Bodhidharma Pacifies the Mind

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Sunrise Sit on August 14, 2024. A recording follows the text.

This is Case 41 in The Gateless Gate:

Bodhidhama faced the wall. The Second Ancestor stood in the snow, cut off his arm, and said, “Your disciple’s mind has no peace yet. I beg you, Master, please put it to rest.”

Bodhidharma said, “Bring me your mind, and I will put it to rest.”

The Second Ancestor said, “I have searched for my mind, but I cannot find it.”

 Bodhidharma said, “I have completely put it to rest for you.”

I want to speak briefly about meditation practice this morning—about the nuts and bolts of it. The nuts and bolts of meditation practice and the struggles to use them early on that most of us experience point to deeper truths we may discover through our practice.

Bodhidharma is regarded as our first Zen ancestor, as you know. He is said to have brought Buddhism from India to China. His student, Huike, is the Second Ancestor—the second in the line of six early teachers from which the Zen tradition developed.

Huike’s state of mind is troubled as he meets Bodhidharma and asks for help. He’s seeking peace of mind. Huike is so troubled he cuts off his arm, or so the story goes.

Many of us come to Zen practice similarly troubled. We may not be so disturbed that we’re ready to sever a limb, but we do aim to cut off certain streams of thought or psychological or emotional experiences that are agitating us.

And many of us imagine that’s the point of meditation practice. Though experienced practitioners tell us otherwise, we think quieting the mind means stopping thought and other mental experience. Certainly it must at least mean developing perfect concertation; stopping the mind from wandering at all during meditation. Right?

So we set our mind to controlling our mind. But this project is doomed to fail. The state of mind, and the understanding of mind, that we bring to practice initially can’t find its way out of the box it creates. 

Our narrow sense of self, our narrow conception of mind, is about achieving seeming safety—perhaps even about achieving certain real and legitimate forms of safety—by seemingly gaining control of our environment and our experience within it.

But the liberation we ultimately seek, the peace of mind we crave, requires giving up the quest for ultimate personal control. We must give up the pretense of being the center of the universe to experience ourselves centered in the universe. We must open the hand of thought, as Uchiyama Rōshi put it.

As we settle into practice, we’re likely to notice our mental activity attempting to direct our mental activity toward reduced mental activity. That type of noticing is very significant, though it’s often followed at first by further mental activity that’s critical of our mental activity that was trying to direct our mental activity toward reduced mental activity.

Another subtle form of noticing is noticing how we try to control the breath during meditation. Noticing that can be a doorway to liberation. We may realize the breath is doing fine on its own, without our efforts to control it. Then we may simply open the hand of thought and experience the breath rising and falling.

If we can do that, perhaps then we begin to notice the breeze rising and falling, the seasons coming and going, now liberated from the pretense that we can and must control our environment and experience. We can participate. Our participation is an influence, but total personal control is a fantasy. 

Meditation teaches us to meditate. Meditation teaches us to live. To participate. To know we’re a part of it all, to accept our part, to take part.

Meditation helps us align our personal state of mind with the active stillness of Great Mind, which is what it means to find peace of mind. We discover we’re not separate, and never were separate, from all that is, no matter what’s arising in and around us.

Our sense of in and around, of me and all else, becomes more permeable. We discover ourselves and all else as mysteriously and matter-of-factly distinct but not separate.

Nothing Twice

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit on July 17, 2024. A recording follows the text.

This is a translation of “Nothing Twice” by the late Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska:

Nothing happens twice,
Nor will it ever. For this reason,
We were born without proficiency,
And will all die without routine.

Though we be the most obtuse
Pupils in the school of this world,
We will never be held back to repeat
A single winter or summer.

No day will be repeated;
There is no such thing as two similar nights,
Two identical kisses,
Two equivalent gazes into someone’s eyes.

Yesterday, when your name
Was said by someone as I chanced to overhear,
I suddenly felt as if a rose
Had fallen in through an open window.

Today, when we are together,
I’ve turned my face toward the wall.
A rose? What does a rose look like?
Is it a flower? Or perhaps a stone?

Why are you, O evil hour,
Thus admixed with needless fear?
You are — and therefore you must pass.
You will pass — and therefore you are beautiful.

Smiling, in a mutual embrace,
We will try to find accord,
Although we are as different from one another
As two drops of pure water.

Our group meets most days. Follows the same routine. Bows. Bells. Chants we chant again and again. Sitting still in the same posture as before. Rehearsing familiar forms. Talks and dialogue on familiar themes.

All this seeming sameness is a call to awaken to the reality of nothing twice.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus tells us no one can step in the same river twice, because it’s not the same river and we’re not the same person. We can take his thought further: no one can step in the same river once.

What is “this river”? What is “once”? Useful constructions, but constructions, nonetheless. All impermanent. Nothing ultimately graspable.

Dōgen equated ungraspable activity with Buddha nature, with emptiness, with realization.

From not one perspective, the perspective of our everyday perspective, ceaseless, ungraspable activity. From not another perspective, absolute stillness. 

Just this not one, not two perspective.

Nothing happens twice,
Nor will it ever. For this reason,
We were born without proficiency,
And will all die without routine.

Though we be the most obtuse
Pupils in the school of this world,
We will never be held back to repeat
A single winter or summer.

No day will be repeated;
There is no such thing as two similar nights,
Two identical kisses,
Two equivalent gazes into someone’s eyes.

Yesterday, when your name
Was said by someone as I chanced to overhear,
I suddenly felt as if a rose
Had fallen in through an open window.

Today, when we are together,
I’ve turned my face toward the wall.
A rose? What does a rose look like?
Is it a flower? Or perhaps a stone?

Why are you, O evil hour,
Thus admixed with needless fear?
You are — and therefore you must pass.
You will pass — and therefore you are beautiful.

Smiling, in a mutual embrace,
We will try to find accord,
Although we are as different from one another
As two drops of pure water.

The Evening Gatha

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen evening sit on July 11, 2024. A recording follows the text.

This is the Evening Gatha we’ll hear chanted in half an hour or so:

Let me respectfully remind you:

Life and death are of supreme importance.

Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost.

Each of us should strive to awake

Awaken! Take heed:

This night your days are diminished by one. 

Do not squander your life.

I turned 62 yesterday. That’s not so very old, I suppose, yet it’s not so very young, either. It’s the average age at which people retire. I’m now eligible for social security, as one of my younger brothers reminded me. It means AARP has been pestering me to join for over a decade now. It seems my progressive lens prescription got much stronger in my annual eye exam last week.

I’m in that age range when many of us develop an increasing sense of our mortality. I’m not talking about awareness that I could die any moment, which is a fact each of us lives with always. I’ve been aware of that for a very long time, having witnessed a couple of terrible accidents. I’m talking about an awareness that my days are numbered even if I live to a ripe old age. That awareness has grown more slowly from an abstraction to a felt reality, primarily over the last couple of years.

I thought it would be fitting to reflect on the Evening Gatha having just passed this milestone. We don’t know the precise origin of this gatha. (The word “gatha” comes from a Sanskrit root meaning to “sing or chant or recite,” by the way. Gatha is a generic word for verses or prayers we chant or recite.) We know the Evening Gatha was used in Huangbo’s lineage in 9th century China. We meet Huangbo in several koans. He was the teacher of Linji, to whom today’s Rinzai Zen tradition is traced. So the Evening Gatha probably is about 1,100 years old.

In Japanese monasteries and temples, it’s inscribed on the han, the wooden sounding board that’s struck to call people to meditation practice, just as we use it on sesshin. It’s recited by the person striking the han, which is different than our practice of reciting it as we close the day’s last practice period.

The Evening Gatha reminds us of our mortality, like the Five Rememberances and other Buddhist teachings. This isn’t morbid. It’s a call to be fully present to this fleeting life we’re living. There’s contemporary support for this ancient wisdom: Research that shows awareness of our mortality is lurking in our subconscious, making us anxious. Making us cling to our tribes and their dogmas, fearful of and biased toward others. But this same research shows that reminders of our own mortality make us more open and charitable; less inclined toward prejudice.

Let’s look at the Evening Gatha bit by bit:

Let me respectfully remind you . . .

Zen is a path of remembering and forgetting. We must remember; awaken from our slumber, our dullness.

And then we must forget. We can regard the awakened state as something too special. As we begin to awaken, it becomes the object of the very obsessive self-consciousness that typifies the dull state. That’s making enlightenment something personal; something we possess. 

We need to forget that, so we can remember the rose petals and the scent of jasmine tea. As the Taoist sage Chuang Tzu said, “when the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten.”

. . . life and death are of supreme importance.

Indeed, though I’d prefer to say birth and death are of supreme importance, because it’s all Life, as the Zen teacher Mel Weitsman said as he was dying.

Time swiftly passes by, and opportunity is lost.

Many of us have things we want to do that we’re not doing. Things that feel core to who we are. We bypass or defer them for many reasons, some of them valid, like genuine practical constraints, but many of them questionable, like others’ expectations of us, fear of failure, or fear of success. Systematic surveys of those close to death suggest that not having done what feels most true to us is a common regret.

There’s no rewind button for life. Yet we can get stuck in a state of regret, missing opportunities we still have to adjust course and do what we still can do.

Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken!

Each of us should strive to awaken to this “one wild and precious life,” as Mary Oliver called it in her poem The Summer Day, and to answer the question she puts to us at the end of it:

            Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

            Tell me, what is it you plan to do

            with your one wild and precious life?

Take heed! This night your days are diminished by one.

My days are numbered even if I live to a ripe old age. Yours, too. If you don’t yet live with that awareness, strive to develop it! Not an anxious, morbid awareness of impermanence, but a vital and vitalizing awareness of it. This is one purpose and one of the greatest gifts of our practice.

Do not squander your life.

We can squander our lives in a relative sense, but from the perspective of the Absolute your life can’t be squandered. Still, as Rilke wrote, the God—or the Universe—wants to know itself in you. 

Does the Universe know itself in you? Do you know yourself as the Universe knowing itself? If so, there can be no deep regrets. Even if you didn’t get to walk the career path you might have preferred or to hike every field and valley you dreamed of hiking, you found the Way.

Approaching the Precepts from the Intrinsic Perspective

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Sunrise Sit on June 28, 2024. A recording follows the text.

These are the first two of Bodhidharma’s Pure Mind Precepts as translated by Taizan Maezumi Roshi and reprinted in Nancy Mujo Baker Roshi’s book on the Zen Precepts, Opening to Oneness:

Non-killing

Self-nature is subtle and mysterious. In the realm of the everlasting Dharma, not giving rise to the idea of killing is called the Precept of Non-killing.

Non-stealing

Self-nature is subtle and mysterious. In the realm of the unattainable Dharma, not arousing the thought of gain is called the Precept of Non-stealing.

This list goes on, as you know. There are ten so-called Grave Precepts.

In Zen we approach our Bodhisattva Precepts from three distinct perspectives: the literal (or fundamental) perspective, the relational perspective, and the intrinsic perspective.

The literal perspective means just don’t do it. Don’t kill.

The relational perspective is about considering context. The time, place, people, and purposes this moment presents and suggests. The relational perspective recognizes that a situation sometimes presents a confrontation among multiple right values. We must make a hard decision or even a tragic tradeoff, in which we deeply regret some expected outcomes of our actions even as we act to produce expected outcomes we hope will be beneficial.

These two perspectives are universal in the realm of ethics. We find them in ethical traditions throughout the world. As Baker Roshi explains, both the literal and relational perspectives are what we call relative perspectives in Zen, because, on their own, they’re dualistic. On their own, they take separateness as a given, even as they may try to promote greater cohesion.

The intrinsic perspective is unique to Zen, or at least it was first and is most developed within Zen. It’s why Bodhidharma and Dogen express the Ten Grave Precepts as non-killing, non-stealing, and so on, rather than not killing, not stealing, and so forth.

The intrinsic perspective is not relative in the Zen sense; separateness is not its starting point. It’s the view from the Absolute. There can be no killing from the intrinsic perspective because both birth and death are Life, however death may occur. There can be no stealing because, throughout space and time, there is no loss or gain.

But how do we make the intrinsic perspective more than an abstract idea? What could it mean as a matter of experience and as a guide to action? Practically speaking, we can approach moral decisions through the intrinsic perspective in at least two ways.

Let me make that concrete with an example. I recently had an extended conversation with a close friend. At one point this friend veered in the direction of critiquing the conduct of someone else we know. I felt a tug to affirm what I’d just heard, and I did so, even amplifying it a bit. This exchange didn’t last long. We didn’t pile on the absent party. But we clearly were praising our view and conduct and criticizing the other person’s view and conduct.

From a literal perspective some might say we had violated the precept of non-blaming others and elevating oneself. How might viewing a situation like this from an intrinsic perspective inform one’s response when a conversation partner begins to lead one in this direction?

I find it helpful to do the following two things:

First, to remind myself about the intrinsic perspective. The literal and relational perspectives are more familiar. I don’t know about you, but they often spring to mind readily, and in that order, when I sense a drift into murky ethical waters. Almost at once, discomfort arises or the thought “Don’t” flashes. That’s followed by a weighing of contextual considerations; by analysis from the relational pespective.

Sometimes we can get stuck there, paralyzed or maybe just treading water. I often find it helpful when this happens to remind myself that, intrinsically, from the perspective of the Absolute, no one and nothing is ever elevated; nothing in the Universe is higher or lower. Doing this, it’s easier just to witness what’s arising in and around me, to be spacious and curious about it, including the tug I feel to participate in the critique my friend has invited.

Second, as Baker Roshi recommends, I look at the side of me that does want to elevate itself; to boast, sometimes at others’ expense. I accept that part of myself as non-judgmentally as I can. As I do this, underlying basic human needs often become apparent. The need to be liked and loved by others. To be connected. The need for self-esteem. Even the need for self-actualization, in part by living my highest values. The need to clarify for myself and others what right conduct looks like and doesn’t look like.

Doing these two things helps cast the view from the other two perspectives in a new light.

The view from the intrinsic perspective helps me hold the literal perspective with a lighter touch. If we only view a situation from the literal perspective, our judgments and/or the ways they’re expressed through our words and actions may be too harsh. When I can see the killer, the stealer, and the boaster in myself, it becomes harder to relate and respond to others’ conduct in a polarized way, because I can see how it also may be directed toward the satisfaction of basic human needs—needs I share and am trying to satisfy in my own way. I may see another’s actions as misdirected—but misdirected toward satisfaction of some legitimate need. From the intrinsic perspective, I know I’m not above it all, because there is no above. I’m in the stew with others.

The intrinsic perspective also helps me judge myself less harshly when, in retrospect, some decision I’ve made in good faith from the relational perspective, or even from the literal perspective, doesn’t look so good in retrospect. I may have considered the choice as best I could in the moment, but, in retrospect, not made the best choice I could have made. Viewing this from an intrinsic perspective, I can trust that I won’t be ejected from the Universe. And being gentler on myself in this way may make it easier to apologize and make amends and may help me be easier on others more generally.

Let me hasten to add that the intrinsic perspective can’t be separated from the literal and relational perspectives either. If we think we’re approaching a moral question from the intrinsic perspective, but if we are merely doing so intellectually, in our heads, we get anything-goes moral relativism. If we think we’re approaching a moral question based upon the supposed profundity of our personal insight—if we are overly-assured about the depth of our realization and its integration—we may well be acting out of deluded grandiosity and cause harm.

The Absolute and relative, the intrinsic perspective on the precepts and the two relative perspectives on them, are one, after all.

The Zen Boddhisattva Precepts as Form and Formation

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen evening sit on Thursday, June 7th. A recording follows the text.

We’ll begin a study group on the Zen Boddhisattva Precepts later this month, so I thought I’d talk tonight about the precepts and how we think about and practice them. 

The 16 precepts we chanted earlier this evening evolved from the Vinaya, the oldest and smallest of the three sections of the Pali Canon, which are the early Buddhist scriptures.  Dōgen crafted the version we chanted tonight.  Our Zen Boddhisattva Precepts derive, in part, from the Vinaya and the much longer sets of vows based upon the Vinaya that Buddhist monastics in traditions other than Zen are required to make.  Depending upon what part of the Buddhist world you are in; whether you are, say, a Theravadan or Tibetan Buddhist; and whether you are male or female, you will make somewhere between about 225 and nearly 360 vows as a Buddhist monastic in traditions other than Zen.

Each of these long sets of monastic vows used in other Buddhist traditions includes familiar prohibitions of things humans throughout space and time have regarded as serious moral lapses, like murder and stealing.  Each also includes many things that, today, we would consider to be a matter of personal choice, like eating meat, even if most of us would acknowledge there are weighty moral issues attending that choice. 

As you might expect with such long lists of vows, each contains some prohibitions many of us today would see as antiquated, or needlessly formalistic, or perhaps too wrapped up in a rigid purity ethic, maybe even performative virtue signaling.  There’s a prohibition on touching money in the monastic vows of other Buddhist traditions that some of us might see that way.

There’s a whole lot of lore about how the Vinaya developed.  As with many things about early Buddhism, it’s a bit hard to separate myth from history.  According to the lore, the sangha—which meant the community of Shakyamuni Buddha’s followers who “left home” to take up a celibate, monastic life with him—functioned quite well without rules for over a decade.   As the community grew larger, more diverse, and more dispersed, however, challenges and conflicts arose.  The Buddha apparently decided it was necessary to begin formulating norms that would help guide and regulate personal conduct and communal life.

It’s said Jesus didn’t start Christianity, and I suppose something like that can be said about Shakyamuni Buddha and Buddhism.  Shakyamuni didn’t use the term Buddhism for the religion he’s said to have founded.  He called it Dhamma-Vinaya.  That’s Dhamma-hyphen-Vinaya; one word.  Dhamma can be translated as truth, and Vinaya as discipline.  The Buddha seems to have been saying the truth he wanted people to know is realized and manifested through the Vinaya, or moral discipline.

The Buddha did indeed speak of a higher truth, or a deeper reality, and he encouraged a practice, meditation, that could help us know it as more than an idea.  But it seems he also came to regard a set of moral principles and practices, or disciplines, as the truest, embodied expression of this higher truth, this deeper reality.  He seems to have increasingly come to regard the Buddhist path as fundamentally about character development; about development of both the character of the individual practitioner and the character of the community. 

A line in the Vinaya reads, “Though the Buddha’s discourses (sutra) and advanced doctrines (abhidharma) may be forgotten so long as the vinaya still exists the Buddha’s teachings yet endure.”  Sutras, doctrines, and Vinaya are the three categories of teachings in the Pali Canon, so this passage is telling us that the moral virtues and principles attributed to the Buddha are the heart of his teaching.

So why do we only have 16 precepts in Zen when other streams of Buddhism have hundreds?  The first of our Precepts are the Three Treasures, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.  If we don’t count them, we’re left with only 13 precepts.  Three of those 13 are the so-called Pure Precepts, which are very general:  I vow to cease from evil.  I vow to practice good.  I vow to save all beings.  This leaves only 10 very specific precepts, like not lying and not misusing sex.  These 10 are known as the Grave Precepts.

There’s a longer story here, but I think it’s fair to say Zen has only 16 precepts because of changing times and life patterns.  Even in Dōgen’s day, there was an increasing number of people who couldn’t or didn’t want to live as monastics but who did want to live an intentional way of life.  And, even in Dōgen’s day, there were questions about whether certain formalisms really added anything meaningful to monastic life.  There had been a lot of questioning of all this in Japan around the time Dōgen lived, within streams of Buddhism that arrived and developed there before he brought the precursor to Soto Zen from China.  Dōgen himself had a hard time finding monasteries in China that would accept him, because he hadn’t taken the long list of vows most monks there took.

It does seem like there’s a purity ethic and needless formalism in many of the ancient monastic vows.  But I’m conscious of the fact that I’m reading them from a 21st century, Western cultural perspective.  Life was very different for people throughout Asia long ago, and it’s still very different than our lives in many parts of the world for some people who seek refuge in Buddhism.

What’s clear, however, is that the vows Buddhists take, whether many or few, are about cultivating a good life, individually and together.  The Vinaya was developed because early Buddhists were concerned their community was disintegrating.  We could say the precepts developed to resist the force of entropy operating in individual psyches and in the early Buddhist community.  They continue to serve this function today.

The precepts are one of our most cherished forms.  And they’re a form that is very much about personal and collective formation.  When we bake a cake, we don’t pour the batter onto a borderless cookie sheet and let it harden into a random blob.  We pour it into a mold that gives it a satisfying shape.  The Zen Boddhisattva Precepts developed over centuries as our ancestors learned from experience and were able to articulate a spare set of principles that help give our lives a satisfying shape.

But the precepts and our relationship to them are more dynamic than this metaphor suggests.  When we use the word “form” in Zen, it almost immediately evokes the word “emptiness.”  It’s too easy to thingify the words form and emptiness and regard them as binaries, even if we also say that form and emptiness are one. 

But what does it really mean to say form and emptiness are one?  It means they’re not things and they don’t create a binary.  It means yin and yang are always co-creating and interpenetrating each other; always dancing. 

So let’s not think of a precept as a static form and embrace it only in a strict, literal sense.  That is one essential way to relate to the precepts, as we’ll discuss in our study group.  Yet Zen also approaches the precepts from other, more nuanced perspectives, as we’ll see.  The deepest meaning of the precepts is realized as we live with, through, and as them in the ever newly unfolding experiences of our lives.

Enlightenment is Nothing Personal

Jeff

I gave this talk on May 1, 2024, during our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit. A recording follows.

This is part of the Zen teacher Reb Anderson’s guidance to us on shikantaza, which is included in our Sutra Book:

Zazen does not prefer success over failure, or enlightenment over delusion. If we are enlightened, we sit still in the middle of enlightenment, with no preference for it. If we are deluded, we sit still in the middle of delusion, with no aversion to it. This is the Buddha’s zazen.

Zazen practice is selfless. The goal of zazen is the liberation of all living beings from suffering, but the goal is exactly the same as the practice. In realizing this goal, one becomes free of self-concern and person al gain; and becoming free of self-concern and personal gain actualizes the goal. Nevertheless, zazen’s an initiatory awareness: it opens the door to a full understanding of how self and other dependently co-produce each other. This is the samadhi of all Buddhas.

The meaning of zazen, the enlightenment and liberation of all living beings, is not brought forth by the power of personal effort, and is not brought forth by the power of some other. Zazen doesn’t start when we start making effort, doesn’t stop when we stop.

We can’t do it by ourselves, and nobody else can do it for us.

Enlightenment is nothing personal. Many of us come to spiritual practice seeking to attain something personally, but sincere practice will simply help us come to see what’s present everywhere and always.

Yes, this increased clarity of perception may well feel preferable to the experience that preceded it—much like when we’re sitting in the optometrist’s chair and she flips to the lenses that give us 20/20 vision. I’m having a personal experience, but 20/20 vision isn’t especially for me, any more than sunlight or fresh air is especially for me. The signals riding the airwaves to which I tune in when I switch on my radio aren’t especially for me. I’m just tuning into them now. Others also are tuning in, enjoying the music.

If and as I deeply realize that the enlightenment of Buddha, of the universe, of all beings, is nothing personal, then in a certain sense, I realize my life also is nothing personal. My life is the universe’s life, the Buddha’s life. My life is life in and as the universe, in and as Buddha.

From the un-attuned perspective Buddhism calls delusion—which also and equally is a feature of the universe’s enlightenment, the Buddha’s enlightenment—what I’m saying may sound rather scary. The so-called deluded perspective very much wants enlightenment to be something personal; something extra special it can attain, contain, and cling to, even as it professes a desire to release itself into it. What we realize through practice is that each of us is an ordinary sort of special—and equally so. As we realize this, experientially, in our bones, not as an idea, personal experience is transformed into something at once intimately personal and nothing personal.

As I was about to begin preparing this talk I walked into our kitchen, in bare feet, to get something from a cabinet. I stepped into a patch of salt left on the floor, and it felt rather gross. Someone had filled a saltshaker or measured salt for a recipe on the counter beneath this cabinet and spilled some on the floor.

My first impulse was to ask whoever made the mess to clean it up. But I paused and thought, well, perhaps that someone was me and I didn’t notice or had forgotten. And even if it wasn’t me, it was me, because I’m part of it all. It’s nothing personal, I thought, then swept up the salt.

This felt like right conduct for me in the moment. I’m often advocating personal responsibility and accountability in our family, perhaps moralizing a bit too much about that at times. Personal responsibility and accountability are important, but for me the universe’s teaching in the moment was to approach the salt on the floor from a different perspective. Nothing personal.

Fran said something to me about koan practice at sesshin that has stuck with me, and which applies to every element of our practice, I think. She said koan work reduces the distance between subject and object. Notice she didn’t say it eliminates the distance between subject and object. Nonduality encompasses duality. They mysteriously co-create each other; are one and the same. Not one, not two.

We exist in subject-hyphen-object relationship. Subject and object without a hyphen implies existential separation. The opposite of separation is fusion, I suppose, and it would imply the complete merger and disappearance of subject and object. We and all else exist as subject-hyphen-object.

Better yet, we exist as connected subjects. The shift in perception we’re talking about, the attunement to the universe’s enlightenment, is mature, abiding awareness of our existence as a connected subject in an enlivened realm full of subjects.

My life is distinct, but not separate. We’re all jewels in Indra’s Net. Enlightenment is a property inherent in the net, not one some of its elements have and others don’t. Some elements may be relatively more awake, or tuned in, to their enlightened nature; others, less so.

But, truly, enlightenment is nothing personal.

Sesshin Encouragement Talk

Jeff

I gave this short encouragement talk on April 27, 2024, deep into our recent sesshin. For context, see Wu-men’s comment and verse on Case 2 in The Gateless Gate in my prior post.

A young monk approaches a teacher with a question.  That teacher, now an old man, approaches a teacher with the same question.  The first teacher gets it wrong.  The second teacher gets it right.

How can we know who and what to trust?  On which teacher and teachings can we rely?

It may seem one error, one misstep, one misguided response, will deny us what we’re seeking.  The life for which we’re longing.  One misstep and we’ll forever remain hostage in the lesser life we know we’re living.

This very life is our teacher.  Its teaching?  No lesser or higher life.  One Life.  Just this life.

You may think you’re not worthy of this life, or perhaps that your life lacks worth.  

You are worthy, and this life, your life, has worth.  

You can’t be banished from the universe in any event.

Yes, our thoughts, words, and conduct have consequences.  Yes, we should intend and do our best. We should aspire to grow in wisdom and compassion.

But the universe embraces us even when our thoughts, words, and conduct fall short of our aspirations.  And even when we learn, sometimes the hard way, that what we were aspiring for ultimately isn’t the best thing we could aspire for.  The universe embraces us even as our thoughts, words, and conduct produce undesirable consequences.  

Life is offering its teaching to us everywhere and always.  Life is the teacher and the teaching we’re seeking.  

Sesshin is an opportunity for each of us to be taught by life.  To pay particularly close attention to life’s teaching.

Life’s teaching often presents itself in small packages.  An opportunity to practice our forms with a present heart-mind; with loving care.  To extend a small courtesy.  To notice the morning light dancing on the floor.  To notice the light warming the floor warming our feet.  To notice that kinhin and washing the dishes are meditation practice.  To notice the riotous calls of the geese bidding us good morning and good night.

I hope our shared life together on this sesshin has been and will continue to be a great teacher for each of us.

Pai-chang’s Fox

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen sesshin on April 26, 2024. A recording follows.

This is Case 2 in The Gateless Gate, with it We-men’s verse and comment:

Once when Pai-chang gave a series of talks, a certain old man was always there listening
together with the monks. When they left, he would leave too. One day, however, he remained
behind. Pai-chang asked him, “Who are you, standing here before me?”

The old man replied, “I am not a human being. In the far distant past, in the time of
Kāśyapa Buddha, I was head priest at this mountain. One day a monk asked me, ‘Does an
enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?’ I replied, ‘Such a person does
not fall under the law of cause and effect.’ With this I was reborn five hundred times as a fox.
Please say a turning word for me and release me from the body of a fox.”

He then asked Pai-chang, “Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and
effect or not?”

Pai-chang said, “Such a person does not evade the law of cause and effect.”
Hearing this, the old man immediately was enlightened. Making his bows he said, “I am
released from the body of a fox. The body is on the other side of this mountain. I wish to make a
request of you. Please, Abbot, perform my funeral as for a priest.”

Pai-chang had a head monk strike the signal board and inform the assembly that after the
noon meal there would be a funeral service for a priest. The monks talked about this in wonder.
“All of us are well. There is no one in the morgue. What does the teacher mean?”After the meal, Pai-chang led the monks to the foot of a rock on the far side of the mountain.

And there, with his staff, he poked out the body of a dead fox. He then performed the ceremony
of cremation. That evening he took the high seat before his assembly and told the monks the
whole story.

Huang-po stepped forward and said, “As you say, the old man missed the turning word and
was reborn as a fox five hundred times. What if he had given the right answer each time he was
asked a question—what would have happened then?”

Pai-chang said, “Just step up here closer, and I’ll tell you.” Huang-po went up to Pai-chang
and slapped him in the face.

Pai-chang clapped his hands and laughed, saying, “I thought the Barbarian had a red
beard, but here is a red-bearded Barbarian.”

WU-MEN’S COMMENT
“Not falling under the law of cause and effect.” Why should this prompt five hundred lives as a
fox? “Not evading the law of cause and effect.” Why should this prompt a return to human life?
If you have the single eye of realization, you will appreciate how old Pai-chang lived five
hundred lives as a fox as lives of grace.

WU-MEN’S VERSE
Not falling, not evading—
two faces of the same die.
Not evading, not falling—
a thousand mistakes, ten thousand mistakes.

Old.  Young.

Teacher.  Monk.

Human.  Animal.

Enlightened. Unenlightened.

Subject to the law of cause and effect.  Not subject to the law of cause and effect.

Trapped.  Released.

Alive.  Dead.

High.  Low.

Right,  Wrong.

These are some of the dualisms on display in this cherished and curious koan.  It presents a seeming thicket of dualisms.

There are other dualisms lurking in the thicket, connecting all the others: 

Searching.  Finding.

One.  Two.

This is the second koan in the first koan collection most Zen practitioners encounter.  It follows Mu.  There’s a logic to that.  It’s ordinary to feel trapped by dualisms.  To get lost in them.  This koan meets many of us right where we’re at when we encounter it.

It’s also ordinary eventually to begin to doubt and contest dualisms.  And to discover through our doubt and questioning that they’re not as solid and confining as we believed they were.  

And yet, it’s also ordinary eventually to begin to doubt and contest the boundaryless-ness, the radical Oneness, the absoluteness of the Absolute that we might experience if we reach a point in our spiritual journey where we feel splendidly awash in bliss and insight.  If we think abiding in Oneness is a separate place or state to which we can escape.

When the old man in our koan was high priest at this monastery, another monk asked him what it’s like to be enlightened.  “Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?”  “No,” responded the priest from his highness.  

The head priest’s response betrays more than a touch of spiritual pride.  And it tells us the peak he thinks he’s reached isn’t the real peak.  The peakless peak.

Viewed from the peakless peak, we discover that many of our dualisms cannot be dissolved completely.  And that they don’t need to be.  That we’re not trapped by them.  We can liberate them and find our liberty within them.  

It’s ordinary to get lost in dualisms.  

It’s ordinary to feel constrained by them.  

It’s ordinary to contest them and discover some are permeable to some degree.  

And yet, it’s ordinary eventually to reapproach and reclaim them, differently now, in transformed relationship to them.  

This seems to be the arc of our spiritual journey.

Here’s a personal example: The God-No God, Theist-Atheist dualism.

As I transitioned from the theistic perspective of my Roman Catholic youth and early adulthood to what I now consider a nontheistic perspective, there was a long period during which I reacted very negatively to God talk.  I had a visceral, negative reaction to it, as if fingernails were moving slowly down some cosmic blackboard.

Something has shifted since then.  God talk isn’t the religious idiom that feels most resonant to me, but I don’t feel a need to stand in opposition to it as I did for a time years ago.  Some of it resonates for me today, or at least provokes and inspires me.

I love the 12th century German mystic Meister Eckhart, for example.  He said things like, “Woulds’t thou be holy?  Do not yelp about God,” and “Pray God that we may lose God for the sake of finding God.”  Whatever God is to a given theist, I sure hope God isn’t an idea.

In both Chinese and Japanese mythology, the fox is often seen as a mischevious and wise and shapeshifting character.  A bit like us as we grow and change.  As we revolve and evolve.

Pai-chang’s turning words released the old man from the body of the fox, which was found dead outside the monastery and received a proper burial.  

Trapped.  Released.

Alive.  Dead.

As Wu-men’s comment tells us, the old man who asked Pai-chang for some turning words, and so also the former high priest, were none other than Pai-chang himself (and you and me, of course).

Fact.  Fiction.

“If you have the single eye of realization,” Wu-men says, “you will appreciate how old Pai-chang lived five hundred lives as a fox as lives of grace.”

The “release” we experience on the Zen path is not the release into formlessness a younger Pai-chang imagined.  A cosmic “get out of jail free” card.  It’s a transformation; literally, a new relationship to form, not detachment from it.

Perhaps we step on the path as a human who sees humans as more worthy than foxes—and so-called enlightened humans as more worthy than so-called unenlightened humans.  If and as we continue to walk this path and let it to transform us, we’re likely to become a human who knows humans aren’t more worthy than foxes—because we are that fox.  We will know this even as we strike a fox with a stick to stop it from sinking its rabid teeth into a child’s forearm—or maybe even kill it to protect that child.

We’ll become an enlightened person who knows enlightenment is nothing personal.  That sages and fools are equally enlightened.

I love how this koan ends.  Being lost in the thicket of dualisms can feel so heavy.  Many koans have a slapstick quality, and this one pivots in that direction as it ends.  Huang-po’s slap, and Pai-chang’s laugh, sum up this teaching nicely.

May each of us live our five hundred lives as lives of grace.  Live them, and hold life, with a loving, light touch.

On Anger, War and Famine in Gaza, and Reversing Vicious Cycles

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit on April 10, 2024. A recording follows the text.

This is an excerpt from a sutra in the Pali Canon:

Monks, there are these three kinds of persons found existing in the world.  What three?  The person who is like a line etched in stone; the person who is like a line etched in the ground; and the person who is like a line etched in water.

And what kind of person is like a line etched in stone?  Here, some person often gets angry, and his anger persists for a long time.  Just as a line etched in stone is not quickly erased by the wind and water but persists for a long time, so too, some person often gets angry, and his anger persists for a long time.  This is called the person who is like a line etched in stone.

And what kind of person is like a line etched in the ground?  Here, some person often gets angry, but his anger does not persist for a long time.  Just as a line etched in the ground is quickly erased by the wind and water and does not persist for a long time, so too, some person often gets angry, but his anger does not persist for a long time. This is called the person who is like a line etched in the ground.

And what kind of person is like a line etched in water? Here, some person, even when spoken to roughly and harshly, in disagreeable ways, remains on friendly terms with his antagonist, mingles with him, and greets him.  Just as a line etched in water quickly disappears and does not persist for a long time, so too, some person, even when spoken to roughly and harshly, in disagreeable ways, remains on friendly terms with his antagonist, mingles with him, and greets him.  This is called the person who is like a line etched in water.

These, monks, are the three kinds of persons found existing in the world.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a very hard time watching the news lately.  I ate dinner alone in front of the TV the other night.  I could barely manage to nourish myself after seeing images of kids in Gaza dying of starvation.

For so many, their spirits, and now their bodies, have been utterly crushed.  Today is the beginning of Eid al Fitr, the feast marking the end of Ramadan.  There traditionally are celebrations after prayers—prayers in which Muslims pray for peace and mercy.  Like us, they also pray for the wellbeing of all beings.  It’s hard to imagine these prayers and these celebrations in the midst of what Muslims in Gaza and Muslims the world over are experiencing.

It’s so sad that we repeatedly enact these cycles of violence.  It so often seems one person’s or group’s spirits get activated and elevated in an angry way to crush another person’s spirits in response to some real or perceived offense.  That prompts those who’ve been harmed to retaliate.  The vicious cycle goes on and on.

It seems Gautama Siddhartha often was asked by monks in his community, and by others he met, how to deal with anger and conflict.  To be honest, some of his guidance seems a bit too demanding and idealistic to me; unlikely to be accepted and practiced by most people.  In one sutra, for example, he admonished his monks to be tranquil even if someone “were to sever you savagely limb by limb with a two-handed saw.”

To be fair, the Buddha was talking to monks in his community when he said this—advanced practitioners, we might say—and he likely was pointing toward what the Zen tradition later came to call the Absolute: the radical emptiness that escapes everyday sensible awareness for most people most of the time.  The perspective from which there is only non-killing.  The perspective from which “my” life isn’t really “mine.”  From which there is no isolated me and mine; only Life (with a capital L) and, whatever I am, I am one with Life in life (with a small l) and in death.  

From the absolute perspective, there is no birth and death, only Life.  If only we could all grasp this, I imagine the Buddha is saying with this provocative example, perhaps nonviolence, nonkilling, would become the norm from a relative, sensible perspective, too. 

Still, the teaching I read a moment ago seems more approachable for most of us, so perhaps better to emphasize.  Perhaps if each of us can progressively shift from being a person who is more like soft ground than stone, and then from one who is more like water than soft ground, we have some hope of reversing the vicious cycles to which we contribute.  To sparking virtuous interpersonal and cultural cycles in which our hearts are less and less inclined toward violence of any form, to any degree.

So, let’s continue to let our practice soften us.

Precariousness or Suffering: Will the Real Noble Truths Please Stand Up?

Jeff


I gave this talk yesterday at our Full Moon Zen Thursday evening sit. A recording follows the text.

This is a passage from the Pali Canon:

Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.

Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: it is this craving which leads to re-becoming accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for becoming, craving for disbecoming.

Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering: it is the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving, the giving up and relinquishing of it, freedom from it, non-reliance on it.

Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering: it is this noble eightfold path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.

These, of course, are the Four Noble Truths Shakyamuni Buddha is said to have shared in his first talk after his awakening experience. So very familiar to us, they obviously focus on the fact of suffering, its cause, the possibility of ending it, and a method for ending it.

A few weeks ago I read an article by Jonathan Gold, a scholar of Buddhism, that asks if the Buddha truly said “suffering” in this sermon. He reconsiders what the Buddha meant if he used a different word, “precarious,” instead of “suffering.”

This isn’t Gold’s idea. It was first proposed by the linguist Christopher Beckwith, who noted that a Greek Philosopher called Phyrro of Elis heard the Four Noble Truths and other Buddhist teachings in oral tradition long before the Sanskrit and Pali word “dukkha” was recorded in the early Buddhist scriptures. Dukkha is the word we translate as suffering.

Phyrro traveled to India in the 4th century B.C.E. with Alexander the Great’s army. The first Buddhist scriptures were written about 300 years later. Phyrro’s much earlier writings that were influenced by his encounter with Buddhism use precarious, not suffering.

Gold’s article examines multiple Buddhist texts, substituting “precarious” wherever “suffering” appears. He thinks this resolves many questions generations of scholars have had about the Buddha’s supposed use of the word “suffering.” I won’t try to summarize all his examples, but here’s one:

Scholars wonder why the Buddha would say the whole of life is suffering when so many of our experiences are pleasant: eating ice cream, holding a baby, smelling the roses. We might feel a sense of loss when these experiences end, but does that mean we were suffering during them? Buddhist teachers have been glossing over this and other problems with the word suffering forever or making rather contorted arguments to dispense with them.

But it’s not so hard to accept the notion that the pleasant experience of holding a baby is precarious, in the sense that it won’t last or that this little love ball might puke in my face while I’m holding her. Pleasant experiences sometimes turn unpleasant. Even when they don’t, they end.

If we substitute “precarious” for “suffering” in the Four Noble Truths, I imagine we get something like this:

One:

Life seems precarious.

Two:

Maybe what makes life seem precarious isn’t so much the obvious fact of impermanence, but the way we tend to respond to it: compulsively chasing after or trying to cling to experiences we find pleasant and compulsively avoiding or trying to push away experiences we find uncomfortable.

Three:

We can end, or at least dial way down, this feeling that we’re riding a rollercoaster with our eyes closed, alternately wishing it would end or begging for more.

Four:

We do that, well, by doing. By orienting differently in and to life. The Buddha embraced eight specific perspectives and practices he found helpful. He thought we might find them helpful, too.

Here’s another way to say the same thing, drawn from modern research on how our minds work, rather than the Buddha’s ancient personal experiment. When focusing on a task, like feeding a baby or washing the dishes, you can either have what researchers call a “state orientation” or what they call an “action orientation.”

If you have a state orientation, you’re focusing primarily on yourself: Do I feel prepared? Does the baby like me? The dishwater feels cold. What if I screw this up?

If you have an action orientation, you’re focused on the task itself, without concern for your emotional or physical state. You’d flinch and do something about it if the baby puked or the water were scalding hot, but you’re not obsessing about that possibility.

You won’t be surprised to hear people with an action orientation are more successful at whatever they’re doing. And I also doubt you’ll be surprised to hear this notion generalizes to the whole of life. If we go around chasing states, constantly asking ourselves whether we’re happy, that’s a recipe for unhappiness.

The Buddha apparently spent years chasing a blissful state. Many of us enter this path looking for a state of existence or nonexistence that feels more reliably pleasant; less precarious. The insights and guidance the Buddha ultimately offered seem more about how to set our intentions and act, and about not separating from our experience, whatever our state.

Perhaps ironically, we tend to find the stability we’re seeking by unifying with the shifting ground of experience, being and doing without fuss.