumped onto his seat, crossed her legs, and died.  The stories have him delivering a smart-arsed Zen comment, performing a seven day funeral rite for his daughter, then with another pithy comment passing away, and of course they have his wife, on hearing of their deaths, making another smart-arsed comment.

Rinzai – Studied with Obaku for three years before he could even meet the master in personal interview.  After many years studying with Obaku, he grew his hair long and traveled for a year testing his enlightenment with many other teachers.   Started his own temple and throughout he shocked the religious and political establishment with boisterous practices, such as grabbing priests and officials by the lapels, hurling insults and yelling at them and hitting with stick.  He urged students to slay the Buddha, ancestral teachers and their own parent.  To become Rinzai’s student you had to relinquish the world and become homeless.  There was no monk, no meditation, no Buddha, no notion even of enlightenment.  He was a major reformer, founding one of the two main remaining zen lineages. 

Ikkyu (He called himself Kyoun, Crazy Coud) –Illegitimate son of emperor, constantly under threat of being killed.  He spent many years desperate for enlightenment, wandering from teacher to teacher.  But when a teacher finally declared him enlightened and gave him an inka certificate, he threw it on the ground and left the room.  He refused to take on a temple, but nonetheless he ended up with a group of followers – women, bums, beggars and prostitutes were his students.  And famously he ate meat, drank alcohol, and made love to women.  He went further, and in the brothels and geisha houses cultivated the connection of his human life and body to death through the red thread of passion and created “Red Thread Zen” with similarities to tantric Buddhism.  And he celebrated all of this in his large body of poetry, such as:

sin like a madman until you can't do anything else
no room for any more

My naked passions, six inches long.
At night we meet on an empty bed.
A hand that's never known a woman's touch,
And a nuzzling calf, swollen from nights too long

In his seventies he met Lady Shin the blind singer, composer and musician who has been called his missing female self and was to become his passionate companion.  And in his eighties the emperor gave him the task of rebuilding Daitokuji, which I understand is a big deal, and he committed the last years of his life to this task, returning to and rebuilding the establishment colored by his own unique style of Zen

Hakuin.  Stories are from a young age showed extraordinary religious ability (though I’ve never known what that means) and expounded long sutra passages from memory.  Childhood anxiety on hearing of the agony of the eight burning hells.  Went to lots of teachers, then read a book with Joshi’s mu and tried to understand in meditation.  This led to his first satori, great doubt of practice leading to great death, the sudden expansion of consciousness and then great joy of nonseparateness and overwhelming love and joy.  He went on to found modern koan practice.  He also used imaging practices in and around the body to induce healing and bring balance for others as well as himself (some inspired by Daoist practices).  He came to see the body as important as a vehicle for enlightenment and the exercise of compassion, and therefore something to be treasured – though this was completely at odds with the practice that almost killed him.  And he developed a considerable reputation and a large temple.  He is said to have seen koan practice as the only way to be brought to genuine insight.  Like many of the rebels and reformers, he is famous for his art and poetry

Nyogen Senzaki.  He was born of a Japanese mother who either abandoned him or died in childbirth, and an unknown father believed to be Russian.  He was adopted by a Kegon Buddhist and given a good education, studying with DT Suzuki, then spending two years in Southeast Asia studying Theravada Buddhism, and becoming abbot of Engakuji at 33.  But when he read the works of the German educational reformer and founder of the kindergarten system, Friedrick Froebel, he left the monastery to form a nursery school which he called Mentorgarden.  Eventually he left not just the monastery, but Japan, and came to the states, where he led practice without money or home, and founding practice and community based on mentorgarten, living together and practicing together without teachers, associating with his sangha regardless of sex, etc.  Two quotes I especially like are:

“When my master was alive I asked him toi excuse me from all official ranks and titles of our church and allow me to walk freely in the streets of the world.  I do not wish to be called Reverend, Bishop, or by any other church title.  To be a member of the great American people and walk any stage of life as I please is honorable enough for me.  I want to be an American Hotei, a happy Jap in the streets.”

And

“If anyone makes demarcation foolishly, thinking that he alone has the right view of water, who should not pity him for his ignorance?  There are many schools, monasteries and sects, each considering their own teaching a lake, rather than a bay, forgetting the inlet to the ocean of Dharma, the universal truth.

Common themes

-          Childhood tales – some miraculous; others, like Dogen, of great doubt; yet others of brilliance and instinct for Buddhism: “the language” of these stories

-          Path began with fervent desire for enlightenment

-          Training in the institutions

-          Spent time with many teachers and wandered wide

-          Then woke up and “went rogue”

-          Concluded the institutions are bankrupt

-          Decided their practice was correct

-          And later went back to lead big monasteries

-          Not just accepted but welcomed back by the institution

-          Not just sitting

o   Soen: “Meditation is not Zen.  Zen is meditation, but it is also thinking, eating, drinking, sitting=, standing, shitting, peeing—all of these are nothing else but Zen...Zazen is sitting Zen.  But this is not the Zen.  Don’t be mistaken on this point.

-          Compassion

-          Living, being in the world

-          Embrace humanity

-          Embrace the dirty stuff – sexuality

What does this mean in the present day?

We talked a lot in the book club about this, but as I’ve thought about it I’ve reached a different conclusion.  I don’t have a good answer to any of this for the universe at large, and even if I did have, I am always conscious of Thich Nhat Hanh’s screensaver, “Are you sure.”  But I can tell you what it means to me.

-          I actually have little use for rebellion per se, though this might just be semantics.  Looked at from the outside a rebel does something different from the rest of society, but from the inside a rebel just does what is natural.  Living out of alignment with who I am supposed to be is rebelling against my own nature.  Giving up rebellion and bringing myself into line with myself will make my behavior more natural.

-          On to reform: to me Buddhism is so small in the US, and Zen a diminishingly small fraction even of that, as well as a very young one, such that reform is not a relevant consideration: rather we are in the process of “forming.”

-          The only thing I have to reform is my own life.  I remember a family vacation a few years ago when one of my sisters came outside onto the patio, said, “Hmm, there’s a dog turd by the BBQ, and went back in leaving others to clean it up.  I have been sitting on a fence for too long and looking the other way.  For so long, in fact, that the ground beneath the fence has been eroding, so the drop has been getting greater and it’s been harder to climb down.  I am making conscious strides to change that.  I am making big decisions and taking deliberate actions in my life to come into line.  It is no longer okay for me to talk about peak oil and Occupy Wall Street and the prison industrial complex and then turn the other way and work my ass off to earn money to live in my big house.  I must reform in what I do, the way I live, the way I hold relationships.  I must allow myself to come back into alignment.

-          So to radicalism.

Radicalism is probably the big one.  To live a radical life is to discard all views and live a free life.   Quoting Layman Pang again:

My daily activities are not unusual

I’m just naturally in harmony with them

Grasping nothing, discarding nothing

In every place there’s no hindrance, no conflict

My supernatural power and marvelous ability

Drawing water and chopping wood

Zen is radical.  It does not exist in institutions.  To be radical is to live such a life.  It is for each of us to find out what that is for us.  It may be as a monk.  It may be the radicalism of living Way of the Bodhisattva of Shantideva, which I have previously talked about as truly radical.  It may be in the daily activity of Layman Pang, in his family life.  It may be freely following one’s calling to found Mentorgartens or Occupy Wall Street.  It may be to live it in the Red Thread of Ikkyu, embracing sex not just as natural, but as a wonderful and beautiful part of this human existence.  It is probably some combination of all of these and more.

But to me that is the core message not just of this book, but of Zen itself.  Zen is not in the institution, whether that it be the national religion supported by the emperor or a tiny, parochial club in Amnerica, but rather in seeing the world as it is, living a life in harmony with whatever you are doing, open and connected and without hindrance or conflict.  What a beautiful thing that would be.

For me this is about stepping off that fence and realizing that the ground I thought was receding such that it would hurt even more when I hit does not even exist.  It is allowing myself to enter that natural free fall of simply being without resistance.  

[Originally delivered to Red Clay Sangha on March 24th, 2012]

Taking Refuge

We hear the word “refugee” a lot.  In dictionary.com we learn that “a refugee is a person who flees for refuge or safety, especially to a foreign country, as in time of political upheaval, war, etc.” The word is used to describe those who are suffering from a Sudanese famine, who are fleeing the Iraqi genocide in Kurdistan, or who are fleeing personal persecution by their government, be that the old USSR, Myanmar, or North Korea.

But the root of the word “refugee” is “refuge”, so a refugee is really just one who takes refuge.  I believe that when we take the refuges we become refugees, and I’d like to look at what it means to think of us in these terms.

A refugee takes refuge from personal danger: what is it that we take refuge from as Buddhists?

We are trying to leave Samsara, to find a new home led by a system or a person who will give us comfort and security away from the suffering that is our world.  And if we look close enough—which as a society we condition ourselves not to—we will see we are also taking refuge from death.  As Shantideva says in The Way of the Bodhisattva:

Don't you see how, one by one,

Death has come for all your kind? 

And yet you slumber on so soundly,

Like a Buffalo beside its butcher.

And:

And when the heralds of the deadly king have gripped me,

What help to me will be my friends and kin?

For then life's virtue is my one defense,

And this, alas, is what I shrugged away.

In the same way that a political refugee looks for a government and society that can save him from a life that he finds unsatisfactory, we, too, are looking to be saved from the horror of suffering.  We have tuned into the basic human desire for happiness.  We have realized that the forms of escapism into which we can so easily fall ultimately cannot work, that salvation requires not more artificial joy, but something completely different. We have realized, in a manner analogous to that of the political refugee, that the structure of the society in which we are living is somehow not conducive to the life of happiness we seek.

We are also all refugees from other religious traditions, mostly Christianity, which we fled because the particular savior we found there did not work for us.  We did not find the Christ a satisfactory solution to our need to be saved from suffering, our need for joy.

Many Buddhists find salvation in the Pure Land, a place physically separate from this world where we might go and live with all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, free from suffering.  This is similar in my conception of it to the freedom promised by Christ in the next life.  This might seem superficially completely antithetical to what we are seeking, which is release now, but I believe that the distinction is not what it appears to be, and I’ll return to the point later.

For now, though, I’ll turn to Zen Buddhism, the tradition and practice of meditation which we all came to, the practice where we all experienced a glimpse of a better life, the possibility of release from suffering.  The practice to which we return, the practice where we sit and take the refuges.

                                                                                   

The Uttaratantra Shastra, which I’ve talked about before, is a wonderful Tibetan text that expounds on the Three Treasures and the act of taking refuge in them as of paramount importance.  It talks of the refuges as being on three levels, with Buddha being the Big One, the highest refuge that trumps the others.  I’d encourage you to read this text, since it really does emphasize the power of the refuges.  In Tibetan Buddhism the act of taking refuge is the point at which one formally becomes a Buddhist, and I’d suggest you look closely at your own practice, for I am pretty sure that whether or not you take the formal recitation of the refuges seriously, you are sincerely taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha in your life as your path to release from suffering, to finding joy, to salvation.

So looking at the refuges in the Shastra’s reverse order, I’ll begin with Sangha:

We all take refuge in Sangha when we come and sit together on Tuesdays and Sundays.  But more than that, by knowing that our sangha is sitting on those days, it is there for us to take refuge in whether we show up or not.  The sangha is always a phone call, an email, a lunch date, or even just a thought away, and we all stay in regular contact.  Taking refuge in sangha is all about connections and relationships and the quality of them.  True sangha relationships are loving and caring and generous.  Whether monastic or lay, they are comfortable and intimate, places of safety.  In our community we have focused much of our practice intentionally on creating an environment in which those relationships can flourish as a resource to us all.  These relationships require cultivation and nurturing if they are to offer benefit to self and other, and we are intentionally working on that together.  In sangha we find real community, real connection, real compassion both given and received.

What does it mean to take refuge in Dharma?  It means to recognize the teachings as something in which we can find safety and release.  It means to study Buddhist texts and through them find a deepening of our understanding that will allow us to see cut through our suffering by identifying its causes and seeing more clearly what is really going on.  There are risks in all practice, and the refuges are no exception.  One of the greatest I see is when we take refuge in dharma, for it is here that there is a tendency to become attached to a teacher.  I recognize the enormous value of a teacher in helping us to penetrate the dharma, but I am troubled by our human tendency to identify with a teacher, to place on a teacher a responsibility for helping us, and perhaps ultimately to turn our teacher into our savior.  This will ultimately fail both teacher and student.  It is critically important that we remember the Buddha’s teaching on this: each of us is responsible for our own salvation.  We cannot look to others, not even to the Buddha, to deliver us from samsara.

So from this standpoint, what can it mean to take refuge in Buddha, the highest of the refuges?

In the first instance we are taking refuge in the Buddha’s teachings and in the second we are taking refuge in his example, which is another form of teaching.  But this is all taking refuge in the Dharma, which we have already discussed.

Taking refuge in the Buddha is about taking refuge in Buddha nature, seeing clearly the reality of the world as it is and taking refuge in this reality.  In many of the texts we read the Hinayana Buddhists are disparaged for running away from this world, for seeking release from suffering without caring for others, and I think this not only as failing to recognize the cultural context within which the teachings occurred, but also a failure to recognize the Buddha’s teachings and the reality of the world in which we live.

Buddha taught that there are two truths: the first is the truth of Indra’s net, that we are all composed of the same stuff, that we come from and return to the same place like drops of rain, and the second that although we are just drops of rain, nonetheless we exist as such in relationship with other drops of rain and with the ground on which we fall.  This is not something we get to choose, it is just the way things are.  We can no more avoid our separateness and our interbeing with other life than we can intentionally avoid breathing.  It just is.  So distinguishing between those who return to save all beings and those who seek to escape is to me rather silly: we cannot avoid being here and ultimately other beings.  The Bodhisattva Vow is not so much a commitment as a statement of reality. 

If we are to follow the teachings of the Buddha, I believe that compassion, love for other, and intimate connection with the world is unavoidable, for what else can we do when we see Buddha nature, see ourselves in the eyes of another?  More, I believe that it is not only unavoidable, but it is precisely in this activity that we have the opportunity to really take refuge in Buddha and truly find our own salvation.  It is not in cultivating silent wisdom away from the world that salvation is to be found, but in engaging with the world in love and care and compassion.  Returning to the salvation of the Pure Land and Christianity, I believe they are also pointing in this direction by creating an environment in which the practitioner is able to transcend the suffering of the world of samsara, and to live a good life for the benefit of others—whether motivated by purifying karma to attain a high rebirth or in the Imitation of Christ.  These traditions point at practices which embody what the Buddha taught: they admonish us to see and experience our connectedness with all of creation and to act with deep empathy and compassion.

There is a perceived risk in opening up to the level of intimacy that comes with Guan Yin taking on the suffering of the world, but like so many risks it is misunderstood and actually we construe it backwards.  It is in opening up and giving ourselves to others that we find ourselves.  Anyone who has children knows this in their bones without even thinking.  But this selfless giving offers possibilities way beyond family, and it gives back to us 100-fold in the joy we can feel.  Compassion is the best cure for us, and it is here that we can find our deepest joy.

Many refugees recognize the wonder of their new life and become the very best of citizens, committing themselves to the political and social processes of their new nation, working hard and contributing more than their fair share: it is no accident that they are also among the most grateful and the happiest of citizens.  As refugees, I would suggest that we, too, should look at our new nation and see the opportunity through giving freely of ourselves in compassion, love, and gratitude to truly find ourselves and to find joy.  And we can remind ourselves of this by taking the refuges.

[Originally delivered to Red Clay Sangha on April 22, 2012]