Talk Notes:
So a colleague in the Kuan Um school - the Western Zen that derives from Korean Soen (their word for Zen) - sent a poem in the email that struck me deeply.
The Human Route - Naong Hyegeun (懶翁惠勤/慧勤, 1320–1376)
Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed
that is human.
When you are born, where do you come from?
When you die, where do you go?
Life is like a floating cloud which appears.
Death is like a floating cloud which disappears.
The floating cloud itself originally does not exist.
Life and death, coming and going are also like that.
But there is one thing which always remains clear.
It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.
Then, what is the one pure and clear thing?
This is about emptiness of course. The true freedom on not being stuck on anything. Not being reactive to anything. Like a floating cloud. Boy Zen poetry and Zen koans can really help us feel into this possibility that's beyond our usual way of thinking about what she said or what he did and why they shouldn't have said that because of these 3 reasons. The churning of samsara.
The teachings of form and emptiness really do matter. They matter every moment of every day. These aren't just interesting toys to play with when we're studying a Dharma text. They matter to the very core of who we think we are and what we think this world is. They are absolutely the key to freedom in suffering and freedom from suffering. And it's easy for them to drift away from our awareness as they are indeed....just clouds drifting by. These pointers to the empty nature of all appearances.
How do we practice with emptiness? How do we hold these teachings close? One time when I was complaining about a kind of low level suffering dragging me along told me, "oh you should study emptiness." But how?
The practice of sesshin can do two important things in the exploration of form and emptiness that compliment each other but it's not always so easy, that's for sure.
One thing sesshin does is is actually intensifies the relative world. Our interactions with our thoughts and each other can be much stronger and more powerful.
Mostly as we attempt to practice in silence the times people do speak, or write us a note which is the same thing really, those words ring loud and can have even more impact than when. Someone makes a suggestion or gives us a correction and it can ring so LOUD. We can have a reaction for hours - days - years.
Sitting a lot does an interesting mix of things too: settles us down and also softens us. We're more grounded but also more vulnerable in sesshin. Less guarded. More open. More fully human you could say.
One time at Samish summer sesshin I was running doing my leader doing-it-all thing. And I was concerned about something in the dining hall - I forget what the issues was - some area where I felt "people" - "the sangha" - weren't paying enough attention to something. Some bit of noise or chaos. So I made an announcement. I don't think it was noise with the silverware and bowls but let's use that as an example. "Please remember to be mindful and quite with your silverware." I'm sure I was careful to deliver that announcement in a calm voice, with a smile in my voice (maybe a partially forced smile) - trying for that "hey friends, let's go a little deeper into the practice together, it'll be great!" tone. But I was actually a bit reactive and annoyed so I'm sure that leaked in too.
The other thing about Samish in past years is I was usually working too hard. Usually a bit exhausted. Wanting so badly for sesshin to be wonderful and deep and powerful for everyone. I'm sure pleasing Norman was in there somewhere but I don't remember ever having that thought exactly. The point being that I was usually a big ragged and that makes me vulnerable.
So I usually had that going on on top of the intensification and softening of identity and boundaries that sesshin brings.
Anyway then I went to check my notes. This was back when there were a LOT of notes often so I'm reading through them and one of them stopped me cold. It said something like, "Sometimes less is more. Please: can we have fewer announcements?"
It was unsigned.
And it hit me to the core. I felt deeply, deeply criticized. My inner unworthiness came racing forward like a freight train. I was literally puddle. I found a friend and we went to a dokusan room together during the break and I just sobbed and sobbed and talked and talked and grieved and raged and released this enormous amount of energy - far more than anything really just to do with this little note. It's unusual for me to find a friend to cry with who isn't my romantic partner so that was notable and important for me too: that you can lean on Dharma friends that strongly.
So I was initially caught in the relative world there big time. That note was hurtful. The words on it were powerful. They were triggering. Especially as it first washed over me I felt belittled and disrespected. Thoughts around like: "don't they know how HARD I'm working? How hard I'm trying to make this sesshin better for everyone!?" There was blame and pushing back in my relative mind.
But as I sunk into it it dropped below that petty way of thinking into pure pain. The pain of relationship. The pain of being a person. The pain of the world. The pain of the deep conditioning I, and so many, carry about around a kind of fundamental unworthiness. It went from something to fight to something to feel. And with the loving support of my friend I think I went deeper into those kinds of feelings than I ever had.
It took a few days I think actually before I was on the other side of this. I remember making what I intended at first to be a kind of fierce request for more kindness and signing the damn notes at the next work circle but it really came out as teary and vulnerable. I don't remember the words I said but the feeling ended up being more like: "hey I'm a vulnerable human please be loving in your communication with me so I don't fall apart here."
But somehow in the process of that whole thing my appreciation for the absolute, for emptiness, did deepen. And it's not a rational or rationalizing kind of thing. I'm not talking about staying closer to an idea like, "well the person writing that note meant the best for the sesshin too, I should appreciate that" - it's more like seeing that everything that's happening in this human relative world is just a swirl of energy rising and falling, ebbing and flowing. That there is no blame or shame in the fabric of the universe - that's something we add and it sure makes us suffer. That we invented communication and it confuses us so deeply. That it's a marvel that a few squiggled on a page can send us into deep suffering - what's that about?? They are just squiggles actually! That an argument with someone is no different from a great blue heron or a blade of grade or a breeze. That it all comes and goes, rises and falls, endlessly and forever and that we can appreciate all of this and ride the waves instead of being so tumbled in them.
So in the end I'm grateful for my anonymous note writer. They provided a trigger for some deep work. It wasn't easy. And, goodness knows, listening to Juriki's talk: real learning growth is rarely easy. But it was one of many things that's helped me become more resilient in the relative world and more open to the absolute.
The other process that helps us to appreciate emptiness has to do with the senses. We operate way too much and way too often in our thinking minds. Buddhism sees the consciousness that's into the thinking biz as one of 6 basic consciousnesses. The other 5 are our usual 5 senses. And in though our minds are deeply layered and complex there's also a singular quality of attention. We're consciously attending to just one thing at a time and we have some choice there. What do I choose to pay attention to know? Do I attend to the thoughts of how so-and-so wounded me with their words or I do I attend to the sky, or the breeze, or a bird flowing by (a bird! an animal that somehow evolved so it could fly through the air?? what?!). And what we attend to are the building blocks of the relative world we're constantly constructing and revising and tinkering with. So we can simply add fewer anxious mental inputs by learning to tune into the rest of this wondrous world all around us and less to our thinking, thinking, thinking.
Sesshin sure helps with this!! The quiet. The downtime without the option to distract yourself with your phone or a book or talking. Being in a beautiful place - and 2509 Cedarwood is a pretty nice place actually. And I'm so grateful the trail to Squalicum Beach is right here. But really all places have beauty and depth. There are always many life forms before us. The sky is always above us. The atmosphere is always up there showing us fascinating clouds of all shapes. I've had many powerful experiences during sesshin of seeing and hearing and feeling what's around us. I bet you have too. I was just remembering this one time I was gazing at a Douglas Fir in the dim November rain at Loon Lake where Mountain Rain used to have their sesshin. I somehow could really and truly feel and see the aliveness of the tree and I couldn't fear my eyes away for a long time. It was so intimate. And isn't that a fine building block to have when my mind does it's relative world construction: intimacy with trees, and by extension with all beings.
And people too: can we open our sense with those around us. Not just perceiving the tired old image of what we expect that person to look like, how we expect them to move, and what we expect them to say - but really taking in how they are actually are. A magnificent Buddha right in front of us. What a blessing.
And as we pay more attention to tuning in we can sometimes notice how very convincing our habituated perceptions are. This seems to go down to the neurological level: the brain isn't always sendings us processed images from our optic nerves, why do the extra work if you already know what you're going to see - instead the brain can send you an image from the archives - that's easier, takes less energy. I had this on Friday morning. Raizelah and I were arriving on our bikes and I expected Seishin, Juriki, and Dana to pull up in Seishin's car. I'd already visualized that this was going to happen. Then it did: Seishin's car pulled up. I saw it roll in as I walked across the parking lot. And then after we were all inside I was confused about why Juriki and Dana are here. So I asked Juriki how come Seishin lent them his car, where was Seishin. Juriki was a little confused: uh, that's Dana's car and it was just the two of us. He was kind too: kind of similar looking cars.
But later I looked. Seishin has a light blue Ford Fiesta and Dana has a dark blue Suburu - a Forester I think. These two cars do not look the same at all!
It wasn't that I was mistaken actually. I remember clearly what I saw. I saw Seishin's Fiesta. That is the image my brain put before my visual consciousness. So we sure as heck don't always see what's in front of us, or hear what was said to us - stuff that's supposed to be cut and dry - "I saw it with my own eyes" - the relative world is a heck of a lot more mixed up than that as it all runs through our minds. Some schools of Buddhism say no, that's not going far enough, all of this IS mind. There is no so-called external objective reality at all.
As we perceive more carefully and clearly. As we work on rebalancing our 6 senses. As we open to the more sublte, wondrous, and fluid nature of the relative world we see naturally become softer and more flexible - that kind of resilience not the tough it out kind. And we're also seeing emptiness mirrored in this more fluid relative world. We can't see emptiness directly but we can feel it and appreciate it.
Slowing down helps. Rebalancing our senses helps. Practicing being more humble and curious helps a lot. Patience is essential too. We are wired up tight and so convinced of the reality of the complex web of stories we call "me" and "world." We heard a lot from Juriki about how he was able to keep re-understanding his own story in healthier and healthier ways through the dramatic hard knocks of his world. And you could feel the growth of wisdom in his understanding.
The other important great jewel in the studies of emptiness is to understand that there is no "inherentness" - in other words nothing is inherently this or bad. Everything is radically relative to everything else. We know this but we so easy to default to this thing is inherently good, that is inherently bad. We assign these fixed qualities as if they were built into the thing. No person is inherently good or bad. So in Buddhist understanding there isn't exactly good or evil in that way either. But down to the note in my example. Notes are inherently rude, or inherently constructive, or inherently helpful or unhelpful, or inherently anything. When you read them you are putting words together and making meaning with them. The meaning you mean might be similar to the one the person who chose them had in mind when they wrote that note, or they might not. And even to our note author the feeling and flavor of this note might have changed by the time I brought it up the next day in work circle.
Where the lack of inherentness seems to falter is when there are something that's almost everyone would agree on a quality is manifests. Like killing someone is pretty much an inherently bad idea. Or is it? (story of Judith Daylen and of course the classic what would you do to stop the Nazi soldiers from taking the jews in your attic?).
In the world of samsara we assign inherentness to things all the time. It's powerful to watch how we do that to people: he's always late, she such a reactive person. Could be negative qualities or positive - he's so kind - but it's the same move. We're putting someone in a box and putting a label on that box. And when we do we have even more trouble actually perceiving things as they are because first we see the label on the box. We don't look inside to see how the person is now. to tune into their actual being.
Wisdom in our tradition - prajna paramita - is exactly feeling and understanding the fluidity of the relative and the interpenetration of emptiness. Knowing in. your bones that nothing is inherently anything. It's all only arising now. Just now. And we don't know what will happen. Ever. There are patterns and we can recognize the Dharma of patterns and predictions arising in the mind that we anticipate that after the left foot moves the right foot will but really and truly we don't know that. Buddhist wisdom isn't knowing lots of stuff. Think of all the wonderful stories of the monks of old burning their sutra books and going back to the monastery to sit all day and study with a teacher who is deeply rooted in emptiness.
And these great poems from the Zen masters of old. Let's enjoy a few more poems from the Korean monk Naong. He was 14th century - a kind of Dōgen figure in that tradition - he went to China and brought back a deepened understanding in a similar way. In his case there were two other monks who went about the same time who are all three honored as a kind of triumverate of great teachers who renewed the Soen (Zen) Dharma in Korea in the 14th century.
Here's the first one again
The Human Route - Naong Hyegeun (懶翁惠勤/慧勤, 1320–1376)
Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed
that is human.
When you are born, where do you come from?
When you die, where do you go?
Life is like a floating cloud which appears.
Death is like a floating cloud which disappears.
The floating cloud itself originally does not exist.
Life and death, coming and going are also like that.
But there is one thing which always remains clear.
It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.
Then, what is the one pure and clear thing?
Advice to Someone Looking for the Truth from Outside
If you truly obtain the treasure of the house, You may use it forever and ever without end. It is manifested in every mark in the whole universe, But if you look for it from outside, no trace of it will be found.
Everyone has his own mysterious jewel, Whether you are standing or sitting it will always follow. If there is anyone who doubts it, he should ask himself, “Who is the one that is now speaking?”
Comments: like Dōgen's "the treasure store will open of itself, and you will use it at will" we just chanted, no? So there is a treasure - this deep understanding. And how we already have what we seek.
Sometimes people here "emptiness" and they think: ick, sounds cold. What about love?
The way I see it: when we really appreciate the empty nature of all that is we also appreciate that we are love. That we are always receiving love. And always giving love. Even when we get tangled up in the relative world. There is nothing but love. That's emptiness.
Reply to the Request for a Verse from a Practitioner of Meditation
If you truly realize the emptiness of body and mind, No harm in sharing the teachings wherever you go* Everything will reveal itself - clear and bright, But if you seek its source, you will never find a trace. 了得身心本自空 何妨隨處展家風 雖然物物明明現 更覓來由又沒蹤 *[orig trans: You may propagate what you believe wherever you go.]
Comment: realizing emptiness is the key to unlock the teachings, but then it's not that you "get" them - don't seek some kind of fixed source, some fixed understanding, it's not that kind of thing. It's the beautiful 3rd line that matter here: "everything will reveal itself - clear and bright."
Affinity with Plum Blossom
What joy to share one’s inmost heart! The sweet fragrance in the snow is diffusing in the house. Only the pine tree and bamboo in the front yard Are enduring the snow and cold weather with the plum blossom.
友梅 同心妙旨孰能歡 雪裏淸香透室間 唯有軒前松與竹 共他一樣耐霜寒
Comment What a joy indeed!
