Talk Notes:
Hi Everyone,
- nice to be back from the Oregon trip
- Raizelah training, me visiting 7 Zen Centers and often getting to have a meal and a conversation with the teacher
- Struck by the incredible devotion and commitment
- All of these places own their buildings now, some for a while, some like us quite recently and all with major remodels involving tons of sangha work. Sangha have bought old churches, barns, industrial brown fields, houses, and converted them into thriving Zen centers. It's wonderful to see, highly recommended. Talk to me for recommendations. I'll tell more stories as we go along.
- Deep conversations with teachers and seeing how things are done slightly differently but with a common flavor of depth and care was clarifying to me, reminding me to focus on my deepest intentions and our collective project here of awakening (so easy to get lost in the details and to-dos and little bits of friction and confusion in a human undertaking)
- One teacher asked me straight up, "What's your vow?"
- I got a little tongue tied but it was helpful to spend some time with this and realize that my vow is to provide space and support for us to heal and transform.
- I chose those two words very deliberately I think what we're doing has two big overlapping directions in it.
- Path of Healing
- Path of Transformation
- Zen's magic is it's incredible depth in the Path of Transformation - why it caught on so powerfully in the west. (And sadly it's losing relevance in Japan)
- But if only transformation is offered it becomes inaccessible because our psychological selves find it harsh, maybe even abusive as it's most extreme. Uncompromising is a positive way of describing that quality.
- We also need healing. We're all traumatized in various ways, we all need love, we all need positive attachment and reassurance that we're okay.
- And yet, only healing without transformation leaves us in the endless realm of samsara. The self that needs reassurance needs it continuously and infinitely, it will never be fully reassured. That's baked into the system of the conditioned small self.
- When it really works like we see portrayed in the Zen stories, the process of practice and the incisive comments and wise antics of the Zen masters help us wake up from the need for constant reassurance. Sometimes the trigger that clarifies after years of practice is a sound or a vision, maybe something in nature. Sometimes it's an interaction that helps us make the radical shift in perspective where suddenly we see we're radically okay and the need for reassurance is completely empty.
- For all of this to work we need to be really committed, each of us, to taking responsibility for our own minds. This is the essential ingredient.
- That as best we can when we get ruffled or feel demeaned or not seen or whatever it is that triggers those need unmet needs in us we take a step back. We notice the mind rushing to defend and fix. How should I tell him that the way he brought this is up isn't very respectful? "How do I prevent myself from ever feeling this way again," in other words.
- The first step is always awareness and then a discernment about which path we are able to tred in that moment.
- Awareness: "wow look at that deep need in me, can I feel it, see it, acknowledge it?"
- Sometimes awareness itself is quite healing and in that healing a tiny little step of transformation, a slight reduction in clinging and need. And that's all that's needed.
- Sometimes we realize, this is powerful, I am really suffering, this is too much for me. And we see we need healing. We ask for support. We look for the wise way to do so. We try not to complain but to engage with what we need. And sure, maybe it's possible to kindly ask whomever triggered us if they could please say the thing in another way because that's what my conditioned self needs, would that be okay?
- But other times a small but strong step on the kinhin path of transformation is possible. We take a breath, we feel the body and the emotions more deeply and clearly, we see "this is suffering, this is the cause of suffering, release is possible" and somehow we release the energy. We don't plant a new seed of annoyance or depreciation or fear. Simple restraint it a powerful step. And sometimes some kind of turning happens - we see the pattern in a new way or we feel the emptiness of reactivity.
- This all sounds very cognitive it's also felt, intuited, and even something we can pray for.
- Continuing the project of looking at the chants in the Sutra book.
- Thank Kanho Chris for an in depth exploration of the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi - wonderful spirit there of exploration and intimacy, not just try to figure stuff out. So wise. And the enthusiastic energy she brings is a great model for us all.
- Our core text, chanted the most at all Zen centers, is the Heart Sutra as you know and if you really want to geek out there are recordings of the 7 talks I gave on it.
- As emptiness is the key to transformation. The way it helps us hold our conditioning more lightly. That even the worst upset is as solid as a cloud in it's real nature. Powerful yes, but only when seen through that frame. Sometimes we can can shift to the frame of emptiness and all of it's perceived weight vanishes.
- But boy is that a hard text to make sense of!
- So right after we chant it we usually chant a totally different sounding text, the Hymn to the Perfection of Wisdom.
- Let's chant it now.
- This text is a chapter of the Heart Sutra's mama. The first Perfection of Wisdom sutra composed around 100 B.C.E. called in Sanskrit the Ashtasāhasrikā (ashta-sah-ha-ri-kah) which actually means "The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines" - although it's not lines exactly, but 8,000 Sanskrit verses.
- Later on the pundits who wrote this literature made longer, and longer versions of this literature. 25,000 lines. 100,000 lines! Exploring in their way the path of transformation and healing - with a strong emphasis on transformation, on the empty nature of all that is.
- And then, it seems, they realized they gone a little far and they wrote shorter versions. The most famous of which are the Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra.
- Here's a little excerpt of the typical language in this literature just to give you a flavor of it - please just let this wash over you. I won't pause to explain anything ;)
- Most of this sutra is a dialog between the Buddha and his two disciples Shariputra and Subhuti. And you might recall that the Heart Sutra is similar although the Buddha in meditation inspires Shariputra to ask Avalokitsevara about his practice and the dialog is between the two of them with pretty much just Avalokitesvara's answer as the text.
- [first half-ish of Conze p. 97]
- And then eventually we get to chapter 7 of the 32 chapters and the sutra breaks out in enthusiasm and pivots to the path of healing.
- What we chant is an edited version of what Dr. Edward Conze translated looks like. His translation, published in 1972, remains the standard but I did find a revised edition from Dr Richard Babcock who teaches as the Tibetan Buddhist seminar in Portland, Maitripa College which I'll share with you:
Chapter vii babcock trans
Veneration towards perfection of wisdom polishes away obscurities, revealing light, O Lord. I pay homage to perfection of wisdom! She is worthy of homage. She is unstained, and thus entire worlds along with complete systems cannot stain her. Regardless whether viewed from, in or as absolute unification, beings come to reveal her as spontaneous source of light, having dispelled any limitations, and things of any triple worlds. Holding her in supreme reverence leads beings away from blinding darkness caused by defilements and wrong views. As this is her nature, we find shelter. Most excellent is her impartial abiding. Within us she is revealed as cause to seek the safety of wings of enlightenment. Realization of her brings light to the blind. Our being is permeated by her light so all fear and distress may be forsaken within her revelation. Veneration of her aquires the five eyes, and shows this path to all beings. She herself is an organ of vision. Her knowledge disperses the gloom and darkness of delusion. She does nothing about all dharmas. She becomes the path and guide any who have strayed on to an obscure road. She is identical with all-knowledge. She never produces any dharma because she cast off any residues relating to both kinds of coverings, these produced by defilements and these produced by any thing whatsoever. She does not stop any dharma, herself unstopped and unproduced...is this perfection of wisdom. She is mother of the Bodhisattvas, on account of emptiness of own mark. As the donor of the jewel of all Buddha-dharmas she brings about the ten powers (of a Buddha). She cannot be crushed. She protects the unprotected with the help of the four grounds of self-confidence. She is the antidote to birth-and-death. She reveals this clear knowingness of the true nature of any own-being of all dharmas, for she does not stray away from it. The perfection of wisdom of Buddhas, the Lords, sets in motion this wheel of Dharma.
A little less chantable but the same idea.
So what do we have here? Well it seems like we have a prayer doesn't it! Not only is Prajna Paramita a subtle philosophical point that totally reinvents who we and our universe are it's also a wonderful being whom we can call on with veneration and joy. Similar to calling on Avalokitesvara for compassion and support we can call on Prajna Paramita as "her" for wisdom, clarity, and total stability and freedom from fear!
Someone was talking to me about how important prayer is to him and how little it's talked about in Zen. They do talk about prayer a lot in Tibetan Buddhism it seems like, but not in Zen. And it can sound jarring to Western Zen students because of the trauma many have experiences through Judeo-Christian religion. So many survivors of all kinds of manipulation and abuse perpetrated by Church leaders and clergy, from mild and utterly horrible, are among us. And the path of healing is I hope laid out before us for those who need it.
And also maybe we can reclaim prayer a little. I was thinking about a time when Norman brought up prayer during a retreat and at least one person complained to me about it later. That's not Zen.
And then oddly the computer gods brought up my notes from 2007 when Norman said that. Here's his suggested prayer for us:
Please help me Buddha*.
Give me strength to know myself, to understand and accept my limitations.
Help me be honest with myself and with others.
Help me to see myself and others with a generous eye.
Help me to forgive myself.
Help me to forgive others.
Open my heart.
Bring me peace.
Give me health and strength for the journey, and what I need to sustain my life.
Inspire me so that I might inspire others.
And above all, help me to be grateful for my life, to love myself and others, and to do whatever I can every day - however small it may be - to help.
*(or Kwan Yin, Tara, Prajna Paramita, etc.)
What I want to suggest is that in some mysterious way the practice of prayer bridges these two intertwined paths of healing and transformation. Healing is obvious: calling for help, please help me heal, but the transformational beyond-our-knowing aspect is there to: who are we calling to? Celestial Bodhisattvas, embodiments of wisdom and compassion - calling to what's beyond our knowing and generating trust in a world beyond the world of concepts and conditioning and interpersonal needs and so on.
May it be so.
