Two Sundays ago, when we began our new 8-week series, I had not
planned on giving a personal Dharma Talk but had intended on simply
reading an article by Thich Nhat Hanh. After the meditations, I
suddenly felt that "flow" that sometimes occurs, and so I gave a
spontaneous Dharma Talk from that heightened state of consciousness.
When that "flow" happens, it feels like "channeling" to me, and I
don't even have to think about what I'm going to say, the words just
come out effortlessly from a deeper place within. It's almost like
I'm watching myself speak. Sometimes, what is spoken surprises me.
Of course, I always have the choice to not speak, but I've learned
over the years not to resist it but to "flow" with it. If you were
not present, you can listen to this 10-minute Dharma Talk here (click
on "stream" or "download"). Thank you for letting me share so very
personally from my heart with you:
I encourage you to come as consistently as possible to "Awakening
Heart" this month and next. You will be richly blessed for it. And
you will be empowered to be a blessing to many, many others. And
please pray for me as I begin the new meditation group at the Unity
Church of Grapevine. Last night, I had a dream in which I received
the name for the new sangha -- "METAMORPHOSIS: Midcities Mindfulness
Meditaton."
From Appreciate Your Life, by Zen master Taizan Maezumi Roshi --
Sometimes our life seems to go to all kinds of so-called negative
extremes. When this happens, how do we take care of our frustrations,
anxiety, pain, sorrows, even despair? The point is how do we put
balance in our life? What kind of standards do we use?
In the Four Noble Truths, Siddhartha Gautama the Shakyamuni Buddha
(who lived in India 2,600 years ago) speaks the truth of suffering. We
know that happiness never continues forever. Ironically, the more
happiness we have, the more pain we have when we lose this
happiness. Generally speaking, birth and death are understood as the
main causes of suffering. Birth, sickness, old age, and death are all
suffering. To be born is to live and become sick, to become old. The
great Japanese Soto Zen Master, Eihei Dogen Zenji (Kigen), tells us
that there is a buddha (enlightenment) within sickness; there is a
buddha in the midst of getting old; there is a buddha within
suffering. More precisely, being born is the life of buddha, being
sick is the life of buddha, getting old is the life of buddha, death
is nothing but the life of buddha. It is the same life as our life. Do
not discriminate between the life of buddha and your life.
One of the members of our Zen Meditation Center recently learned that
her mother has terminal cancer. Her mother has not been told of this,
so the daughter wrote and asked me, "Shall I tell her or not?" I wrote
back a passage from Dogen Zenji, "Birth and death is the life of the
Buddha." I don't know what she told her mother, since her mother is
not Buddhist. Is it difficult for you to take death as the life of
buddha?
Dogen Zenji also said, "When the Buddha is within birth and death,
there is neither birth nor death." This is a wonderful koan [a
"koan" is a text or question -- traditionally taken from, but not
limited to, Zen literature -- assigned to a student by the
teacher. The student must then demonstrate a clear grasp of the
essence of the koan]. If there is no birth, no death, then what
exists? Answer me. What exists?
Just buddha.
We are being born and dying simultaneously. Each moment we are being
born and each moment, dying. Instant birth and death. This means that
in every moment our life is brand new. We are living this fresh, new
life all the time, and yet we experience so many fears and
frustrations.
Of the Four Noble Truths, the fourth, the Eightfold Path, is the most
important, for it talks about how we can take care of suffering. In
the Eightfold Path, the Buddha begins with right understanding, or
right view. This sense of right is not limited to a conventional sense
of right and wrong, but means a total or complete understanding. We
should understand life and the aspects of life in a proper way. Right
understanding is followed by right thought, speech, conduct,
livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration (samadhi ).
Samadhi leads us back to right understanding. What is right samadhi?
This kind of samadhi is one of the very crucial bases for making
decisions. When we have it, we transcend this restricted "I". If we do
not understand this "I", we create delusions and we suffer pain, fear,
and frustrations.
The Eightfold Path begins with right understanding, which takes care
of ninety percent of the pain in life. What makes it right? What is
right and what is wrong? In one way or another, all of us have some
kind of standard by which we make value judgments, by which we judge
whether something is good or bad, right or wrong, adequate or
inadequate.
In this regard, there are four aspects to consider when we have
decisions to make or actions to take. The aspects are time, place, the
people involved, and amount. These could be applied to any situation
with our commonsense understanding. For instance, we must take into
account the people involved in the situation before we can take action
or make certain decisions. We also consider the circumstances, the
place, and how much we can do. If we pay attention to these four
aspects, we can judge fairly well what to do.
In the Nirvana Sutra, we find the Buddha's last sermon on the "Eight
Awarenesses of the Enlightened Person." It is somewhat similar to the
Eightfold Path of his first sermon. I want to emphasize the first two
awarenesses: wanting little, and knowing how to be satisfied. The
first awareness is having few or fewer desires. It does not say not to
want anything, but rather to have fewer desires. There is wonderful
wisdom here. Want little of the things that we do not have. With just
this awareness, our life can be fairly well sustained.
How much should we want? How do we know if it is too little or too
much? And what kind of things should we want? In a way, wanting little
is a very clear guideline, but it is not easy to achieve. What would
be good guidelines for practicing wanting little? You already have
everything you need! So it is not a matter of setting up artificial
guidelines. Look deeply into yourself. I think you know the answer.
The second awareness is even more fascinating. Know how to be
satisfied with the things that we already have. When we think about
this, we see that we truly have enough. We have this life. To some
degree, we can say that the less we have, the more abundance we
have. When we don't own anything at all, we have the abundance of the
entire universe. This is the miracle of life, but instead we chase in
vain after things. So wanting little and knowing how to be satisfied,
we can be peaceful, can't we?
This principle of no gain applies to enlightenment, too. Since we are
already it, we need not expect anything. This may be the most
important attitude that we can take toward our practice or even our
life. We can look at this from two aspects. One aspect is, "Don't
expect anything." The other is, "Everything is already here!" What is
there to expect? What else do you need? You have everything to begin
with. You don't need to become something or someone
else! You are already complete.
Buddha guarantees this to each of us with no exceptions. This is right
understanding.
The last of the Eight Awarenesses is avoiding idle talk. These are, in
effect, the last words of the Buddha's teaching. We can understand
idle talk as the pursuit of conceptual thoughts or dualistic
understanding. If we talk in dualistic ways, our talk becomes idle
talk and we cannot have peace. We can even make our healthy body sick
by our thoughts and vice versa. In our tradition, zazen (sitting
meditation) is the best means to taste this nonduality, or peace. At
the same time, practicing zazen to get something is not an ideal way
to practice. Please do not expect any effects from zazen as such, just
do zazen. Can you do this? In just doing zazen, zazen contributes to
each of us, to the immediate sangha (spiritual community), to the
extended sangha, and even further to the Three Treasures of Buddha,
Dharma (Truth), and Sangha, which contain everything.
Please consider that your practice is not just for yourself. When you
forget yourself, a transformation takes place. Then your life is no
longer your life. It is the life of Buddha. Your practice is
contributing much, much more to others than you might think. If we
must use any basic standard of evaluation, the fact that the life of
each of us contains everything is the standard we should use. We make
this realization clear through our practice. You are taking care of
the dharma at the same time that the dharma is taking care of you.
So when you feel fear, pain, and frustration, appreciate your life as
Buddha's life. Being sick, take good care of yourself instead of being
upset and frustrated. Getting old? Enjoy it, Buddha is getting
old. Have a feast with him/her! Why not? We have all had painful
experiences. Turn your mind around and see how you can take it with
the joy of Buddha. Just the way we look at these things can be the
difference between heaven and hell. This is not to say there is not
terrible suffering in life, but too often a tiny thing becomes a huge
thing for us; it almost kills us. And yet, when we look at it from a
different perspective, we laugh.
Clarify what life is, what death is. There is a very clear answer. How
you appreciate it and how you live it is up to you. Please take care
of it.
-- by Zen master Taizan Maezumi Roshi, from Appreciate Your
Life
