Gatha of Atonement

Jeff

This is an approximation of a Dharma talk I gave on April 16, 2014, at the Greater Boston Zen Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

 

All evil karma ever committed by me since of old,

on account of my beginningless greed, anger and ignorance,

born of my body, mouth and thought,

now I atone for it all.

 

– Gatha of Atonement

 

I began a series of talks about elements of our liturgy a few weeks ago on a Tuesday night. I spoke about the sound of the bell with which our liturgy begins and ends in that talk. Tonight I’ll talk about the Gatha of Atonement, the first verse we chant together.

 

It may be hard for someone raised Catholic, like me, not to chant this verse solely as an act of contrition: as a reminder and admission of how bad I’ve been personally, how big the cosmic hole I’ve dug for myself is, and how endlessly I need to work to try to get myself out of it.

 

This is a caricature of the Christian notion of sin and repentance, of course, and it’s also a caricature of this gatha from our Zen Buddhist perspective. It is right, and it is vitally important to achievement of personal and collective wholeness, that we acknowledge and try to make amends for the ways in which we have caused harm. To be sure, from one angle this verse is about recognizing my own failures to treat others and all that exists (including myself) with dignity, and about vocalizing my intention to do better.

 

Yet there is more going on in this verse, I think. The this life, individual accountability, relative dimension of this gatha that may be the primary lens through which some of us view it is complemented and counterbalanced by an atemporal, interwoven, absolute dimension.

 

Each operative word and phrase in this brief verse is rich with layered meaning from this perspective. Each is worthy of its own talk – of multiple talks. I can only focus on a few phrases, and a few meanings I sense, tonight.

 

Evil karma

 

It’s hard to think of two more loaded, contested words in contemporary Buddhist discourse. The classical idea of karma is closely associated with reincarnation, a word that is equally loaded and contested.

 

I’m going to skirt the reincarnation debate – I’m not very interested in these sorts of dogmatic arguments and metaphysical speculations, anyway – to focus on karma in another accepted, and more prosaic, sense of the word: causes and conditions.

 

A key insight of Buddhism is that this moment as we find it is the product of causes and conditions that precede it, that have conspired to produce it. Though we can’t always trace and weight the relative contributions of these causes and conditions with mathematical precision, the idea arguably is more in the realm of physics than metaphysics. It’s a pretty simple notion, and increasingly uncontested, even among some theistic religious thinkers, who also see the hand of a God-figure at work.

 

For tonight’s purposes, I’ll keep the idea of evil karma equally simple, and un-cosmic: among the causes and conditions that conspire to create this moment are causes and conditions that can produce various forms of harm and injustice, some of them extreme. The next line of the verse asserts that these causes and conditions can be traced to the three poisons: greed, anger and ignorance. To be specific, “my beginningless greed, anger and ignorance.”

 

Beginningless greed, anger and ignorance

 

This notion of greed, anger and ignorance without beginning is a pointer to the absolute dimension of the gatha. We’re prompted to consider the possibility that these poisons might be in the nature of things; of who I am as a human being; of who we are. Rather than seeing my selfish impulses, anger (expressed or unexpressed), and blindness and false certainties solely as personal failings for which I feel guilty and punish myself, this phrase seems to be an invitation to consider our own and others’ base instincts and impulses, habitual reactions, and present limitations, with curiosity and compassion.

 

What is it about our circumstances and our programming that inclines us, in some moments at least, toward selfish, angry or biased behavior?

 

Born of my body, mouth and thought

 

The next line of the gatha reminds us that we are creatures. We are embodied. And that we seem to be unusual creatures, possessing the capacity for complex thought and communication. And we’re told that evil karma is “born of” these facts.

 

In this realm of the 10,000 dharmas, of diversity, of seemingly finite resources, and of human and non-human creatures, arriving at this moment on the wave of celecstial and terestial evolutionary history, each of us, like the beings that begat us, must forge a path. This realm often seems, and is, confusing and contingent. I’m inclined to think that greed, anger and ignorance are over-amplifications of tendencies that generally serve us well, individually and collectively, as we make our way:

 

  • Greed as an over-amplification of our legitimate imperative to satisfy basic physical and psychological needs.

 

  • Anger as an (often misdirected) over-amplification of our legitimate impulse to protect our fragile bodies, and psyches that are fragile as they develop.

 

  • Ignorance (aka false certainty) as an over-amplification of the limitations of our senses and cognitive processing powers, and of our need, for many legitimate purposes, to reduce complexity, to filter out some sensory data.

 

And so we sometimes act (body), speak (mouth), and perceive and process information and experiences (thought) in ways that tend to produce harm and injustice, insomuch as our actions, speech and thought “over serve” legitimate needs and impulses, to others’ detriment.

 

Now I atone for it all

 

Right here, right now.

 

Yes, I express regret for my actions, speech and thought that has hurt others, and I renew my commitment to do my best to live up to my highest ideals – to the precepts. I atone in the sense of acknowledging when I have fallen short of those ideals, and I constantly do, and of being penitent.

 

But atone has another meaning: to reconcile.  To stop fighting.

 

I reconcile myself to the nature of things. To my own and others’ creatureliness. To our evolutionary heritage. To the needs and impulses that can incline us toward greed, anger and ignorance when they are over-amplified.

 

Realizing this, not idealizing about our condition, accepting it, not flogging ourselves and others for our supposed failures to be the perfect angels we tend to think we and others should be – ever pure of heart, in thought and in deed – is an important step toward actually developing the capacity to show up as we intend, and helping others cultivate and sustain their intention and efforts to do the same.

 

This take on the Gatha of Atonement may be more the very long view from a relative perspective than a view from the absolute. As I said, I’m not very inclined toward metaphysics, and the relative and absolute are one, in any event, as we say. It is a take on this gatha, anyway. It is a useful take for me, and I hope it also is useful for some of you.

 

 

The Sound of the Bell

Jeff

 

This is an approximation of a Dharma talk I gave on March 25, 2014, at the Greater Boston Zen Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

 

 

[Ring Inkan bell, which sounds something like this: ding.]

 

I recently committed to giving four talks – five, if we count the one each BoWZ teacher gave at the Temple during the Ango – in March and April. I have three to go, and this seemed like an opportunity to organize several talks around a theme. I’ve spoken before about features of our liturgy, and I’d like to use these next few talks to touch on aspects of our liturgical forms that I’ve wanted to speak about for some time.

 

[Ring Inkan]

 

Our liturgy practice begins with this bell, one of several we hear throughout the service.

 

It could end here, too.

 

In fact, it does begin and end here.

 

[Ring Inkan]

 

Here’s a koan from the Miscellaneous Koan set in our Harada/Yasutani koan curriculum:

 

Stop the sound of that distant temple bell.

 

[Ring Inkan]

 

From The Gateless Gate koan collection:

 

Yunmen said, “See how vast and wide the world is! Why do you put on your seven-piece robe at the sound of the bell?”

 

[Ring Inkan]

 

A koan from the Book of Serenity:

 

Yakusan had not ascended the rostrum for a long time.

The steward said, “All the assembly has been wishing for instruction for a long time. Please, Master, give your assembly a sermon.”

 

Yakusan had the bell rung. The assembly gathered. Yakusan ascended the rostrum and sat there for a while. Then he descended and returned to his room.

 

The temple steward followed him and asked, “You said a while ago that you would give the assembly a sermon. Why didn’t you speak even a word?” Yakusan said, “For sutras, there are sutra specialists; for sastras, there are sastra specialists. Why do you have doubts about this old monk?”

 

[Rink Inkan]

 

I’ll end this little carol of bells with a poem by the famous British Jesuit, Gerard Manley Hopkins, that I’ve always loved:

 

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

 

I say more: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —

Christ — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

 

[Ring Inkan]

 

This bell with which we begin our service – and each bow, each tone chanted, each drumbeat, each waft of incense, and each breath and footstep that follows – presents itself.

 

We present ourselves.

 

All presenting together.

 

Now. And now. And now.

 

And so our liturgy begins.

 

And ends.

 

And so we carry on.

 

Right here, now.

 

The Emperor has clothes, after all

Jeff

 

This is an approximation of a Dharma talk I gave on March 6, 2014 at the Boundless Way Temple in Worcester, Massachusetts, during the Boundless Way Zen meta-sangha’s three-week Ango retreat.  Audio recordings of this talk and others given by BoWZ teachers are posted here.

 

Emperor Wu of Liang invited Mahasattva Fu to lecture on the Diamond Sutra.  On the rostrum, Mhasattva Fu struck the lectern once with his stick and immediately climbed down.  The emperor was astounded.

 

Master Zhi asked, “Your Majesty, do you understand?”

 

“No, I do not.”

 

“Mahasattva Fu has finished the lecture.”

 

(Blue Cliff Record, Case 67)

 

I began looking for a koan to use as the launchpad for this talk about a week ago.

 

I poked around the koan territory I’ve been wandering in recently.  Not finding much inspiration there, I went back to the earliest koans in the miscellaneous collection and worked my way forward to where I’ve been wandering lately.  Still nothing, so I even peeked ahead of the koan I’ll next bring to dokusan.

 

No single koan lept out during this exercise, declaring, “Pick me.”  Hmm.

 

What did leap out, however, were two themes that seem to me to run through our whole koan curriculum, so I thought I’d make them the subject of my talk tonight.  I mainly want to talk about the second of these themes, but I need to touch on the first to set up the second.  I’ll come back to Mahasattva Fu’s lecture on the Diamond Sutra when I get there.

 

The first theme . . .

 

Surveying the koan curriculum brought home to me more than ever how it — and the Zen project writ large, I suppose — is, in part, about exploring our relationship with real and perceived constraints.

 

Many of our early koans seem to challenge one’s current perceptions of what’s possible, and so challenge us to take a closer look at what we experience as constraints.

 

Stop the sound of that distant temple bell.

 

Count the number of stars in the heavens.

 

Say something without moving your lips or tongue.

 

Some koans even use metaphors of physical entrapment.

 

You are at the bottom of a 200-foot dry well.  What do you do?

 

Many of us, perhaps most of us, come to Zen feeling trapped somehow.

 

Some part of me cut off from another part of myself.

 

A mind or spirit trapped in a body.

 

A solitary being cut off from the world I inhabit.

 

One being among many inhabiting a realm that can’t be all there is.

 

Some type of dualism.  Some version of heaven and earth, or heaven and hell.

 

We’re sure there is someplace else we must get, something more to know.  There must be a secret passageway to a place beyond, and we sense that Zen might offer us a map to find it and the key to open the door once we get there.

 

The early part of the koan curriculum seems to meet us where we’re at in this regard, even as it begins to challenge us to see that the “something more” we’re looking for is just this.  The “someplace else” we’re seeking is right here, right now.

 

The heat is turned up progressively, of course, as we’re challenged in increasingly direct ways.  Like this zinger (from the Blue Cliff Record), for example:

 

A monk said to Dasui, “When the thousands of universes are altogether and utterly destroyed in the kalpa fire — I wonder whether this perishes or not.

 

“This perishes,” said Dasui.

           

“If so,” persisted the monk, “does it follow the other.”

           

“It follows the other,” said Dasui.

 

Tsssssss!

 

 

And so it goes, until we come to the end of the curriculum, where, among other things, we encounter the precepts as koans.  Perhaps by then koan practice, and sitting practice, and everyday life practice have helped us let go of some perceived constraints and helped us see constraints we must accept in a new light.

 

The open secret, of course, is that the freedom we seek is found in the realm of constraints, not someplace else.

 

There is a “through the looking glass” quality to grasping this open secret, to be sure.  As we desperately strain to peer through the glass, what’s on the other side appears faint and blurry.  Passing through, I find myself.

 

Same old me.

 

Relatively speaking, there seems to be something to get.  Absolutely, not so much.

 

And this brings me to the second theme that seems to run through the koans. . .

 

Perhaps it’s more of a conceit, or a device, than a theme.

 

Like the koan I ultimately chose for this talk, the set up for many koans is an exchange between a wise teacher and a seemingly less wise student.

 

Often there also is a supporting character who is in the know, like Master Zhi in today’s koan.  Or Mahakasyapa, the student — and the only person, we’re told — who broke into a smile in the sermon where the Buddha simply twirled a flower.

 

We might more or less consciously identify with Master Zhi or Mahakasyapa as we pass through one of these koans.  We, too, get it.

 

But I’m not talking about them.  I’m talking about the seeming stooges.  The characters who are portrayed as hapless.  The characters who just don’t seem to get it.

 

Sometimes that student is a prominent person, like Emperor Wu of Liang, who also appears in a handful of other koans.  These prominent folk tend to fare especially poorly, at least on first blush.

 

As I surveyed our koan curriculum looking for inspiration for this talk, I found myself really appreciating these characters, the supposed stooges.  Even inspired by them.

 

Here I was, wandering around, looking for inspiration and insight . . . and I find it in other people wandering around, looking for inspiration and insight.

 

This is where much of the action is in these koans — much of the insight, the invitation and potential for us — I think.

 

“Not knowing is most intimate,” we like to say.  “Only don’t know.”

 

But is there still a hint of special knowledge in our not knowing?

 

As long as we’re identifying mainly with Mahasattva Fu or Master Zhi, perhaps there is.

 

As long as we think we get something Emperor Wu doesn’t, perhaps there is.

 

We can settle into our not knowing, and this, importantly, may make us a bit less anxious in our approach to life; perhaps relatively free of certain questions with which Emperor Wu is wrestling.  Perhaps we’ve come to feel just a bit more at home with ourselves; a bit more at home in this vast universe.

 

Mahasattva Fu, Master Zhi and, yes, Emperor Wu — each of them, and all of them together, are presenting themselves with integrity.  And each is an aspect of who we ultimately are.

 

I really appreciate how Emperor Wu, or that seemingly clueless student in so many other koans, helps us see how easy it is slip into a frame of mind in which there’s something more to get, something special, and, by god, perhaps we’ve got it.

 

That frame of mind from which we may overlook our own haplessness and ignorance, and the opportunities presented by those features of life we experience as constraints, as barriers.

 

If, on the other hand, you happen to be someone who identifies with poor, picked upon Emperor Wu all too easily — well, good for you.

 

“Emperor Wu was astounded.”  What a wonderful response to this.

 

Not knowing is most intimate.

 

 

 

Dancing with Elephants

Jeff

 

This is an approximation of a Dharma talk I gave on February 27, 2014 at the Greater Boston Zen Center.  It’s a reflection on a passage written by Barry Magid about the Bodhisattva precepts in the Zen tradition that we’ve chosen to focus on in our mini, nonresidential version of an Ango retreat.

 

I’ve tracked the work of a very creative social psychologist named Jonathan Haidt for nearly 20 years.  His work strongly influenced my own when I was in graduate school and, later, teaching about transformation of conflicts involving identity dynamics and deeply-held values.

 

Much of Haidt’s early work was on moral psychology.  He’s since contributed to the research and literature on happiness and so-called “positive psychology.”

 

In one strand of Haidt’s research on the psychology of human morals, he created a series of hypotheticals like this.  Fasten your seat-belts:

 

Julie and Mark are brother and sister.  They are traveling together in France one summer vacation from college.  One night they are staying alone in a cabin near the beach.  They decided that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love.  At very least it would be a new experience for each of them.  Julie was already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe.  They both enjoy making love, but they decide not to do it again.  They keep that night as a special secret, which makes them fell closer to each other. 

 

After study participants read this hypothetical, Haidt asks them to respond to two questions:

 

Is this wrong?

 

If so, why?

 

Almost all study participants feel the conduct is wrong.  When asked why, they first say things like:

 

The siblings might conceive, and the child might even have birth defects. 

 

One might pass an STD to the other.

 

Their parents might learn what they’ve done, and they would be crushed.

 

They are too young.

 

There is some element of coercion.

 

This will contort their relationship, altering it for the worse.

 

As you can see, however, Haidt’s hypotheticals are carefully crafted to negate all possible negative consequences.  When Haidt points out to respondents that the consequences they fear cannot occur, many respond in exasperation, “I don’t know why it’s wrong; it just is.”

 

Haidt concludes from this line of his research and others that our morals, and so our perspectives and conduct, are strongly influenced by pre-cognitive reactions – here, disgust – and that we often construct rationales to justify these primary – and primal – reactions after-the-fact.  Our “lower” (or ancient) brain functions decide what is right and wrong, and then our “higher” (newer) brain functions, which enable functions like rational thought and language, “pretty up” the decisions, making them presentable to ourselves and other rational minds.

 

To be sure, Haidt is not trying to justify incest (nor am I), but he is exposing something about how our minds work, and the unseen problems that can flow from this (like discrimination against people who are different than us based upon pre-cognitive reactions).  The problem is that, for many of us, much of the time, our rational minds don’t quite grasp how things are working.

 

Haidt likens the situation to a rider on an elephant.  The elephant lumbers along, going where it will at its own pace, while the rider tugs busily on the reins, believing he is in control.  The rider is a bit like R2D2, constantly jabbering away as his CPU churns, having little influence on what’s happening.

 

Haidt grants that the rider does have an influence, but he believes the default balance of power between elephant and rider is roughly 90% elephant and 10% rider.

 

Haidt’s work on happiness and advice about how to find it draws upon his research on moral psychology and centers around two themes:  recognizing that there is an elephant; and helping rider and elephant get along and work well together.

 

Haidt maintains that the rider can increase its influence appreciably, to the mutual benefit of both rider and elephant.  Much of the trick here is helping the rider understand the elephant.

 

Haidt’s metaphor of the elephant and rider reminds me of the koan about an ox trying to pass through an open window (Case 38 in The Gateless Gate):

 

Wuzu Fayan said, “It is like an Ox that passes through a latticed window.  Its head, horns, and four legs all pass through. So, why can’t its tail also pass through?”

 

What is this tail that can’t pass through?  What are we to make of and do with this stuckness?

 

Interestingly, Haidt – who, so far as I know, is not a Buddhist – sees meditation as one of the most valuable ways to improve the relationship between rider and elephant.

 

Our lovely Ango reading from Barry Magid draws our attention to the fact that we are both rider and elephant.  We tend to experience our elephant-ness and rider-ness as oppositional forces.  Rider and elephant engaged in a constant wrestling match.  The rider trying desperately to bring the elephant down, to subdue it.  The better angels of our nature fighting the good fight against our demons.

 

There is something to be said for that perspective on the human condition, and human moral evolution.  I believe there is an arc of human progress – that, despite the atrocities, big and small, that still are occurring everywhere, humanity is more or less continually evolving the capacity to be kinder and gentler, and the world is being transformed for the better as we do.  (Read Steven Pinker’s latest book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, for 1,000 pages of insightful commentary on an elephantine body of quantitative data that supports this viewpoint.)  I believe that is ultimately what our Zen project is about.

 

Some of this progress no doubt has been achieved by wrestling a few elephants to the ground and restraining them there.  And, yet, we need to honor and thank the elephant for helping us survive to the point that it can be ridden, and for all it contributes to our lives today.

 

Star Trek’s Dr. Spock is all rider, no elephant.  Is that the life we desire?

 

Most of all, we need to see and understand the elephant as best we can.  There is wisdom in our elephant-ness.  The elephant can look clueless and heartless from the rider’s perspective, but that is not the whole story.  As riders, we must straddle our elephants securely as we reach for the stars.

 

The ride can be most gratifying for this elephant-rider duo, this elephant-and-rider one-o, when there is mutual respect between them.

 

Barry Magid shines a light on our elephant-ness and reminds us that true wholeness, that true wisdom, requires an appreciation of how our own and others’ elephant-ness is woven into the fabric of our individual and collective experience.   And how the deepest understanding and fullest, truest embodiment of the precepts demands this appreciation.

 

This definitely comports with my experience in every realm of life: relationships, work, even – and perhaps especially – religion/practice.

 

“We must come to terms with both sides of who we are,” he says.  “Practice will not lead us into a state of harmony by eliminating some aspect of who we are.”

 

If and as we seek peace with our elephants, we just might find that our elephants become more receptive and responsive to our wizened riders – though I would note, as I’m sure Barry Magid himself would, that practice won’t necessarily lead us into a constant state of harmony even if we embrace all aspects of who we are – or, rather, it may eventually awaken us to the harmony that’s always been there, but it won’t necessarily always feel pacific.

 

I’ll close with the lovely Mary Oliver poem titled Wild Geese:

 

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Remembering Mandela

Jeff

I never met Nelson Mandela, which I regret, because that probably would have been possible even just a few years ago. Mandela was one of the five Nobel Peace Laureates who gave the Peace Appeal Foundation its original mandate. That was late-1999/early-2000.

I became involved in late-2000, when Hannes Siebert, who served in the South African Peace Secretariat under Mandela, and was the driving force behind formation of the Peace Appeal, walked into our office at Groove Networks to request help tuning the product to his needs as the new external advisor to stakeholders in the peace process in Sri Lanka. After we sold Groove to Microsoft in 2005, I joined the Peace Appeal’s board.

We could have traveled to South Africa years earlier, when Mandela was in better health. It wasn’t possible to see him when we were there this March. He was too frail.

The Peace Appeal Foundation is a small part of Mandela’s legacy. He has certainly touched and influenced my life by helping launch it. I have heard Hannes say that he has devoted his life to Mandela and his legacy by committing himself completely to conflict resolution work (at considerable personal cost, in his case, I would add).

We sent a reflection on Mandela’s life to our supporters via email (copied below) and devoted our homepage to him.

The Power of Forgiveness:
Reflections on the Life and Legacy of Nelson Mandela

By Shirley Moulder and Derek Brown

A generation from now when parents, teachers, politicians and others seek to describe moral courage and distinguished leadership, there will be one person from their lifetimes whose name will rise to their lips: Nelson Mandela. There are very few true global heroes; Mandela was one.

Though millions across the globe have been awed and inspired by a man who chose reconciliation over revenge, moral leadership over personal gain, and justice over tyranny, Mandela was first and foremost a South African, whose dedication to his country has only been matched by his countrymen’s reverence and dedication to him.

In 1990, upon his release after 27 years of imprisonment, Mandela gave a speech in Cape Town demonstrating the qualities that would cement his reputation. He concluded his speech with the same words which he spoke at his own trial in 1964:

“I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Mandela thankfully lived, leading his country in one of the 20th century’s most profound political transformations. In the process he has become an icon to much of the world for his statesmanship, his dignity, his tolerance and ability to forgive, and his commitment to non-violent political change.

His status as a global hero is all the more remarkable in our media obsessed age, where leaders are subject to intense scrutiny of their personal lives, not just their political careers. No statesman or woman today has enjoyed the near uniformity of approval which was bestowed on Mandela.

Despite this seemingly heavy burden of respect, Mandela wore the label of hero lightly. He took the limelight when it was necessary, but was happiest when stepping back to let others take the lead. He often described himself as just “a country boy.” Those who worked with him spoke of his ability to identify what was needed and to pursue it with single minded determination. In his post-presidential years, he was a tireless advocate for children’s education, devoting much of his time to raising funds for new schools and education programs throughout South Africa and the world.

The most important legacy of Nelson Mandela, in his life as well as in his death, may well be his remarkable ability to bring parties of all persuasions together, ultimately transcending the deepest divisions, suspicions and even hatred – a skill which only grows in importance in our world.

His cohort of political activists, many of whom were defendants with him at the time of the Rivonia Trial in 1964, represented a multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-religious panoply of South Africa; black, white, Asian, Xhosa, Zulu, Jewish, Muslim, Christian. Following his release from jail, this cohort was transformed into a remarkable coalition that included representatives of the government which imprisoned him – a coalition that brought a post-apartheid, democratic South Africa into being.

Mandela’s ability to work across political divides in South Africa would have warranted him a special place in history by itself. Yet it was his extraordinary ability to inspire and connect with people that vaulted him into the rarest pantheon of global statesmen and women. One of his many acts of political genius and moral leadership was portrayed in the movie “Invictus.” When racial divisions still threatened the dream of a united South Africa, Mandela donned the captain’s jersey of the South Africa’s newly minted world champion Springboks rugby team, and walked onto the field post-game – amidst thousands of white fans, many waving the nationalist flag of 1928 – to present the trophy to the team. With this simple act, he managed to win over millions of skeptical white South Africans to the cause of a new, multi-racial and democratic South Africa.

Even in these past months of his declining health, he brought unity amid diversity in his nation. Across South Africa, from the Johannesburg to Mandela’s ancestral home community of Qunu in the Eastern Cape, people have publicly honored the man many call “Madiba” (his ancestral clan name), or simply “Tata” or father. In the all-white Afrikaner community of Orania in South Africa’s Northern Cape province (home until her death of Betsie Verwoed, widow the former Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoed who was architect of the apartheid system), the community began praying for Mandela daily this past summer.

The collective reverence that has gripped most of South Africa these past months, and indeed much of the world, comes at a time when tremendous political divisions threaten to divide the country. (Less than 12 months ago, the cover of the Economist magazine featured South Africa with the cautionary heading “Cry, the beloved country” raising questions about South Africa’s political and economic leadership). These challenges serve as a reminder that the South African national journey will be an ongoing project as it seeks to fulfill the vision that Mandela so tirelessly pursued.

The highest honor we can pay this extraordinary man, whether we are citizens of South Africa, the United States or elsewhere in our world, is to renew a commitment to his vision of democratic and free societies in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. Let Mandela’s dream live on.

The authors, based in Johannesburg and Charlottesville, Virginia, are board members of the Peace Appeal Foundation, founded in 1999 with the support of five Nobel Peace Laureates, including Nelson Mandela,
F.W. de Klerk and Desmond Tutu.

Healing Myself

Jeff

This is an approximation of a Dharma talk I gave at the Greater Boston Zen Center on Tuesday, November 12, 2013.

 

Healing myself and others, I vow to save all beings.

— from the Bodhisattva Precepts (BoWZ shorter version)

 

 

 

Sometimes a word or phrase will jump out at me as we chant or recite it during the liturgical portion of our service.  One word or phrase seems elevated above the rest, like a sonic bubble bursting through the surface of awareness.

 

This happened recently when we were reciting the shorter version of the Bodhisattva Precepts.  The phrase “healing myself” leaped out.

 

“Healing myself and others, I vow to save all beings.”

 

I’ve held this phrase as a little koan during the weeks since.  As a pebble in my palm.

 

How is it that we heal ourselves by vowing and working to save others?  How is it that we save others as we do this?

 

It seems fair to say that we’re conditioned to think of ourselves as separate beings, and that this gives rise to a fair amount of psychological (and, by extension, possible physical) suffering.

 

There no doubt are many practical benefits – physical, psychic and social – that flow from a strong self-sense.  We are embodied in a realm in which all is constantly in flux – where things, including us, come into being, cease to exist, and change states between those two moments.  Where we inevitably experience harm and loss between our coming into being and our ceasing to exist.  We’re no doubt programmed for protection of the skin bag that we are during this brief life, and this self-sense seems to be part of that program.

 

This program is only part of the picture, however, and yet it tends to monopolize our attention.  For many of us, it is the overwhelmingly dominant perspective.

 

Despite the fact that many Asian cultures are considered to be, and likely are, more communally-oriented than US and European cultures, this sense of psychic, even cosmic, isolation seems to be a pervasive feature of human experience.  Buddhism, with its many forms of antidote to this experience – its many ways to help us open our eyes, minds, hearts, arms and hands to the reality that we are and always have been thoroughly part of it all – arose from and has thrived in the cultures of Asia, after all.

 

In reality, though we are distinct, we are not separate.

 

The kind of suffering that the Buddha, and all teachers that have followed him, experienced and diagnosed and developed an approach to alleviating is the suffering we experience when we don’t genuinely feel – don’t know in our bones, know beyond knowing – that we are truly part of it all.

 

All in.

 

One common dictionary definition of the word “heal” is to “make whole.” I heal myself as I become whole.

 

From the Buddhist perspective, whole really means everything – the whole universe, the whole shebang.  From the farthest reaches of space-time to the poodle in your lap.  The stuff we understand and the stuff we may never understand conceptually, but which we stand under and stand in and embody, whether or not we’re capable of wrapping our minds around it.

 

All right here.  All me.

Sure, we can’t both ride that bike at the same time.  We have to develop wise and compassionate norms about how to produce and allocate and consume resources, and we have to develop wise and compassionate norms about treatment of beings in all the ways we are distinct in our not-separateness.

This is all part of what it means to be whole, personally and collectively.

But the not-separate orientation seems to be harder for many of us than managing our distinctiveness, our individual existence (hard as that is).

 

Zen has many resources for helping us realize and lean into our not-separateness, among them:  zazen, in which we practice just being here, nothing more, nothing less; the teachings; our liturgy, in which we move together and become a chorus; koan practice, in which we join with a teacher and the many teachers of old to discover something for ourselves, and for all beings, in one of the lovely, often quirky stories that have been preserved and passed to us; and service opportunities.

 

So how does all this heal each of us and heal others?

 

As I age, and as I continue to sink into Zen practice and let it sink into me, I feel more and more insignificant, I must say.

 

What a relief!

 

Imagining ourselves as somehow capable of standing outside of or above it all, looking for that place or believing you’ve found it – well, that’s a very fragile way to go through life.

 

On an individual level, we’re healed by coming to know we’re in the soup.  We’re part of this whole mess, this whole beautiful, wondrous mess.  By aligning our perspective, our plans, and our actions with that reality.

 

And, yes, others are saved in the process.

 

This notion of saving others used to grate on me somewhat.  In this culture, notions of religious salvation and efforts to save others smacks of proselytizing in order to save others from the devil in this life and beyond.  It also can sound filled with hubris, like “Here I come!  Zen Superman to the rescue of all of humanity!”

 

But there are more nuanced ways to think about how our practice may be saving others:

 

Saved from our delusions that cast others as characters in our own private dramas.

 

Saved from the tendency to view and treat people instrumentally if we unconsciously or consciously, subtly or not-so-subtly regard ourselves as masters of the universe, rather than part of the chorus that is the universe.

 

Saved from what happens when we check out:  loss of the contributions we’re capable of making.

 

Saved by the reduction in harmful conduct that tends to come with orienting our lives in accordance with the realization that we are part of it all.

 

Saved by the generosity and compassion and skillful service that can flow from that orientation.

 

I now see this notion of healing – of wholeness and integration – as a key to understanding and living all of the precepts.  Each of the other precepts offers a specific perspective on and guidance in what it means to be healed and whole in a particular domain of life.

 

We are here, in this zendo now, to heal ourselves and one another.  To enact and honor our wholeness.

 

Our inescapable wholeness.

 

It’s lovely to be here with you, to be part of it all with you.

 

 

A koan about religious tolerance (or is it?)

Jeff

 

About a year ago, we changed the way we work with koans in BoWZ.  Rather than skipping over koans that appear again in later collections, a student now must work with them multiple times.

 

I’m currently working with Case 65 in the Blue Cliff Record.  In John Tarrant’s and Joan Sutherland’s as-yet unpublished translation of the BCR, which James Ford shared with me, the koan is titled “A Philosopher Questions the Buddha.”  This koan appears earlier in our progression as case 32 in The Gateless Gate.

 

Here it is:

 

An outsider asked the World-Honored One, “I do not ask for the spoken; I do not ask for the unspoken.” The World-Honored One just sat still. The outsider praised him, saying, “The World-Honored One with his great compassion and mercy has opened the clouds of my delusion and enabled me to enter the Way.” He then made bows and took his leave.

 

Ananda asked, “What did that outsider realize to make him praise you?”

 

The World-Honored One said, “He is like the fine horse who runs even at the shadow of a whip.”

 

This koan is very interesting to me at the moment for two reasons.

 

First, having passed through it quickly before, I stumbled on it this time.  I read it the morning I expected to present it to Josh in dokusan, then again that evening, just before we began to sit.  In other words, I hadn’t really stepped into it – entered it, and allowed it to enter me – and so my presentation of it in dokuan was off-the-mark, and I didn’t pass through it.

 

This is a really good reminder that we do not realize something unless we realize it in the moment, even if we’ve realized it before.

 

This is one way in which we can see the wisdom of working with a koan multiple times.

 

Second, this is a powerful, early example of religious tolerance in Buddhism.  I’m not sure this feature of the koan really hit me the first time around – and so we see another way in which there’s wisdom in working with a koan multiple times.

 

The World-Honored One is the historical Buddha, of course.  Ananda was one of the Buddha’s most senior and respected followers.  The Zen tradition regards him as the second Indian patriarch, just one step removed from the Buddha in the (at some points likely mythological) line of transmission that includes all living and departed Zen teachers.

 

The outsider in this koan was not a follower of the Buddha, not part of the clan.  In another translation, the koan is titled “A Hindu Questions the Buddha.”  Perhaps this “outsider” stood within the major religious stream within India then, as now.

 

This outsider clearly gets it, and Ananda, one of the Buddha’s most senior disciples, clearly doesn’t.  (Ananda apparently came to his realization very late in life, but he was revered for his big heart and incredible memory.  He is credited with preservation of many of the Buddha’s key teachings.)  The fact that an “outsider” gets it is clearly fine from the Buddha’s perspective.  In yet another translation, the Buddha is said to have been “respectful for a long time” after this man’s opening remark.

 

(What does the outsider realize?  We all need to realize that for ourselves, of course.)

 

This case seems to me to be making a point about religion and religious boundaries, in addition to other points it’s making.  This is the purpose of identifying the Buddha’s interlocutor as an outsider (or a Hindu).  Otherwise, why not just start the koan “A man asked the World-Honored One . . .”?

 

Note that there’s a fourth character in this koan, the narrator (and a fifth, you or me).

 

The narrator ushers us into “insider vs. outsider” mode almost imperceptibly.  It’s so seemingly natural to label people according to their traits, views, and social groups.

 

But is this really a koan about religious tolerance?

 

The Buddha doesn’t seem to see this guy through a “my religion, your religion” lens, as the narrator of the koan apparently does (or else playfully entices us to do).

 

Jesus was not the first Christian, as they say, and here we seem to be seeing that the Buddha was not the first Buddhist.

 

For the Buddha, this apparently was just an encounter with another human being who saw what he saw.

 

No religion here, and so no religious tolerance either, one could say.

 

Just a genuine encounter.  Presence.

 

Appreciation without labels.

 

Appreciation whatever the labels.

 

Don’t Separate from this Skin-Bag Here and Now

Jeff

This is an approximation of a Dharma talk I gave last night at the Greater Boston Zen Center.

 

These are the final lines of Shitou Xiqian’s lovely poem, Song of the Grass-Roof Hermitage, which is sometimes part of our liturgy:

 

If you want to know the undying person in the hut,

don’t separate from this skin-bag here and now.

 

Many of us come to Zen practice with this nagging sense that there must be more to life than this.  There must be more to me than this.

 

There’s something missing.

 

And so we go looking for it.  The undying person in the hut.

 

“Dukkha,” the key word in the first of the Buddha’s four noble truths, is typically translated into English as “suffering.”

 

But it’s apparently a richly nuanced word in Pali, and the physical suffering caused by hunger or a broken bone doesn’t capture its full meaning.

 

It includes this sense of uneasiness about who we are and about this life we’re living.

 

Somehow this isn’t the real deal, the whole story, we feel.

 

It seems quite significant to me that Siddhartha Gautama chose to call attention to the fact that we have this sense of something being amiss as the first point in his first public, spoken sermon.

 

That the first thing he wants to say to us is that we should take note of and investigate this sense of uneasiness.

 

This sense of absence is so present for many of us.  It drives so much of our thought, speech and action.

 

And yet many of us never truly get close to it, get to know it.  We push it away, and so it pushes us around.

 

It seems the human heart and psyche, like nature, abhor a vacuum, real or perceived.

 

So we try to fill the vacuum.

 

Taking up the Zen path can be great way to begin to get up close and personal with this uneasiness.

 

And we also may use it to fill the vacuum for a while.

 

Much earnest practice.

 

Much reading.

 

Much speculation.

 

All with a goal in mind.

 

Much searching for a way out of our discomfort, a way into an imagined better state.

 

Like the historical Buddha before him, Shitou Xiqian is telling us in his lovely poem that this sense of something amiss might itself be a fertile place to begin to look for that which fills the void we perceive.

 

The undying person we seek is no other than this skin-bag that’s looking for the undying person.

 

The skin-bag having this experience of something missing is the path, Shitou tells us, and here and now is the entry point, the trailhead.

 

He tells us not to separate from this skin-bag, which obviously implies that this is what we’re often trying to do.

 

This practice ultimately is about inhabiting this skin-bag.

 

Becoming at home in our own skin.

 

This includes our greed, anger and ignorance.  Getting to know them; seeing how they arise for us.

 

Our aversions.

 

Our anxieties.

 

Our rough edges.

 

Even the really uncomfortable stuff.

 

Biases we discern in our thoughts, words, and actions.

 

The things we’ve said or done in the past that we just know have royally and irreversibly screwed up our lives.

 

Our bodily characteristics, and limitations.  Let’s not neglect the fact that this skin-bag is a body.

 

All the stuff we try to separate from.

 

All of it, opportunities.

 

Invitations.

 

Dharma gates.

 

Opportunities for growth, perhaps.

 

Invitations to work compassionately to right a wrong, perhaps.

 

Gates into new territory; the sense of absence a gate into a deepened sense of presence, perhaps.

 

I have long been haunted and inspired and called by a line at the end of another favorite poem, this one by the romantic poet Rainer Maria Rilke.  You can take or leave the theistic perspective.

 

Rilke’s poem ends:

 

For the god wants to know himself in you.

 

What if it’s true?

 

What if what you’re experiencing right now, and this week, and in this life, truly is god’s gift to the world, so to speak, and the world’s gift to you?

 

Not in some grandiose sense, but in the sense that your life is just as it should be – which is to say, the only way it can be, which is just as it actually is right now.

 

That feeling of absence a part of it, and a prompt, perhaps, an invitation.

 

What if the universe really does want to know itself in you?

 

Will you let it?

 

How might we meet this moment from that orientation?

 

How might we meet others as the universe wanting to know itself in them, too?