Driving Dharma

I would like to start our my dharma glimpse with a poem from the Venerable Robina Curtin; she is a Tibetan Buddhist nun in Australia, I love its matter-of-factness of her lines.

“We’re all mentally ill.
We’re all delusional.
We’re all junkies.
It’s just a matter of degree. “

I like how she embraces specific negative labels and says, “wait, hold on, you think that is not you…come on!” These are the labels we use for other people, not for ourselves, we can discount them, dismiss their experience because they are not like us, it’s all a way for us to avoid looking at ourselves. She calls it as it is, “You are delusional!” I think most of us would agree that we are delusional in a “not yet awakened way” but not “actually delusional” or in a “literally delusional” way but is that true?
In our sangha manual, we have this adapted line from Shinran as part of our liturgy,
Blinded by our delusion, anger, and greed we cannot see the brilliant light that embraces us – The Great compassion never tires, always casting its boundless light upon us, just as we are, always.
Sometimes for our dharma talk, we will use the prayers and affirmations in our practice manual as a starting point. We used the one above for a recent discussion. I asked the gathering what they would call someone who is out of touch with reality or in other words a person who doesn’t accept reality as it is and they responded with delusional. So I followed up by asking them how they were delusional. Not something they are usually asked. It was great to see their eyes light up as they started to slowly understand how they are actually delusional in a real everyday sort of way. It was then that the words of our dharma brother Noah San came into my head, it was a line from his book on Secular Buddhism which I really liked. In the chapter about Dukkha, he distills the cause of suffering into to a very simple and profound way. He writes that “We suffer because we want reality to be different than it is.” I offered this teaching to the gathering. It is that simple. We are delusional because of we. “we want reality to be different than it is.” It’s even more than want, we scheme, invent strategies, create convoluted stories all, so we do not have to accept reality as it is. Let me share an everyday experience that helped me see this.

A lot of my examples of late have to do with driving. I think I need to start a blog called Dharma Highways: How Driving Teaches us the Way……or maybe not. Every morning when I drive to work, as it does every day, the flow of traffic continually changes, slows down, speeds up, always in a state of flux because of a myriad of cause and conditions. This is the very nature traffic. When traffic stops moving it ceases to be traffic and becomes parking. That aside, here I am driving to work like I do every day and the reality that I want, the reality that I expect is the following:

no red lights,
goodly speeds,
graceful lane changes,
blinkers, yes blinkers.

I expect traffic to be light and if heavy still to move efficiently. But what happens when these expectations are dashed after the first right-hand turn? Anger? Rage? We, I mean I – become frustrated, my pulse races, my vision narrows. I am assigning all kinds of character traits to people I don’t know, transforming them into an enemy. The chanting I was just doing moments ago, forgotten and now I am driving aggressively and tailgate the car in front all because she moved into my lane and caused me to touch my breaks. Of course, I do not notice the bumper sticker placed loving on the driver’s side of the bumper, by her special needs granddaughter, that reads, “World’s Greatest Grandma.” Then in a flash, I realize, “Holy crap I’m delusional!” In a very real way, I do not see reality as it is. I am suffering because I want “reality to be different than it is.” It really is lunacy to suffer so significantly in the ebb and flow of traffic; it is traffic, it ebbs and flows.
The incident made me think of how many other places in our lives that we are delusional? Our relationships, our jobs, our expectations of ourselves. One of the most significant teachings that I have found in the dharma and from Gyomay Kubose Sensei is that acceptance IS transcendence. We suffer because we are unwilling to accept reality as it is and are so willing to dive right into depths of dukkha because we want so badly to believe we have some control over life. I would rather suffer and stay deluded than to accept how little control I actually have. And yet to be free, I have to acknowledge there nothing I can do to change reality. That reminds me of what Hiroyuki Itsuki writes in his book Tariki, his mantra that keeps him sane, “there is nothing I can do.” I too realize that there is next to nothing that I can do about the natural ebb and flow of life itself. This is a great mantra when stuck in traffic, “there is nothing I can do about the natural ebb and flow of traffic.” I guess I have found something that I can do. I can accept the ebb and flow of traffic. I can directly observe how it works and by doing so become more aware of the unnoticed kindness of strangers that let me in, the person in the car next to me crying, or the kids in the back seat laughing and making faces, all manifestations of the light of the great compassion.
Yes, I am delusional, and I am working on by degrees accepting reality a little more each day, even when I am stuck driving 47 in 70 miles an hour zone.

Gassho

Dharma Glimpses from Bright Dawn.

Dharma Glimpses are short dharma teachings  from Bright Dawn Lay Ministers.

Here are some podcasts from Bright Dawn Way of Oneness podcast page.

Faust my Dharma Teacher.

Listening to the Dharma 

Buddhism and Gender Equality

Who are you?

And here are some more Dharma Glimpses in written format on our Bright Dawn Blog.

 

Naturalness

Bodhisattvas and Buddhas

Peaceful Heart

Invisible Cemetery

Ku Yo – Offerings to all the Buddhas

“ Ku Yo, making an offering is a very important virtue in the Buddha’s Way…Ku Yo is done in relation to someone who is more worthy than oneself…to do Ku Yo is one way of expressing profound gratitude and nourishment for the very source of our gratitude…it is an honor to do Ku Yo.” – Gyomay Kubose

 

The concept of Ku Yo resonates with me. To make offerings to all the Buddhas is something that brought me back to Buddhism, after being away for a while. I have no idea of why this is what brought me back. If I look at my history, one would think that this is what would drive me away instead of drawing me nearer. Recently I was re-reading the Shorter Pure Land Sutra about how one of the practices in the Pure Land being was to make offerings to countless Buddhas of other Buddha lands. In Sukhavati, it rains Mandarava blossoms all the time, and those flowers are gathered up and then offered to numerous Buddhas across the universe. Along with other meditative or Bodhisattva practices, there is also the practice of Ku Yo. I love that fact that the offering to the Buddhas is not something that is rare but something that is continuously unfolding. I like to think of the flowers as a representation of the compassion and practice of those living in the Pure Land; the flowers raining from the sky represent the fruit of practice and awakening. As Mark Healsmith has written, “The flower is a wonderful exemplar of the uniqueness yet interconnectedness of all life “ and makes the offering of them an expression of the interconnectedness of all life and “profound gratitude, for the very source of our gratitude.”

The other reason why Ku Yo resonates with me is it is something that I have been contemplating. I have been thinking about Ku Yo in the frame of the “Way of Gratitude” and some of the barriers that impede our cultivation of it. I have been thinking about the role of humility and gratitude and how humility is one of its prerequisites. I think, at times, we struggle with gratitude because we struggle with humility. As I have been thinking about this and asking others, I found that for many of us we struggle with humility because we have not experienced it, only its unhealthy sibling; Shame. In humility we are open, we are ready to learn, we show both sides of the leaf. With shame, we close our self off from the outside world and bury our leaf in the darkest hole. In this state of mind when we see someone with boundless compassion or great practice we do not see it as something we can learn from, but they become a source of further comparison and a deepening shame of our failures. That which could give us hope and insight into our Buddha Nature only becomes a testament to our failures. Gratitude gets choked off in the darkness. Humility, on the other hand, opens us up to awe and the acceptance of our limitation, it frees us to “keep going” without the burden of judgment and shame.

As Gyomay writes, Ku Yo practice is being done in relation to someone or something that is more worthy than oneself. More worthy than me? A part of us does not like such a statement. Here is where many of us live in a paradox. In our shame we feel unworthy and yet we bristle at the idea of someone being more worthy than us? Why is this concept so challenging for some of us? Maybe it is because we have inherited the karma of “rugged individualism” and a misplaced meaning of “equality”? In opening services at our Sangha, we recite lines from the opening they use at Plum Village Sangha in France. One of the lines says, “may we be free from the “equality complex””, to remind ourselves that there are things greater than ourselves, like the three refuges for example; the Dharma, The Sangha and the Buddha. I am grateful that there are things in this world greater than me! I feel a sympathetic joy and gratitude to those I make offerings to. I think that Ku Yo is the fruit of “sincerely seeking the true life” (46) There is no Ku Yo without “true life” and no true life without “Ku Yo”, they “co-arise”. Offerings to the Buddha inspire us to become Buddhas, they come from the heart, there is no ego in it.” (46) all the time realizing that what bows and is bowed to are the same.

I have great appreciation for the more psychological and secular forms of Buddhism and they have been companions with me on my journey. At the same time I appreciate the idea of something greater than my small ego-self, a point of reference that elicits awe, a devotional expression within samsaric dualism, that works dynamically through poetry, metaphor and experience to dissolve all dualisms into the great ocean of compassion.

The Grace of Oneness

“ This realization of oneness. It involves the highest type of communication and respect.  IF your life is realized in the this sense…you would see that the whole world supports you.  You exist because others; everything supports your life.  This totality, this oneness evokes a gratitude and a great joy beyond explanation.” Gyomay Kubose

 

We live a life immersed in grace;  the grace of being supported by all things at all times. We are supported by the solar system, by the sun that continually lights our world and drives the processes that help the earth to give us air to breath, water to drink and food to eat, that helps us to see, We are supported by the smallest things, to the largest. We are supported by microbes and bees that help create the food we eat, and by all the trees that help us breathe.   The bees give us grace every day, the trees give us grace, and there is also the grace given by our ancestors down through long passages of time; so much grace given that is still within in us now.  We are all interdependent and existent in this very moment.  In the midst of our diversity and interdependence we can come to direct realization of Oneness and by doing so we can communicate our respect and gratitude for them, for all of life, for all the gifts which in oneness we have received  and which are unmerited.

 

For me, namu amida butsu is an expression of this oneness and grace, an expression of Buddha-nature.  The Oneness that Gyomay Sensei is writing about in the above quote, is for me personified as Amida Buddha.  Because of Oneness I exist and therefore I exist because of namu amida butsu. This is how I understand the idea among some teachers, that  the nembutsu is simply an expression of gratitude for all that Amida Buddha has done for us. My practice of chanting the nembutsu is a form of the highest form of  communication and respect. Through this practice I cultivate a recognition / realization of Oneness, and all that Oneness does for me every day, and this brings forth the fruit and joy of gratitude.

 

This has tied into something that I have been thinking about  and that is gratitude, gratitude as a form of awakening.  A few years ago I had an experience in the midst of great suffering, where something shifted and I was overwhelmed with an intense gratitude for everything I had experienced and everyone I have ever known, even for just a moment.  I spent hours going through my email list sending out heart felt thank yous to everyone on. I think even companies whose email list I was part of even got a thank you and I am sure a few who received the emails, shook their heads. I called friends, I reached out to as many as I could to share my gratitude for their very existence.   In this space of gratitude, I wept and I laughed.  It was confusing at first because of the amount of tears that fell.  I remember thinking why am crying so hard?  I am  not sad so why am I crying? I realized that for me this is how deep and profound gratitude expresses itself.  Later on, this experience also helped to me realize that for many years I had seen “love” as the highest emotion, the goal of religious practice.  I have had experiences of profound love for all things,  where I loved even the street sign that I was standing under, and yet that night I experienced something even more expansive and sublime than “love”;  I experienced an unbounded gratitude. Writing this now and remembering what it was like, the lines from last week’s report are even more profound  “ We should always be ready to die, able to say, “thank you for everything”.  In some ways, that is what I experienced that night, the “thank you for everything” and remembering it helps me to understand what Gyomay Sensei was teaching.

 

I like what Jeff Wilson,  a Jodo Shin minister has written,  “in Shin Buddhism our main focus is the practice of gratitude. We practice simply to give thanks for what we have received. It’s a small shift in one’s perspective, but when pursued, it can be transformative.”  This came home to me the other night when I was holding my little boy in my arms, he was cuddled against my chest and I was just feeling him breathe and thinking how much I loved him and I just repeated thank you, thank you, thank you and the love I was feeling already, expanded exponentially and was enfolded into an ever expanding gratitude.  I think the cultivation of  gratitude is an important practice because it acts as a catalyst that can expand positive states of consciousness. Cultivating gratitude, by recognizing  and by expressing it, manifests more gratitude and deepens our awareness of Oneness.

 

Namu amida butsu

Namu amida butsu

Namu amida butsu

 

May it be so.

The Three Hardest Words.

I don’t know.

From a young age  many of us are afraid to be someone  who doesn’t know. Maybe we are afraid to be seen as dumb and therefore unacceptable,  so we wing it and hope the other person doesn’t see that we actually don’t have a clue. This is not just anecdotal, studies have shown that when children are giving unanswerable questions, they makeup answers, to seem like they know rather than to be found not knowing.  This habit sticks with as we grow up, for some of us they become the three hardest words to say.   We all know that feeling; usually half way through, when we realize we really have no clue what we are saying and how much easier it would have to simply say, “ I don’t know”. Instead we find ourselves five years old again, dancing around with our made up answers, again  hoping no one will notice.

To act as a “knower”  is fraught with challenges and pitfalls. Deciding that we know this is the way it is.”….. has a tendency to close us off to a myriad of other possibilities.  We become fixed in our ideas and perceptions, our world gets smaller and smaller.  Another problem with knowing and being afraid of not knowing, is we can never really be confident that what we know is reality. To paraphrase Mark Twain. “…they think they know something that just ain’t so.

To be clear, the knowing I am referring to is not confusion or paralyzing doubt and it is not knowing in opposition to not knowing as in not knowing the capital of Nebraska, or  even a set of propositions such as the four noble truths.  When I say “I don’t know” I am talking the spirit of openness and curiosity a “I don’t know! Let’s find out!” or  “Let’s keep going and see what happens,” it is the not knowing of faith.  Suzuki Roshi wrote in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, “With beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert mind there are few.”  Beginner’s mind is the essence of not knowing”.  For those trapped in “knowing” the vista is limited, the questions are answered, all is settled, the world is fixed, but in the end, the light at the end of the tunnel is not more knowledge but the Dukkha Express and it is coming fast.

So how can we cultivate the non-dual spirit of “I don’t know”?  The first thing is to simply being willing to not know, to let go of the knowing.  I have found the world is lighter when I am free of having to know, I am more patient, less stressed, open. Here are two concrete things we can do to cultivate the not knowing.

First there is a  good practice suggested by Buddhist teacher, Gil Fronsdal, is to attach  “I don’t know” to as many thoughts as possible. For example, when thoughts arise like, this is good or this is bad or I can’t handle this; these become, I don’t know if this is good or I don’t know if this is bad or I don’t know if I can’t handle this.  As he says,  “the phrase “I don’t know” questions the authority of everything we think.”  It allows us to be free of fixed ideas, it can create curiosity and allows an openness to creativity.”  He goes on to say that this simple phrase can help us challenge tightly held beliefs and can  “pull the rug out from under our most cherished beliefs.”   Not knowing opens the world to us, it makes a way for us to be compassionate, patient, kind, honest and help cultivate equanimity.

The last thing that we can do to  cultivate the essence of “I don’t know”  is bowing.  James Ishmael Ford has written about not knowing and how it relates to the act of bowing.

“Don’t know. Not knowing. That is the ancient spiritual practice of bowing in a nutshell…The bow, I suggest, can open our hearts, can take us places we never dreamed of, to a palpable, transformative, endless world of possibility called not knowing. This is what I really want to underscore: this not knowing has endless creative possibilities, to throw in another metaphor, one or two simply aren’t enough for this place, this moment when we surrender to not knowing, when we bow to life: we discover a well that apparently is bottomless, bubbling with life-giving waters.”

I raise my hands in gassho and bow to each of you.

I would like to close with the words of Zen teacher of the 9th century, Dizang, “not knowing is most intimate.”

Namu Amida Butsu.