Blogma

While some of us are sitting sesshin this coming week, whenever you think of us, please stop for a moment and take a mindful breath, or several. Look around and appreciate the blessings that you are receiving this very moment. And reflect on what you are offering this very moment – in support of us in sesshin, and in support of all beings where you are. If you’d like to join in this season of Rohatsu sesshin, and celebrate Buddha awakening, add another period of zazen to your daily practice and dedicate it to the well-being of all the great variety of beings who are sharing this moment on Earth with you. This is the opportunity that receiving a human life offers to us all.

Monday is a full moon. This day is set aside traditionally for the Fusatsu ceremony, where we contemplate our basic life intention. We’ll be celebrating this on Sunday. We look at what ways we continue to be led by our habits of mind and activities that are contributing to our own and other’s suffering.  We bring awareness to these. Then we atone for them. This all helps to remind us of and strengthen our intention. Actually, more than just an intention, by engaging this practice we shift our orientation from following habits to living according to vow. This is, a Great Vow to wake up to unskillful habits so that we can choose other ways to respond to circumstances. Seeing that we have a choice in how we respond opens us to so many possibilities. Every day is a series of choice points. Releasing ourselves from automatic and into presence, allows us to choose in the direction of happiness and the causes of happiness. What comes along with decreasing suffering, is increasing peace. The Buddha’s motivation to save all beings from suffering led to a Great Vow. That is the work, the way of life of a Bodhisattva, one who lives in all the difficulties of the world with the intention to bring peace to their own hearts and the hearts of all beings, through the words and actions. These are our tools to do this. We begin with ourselves. What better way is there to live? Please join us this Sunday for Fusatsu.

Dogen offers his unique guidance for awakening when he instructs: “See the Buddha’s golden light in every hour of your day, cultivate doubt about your view of time and being, investigate how it is that particular being-time co-exists with all being-time, and know that practice-realization is right now.” This quote is from his essay on the nature of time as we experience it. The experience of time is so various, depending on the particular circumstances and our state of mind. During Rohatsu Sesshin, which celebrates the Buddha’s enlightenment, we’ll be inquiring into what is so subtle that often we don’t even take note of it. Is this moment independent from any other? How do you experience time directly? We will be taking up this mystery during the upcoming sesshin. It’s best investigated during long sitting, which is what sesshin provides. A sesshin is a “time-out”, a rest for the usual mind, and, thus, to sink into wide awareness, and the sequential characteristics, of our usual sense of the march of events. Even if you cannot attend the entire week, do consider at least one full day, to relax and open to this mystery of time.

The first of the perfections is dana, the Sanskrit word for generosity. Dana is a natural expression of an open heart and spacious mind. Nothing material need be added necessarily. We give things, time, attention, Dharma. And most fundamentally this refers to how we go beyond separate self, as we participate wholeheartedly in the simple functioning of life. We don’t need to decide to give, or to pick and choose how we give….it flows from oneness, from the natural connection with another’s true need. In this way we appreciate our life as our instrument of spontaneous offerings. The quality of our own being functions fully and is enough. Generosity as practice is not dependent on giving as a means to anything else. It’s not dependent on getting something back. Not dependent on anything but the immediate need that we recognize and fulfil.

Generosity is something we cultivate in practice as we manifest upaya, skill in means as an ordinary human being. If our offering is not respectful, if it’s not free of strings, then our experience will not be marked by the joy of giving with a whole heart. Generosity can bring us happiness at every stage of its expression. And in that sense we delight in the intention of giving, we delight in the actual act, and then perhaps also delight in looking back on what we gave. In this way we become aware of the motivation underlying our giving.

It’s not always possible to know what will result from our actions. Our practice is to recognize when we are distracted by our own mind states, that are colored in holding extreme views, being caught in thinking and in rigid categories. When we fall into habitual stereotyped thinking, it limits our ability to respond to conditions as they are. Being held by our self-serving agendas, we cannot experience the freedom of openness and creativity that comes with not being so sure. We inquire more carefully, we tend to see fully the many conditions that underlie any situation. We can refrain from adding to harmful outcomes or from planting seed for further harm. And remember to exercise patience, generosity, kindness, even when a situation is challenging. Embracing precepts helps us be aware of the ways we use our body in action, our speech in relationships, and how aware we are of what’s going on in our own minds and hearts. These are the seeds we plant in daily life. Being at peace, with a stable and open mind we are more likely to see accurately what’s needed. And use whatever skillful means (upaya) is available. A limited view, limited by our fond opinions and unexamined beliefs, binds us to unskillful activity. Being skillful in our lives grows out of a wider, open view, a “don’t-know” mind, and an unflagging commitment to be of benefit.

I’d like to share with you words from my fellow teacher, Rafe Martin. He is the author of several translations of the Jataka Tales, mythic stories of the Buddha’s previous lives.

We live in a reciprocal universe. No one and nothing is ultimately isolated or alone in deepest reality. Whatever happens anywhere, in some way affects us, and conversely, how we live and act and think affects everything everywhere.
Given what is now going on, and the suffering involved to so many, please do what you can to keep your practice in mind as you go about your day. When sitting please really sit. Don’t just sit in zazen dreaming of other things. Commit as fully as you can to this breath, this count, this koan, letting all else go. In this simple way you will be participating in actively helping to bring peace, or in helping to establish the possibility of peace in our deeply suffering, terribly un-peaceful world.
I think of the jataka tale of the Brave Little Parrot. The forest is burning and the little parrot sees one little thing she can do to help stop the blaze. And she does that one little thing with her whole heart. Bringing her tiny drops of water, one-by-precious-one, ultimately has an effect much greater than logic could ever predict.
The so-called “big picture” is built of very small things. Breath by breath, drop by drop.